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ATRC Podcast
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 Podcast
for October 12, 2007 - Episode 75
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Play time 58 minutes - Program Notes
"Black
Cadillac. Alligator boots. Money in the
pockets of his sharkskin suits."
~Mark Knopfler, "Song for Sonny Liston" Track 8 on
Shangri-La
On the show:
Political Economy Days are coming up and we have the
webcast URL for you; the Excel bug gets fixed; beta
signup for Office Live Workspace; Patch Tuesday
happened; a serious security flaw in Adobe Acrobat has
been discovered; there was a java update this week;
Popular Mechanics has announced the 10 breakthrough
technology products of 2007; Google buys Jaiku; the
Nobel prize for Physics goes to two scientists whose
discoveries have contributed to hard drive technology;
PoliticalBase.com makes it's debut; and we feature a
book on Word. David's Blackboard feature of
the week is titled "Too Many Tools" about the Blackboard
faux student account. Haydn's Teaching with
Technology segment today is titled "Interaction in
Online Learning." My Tech Talk Topic is "The
Quick Access Toolbar in PowerPoint 2007."
Technology News Briefs
-
 Political economy days are
fast approaching.
The Economics, History and Political Science
department is organizing this once-a-semester
experience on October 17-18. The schedule of
speakers is extensive and controversial.
Click here for the web site,
here to download the PDF schedule of speakers.
Sessions held in the Governing Board room will be
webcast at the following URL:
http://palomarcollege.acrobat.com/ped2007.
To view, click on this link at the scheduled time.
An archive will be available at a later date, but we
do not yet have details on the URL of the archive.
-
Two weeks ago (Episode
73) we reported on a bug in Excel 2007 which
cause it to display incorrect results when floating
point multiplications are performed with products
very close to 65,535 and 65,536. The bug has
been fixed.
Click here to access the Microsoft Excel team
blog, which contains patch download links. The
patch will become part of the Microsoft update
system, but a release date has not been announced.
It will also be a part of a later Office 2007 SP1.
-
You can sign up for the
free beta of Microsoft Office Live Workspace, a
new web service from Microsoft which permits storing
Microsoft Office documents online, access from
anywhere, collaborate with others on projects
centered on Office documents, control permissions to
the shared web space, open/edit/save Word, Excel and
PowerPoint documents from the web, synchronize
Outlook information and more. It is being
called the "online companion to Microsoft Office,
and is what Microsoft sees as the future of "cloud
computing."
-
If you were paying attention, Patch Tuesday occurred
this week. It was just the usual. I
installed 5 patches on my XP machine and 8 on Vista.
Your mileage will vary.
Click here for the full explanation in the
Microsoft Security Bulletin.
-
 A
security flaw has been discovered in Adobe
Acrobat Reader and Adobe Acrobat (versions 8.1 and
earlier) that could allow malicious programs to take
control of PCs. Adobe has announced that they
are aware of the flaw, and will have a patch in
place by the end of October. They
have published a workaround for the
vulnerability for Windows XP on their web site, but
it involves editing the registry and is not
recommended for non-expert users. Adobe
contends that the flaw only affects XP users.
- A Java update, version 6 update 3, became
available from
Sun this week. Sun is also pushing their
free "Open Office" product, which can be obtained by
download from that Java update site.
-
Popular Mechanics announced their 10
breakthrough devices of 2007 this week:
- The Microsoft Surface - a table-top computing
device
- The Apple iPhone
- The Samsung solid state hard drive
- The Nintendo Wii Fit - a fitness gaming device
- The LG Super Blu Player - a DVD player that can
play both HD and Blu-Ray discs.
- The Ford Sync - in-car communications,
navigation, and entertainment system installed in
certain Ford models this year, and to be installed
in all models within 2 years.
- The GM, BMW, Daimler-Chrysler Two-Mode Hybrid
fuel saving technology (remember, this is Popular
Mechanics).
- The Zonbu Zonbox laptop computer. If it
crashes, you get a new one overnight.
- The Hitachi CR13VBY reciprocating saw
- Dow SafeTouch Fiberglass-free Insulation (at
last)
Click here for a Crave picture gallery.
- Google announced that they have acquired
Jaiku, a Finnish
microblogging service provider. Google
plans to compete directly with
Twitter and
Pownce in the world of microblogging, where
users post very small messages (140 characters or
less) that get aggregated in mashups across the web
or targeted to specifically identified groups.
