"The
intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the
sensible man hardly anything."
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
On the show:
We have a new Blackboard @ Palomar podcast; Microsoft
makes an offer for Yahoo; Darwin Day is next week;
Google introduces a new anti-spam product, while spam
continues to increase; the Kindle is sold out; band-aids
enter the 21st century; Windows Vista SP1 will be
released in March; Apple doubles the capacity of the
iPhone and iPod touch; ICANN turns on IPv6; the Lego
brick turns 50; shape-shifting microrobots are just
around the corner; and we feature an online book on
Adobe InDesign and XML. David's
Blackboard feature of the week is brought to you by the
letter B and the number 8, as in Bb8.
Haydn's Teaching with Technology segment contains tips
on getting off to a good start with students. Our
Tech Talk Topic is titled "Three for Free," where we put
together three how-tos that might appeal to different
audiences.
Microsoft has offered $44.6 billion in a hostile
takeover bid of Yahoo.com. Google is fighting
back, mobilizing lobbyists to complain to federal
lawmakers about monopolistic practices. Yahoo
has yet to answer Microsoft's bid, but it is
apparent that no other likely contender (AOL,
Comcast, AT&T, News Corp.) has any intention of
becoming involved in a bidding war with Microsoft.
Stay tuned... (bink.nu).
Darwin
day is next week. February 12, 2008 will mark the
199th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.
Darwin day is dedicated to Darwin, verifiable
scientific knowledge, and humanity.
Click here for the international Darwin Day
Celebration center to find out what the rest of the
world is doing to celebrate.
According to a
new report [PDF] from Symantec, spam now
accounts for 78.5% of all email traffic, although
image spam is down appreciably and the average file
size of spam emails is also decreased.
Speaking of spam, we reported last summer (episode
65) on Google's acquisition of Postini, a
data security company. At last Google has used
Postini assets to market a product: for $3-$25
per year corporate clients can use Postini filters
to protect their email systems (Ars
Technica).
The Amazon Kindle, a new e-reading device, has
exceeded all expectations in sales. According
to the
Amazon sales site the Kindle is sold out "due to
heavy customer demand." Our own Chris Norcross
reviewed it in episodes
81 and
82. Is there a connection? We think
so. If you are considering buying one, in the
words of the Amazon sales site, "Please ORDER KINDLE
NOW to reserve your place in line." On the
other hand, you may perceive all this as so much
advertising fluff. (Ars
Technica).
Next
year, band-aids enter the 21st century. "Toumaz
Technology is bringing band-aids into the 21st
century with a new technology that can remotely
monitor patients. The solution involves a custom
mini-chip with a 5-7 day battery, with built-in
800-900MHz wireless and a price as low as $5 a pop
when the disposable patch is released next year. The
chip is designed to relay data from sensors such as
electrocardiogram, a three-axis accelerometer, blood
glucose, ph-level and blood pressure monitors" (engadget).
Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 will be available in
March, presumably Patch Tuesday in March, for volume
license customers first. It has already been
released to manufacturing, as has Windows Server
2008, which will be available for sales on March 1st
(engadget).
Apple has added new models of the
iPhone and
iPod touch, doubling the capacity of the
top-of-the-line model. The iPhone now comes in
a 16GB model, and the iPod touch now comes with 32GB
of storage...for $100 more, of course.
On Monday, February 4, 2008 ICANN, the group
responsible for maintaining the Internet's
addressing scheme, for the first time turned on
IPv6, an upgrade from the old IPv4 address scheme.
The new address ranges--which will service over 340
trillion, trillion, trillion addresses, rather than
the nearly exhausted 4-billion+ system in place
under IPv4, was installed on 6 of the Internet's 13
root server networks. Businesses and owners of
high-volume web sites are being encouraged to switch
over to the new addressing scheme (CNet).
The
patent for the LEGO stud-and-tube coupling system
was 50 years old last week, on January 28 at 1:58
pm, to be exact (GMT, one presumes).
Click here to see the interesting timeline from
Gizmodo.
Micropscopic shape-shifting electromagnetic robots?
You bet. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon
University have developed prototypes which they hope
will bring this concept to fruition. The idea
is that millions of very small robts can cling to
each other forming useful structural shapes in order
to perform an array of real-world tasks. Watch
the YouTube video below to get the idea. (Here
is the link for the Newsletter:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=e44hA6IBtkA
)
Featured
Safari Tech Book Online:
A Designer’s Guide to Adobe® InDesign® and XML:
Harness the Power of XML to Automate your Print and
Web Workflows by James J. Maivald. "A
Designers Guide to InDesign and XML is an
introduction to XML tagging and how it works. The
technology is broken down into its essential parts,
explaining what XML is and how it works in plain
English. XML is a markup language, a close cousin to
HTML. While HTML is used to format text for display,
XML is used to tag or identify data. By “marking up”
the data users can then transfer or repurpose it
from one application to another. This ability to
repurpose is XML’s key advantage over most other
technologies. And, because XML was built for the
Web, it offers the promise of moving data from print
to the Internet and back again with the push of a
button. The guide includes 10 real world projects
with an aim toward users working with increasing
confidence and skill to incorporate XML into their
daily workflow."
