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Palomar College Academic Technology Resource Center

August 14, 2009

Contents
  • Technology News Briefs
  • Training Opportunities
  • The Blackboard Feature:
    "Fall Into Blackboard"
  • Teaching with Technology:
    "Helping Online Students (and Instructors) Get a Good Start"
  • Tech Talk Topic:
    "Your Online Toolkit"
  • For more, see podcast notes page for Episode 106

Teaching with Blackboard

Need a quick Blackboard tutorial?  There are many focused screen videos available here.

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

"Greetings."  ~Salo

Technology News Briefs

  • Thanks to those who attended summer tech camp.  We had a great time and a lot of learning went on.  We covered many topics, chief among them Blackboard, Learning Objects blogging tools, Jing, YouTube, the Wimba Voice Tools, CPS Clickers, the Flip Video camera, Google Earth, and other topics.
     
  • Summer 2008 courses will be purged from Blackboard Wednesday, August 19.  If you need to copy data from any of those old courses, or archive/export them, please do so before that date.
     
  • For those of you using screencast.com to upload your Jing captures--click here to learn about Jing--please be aware that screencast.com will be down for maintenance 9:30pm-1:30am PDT Saturday, August 15.
     
  • Google wants you to help test some "next-generation infrastructure."  We are talking about Google "Caffeine," the new improved Google Search tool.  You won't notice a superficial difference between new and old Google Search, but under the hood things have changed, indexing focuses on the more current, "momentary web" content than the older model and the relevance of hits is improved.  Try it at http://www2.sandbox.google.com.  Read about it, and learn how to submit feedback, here.
     
  • If you haven't clicked Software Update on your Mac OS X system lately you might want to.  There are updates to OS X itself (10.5.8), Safari (4.0.3) the AirPort client, Bluetooth firmware, Macbook firmware (if this is you), a Java update, a larger than usual security update, and if you have Windows installed, a Trackpad update.  Get the details (or download) these and other support updates at the Support Download site.
     
  • Cengage learning announced plans to begin renting textbooks to students beginning this year through the web site Cengagebrain.com.  Cengage joins Chegg, Bookrenter, and others in the movement to rent rather than sell college textbooks.  Follet is running a small scale pilot to test the market, as are Barnes & Nobel College Booksellers (NYTimes).
     
  • Firefox 3.6 alpha has been released for download (alpha means please do not install on Palomar College production computers).  Code named Namoroka, its most exciting features are a new, high-speed javascript engine, CSS gradient background images, and improved screen scrolling.  Click here for the roadmap to Namoroka.
     
  • The scientists and engineers at CERN are going to try again this November to turn on the Large Hadron Collider.  It was nearly a year ago (19 Sept. 2008) that, with much ado, they threw the switch to a sickening pop and the acrid smell of fried circuits--not exactly what happened, but there was a catastrophic electrical failure.  The problem, it seems, was in thousands of high-current electrical connections.  The connections have been repaired, they think, but more analysis needs to be done.  In the mean time, operators are confident the device can be run a half-power, 3.5 TeV.  At this level important experiments can be performed, but the Higgs boson definitely will almost certainly not be found at those energies.  Click here for the CERN press release, here for LHC poster boy Brian Cox's apologia and overoptimistic pep talk via TED,  or read one of the following for more sober articles from The New York Times or NewScientist.
  • No more Word?  Don't bet on it.  A judge this week issued an injunction ordering Microsoft to stop selling Word as al result of a patent infringement suit won by Canadian company i4i.  The patent has to do with a method used to parse XML files in the latest version of Word.  Microsoft has been fined $277 million in the case, and has 60 days to comply with the injunction.  Of course The Empire will appeal, and the injunction will not actually take effect.  In 60 days Microsoft can a) settle; b) buy i4i; c) create new code that does not violate the patent; or d) all of the above.  Microsoft's response?  "We are disappointed by the court's ruling," Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz said in a statement. "We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid. We will appeal the verdict" (SeatllePI).
     
  • Speaking of cash cows, Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing and will be for sale on October 22.  A public version which will expire in 60 days is available (do not install this on Palomar College computers), but most of us can wait.  If you are very curious, however, here is a Windows 7 review from engadget.
     
  • And finally, speaking of Office, Office 2010 is due out in the first half of 2010 (read June 30 at 11:59pm).  If you want a preview, click here for the Office 2010 web site.  The videos are interesting but a bit underwhelming.  The best news is extension of the ribbon to all applications, including Outlook, the worst the further confusion of the role of Sharepoint Designer, now called SharePoint Workspace, and the exclusion of Expression web tools.
     
