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Palomar College Academic Technology Resource Center

April 24, 2009

Contents
  • Technology News Briefs
  • Training Opportunities
  • The Blackboard Feature of the Week:
    "Blackboard 9 and the Dropbox Dilemma"
  • Teaching with Technology:
    "Box Score: Podcast 1, Lecture 0"
  • Tech Talk Topic:
    "Using Jing to Paste Images Into Blackboard"
  • For more, see podcast notes page for Episode 103

Pluto
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For help or questions:
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Technology News Briefs

  • SP2 for Office 2007 will be released April 28.  Service Pack 2:
    •  adds the ability to open, edit and save documents in version 1.1 of the OpenDocument Format for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint;
    • supports uninstall of client updates;
    • save as PDF is now built-in to the Office products (no extra downloadable add-in requried);
    • graphics rendering has been improved;
    • charting has been improved in Excel;
    • SharePoint synchronization with OneNote has been improved;
    • Outlook is more reliable;
    • File saves in PowerPoint has been improved;
    • Word/PDF fidelity has been heightened;
    • integration with various web browsers has been improved.

At the same time, Microsoft has announced that the next version of Office (Office 14, due out in 2010) will be released in 32 and 64-bit versions.  Expect browser-based versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote to be included in the distribution (bink).

  • "In January, Wikipedia got 97 percent of the visits that Web surfers in the United States made to online encyclopedias, according to the Internet ratings service Hitwise. Encarta was second, with 1.27 percent" (NY Times, see also this article).  Consequently, Microsoft has finally given up on Encarta, and Encyclopedia Britannica, which has lately become "open," allowing for participant edits of the articles (by invitation, at least) is barely hanging on by virtue of its print version income.  Microsoft announced that Encarta will be removed from stores by June.  If Microsoft wanted to earn points in heaven, they could release to the public domain the Corbis material they own and used in Encarta.  This, of course, is a non-Calvinist view of Microsoft.
     
  • Speaking of the encyclopaedic, a new site, the World Digital Library, is now available online:  "The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.  The principal objectives of the WDL are to:
    • Promote international and intercultural understanding;
    • Expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet;
    • Provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences;
    • Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries.

    While the selection is not yet great, the primary materials are thought provoking and valuable.  Click here for a brief video by US Librarian of Congress James Billington explaining US involvement in the WDL.
     

  • In addition to April 23 being World Book Day and Shakespeare's supposed 445th birthday, it was the release date for the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, code named Jaunty Jackalope.
     
  • Google labs has announced two new search tools:  Similar Images, a tool the finds similar images based on an image, and Google News Timeline, a web application that organizes information chronologically.  Google is investigating methods to bring new developments in search technologies to information consumers faster.  These two examples have been released to the public far sooner than most.
     
  • California has taken the step that the rest of the world must eventually take:  the Public Utilities Commission is considering a request from PG&E to begin, in 2016, to purchase electricity from Solaren, whose space-based network of electrical generator/collectors will deliver it to earth, no fossil fuel involved (Discovery News).
     
  • PBS has a new streaming video portal at pbs.org/video.  It is slick and easy to use, like Hulu.com (where, by the way, you will also find several PBS titles streaming in a commercial venue).  Now much of the great quality programming heretofore available only by purchasing DVDs or using your Netflix account can be enjoyed free in streaming format online.  Available programming includes American Experience, American Masters, FrontLine, NOVA, Great Performances, Masterpiece Classic, Nature, The NewsHour, and others.  This has important implications for media use in education, since one of the provisions of the copyright code is that videos cannot be encoded and streamed from institution servers if a digital version is already available online.
     
  • Bad news for students, "...the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has found that Web-based plagiarism detection service TurnItIn.com does not violate the students' copyrights in their work, even though it sometimes stores their complete papers for future plagiarism hunting" (ars technica - and click here for the PDF of the Federal decision).  Four high school students had sued TurnItIn in 2007, claiming copyright infringement, but the federal court judged it fair use, similar to the recent case against the use of thumbnail images by Google image search.  Palomar now uses Safe Assign as its anti-plagiarism tool, which gives students the right to opt out of the national database of papers, a right they did not (and do not) enjoy with TurnItIn.
     
