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Palomar College Academic Technology Resource Center

June 13, 2008

Contents
  • Technology News
  • Upcoming Training Opportunities
  • The Blackboard Feature of the Week:
    "The Season of Change"
  • Teaching with Technology:
    "2008 Online Teaching Conference - Report 1"
  • Tech Talk Topic:
    "New TEACH Act Procedure"
  • For more, see podcast notes for Episode 88.


Blackboard Upgrade

Blackboard will be down June 21-22 in order to upgrade to version 8.

For help or questions:
voice: (760) 744-1150 ext. 2862
atrc@palomar.edu

Technology & Download News Briefs

  • We will be updating Blackboard to version 8 on June 21-22.  The biggest change will be the replacement of the current gradebook with the Grade Center.  For more on the upgrade, click here; for more on the Grade Center, click here (PDF) and here (video); for more on the new critical thinking tools, click here (video).  To see version 8 in person, login to the Blackboard sandbox (use your normal Palomar faculty login credentials).  If you have questions, email atrc@palomar.edu or call ext. 2862.
     
  • The big tech news this week was from Apple: the 3G iPhone is being released to consumers July 11.  "...they're also making sure it's available all over internationally, works with enterprises, runs 3rd party apps... and does it all for cheaper" (engadget).  The price for the 8GB model is $199.  At this price point they will sell millions and millions, which is good news for those providers of expensive and mandatory data plans.
     
  • Also from Apple, the next version of OS X, called "Snow Leopard," was mentioned in Steve Jobs' keynote to last week's World Wide Developers' Conference, but details were sparse.  It will be "evolutionary rather than revolutionary" according to Jobs (a collection of boring fixes and uninspired non-innovation?  sounds like Windows Vista).  In any event, it will not ship for another year or so, with emphasis on the "or so."  Click here for the official Apple page.
     
  • California's new cell phone law will go into effect July 1, making it a crime to use a handset while driving (though allows texting!).  Peace officers are rubbing their hands in expectation of huge revenue boosts.  Expect it will change the behavior of most teens?  Think again.  Other states have tried and found little difference of teen drivers before and after cell phone laws.  "Researchers who watched as high school students left school found that teenage drivers used their cell phones at about the same rate both before and after the law took effect...In the North Carolina study, researchers found that 11% of teenage drivers observed departing 25 high schools during the two months before the ban took effect were using cell phones. About five months after the ban took effect, during the spring of 2007, nearly 12% were observed using phones" (USA Today).  Click here for the California DMV Q&A page on the new cell phone laws.
     
  • Microsoft's foray into direct competition with Google on digitizing and searching books and scholarly articles has ended in humiliation as they pulled the plug on their Live Book Search and Live Search Academic projects.  Click here for Microsoft's best possible spin on the disastrous effort.  Google's Book Search and Scholar projects, the direct competition for Microsoft's efforts, are very much alive and thriving.
     
  • Microsoft is also circling the wagons with respect to video.  Last week they launched Microsoft Video, like a YouTube for Microsoft how-to and promotional videos.  Useful, but hardly competition for Google.
     
  • Microsoft has also (mysteriously) brought out a beta of Producer 2007 (if this makes sense to you, you are too devoted to Microsoft products).  Producer is a PowerPoint add-in (not really, but they call it that and it has an add-in component) that is supposed to make it easy to convert PowerPoint presentations to streaming "rich media" presentations.  Producer 2003 worked, was kludgy, but never caught on.  We will review Producer 2007 in a future issue, but for now, those wishing to convert PowerPoint to a web movie ought to use Camtasia, a superior product from Techsmith available in the faculty technology center (room LL-111 in the San Marcos campus library).
     
  • Worried about the explosion of digital information?  If you are a storage manufacturer, you are rubbing your hands, if you are a librarian you despair.  To get a feel for the magnitude of the problem, take a look at "The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010" [PDF]. 

  • Microsoft will be test releasing a feature rich beta (2) version of Internet Explorer 8 in August aimed primarily at regular web users.  The beta 1 of IE8 aimed at web developers is currently available at the Microsoft web site.
     
  • Featured Safari Tech Book Online: Google Apps: The Missing Manual, by  Nancy Conner.  "Google Apps: The Missing Manual teaches you how to use three relatively new applications from Google: "Docs and Spreadsheets", which provide many of the same core tools that you find in Word and Excel; and Google Calendar and Gmail, the applications that offer an alternative to Outlook. This book demonstrates how these applications together can ease your ability to collaborate with others, and allow you access to your documents, mail and appointments from any computer at any location."  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 Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray.

The Season of Change

The season of change is upon us. Spring is over, summer is imminent, and fall looms ahead. But some changes other than the majestic cycle of semesters is also coming. Now let us consider: Blackboard 8.

