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September 4,
2009 |
Contents |
-
Technology
News Briefs
- Training
Opportunities
- Teaching with Technology: "Virtual
Groups"
-
Tech Talk Topic:
"Blackboard Help"
- For more, see
podcast notes page for Episode
107
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Technology News Briefs
-
 Blackboard will be down for
maintenance Friday,
September 11. We
expect to complete system
maintenance in approximately
12 hours, from 6am to 6pm,
but it is possible it will
extend beyond that time
frame. The maintenance
includes full-system backup
and application of a patch
to address a Blackboard
discovered vulnerability.
-
Microsoft has
announced the
availability of the new
Windows phones, the first to
use Windows Mobile 6.5, on
October 6, 1009. In
North America the new phones
are supported by AT&T, Bell
Mobility, Sprint, TELUS,
Verizon Wireless, and
others.
-
Speaking of AT&T, a growing
body of consumers,
especially in large urban
areas, are complaining about
the sluggishness of iPhones
on the AT&T 3G network.
The iPhone is to mobile
phones what the Hummer is to
autos, a resource guzzler,
and AT&T's network cannot
keep up. " (NY
Times).
-
Apple's upgrade/patch to OS
X 10.5, is OS X 10.6 "Snow
Leopard," which became
available to the public
August 28. Those
wishing to upgrade, however,
ought to be aware of Apple's
(long)
list of incompatible
software, including the
most popular antivirus
products and the most
popular VM solution for
running Windows and Mac OS
in parallel. You might
also want to check Apple's
printer/scanner
compatibility page,
which may help you diagnose
why your printer/scanner has
stopped working after the
upgrade, or better yet, warn
you about a potential
conflict or need for new
driver prior to upgrade. The
upgrade will cost $30, and
has received rave reviews
from the Apple faithful,
like
David Pogue of the New
York Times, but complaints
from the unconverted who say it
is nothing more than a patch
like the ones Microsoft
gives away for free.
-
Google
Chrome is the also ran
of the browser wars, with
only 2.6% market share.
Google has inked a deal with
Sony, however, to have
Chrome be the default
browser pre-installed on all
Sony Vaio PCs. It is a
bid to move from sleeper to
keeper, but it will take
more than the Sony deal to
make headway against market
leaders Microsoft Internet
Explorer and Mozilla Firefox
(Wall
Street Journal).
-
Diebold has been driven from
the voting machine business
because of poor design, low
reliability and poor
security, all demonstrated
in real-life situations
involving their voting
machine products.
Diebold could simply no
longer afford the disastrous
publicity which threatened
to swamp their core
business, ATM machines.
In a "strategic alternative
to ownership" Diebold sold
their voting machine
business to competitor ES&S,
insuring that the flawed
technology will continue to
retard effective, reliable
e-voting that inspires voter
confidence. Diebold
took a $45 million loss on
the sale on technology that
amounted to no more than 3%
of their business (ars
technica).
-
"Robby, did I take my pills
this morning?" "No,
master." "Bring me the
pills, Robby." "Yes,
master." A
conversation you will be
hearing in your own home
eventually, if Colin Angle,
CEO of iRobot has his way.
He is pitching a robot nurse
to alleviate the cost of
human nurses for the
elderly, and presumably
reduce the $2.2 trillion
(and rising) spent on health
care each year in the US.
"The robot could examine,
diagnose, and make sure a
prescription is administered
on the right schedule."
The US Army has just placed
a $35 million order with
iRobot, for
PackBots designed to
disassemble roadside bombs,
but Angle knows the real
money is in health care,
where his company is now
concentrating. (CNet
News).
-
 Featured
Safari Tech Book Online:
Take Control of Upgrading to Snow Leopard, by
Joe Kissell. "The ebook will help you:
Evaluate whether your Mac is ready to run Snow
Leopard; Prepare for changes in Snow Leopard, such
as software that may no longer work; Complete
crucial pre-upgrade steps that help you avoid
trouble; Make a bootable duplicate in case Joe's
easy Plan A doesn't work for you; Understand
everything you need to know about what the installer
will do; Decide which optional software you should
install; Perform a few important post-installation
tasks and tweaks; Solve problems that might arise
after installing-such as a Mac that won't boot." 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 Academic Technology schedule of workshops
has been published for fall 2009.