Click here for the Google press release.
The entry of Google into the world of microblogging
raises hopes for the introduction of standards in an
increasingly balkanized array of services and
interfaces. See
this ars technica article for details.
-
 "Albert Fert of the Université Paris-Sud in
Orsay, France, and Peter Grünberg of the
Forschungszentrum in Jülich, Germany, have been
awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in physics for their
discovery of the phenomenon known as giant
magnetoresistance (GMR)" (ars
technica). The primary practical
application of their work has been in the
manufacture of read/write heads in hard drives and
the development of
magnetic random access memory. For further
information on giant magnetoresistance in multilayer
media,
click here.
-
PoliticalBase.com is a new wikipedia-like site
specializing in neutral information about politics
and politicians. Based on federal election
commission data, the ad-supported site contains
information on politicians, issues, advocacy groups,
and all things political. User content is
welcomed wiki-style. Maintaining the
neutrality of which ought to be really interesting.
-
 Featured Safari Tech Book Online:
Microsoft Office Word 2007 Inside Out by
Katherine Murray, Mary Millhollon and Beth Melton.
"Learn everything you need to know for working with
Microsoft Office Word 2007. This book packs hundreds
of time-saving solutions, troubleshooting tips, and
workarounds for using Office Word 2007."
Palomar maintains a subscription to Tech Books
Online, and the books can be accessed from any
computer on the campus network.
Contact the library for information about off-campus
access.
Listen to the news [mp3 -
15:31]
Training Opportunities
- Academic Technology Workshops
-
Elluminate Training
- Elluminate is our new econferencing system.
There are many excellent training resources
available through the
Elluminate training center. Live,
instructor led training seminars--conducted through
the Elluminate interface--occur regularly and
may be scheduled through their web site.
-
@ONE Training
Blackboard Feature of the
Week - David Gray
Too Many Tools
Blackboard contains many tools for distributing
content and facilitating communication between
faculty and students. It’s always a good idea to
consider what tools are available, but sometimes you
know there are tools you are just not going to use.
When that happens, you can simplify your life by
turning off these other tools, so that you aren’t
constantly having to sort through massive lists to
find the tools you do want to use.
The ability to customize which tools are
available in your own course is hidden in the Manage
Tools link, found in the lower left corner of the
Control Panel. There are actually three types of
Availability to control, for Tools, Building Block
Tools, and Content Types, but the controls are
similar for each type.
If you were to click, for example, the Tool
Availability link, you end up with a list of the
different tools available built into Blackboard.
There are check-boxes to the right of each tool,
indicating who can use these tools. For Tool
Availability the choices are Available, Allow Guest,
and Allow Observer. Available, in unchecked, means
the tool is not going to work in your course; if you
have made links to a tool (such as the student My
Grades list) available in your course, but then turn
off the corresponding tool in the course (such as
unchecking Availability to the Gradebook) then the
link to the tool remains but will result in an
Access Denied error message. So, if you do decide to
make any of these tools unavailable, make sure you
have also removed the links to these tools.
You may wonder why some of the entries have small
grey dots rather than check boxes; if a dot appears,
that indicates the tool cannot be made available for
that type of user. For example, the Address Book in
Blackboard cannot be made available to guests.
You may also wonder what the Allow Observer
column is intended to control; Palomar does not use
the Blackboard Observer status, so basically those
controls do nothing and can be safely ignored.
When you customize the checkboxes in this list to
your own satisfaction, just hit the Submit button in
the lower right corner of the page and voila! After
committing these changes to a course though, I’d
strongly recommend that you log into your course
with your faux-student account and check things out
from a student point of view, just to make sure the
changes you made didn’t adversely affect student
use.
Be careful with what you turn off, but with a
little judicious management you should be able to
trim down the extraneous controls when you’re
working with your course as an instructor. Simplify,
man!
Note: To get to David's vodcast site,
click here.
Teaching with Technology - Dr.
Haydn Davis
Interaction in Online Learning
Promoting interaction in a traditional, on-campus
class is hard enough; sometimes it’s a challenge
getting students to pay attention, never mind
getting them to interact – with the content, with
other students, and with you. Now consider how to
promote interaction in an online class! Many online
instructors see this as one of the most difficult
aspects of an online class but also one of the most
important. The level of interactivity in an online
class is often singled out as one of the top factors
in determining whether or not the online class goes
well. While it may seem as though it should be
natural for students to interact enthusiastically,
experience teaches us that interactivity doesn’t
happen spontaneously, it must be carefully
cultivated.
