"When
everyone is somebody, then no one is anybody."
~W. S. Gilbert
Gilbert
On the show:
Apple's Leopard has arrived; there is a new iPhone
purchase limit; Google and Microsoft goe head-to-head on
411 services; Shell embraces biometric payment; Oprah is
on YouTube; Google announces Android; Time magazine
names the invention of the year; Microsoft is going to
give away what Google sells; how researchers learned to
create human acceptance for robots; and a book on
PowerPoint makeovers. David's Blackboard feature of
the week is titled "The Roses of Success"
about how to evaluate the effectiveness of online exam
questions. Haydn's Teaching with
Technology segment focuses on two things: "Online
vs. In-Person; and Online Instructor Burnout."
Shay Phillips will do the Tech Talk Topic. He
demonstrates in a screencast how to embed a YouTube
video in a PowerPoint 2007 slide.
Technology News Briefs
Apple's long gestating Leopard sprung from its cage
on October 26, unfortunately
many users are reporting serious installation
problems, including an ironic blue-screen-of-death.
F-Secure also
reported a firewall problem that disables
firewalls and by default leaves it off on Leopard
installs. It is getting some
bad reviews from some important people. Problems were spotty, you might say.
Click here for a guided tour of the updated Mac
OS.
Apple has also announced a limit of 2 iPhones per
person, and will no longer accept cash sales of the
phone at all outlets (to curtail resellers). (Podcasting
News)
Battle of the 411 services. Ars Technica
published
a subjective review of the two major compeint
411 services, Google's service, called "GOOG 411"
(1-800-GOOG-411) and Microsoft's LiveSearch411
(1-800-Call-411). The clear winner?
Microsoft. It has features like remembering
your previous search and sharing results with
others, though the reviewer also noted some bugs.
Shell oil is the first gas-chain in the US to
initiate biometric payment systems at the pump.
Ten Chicago stations are piloting a
pay-by-fingerprint system where customer
fingerprints (entered at stores or via online with
the proper hardware) are tied directly to banking
accounts. So far, so good.
Click here for the engadget story.
Microsoft will be giving away business search
software. "Starting next year, the company
plans to give away a new product, dubbed Microsoft
Search Server 2008 Express, which enables workers to
see a collection of search results spanning
databases, internal computer systems, and the
Internet. In addition to the free product, Microsoft
plans a paid version that is essentially the same,
but is licensed to run on more than one physical
server. Microsoft said it will announce pricing for
that product closer to its launch next year" (CNet).
You
will have to wait until the latter half of 2008 for
your GPhone. No, Google is not getting into
the hardware business--at least, not yet. They
have left that to the established hardware
marketers. They are developing "Android," a
mobile phone software "stack" that provides phone
services--and serves as an entre to Google mobile
advertising--for mobile phones.
Click here for the details.
What's your nominee for the invention of the year?
Don't bother answering. Time magazine will
tell you. It's the iPhone.
Click here for the Time story. (Someone
should really explain to them the difference between
inventions and products).
Humans grow bored with robots quickly. Until
now. UCSD researchers have discovered that
giving a robot a sense of touch will keep it
interesting to humans. A robot named QRIO was
given a crude sense of touch (it giggles when
children touch it). This radically increased
its acceptance level and human sympathy among
toddlers and adults alike.
Click here for the story.
Featured Safari Tech Book Online:
Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007 Complete Makeover
Kit, by Geetesh Bajaj and Echo Swinford. "This
book is very, very different from the competition
solely because no other book of this sort exists
today. Most PowerPoint books are theory related with
little or no practical content in a workbook and
examples type of workflow that this book will
provide. Also, new PowerPoint 2007 effects and fills
make it possible to create very appealing makeovers
in little time - this is a hitherto unexplored
horizon for PowerPoint books."
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.
Training Opportunities
Academic Technology Workshops
On Thursday, 11/15 from 10-11am in room LL-109
Terry Gray will present "Using
Google Notebook."
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.
Up from the ashes of disaster grow the roses of
success! Now, even if you don’t have a disaster, you
can still analyze information from your Blackboard
course and cultivate improvements for the future.
Back a couple weeks ago I spoke on Course
Statistics, which can allow an instructor to see
what content areas of your course students are going
to. Looking at this data can help you plan any site
re-designs, if you want to move your content around
to streamline student access. However, there is some
additional statistical data you can find, that can
help to streamline your online tests.