Click here
to access the schedule. We will be offering
workshops in various topics related to Blackboard,
classroom technology, Google Earth, our new Learning
Object products for journals, blogs, wikis and
podcasts, and traditional workshops in web site
development and PowerPoint.
Workshops:
- We have developed (or linked to) sets of
screen videos (screencasts) that teach how to use the features of
the various technology tools available to faculty
members through Blackboard:
How-to screencasts:
Teaching with Technology -
Dr. Haydn Davis Virtual
Groups
The Problem: Discussion Boards and Chat
Rooms become overwhelming to online students.
One Solution: Create “virtual sections”
within your online class.
Those of us who teach online value a
robust, active discussion board component to our online
class. Often, though, we find ourselves with a class of
35-40 students and a discussion board with so many posts it
can become confusing for students and may actually work
against our objectives. And if you’ve ever tried a chat room
with that many students you know how impossible that
becomes.
Fortunately, there is an easy solution to
the problem described above. What you can do is to create a
couple of smaller classes within your Blackboard class –
just for the purpose of making the discussions and chats
easier to manage. What I’m suggesting is that you use
Blackboard’s Group tool.
Here’s how it would work. You would create
two (or more) groups and split the students equally into the
groups. Each group has its own discussion board, chat room,
file exchange, and email tool. So, while all the students
will access all the course resources (Course Information,
Course Documents, Assignments, etc) the same way, they will
be split into groups only for purposes of discussion and
chat. Of course you could use this group feature for other
purposes such as class projects but, in this example, I am
discussing the tool only as a means of enhancing interaction
via discussion boards and chat rooms.
When the instructor creates the groups
(Control Panel>Manage Groups>Add Group), you can then click
the Modify link next to the group you’ve created and assign
students to each group. This process is simple, you just
list all the students in the class and, by clicking
checkboxes, identify the students you wish to place in each
group. Note that if you decide to populate the group
discussion board with discussion prompts (a good idea in my
view), you can simply copy the forum along with the posts
you put in, to any other groups you have created. In other
words, you only need to create one group discussion board
with prompts and have that one mirrored in the other groups
via the copy command.
Instructors who have tried this have
reported, for example, that “the overall quality of the
interaction within the course improved immensely” [Lisa
Panagopoulos, UMass Lowell Online Teaching Institute].
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry
GrayBlackboard Help
The quickest way to get help with your Blackboard
problems is to
submit a help ticket to our help system.
You do not need to login in the Helpdesk Login
area to submit a ticket. The login is only
required when you are later adding information or
updating the ticket. As soon as you submit
your ticket you will receive an email from the
system giving you a ticket ID number, and
instructing you on how to log back into the system
to check on its status or update information about
your problem.
Many questions, however, have already been
addressed by our techs, and the answers are stored
in our Knowledgebase.
You may be able to save yourself a lot of time by
checking the knowledgebase before submitting your
ticket. It is searchable by keyword, and
categorized by common question types.
For instance, if your students are having a
problem logging in to Blackboard, it is almost
certainly related to their password in eServices.
Our knowledge base instructs them to login to
eServices and reset their password.
Another common student question is "How can I get
my test attempt reset?" In the course of
taking a Blackboard assessment something may go
wrong with the student's computer or internet
connection. In order to resume or retake the
assessment their attempt must be reset, but only the
instructor can reset a test attempt. Our
knowledgebase informs them of this fact, and
suggests that they lookup their instructor's email
in the Palomar online directory or call the academic
department for help in reaching their instructor.
When submitting a help request ticket, our system
allows for upload of explanatory files. We
strongly recommend that users download the free
Jing program for PC or Mac. It makes it
easy to capture any part of a screen and submit
either the picture, or a link to the picture along
with your help request.
When our techs are reviewing your help request
ticket, they will be able to see what you are seeing
on your screen, like this:
Jing even allows some textual or graphic
annotation of the captured image:
Click here for a very brief screen video on how
to make your first Jing capture. As they say,
a picture is worth a thousand words. Not only
will you find Jing invaluable for error reporting,
but as you learn to use it you will discover all
sorts of applications that will enhance your online
communications. If you prefer to upload your
captures to screencast.com, rather than save them
locally, it is even easier to include the link to
the image in your help ticket.
If professors and students both learn how best to
use our help ticketing system it will lighten the
load for everyone and help build a useful ongoing
resource through the knowledgebase.
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