Why is interactivity so important? There are
numerous benefits but here are a few that are often
cited:
- With high levels of interaction, students
can develop a sense of community and this has
been linked to higher retention, higher
satisfaction rates, and even increased learning;
- Interaction provides valuable feedback to
students;
- Interaction can help students to feel more
connected, actively engaged with the class;
- Interaction can help students see things
from different perspectives.
Consider three basic ways students can interact
in an online class.
- Students can interact with the course
material and participate in various learning
activities.
- Students can interact with other students.
- Students can interact with the instructor.
Now consider how we can implement pedagogical
strategies to encourage interaction.
Student to Content Interaction
|
Pedagogical strategy |
Comment |
|
Include content in several different formats |
Making content available via text, audio clips, video clips, Power
Point slide, and animations makes the class much
more interesting and addresses different
learning styles |
|
Include web links to relevant resources |
Providing learning activities that require students to conduct web
research allows them to develop a deeper
understanding of a topic such as responding to
Web Quests or MERLOT resources |
|
Include activities that allow students to generate their own projects |
Allowing students to, either individually or in small groups, research
a topic and then present what they’ve learned
can be accomplished online perhaps easier than
in an on-campus class |
|
Create practice quizzes or self-tests |
If students take advantage of this opportunity they can assess their
understanding of the content upon which they’ll
be tested later |
Student to Student Interaction
|
Encourage students to introduce themselves
|
Require students to create a Blackboard homepage and award points for
it; create a student-only forum where they can
post things unrelated to the course |
|
Encourage participation in Discussion forums
|
Most online instructors believe the discussion board is an important
component in an online class. To ensure that
students become actively engaged you need to
write stimulating discussion prompts, be present
in the forums, compliment thoughtful student
posts, post responses to student posts that
encourage them to reflect more deeply, and award
points according to a posted grading rubric |
|
Give students responsibility
|
Assign students to post a summary of the comments in a particular
thread, allow them to sign up for topics they’re
interested in |
|
Encourage students to consider new perspectives |
Require students to post their assignments, short papers, relevant
movie review, etc so that others can comment on
their work |
Student to Instructor Interaction
|
Create a welcoming class environment
|
Introduce yourself and provide some personal details; use first names
when you communicate with students, encourage
students to contact you according to rules you
explain |
|
Provide clear expectations |
Your syllabus should be detailed and thorough (some instructors give a
syllabus quiz for bonus points); carefully
describe each assignment and explicitly describe
how students will earn grades; explain how
students can contact you and when |
|
Maintain a presence in the class
|
Make sure students know you are carefully monitoring the class by:
posting announcements on a regular basis (at
least once a week); make frequent, and
constructive discussion board posts; some online
instructors schedule optional chat room hours;
some instructors invite their online students to
sit in on their F2F classes |
|
Provide timely and relevant feedback |
Perhaps more than anything else students appreciate hearing from the
instructor about their progress; of course
compliments when appropriate are greatly
appreciated |
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray
The Quick Access Toolbar in PowerPoint 2007
One of the joys (yes, I said joys) of using the
new Office 2007 system is "the ribbon;" what is
referred to in Microsoft-ese as the "Fluent User
Interface." The ribbon consists of the tabs,
groups, commands and dialog launchers at the top of
the major Office 2007 programs (Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, Outlook) that make them so different
from their predecessor versions. The part of
the ribbon I would like to discuss today, in the
context of PowerPoint, is that little set of icons
just to the right of the Office button in the upper
left of the application screen: the Quick Access
Toolbar (QAT).
The QAT is a consistent feature across all the
major Office 2007 programs that use the new ribbon
interface, but the tools that can be placed on it
vary according to application. I would like to
demonstrate how to add (and remove) tool to the QAT,
and then nominate several tools from the various
tabs in the new PowerPoint that I think ought to be
on everyone's personal QAT.
Notice that the QAT comes preset with three
icons, the Save, Undo and Redo commands (If you are
a keyboard shortcut fan, the shortcuts for these
three critical commands are Ctrl-S, Ctrl-Z and
Ctrl-Y, respectively). From the Home tab, the
two indispensible commands that ought to be added to
the QAT are the New Slide command (Ctrl-M) and the
Format Painter command. To add the New Slide
command to the QAT, right-click the command icon and
select "Add to Quick Access Toolbar" from the pop-up
menu.