First, let me remind everyone that Blackboard
supports tests and surveys, which work quite
similarly. Surveys are, functionally, anonymous
tests with no points assigned to them. The only
results you can see from surveys are aggregate
results, such as “20% of students answered ‘A’ to
question three.” With tests, obviously, you can tell
how each student answered each question. Sometimes
it can be useful to see some aggregate figures on
how tests were answered though, and Blackboard does
offer up that information.
Once students have taken a Blackboard test, the
instructor can go into the Gradebook, click the
column name for that test entry in the Gradebook,
and select the link that says Assessment Attempt
Details. The next page you see will contain a
statistical breakdown of how students answered each
question from the test. Clearly the results from
some questions are simpler than others; true/false
or multiple choice questions can tell you exactly
how the percentage breakdown of answers worked out.
However, even the more free-form question types,
like fill-in-the-blank questions, also show all
answers given. In fact, with fill-in-the-blank
questions, this can be an essential tool in
examining what answers were marked wrong, so that
you can decide if you want to list any of those
answers as correct before using the test in a future
semester. Hopefully all this data can aid in
evaluating the effectiveness of the questions in
your tests.
Online vs. In-Person; and Online Instructor
Burnout
In this Teaching with Technology segment I want
to discuss two research studies. The first compares
an online and on-campus Biology class. The second
discusses online instructor burnout.
While CCCs do not distinguish, on a transcript,
between classes taken online and those taken
on-campus, there is a question in the minds of some
educators regarding the equivalence of online and
on-campus courses. Dr. Roy Mason, from the Biology
Department at Mt. San Jacinto College, compared the
performances of 142 students, 71 who took Biology
115 online and 71 who took the same class on-campus.
All the materials, assignments, laboratory
exercises, review articles, and tests were exactly
the same. The online students, however, did not ever
go to campus. The research question was: “whether
on-line courses can be considered equivalent, in
terms of student performance in meeting student
learning outcomes, to similar courses offered in an
on-campus format.” The answer, with a couple of
caveats, was: When comparing 29 measures of student
performance associated with student learning
outcomes, this study supports the practice of
treating on-line and on-campus course as
equivalent.”
This finding will be particularly interesting to
those who support an online degree program - if
indeed an online laboratory science class can be
developed that is equivalent to an on-campus
laboratory class.
The second report examines the issue of burnout
among online instructors. This research studied
rates of job burnout among online instructors and
compared the rates to non-online instructors. Job
burnout was defined as (a) emotional exhaustion, (b)
depersonalization (an impersonal response toward
students), and (c) a reduced sense of personal
accomplishment. Surprisingly, the report stated that
the research on job burnout among higher education
faculty is rather meager; this might be the first
systematic examination of online instructor burnout.
Two established burnout inventories were used, both
self-report measures. The data produced scores in
three subscales: emotional exhaustion,
depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. As
with all survey research, one must be cautious in
generalizing the results. Analysis of the data
revealed that “online instructors had an average
score on the emotional exhaustion subscale, high
degree of depersonalization, and low degree of
personal accomplishment.” So, according to this
study, online instructors are at a higher risk for
burnout than on-campus instructors. The authors
offer advice for reducing burnout and here is where
Palomar is, I think, in pretty good shape. The
authors suggest six factors that will reduce
burnout.
Consult with online faculty on matters
directly impacting their learning environment
(i.e. curriculum development)
Provide adequate resources to support online
instructors (i.e. technology support resources)
Provide detailed job descriptions and
faculty expectations to reduce role ambiguity
Create and maintain clear lines of
communication between online faculty and
administrators by providing performance feedback
Facilitate professional development
activities
Reduce teaching load and number of students
per online coursePalomar scores well on most of
these.
See
an index of previous "Tech Talk
Topics" segments.
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 "The
Collective Now" by
The Seldon Plan. "Highly polished yet
exquisitely laid back indie rock: 'What impresses us
most about this band's music is how unpretentious it is.
The smooth, ultra-hummable songs on this CD flow by like
big fluffy clouds. After spinning this disc a few
times...we can't decide which we like better, the debut
album (Making Circles)...or this? Actually and in fact,
we prefer both as they are each equally satisfying and
superb.'" --Babysue.
"I
have left orders to be awakened at any time in case
of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet
meeting." ~ Ronald Reagan
Podcast
for November 9, 2007 - Episode 77
The
domestication of YouTube is now complete.
Oprah has
You
will have to wait until the latter half of 2008 for
your GPhone. No, Google is not getting into
the hardware business--at least, not yet. They
have left that to the established hardware
marketers. They are developing "Android," a
mobile phone software "stack" that provides phone
services--and serves as an entre to Google mobile
advertising--for mobile phones.
Featured Safari Tech Book Online:
The
music for today's show was provided by