  • Greetings from earth.  You may recall the difficulty Salo, Tralfamadorean robot, had in delivering his message in The Sirens of Titan, and the consequent effects on human existence.  Now is your opportunity to play Tralfamadorean overlord and compose a message for your robot to deliver to planet Gleise 581d.  No joke.  You can now visit the Australian web site Hello From Earth, and compose a message that will be transmitted to that possibly inhabited planet.  At least, it is thought that exoplanet Gliese 581d is earthlike enough to support life.  Note:  messages must be in English and inappropriate messages will be rejected.  If you are inviting the Glieseans to a party, you may want to wait on your Costco run.  Gliese 581d is 20.3 light years away, and with the RSVP cycle included, the perishables definitely will not keep.
     
  • Sony has announced that they plan to support an "open standard" for eBooks on their Reader brand ebook reading device.  By year's end they will support the ePub format, a standard created by a consortium of publishers and used at Project Gutenberg.  The market leading Amazon reader can load ePub format books once they have been converted to the mobi format.  Sony is not abandoning DRM (digital rights management) however, but is dropping their proprietary DRM in favor of an Adobe technology that limits the times a copy can be made of the ebook (NY Times).
     
  • Featured Safari Tech Book Online:  Google Sketchup: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover.  "If you want to learn to create 3-D models using Google SketchUp, this Missing Manual is the ideal place to start. Filled with step-by-step tutorials, this entertaining, reader-friendly guide will have you creating detailed 3-D objects, including building plans, furniture, landscaping plans -- even characters for computer games -- in no time." 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

Academic Technology Workshops

The Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray

Fall into Blackboard

Fall is upon us. Remember that your Blackboard courses will not be accessible by your students until you manually make them Available. (Click here for a screencast tutorial.)

Also take note that the Summer 2008 courses, from over a year ago, will finally be removed from the Blackboard system on Wednesday, August 19th. Of course the Summer 2009 courses which have just completed will be available for instructor access until this time next year, but the courses from last Summer must leave us now.

For any faculty who haven’t used Blackboard before, I’d like to urge you to consider trying out extending your classes with something simple but powerful: Use the Blackboard Announcement tool. By default every Blackboard course has an Announcements area, so if you make your course available to your students as mentioned above, then begin adding announcements to your course by going into the Control Panel and clicking the Announcements link in the upper left corner, you can open up a whole new method of communicating with your students. The Announcement tool can be used for everything from reminders of upcoming tests in class, through such unexpected events as a class cancellation should you become ill, all the way to communicating instructions to your students in the event of a serious event like the wildfires of years past. The key to getting use out of the Announcement tool is get your students into the habit of checking for them.  Consider augmenting your Fall classes with the simple addition of Blackboard Announcements.
 


 		 Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 5:18]
 
See the index of Dave's previous "Blackboard Feature of the Week" segments.

Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis

Helping Online Students (and Instructors) Get A Good Start

It probably fair to say the first two weeks of a new semester plays a large role in influencing a student to be successful in the class. Getting off to a good start in a class can motivate a student to continue to do well throughout the class.

Last time I talked about the importance of student feedback and I think that while this is important throughout the course, it may be most important in the early part of the course. This time I’m going to underscore that point by mentioning a couple of tools we’ve harped on before in these podcasts but with me anyway it’s often helpful to be reminded of something I already know. With that adage in mind I want to remind online instructors to consider using two powerful but underused Blackboard tools: the Calendar and the Performance Dashboard.

The calendar tool while primitive can be very useful in helping students stay on task and it has the virtue of being very simple to use. I recommend that the instructor place a number of reminders for students and tell them that they too can add their own events (of course whatever they add will appear only in their view of the calendar). I like the fact that the calendar items appear when the student first logs onto the Blackboard system.

The process for adding calendar items couldn’t be easier as I mentioned. The steps are:
Control Panel
Course Tools/Course Calendar
Add Event
Choose Date

 

The second tool I know we’ve also discussed more than once but the Performance Dashboard provides a lot of useful information that, particularly early in the course can be used to identify students who might be having difficulty in the class. A short email or phone call will often get them back on track. The screen capture below shows how the instructor can monitor course access as well as other progress. In the example shown, Adam has not accessed the course yet and the first week is coming to a close.

Finally, under the heading of getting started well, I’ve included two URLs that instructors might find helpful.

Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 5:53]
 
See the index of Haydn's previous "Teaching with Technology" segments.

Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray

Your Online Toolkit

If you haven't prepared the electronic portions of your courses for fall semester yet, it is time to swing into action.  This article will give you an overview of the major tools we have put in place to assist you in delivering online content to students.

Blackboard

Blackboard is "tupperware," as our Blackboard techs are fond of saying.  It is a set of interrelated containers into which you place your educational content.  It goes beyond "tupperware" however, because Blackboard includes some native tools that will help you create and manage educational content, and we have added others, called "building blocks," that will let you do some pretty neat things.  Some of the Blackboard native tools include:

  • Learning Units - a great way to present learning materials in a linear fashion.
     
  • Surveys - a way to poll student opinion and elicit facts, by name or anonymously.
     
  • The Assignment Manager - if you are using the "digital drop box" in Blackboard, stop. Use the Assignment Manager instead.  You will be glad you did.
     
  • Discussion Boards - It is the rare class, whether online or in person, that cannot profit from a written discussion board on challenging and interesting topics.  Discussion Boards can also be used by students to ask questions about the conduct of class or the presentation of materials.
     
  • Chat and Virtual Classrooms - though not heavily used, Blackboard allows for online chat and a "virtual classroom" via a collaboration server.  There is a more robust version of "virtual classroom" available through Elluminate Live, a building block we have added to Blackboard.  If you have a need for a synchronous online meeting--online office hours, for example, this is your tool.  Online meetings can be optionally archived.
     
  • Groups - for those who assign student group work, Blackboard can be used to create online environments for group projects.  Some of the tools we have added to Blackboard, such as the wiki and blog tools, can also be configured for group work.
     
  • Safe Assignment - this is the anti-plagiarism tool we use.  If you give writing assignments, Safe Assign is a great way to teach about attribution and citation.  It can be configured to accept student drafts, final submissions, or instructors can submit individual documents in order to check them.  We encourage the use of Safe Assignment because the more widely it is adopted, the more effective it is at eliminating plagiarism.
     
  • Assessments - Blackboard can create, manage and grade simple, multiple choice tests, or can be used to create very sophisticated randomized tests drawing from question pools so that each student in the class will receive a totally different test, which can be timed and automatically graded (unless you have included "essay" questions that must be evaluated by hand).  The results of assessments are automatically linked to the Blackboard grade center so that students can receive optional feedback instantly.  Blackboard assessments support 26 different question types, including "hotspot" screen coordinate questions.

Tools to help you communicate with students and track their progress built-in to Blackboard include:

  • Announcements - if for no other reason you should be using Blackboard to post announcements.  Announcements include an email all option, and can be synced with Facebook and the iPhone.
     
  • The Grade Center - this is the one the students are most interested in.  It is also a great improvement over the old Blackboard gradebook.  If you haven't used it yet, give it a try.
     
  • The Performance Dashboard - this is a tool that will help you keep track of student progress and warn when someone falls behind.  Another tool, The Early Warning System will let you set specific performance criteria and notify you when students need your assistance.

"Building Block" tools we have added to Blackboard:

  • The Wimba Voice Tools - a collection of tools built around a java-based online audio recorder.  The tools include a Voice Author, which allows recording of an audio message your students can play back; Voice Email; a Voice Discussion Board, which also allows text, where you and your students can carry on an audible discussion; and a Voice Presenter, an online "slideshow" application where you can audibly annotate web content and solicit your students' responses.
     
  • Learning Objects Campus Pack - a set of applications that you may use to create course-based student journals, blogs, wikis and podcasts.  The Learning Objects also include a Blackboard Search tool and a public facing Expo tool.
     
  • Elluminate Live - a tool that can be used to set up an online, synchronous meeting, or publish an online archive of a meeting.  If you have used CCC Confer you know how it works.

In addition to Blackboard specific tools, we license software you can use to create flash-based learning activities, called StudyMate.  StudyMate can create flash cards, multiple choice quizzes, crossword puzzles, fill-in-the-blank and matching exercises, and several other learning activities.  It requires download of client software from our secure installation point.

 Those meeting in-person may also want to use radio frequency clickers to engage students and check on learning progress during class.  Clickers add a fun element to any classroom activity and are easy to use.  They can be checked out from our help desk (room LL-103), but if you have never used them before we ask that you schedule a half-hour training session before using them.

Academic Technology also recommends the use of a wide range of software and services, accessed via our Software page, and provides training material on their use.

Resources

Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 10:37]
 
See an index of previous "Tech Talk Topics" segments.

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