Late evening on Friday, June 20th, the procedure will begin to upgrade Palomar’s Blackboard Learning System to version 8. To do this, all day on Saturday June 21st and possibly all day on Sunday June 22nd the Blackboard system will be unavailable to faculty and students. At the same time, dramatic changes will be made to the support materials and site design, so that by Monday morning, on June 23rd, a whole new Blackboard system will be ready for use.

As discussed since February around here, the largest change will be inside of Blackboard, with the replacement of the old Gradebook with the new Grade Center. The Grade Center guide [PDF] should answer the most burning questions on how instructors can put the new tool to immediate use, but I feel obligated to warn everyone that things in the Grade Center will be quite different than what has gone before. Fortunately the directions for students remain the same: Click the My Grades link, which may be found in the Tools area of the course.

At this time, it is possible that some instructors are still getting things ready for Summer or Fall classes, too. I’ve been asked recently if it would be better to wait until after the upgrade to prep for new courses, or is it okay to do course copy procedures now. Now is just fine. Any content changes to the system will carry though the upgrade just fine, so feel free to get your upcoming course sites ready before the upgrade. Just… don’t try to get things done on the system between late Friday June 20th and early Monday June 23rd, as the system will be unavailable. An instructional sheet on some of the common pre-semester tasks you may need to complete is available here [PDF].

Be warned, changes are coming. By getting ready and staying informed, everyone should be just fine. But, if you do run into any problems, please contact our Blackboard Technical Support by phoning 760-744-1150 x2862 or emailing us at atrc@palomar.edu.


 		 Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 10:52]
 
See the index of Dave's previous "Blackboard Feature of the Week" segments.

Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis

2008 Online Teaching Conference - Report 1

Tips from established online instructors: What do you wish someone had told you?

  • Ensure that students read the syllabus - one instructor has a policy of having students sign a statement that he/she has read and understood the syllabus; another created a quiz about the syllabus that students must take (they earn extra credit points).
     
  • Try everything yourself first - when you post a URL, an assignment, a quiz or test, be sure to do it yourself first.
     
  • Establish a DB policy and answer these questions: how many posts are required? When in the week are students required to post? Do forums have due dates (the consensus was Yes)? Are students required to respond to other students' posts? State explicitly how DB posts should be made: standard, grammatically correct English or is more conversational English OK? What about IM abbreviations? Do you have a grading rubric (you should)?
     
  • Explicitly state your email policy - if you have a Q & A forum in your Discussion Board (you should) explain to students that only private matters should be emailed to you, everything else should be posted in the DB where, often, other students will answer the question before you have to; also, if you have students email papers or assignments to you have a policy of replying to their submissions. Then, students don't have to wonder if you received something from them - if they didn't receive a reply, you didn't.
     
  • Create a "Wisdom Wall" forum in your DB - at the end of class students leave tips, ideas, suggestions to next semester's students about what the incoming students can do to do well, make their lives easier, etc. Post these comments in next semester's DB and make it the first thing students read.
     
  • Create a "Parting Comments, Parting Shots" forum in your DB to allow students anonymously to give their honest reactions to the class; another person named this forum "How Did The Class Work For You."
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 9:42]
 
See the index of Haydn's previous "Teaching with Technology" segments.

Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray

New TEACH Act Procedure

Academic Technology has a new procedure faculty members ought to be aware of.  One of our most popular activities is to digitize video for use in "distance education."  For our purposes, a "distance education" class is any class offering instruction at a distance, not a class officially designated with a particular delivery modality. 

In the past we have advised instructors via email, on web pages, and through personal meetings about the legal requirements of the TEACH Act (passed by Congress and signed into law in 2002) which basically harmonizes the copyright exclusions applicable to online and in-person instructors where the copying and display of media is concerned.  Now we have formalized that process by creating a TEACH Act Checklist. 

The TEACH Act Checklist is based on the TEACH Act Guidelines.  Basically, we are asking instructors to assert that works they request us to digitize, stream and link within their Blackboard classes meet the following criteria:

  • The work is not produced for distance education.
  • The work is lawfully made and acquired (no home-made VHS tapes).
  • The work is part of systematic mediated instructional activities. 
  • The work is directly related to or of material assistance to teaching (basically, you have created an assignment based on the work and it is not simply background or enrichment material).
  • This work is:
    • A nondramatic literary work.
    • A nondramatic musical work.
    • A reasonable and limited portion of any other work.
    • A display of any work in an amount analogous to a live classroom setting.
  • If requesting a conversion from analog to digital format, no digital version of the work is available or the available digital versions are technologically protected.

Unless you are using a very limited portion of a work for which you are making a fair use argument, then, be sure before bringing a VHS tape or DVD to Academic Technology for streaming, that you fill out the TEACH Act Checklist for each title and bring it along with the media to our offices.  Works unaccompanied with the checklist will not be processed.  Faculty digitizing their own works must be sure to comply with the terms of the TEACH Act to avoid potentially serious liability consequences.

For more information, call ext. 2877.

Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 5:20]
 
See an index of previous "Tech Talk Topics" segments.

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