Palomar maintains a subscription to Tech Books
Online, and the books can be accessed from any
computer on the campus network without as login, or
with your Palomar login and password from anywhere
in the world.
Click here for more information about off-campus
access.
Training Opportunities - the next two weeks
Academic Technology Workshops
We have published our spring 2008 Academic
Technology training schedule.
Click here to read it. For TBA training
call (760) 744-1150 ext. 2341.
The following self-paced,
online training workshops are available:
To access workshop materials, if you are a faculty
member, login to Blackboard and click on the class
in which your are enrolled titled "Academic
Technology Training." If you are a staff
member, you may access the materials as a guest.
Click here for instructions on guest access to
Blackboard. These courses are offered to be
completed on your own schedule at your own pace.
There is no set meeting time. Questions and
comments are handled through the Blackboard
discussion board, where appropriate.
On Tuesday, February 12, from 2-4pm in room
LL-109 Chris Norcross will present "Creating
Your Own Web Site."
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.
This
feature is brought to you by the letter B, and by
the number 8.
On June 21st and 22nd, the Blackboard system will
be down for an upgrade.
Wait, what? The Spring semester is barely under
way, and here David is wanting to tell us about
something that won’t happen until June?
This upgrade, to Blackboard version 8, is going
to fix a number of bugs and add functionality to
conduct Peer Reviews of student work. Normally this
would not be enough to start warning people this far
in advance, but there is one more change that does
merit a great deal of advance warning: The
Blackboard Gradebook is going to be totally changed.
Over the course of this semester we are going to
be putting up training materials for the new
Gradebook, and holding workshops on how to deal with
the new features and functionality. I believe that
everyone who uses Blackboard’s grade functions will
end up enjoying the new “Grade Center” in version 8,
but there’s that little problem of getting used to
it first. Given the time constraints of our upgrade
time, as the upgrade will be taking place between
the end of the four-week intersession classes and
the start of the six- and eight-week summer classes,
we really want to ensure that anyone teaching over
the Summer has plenty of advance warning of these
changes.
As I mentioned above, the training and
announcement materials on using version 8 of
Blackboard will be released in the weeks to come,
but if anyone is interested in trying out the new
version they can do so right now. Palomar’s
Blackboard Sandbox system, online at
http://bbsandbox.palomar.edu/ will allow Palomar
faculty to log on using both instructor and student
accounts and try out the latest version of
Blackboard, at your convenience.
These are ideas for online instructors to
consider as I believe that implementing them will
create a model to follow the rest of the semester.
Getting the DB off to a good start: Post examples
of “good” DB posts (see example below)
Student Post I keep hearing about that book "The
Secret". I myself have not read the book, but I
guess the main concept is you decide your fate based
on the energy you put out into the world. I guess it
deals with positive and negative energies.
With that said I thought Freud's discussion of
the conscious and unconscious paralleled that with a
more scientific explanation. On page 11, the book
discusses Freud’s theory that motive is hidden in
the unconscious mind outside of awareness.
I interpret this theory has playing a huge role
in the way humans behave. I find it interesting that
people believe in things like "luck" or "fate" when
possibly it’s themselves formulating their own
outcome (at least that's what I believe). Because if
motive is hidden and beyond our individual
understanding, then our lives end up, for the most
part, exactly how they were meant to be.
My Comment I chose this post as an example of a
“good” post in large part because it illustrated how
the student connected something from current events
to a concept presented in Chapter 1 of our textbook.
After making the connection, the student explained
what it meant to him. In addition, the post
stimulated others to react or comment.
Getting participation off to a good start
At the beginning of each week post (or use
an audio recording) a brief “heads-up” regarding
the upcoming week’s requirements – do this even
though the information may be in the syllabus or
other course documents.
Post a weekly grade/points summary that
lists the most points one could have earned:
“The most points you could have earned to this
point is 35 (Homepage – 10, Participation – 10,
Web Assignment – 10, Syllabus Quiz – 5). To
check your grade click Student Tools/My Grade.
Let me know if you think I have overlooked
anything.”
Use students’ names whenever possible. In my
on-campus classes I have digital photos taken of
my students and learn their names so that I can
involve them in class discussions by using their
names. In my online classes I try to put
students’ names in the announcements and other
areas of the Blackboard site as much as
possible: I recognize a “Poster of the Week,”
publish the names of the winners of the “Mystery
Student Contest,” include in an announcement a
reference to a particularly insightful comment
made by a student, and find other ways to get
students’ names into announcements and other
course areas that students read.
See
the index of Haydn's previous
"Teaching with Technology" segments.
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray
3 4 Free
1) How to embed a YouTube video in Blackboard
- Terry Gray
Summary:
Locate the video you want in YouTube and
click on the Embed code window.