  • Dababase monster Oracle this week acquired Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion, or $9.50 for each share of Sun stock.  The move is a direct challenge to IBM, who until last week had been negotiating to purchase Sun but abandoned the effort when Sun shareholders rejected their $9.15 per share offer.  With the acquisition Oracle has positioned itself to compete directly with IBM and HP in providing large-scale hardware/software solutions to institutions and corporations (BBC).  sun is expected to increase profits in the next year, but lay off approximately 10,000 workers in order to do so.
     
  • Apple, in the mean time, announced an unexpectedly high profits for the third quarter, up 15%, driven by sales of the iPod and the iPhone.  Mac sales were down 3% (NY Times).  Microsoft reported disappointing earnings, down 6% from last year on overall earnings, but profits being reported as down 33% from the same quarter last year, due primarily to failed investments (BusinessWeek Online).
     
  • File this under "End of an Era": According to ars technica, "Believe it or not, the webpage service Geocities is still alive—but not for long. Fifteen years after its original creation, Yahoo has announced that it will shut down the service later this year. An exact date is not specified, but Yahoo is warning current users to consider moving to other options, such as Yahoo's own Web Hosting service."  GeoCities, RIP.
     
  • Featured Safari Tech Book Online:  iMovie '09 and iDVD: The Missing Manual by David Pogue and Aaron Miller.  "Bursting with new features, Apple's iMovie '09 is vastly more usable and complete than iMovie '08 -- amazing right out of the box. But the box doesn't include a good user's guide, so learning these applications is another matter."  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.

Training Opportunities

The Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray

Blackboard 9 and the Drop Box Dilemma

Blackboard 9 is coming, and when it arrives there is one notable tool change that certain faculty need to be aware of: There is no Digital Drop Box.

Of course, even on our current Bb8 system, the functionality that, once upon a time, required the Digital Drop Box, has been replaced by more mature and controllable tools such as the Assignment Manager. Of all the faculty I have persuaded to try out the Assignment Manager in favor of the old Digital Drop Box, all have preferred the new tool; of course some have not been persuaded to try the Assignment Manager yet… This would be a good time to do so.

For any faculty interested in finding out how to use the Assignment Manager, we do have an online demonstration video available here.

Now, if you’re also looking for something that will run plagiarism detection on the student’s works, you may be interested in using a SafeAssignment, as explained in online videos available here.

Either way, I strongly suggest that faculty who are currently using the Digital Drop Box to start looking at alternate tools for students to submit their files to you; the clock is ticking, and the Drop Box will soon be no more.


 		 Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 9:25]
 
See the index of Dave's previous "Blackboard Feature of the Week" segments.

Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis

The Box Score: Podcast 1, Lecture 0

A headline in a technology newsletter caught my eye recently: “Online Learning Set To Soar.” According to Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen, in less than 10 years more than 50% of higher education classes will be presented online.

That headline reminded me of an article published in eSchool News that compared learning online compared with learning in a traditional on-campus classroom. The study, conducted at the State University of New York Fredonia, compared test scores from students who watched a lecture podcast (actually a vodcast) compared with students who attended the same 30-minute classroom lecture. Test results revealed the following:

  • Podcast students scored an average of 71% on the test, and
  • Classroom lecture students scored an average of 62% on the same test.

Even more interesting was the finding that students who watched the video podcast and took notes scored an average of 15 points higher than their lecture classroom peers who also presumably were taking notes.

What accounted for this significant difference? It seemed like the main explanation was that the students who scored highest were the ones who paused the podcast, rewound it when necessary, and took notes throughout – all behaviors that can’t be replicated in the classroom.

Maybe the best lesson for anyone who uses Blackboard is to combine classroom lectures with podcasts, the proverbial best of both worlds.

Source: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=57612

Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 9:07]
 
See the index of Haydn's previous "Teaching with Technology" segments.

Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray

Using Jing to Paste Images Into Blackboard

For newsletter readers, click here to watch today's screencast segment.

Resources

Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 6:10]
 
See an index of previous "Tech Talk Topics" segments.

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