You will see a small icon added to the QAT
representing the New Slide command. The New
Slide icon is one of those two-part commands, with a
gallery drop-down indicated by the little triangle.
The drop-down gallery contains various slide layouts
which can be chosen as part of the New Slide
commnand:
The layouts available will vary depending on
which Office theme you are using. The point I
want to make here is that this drop-down gallery
will also be available to you from the QAT.
Notice the little triangular indicator next to the
New Slide icon on the QAT. Clicking it will
produce the same gallery you see illustrated above.
The second command from the Home tab that is
indispensable, and therefore worthy of placing on
the QAT, is the format painter command--that little
paint brush just to the lower right of the Paste
command. Right-click it and add it to the QAT.
 For
those of you who have not yet made the acquaintance
of the format painter, it is one of those tools that
make life so easy that you wonder how you did
without it. Briefly, what it does is capture
the formatting of any selection you make, and
"paint" that formatting on to any other text or
object in the program. The steps in using it
are 1) select the source object; 2) click the format
painter tool; 3) paint the formatting on some new
object. It gets even better than this,
however. If you want to paint new formatting
on several new objects, double click the format
painter tool, rather than single clicking it, in
step 2 above. It will remain active until you
have painted all the objects you want. To turn
it off, click the icon again.
The tools you add to your Quick Access Toolbar
will vary depending on the type of presentations you
typically make, and your style of presenting, but
for most of us the Text Box, from the Insert Tab, is
an essential tool. Also essential from the
Insert tab, the Insert a Picture tool. I have
them both on my QAT.
The Animation tab also has two tools I want
readily at hand, the Animation presets tool and the
Custom Animation tool. Since these are the
only two tools in the Animation group, I can add the
entire group to my QAT, taking up less space than if
I had added them individually. To do so,
right-click the group title and choose "Add to Quick
Access Toolbar."
From the Slide Show tab, I add the Start Slide
Show from Current Slide tool. It is true there
is already an icon that does this on the status bar
at the bottom of the screen, but I like it to be
closer at hand. Designing your QAT has a lot
to do with work style.
From the Review tab I add the Spell Checker tool
(F7). I also add the New Comment tool. I
like to include descriptive comments (which will not
be visible during presentation) to the slides in
order to document sources, make notes to myself, and
so forth.
From the View tab I add the Slide Master tool (I
don't think I have ever developed a presentation
where some type of editing was necessary on the
slide master) and also the Switch Window tool.
You can have as many presentations simultaneously
open as you wish, and can quickly switch between
them with the Switch Window tool.
There you have it. My nomination for ideal
PowerPoint Quick Access Toolbar.
There are just a couple more questions to answser.
First, how do you remove a tool from the QAT?
Simple. Just right-click it (on the QAT) and
choose "Remove from Quick Access Toolbar."
Secondly, can the QAT be moved? Yes, in a
limited fashion. If you right click the QAT
anywhere, you will notice, on the pop-up menu, that
one of your choices is "Show Quick Access
Toolbar Below the Ribbon." This is for those
of you who like to put everything on it. If it
gets too long, you can always move it.
Thirdly, what about system commands, like Open,
Save, Print--the commands on the Office button,
basically? You will notice that there is
already one of them on the QAT by default, the Save
Command. You can add any others you wish by
first clicking the Office button, right-clicking the
command, and choosing "Add to Quick Access Toolbar"
as usual. You will also notice the small
drop-down at the end of the QAT, it already contains
a menu of the most common system commands.
Finally, how do you re-arrange the commands on the
QAT? Right-click it and choose "Customize
Quick Access Toolbar..." You can move commands
and add others quite easily.
Music
 The
music for today's show was provided by
Magnatune.com,
and is used through their Creative Commons license for
podcasts. Today's album is "Azadi"
by
Junoon. "In 1998, Junoon took both Pakistan and
India by storm with the hit single "Sayonee" and then
proceeded to sell over 25 million albums in the next
nine years, playing an active role in bringing the
people of India and Pakistan together for which they
were granted the UNESCO award for Outstanding
Achievements in Music and Peace."
"At my lemonade
stand I used to give the first glass away free and
charge five dollars for the second glass. The refill
contained the antidote." ~ Emo Phillips
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