Right-click the selected code and choose
copy.
Go to your Blackboard course, enter the
content area where you want to place the video,
and enter Edit mode.
Click Add Item.
Give the item a name, and then click the
angle bracket icon in the visual text box editor
to "Toggle HTML Source Mode" on.
Paste the embed code into the visual text
box editor that you copied from YouTube.
Click the angle bracket icon again to toggle
back to text mode.
That's it.
There is no step 8, as they say.
Click here to play the screen video that
explains this process.
2) Microsoft Math Add-in - Chad Abshier
Microsoft has produced many add-ins that you can
download for free to enhance your ability to use
Word. One such add-in is Microsoft Math. The
Microsoft Math Add-In for Word 2007 is a great tool
for any mathematics teacher or student. After only 5
minutes of playing around with its features, I got
the general idea of how it works. It uses the built
in Equation Editor of Word 2007 to type any equation
you could think of. The add-in does not increase
Word’s ability to create equations, but it does come
in handy after you have typed an equation. It gives
you the ability to solve and plot equations,
allowing the user to plot functions in 2-D and 3-D
planes, solve an equation or inequality, and solve a
system of equations. The options that are available
under the add-in change depending on what kind of
equation you create.
In my opinion, the Equation Editor in Word 2003
was harder to use than it is in Word 2007, and under
Insert -> Equation you can find nearly everything
you would need to write a professional looking math
test or review sheet. If you want to, however, use
Word as a calculator, even a graphing calculator, go
ahead and download the add-in.
Click here to download Microsoft Math add-in for
Word 2007. (Genuine Microsoft Office
validation required).
3) The Zune now does Podcasts - Shay Phillips
Back in December of 2006 Shay Phillips reviewed
the Microsoft Zune for us (episode
44). He still has and still uses his
trusty Zune, and now it does podcasts, as it should
have from day one. Here is how to "catch" a
podcast with the Zune.
With the newest version of the Zune software you
can now catch Podcasts. I’ll walk you through the
process which will only take a few clicks.
To begin you will need to click the podcasts link
in the Zune software.
The first time you enter this section of the
software you will see that you have no podcasts in
your collection.
You have two choices here. You can search for
podcasts in the Zune Marketplace or add a Known
Favorite. Today we are just going to add a known
favorite. When you click on the link you will be
asked to enter the URL of the podcast you want to
subscribe too.
You can type or paste the RSS feed URL in the box
and click Subscribe. You have now added your first
Podcast to the Zune Software. You will see a screen
similar to this after you have subscribed.
From here you can add a Podcast, unsubscribe from
or manage the series settings for the currently
selected podcast.
Some of the settings you can manage for the
series are the number of episodes to keep, The
playback order and the sync settings.
From the Podcast section in the Zune Marketplace
you can find a lot of different podcasts as well as
suggest ones to be listed. They have some tips on
podcatching and pocasting as well.
Well that is all there is too it for adding a
podcast to your Zune. Happy listening!
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
a compilation of
Magnatune classical artists.
Works performed include Handel's Sonata
No. 2 in G minor, Mozart Sonata in C
major (KV 545) and a Rameau Suite from
Les Fetes D'Hebe, among others.
"His mother should
have thrown him away and kept the stork." ~
Mae West
Podcast
for February 7, 2008 - Episode 83
On the show:
We have a new Blackboard @ Palomar podcast; Microsoft
makes an offer for Yahoo; Darwin Day is next week;
Google introduces a new anti-spam product, while spam
continues to increase; the Kindle is sold out; band-aids
enter the 21st century; Windows Vista SP1 will be
released in March; Apple doubles the capacity of the
iPhone and iPod touch; ICANN turns on IPv6; the Lego
brick turns 50; shape-shifting microrobots are just
around the corner; and we feature an online book on
Adobe InDesign and XML. David's
Blackboard feature of the week is brought to you by the
letter B and the number 8, as in Bb8.
Haydn's Teaching with Technology segment contains tips
on getting off to a good start with students. Our
Tech Talk Topic is titled "Three for Free," where we put
together three how-tos that might appeal to different
audiences.
Darwin
day is next week. February 12, 2008 will mark the
199th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.
Darwin day is dedicated to Darwin, verifiable
scientific knowledge, and humanity.
Next
year, band-aids enter the 21st century. "Toumaz
Technology is bringing band-aids into the 21st
century with a new technology that can remotely
monitor patients. The solution involves a custom
mini-chip with a 5-7 day battery, with built-in
800-900MHz wireless and a price as low as $5 a pop
when the disposable patch is released next year. The
chip is designed to relay data from sensors such as
electrocardiogram, a three-axis accelerometer, blood
glucose, ph-level and blood pressure monitors" (
The
patent for the LEGO stud-and-tube coupling system
was 50 years old last week, on January 28 at 1:58
pm, to be exact (GMT, one presumes).
Featured
Safari Tech Book Online:
This
feature is brought to you by the letter B, and by
the number 8.
The
music for today's show was provided by
