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ATRC Podcast
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 Podcast
for August 18, 2006 - Episode 28
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Play time 61 minutes - Program Notes
"I'm telling you:
Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on
third." ~Bud Abbott
 (wiki)
from "Who's on first"
(wiki)
 |
|
Abbott & Costello |
This is plenary week, where all the faculty
gather for their orientations and the online classes
start presenting orientations as well. On
Monday, the Fall 2006 semester begins.
We have a lot of news from Palomar and Academic
Technology, but not much in the way of download
news. Dave has another multipart Blackboard
feature of the week. Haydn is back from the Grand Canyon
and ready to regale us again with a Teaching with
Technology segment. My tech-talk-topic is
a laundry list of what's new in academic technology
this fall, for those who are catching up--and that
includes almost everyone. Finally, the gizmo
of the week is, once again, a service, sort of, and
not a thing, sort of. It is the website
YouTube, and that is why we started off the program
notes with the quote from who's on first.
Palomar Tech and Download News
-
We are seeing some Blackboard course copy errors
occurring as faculty copy their course contents
from old Blackboard course shells to their new
ones. This is not the same course copy
issue that was fixed with Blackboard 7.1.
The new error actually generates an error
message that is emailed to the professor making
the course copy. If you get this email,
follow its advise and contact Academic
Technology at phone ext. 2863, or email
onlineclasses@palomar.edu.
-
We have discovered a bug in the Horizon Wimba
voice announcement tool, as it works with
Blackboard 7.1, and are advising faculty members
not to use that tool until it is fixed by
Horizon Wimba. The voice recorder tools
works just fine, and we recommend that it be
used, just not the voice announcement tool.
-
We are also aware of an error using the
Blackboard visual text editor in the discussion
board with the Mac Safari browser. If you are
attempting to make postings to the discussion
board using this browser, but you cannot view
your postings, turn off the visual text editor
within Blackboard and all will be well.
Contact Academic Technology for details, ext.
2862 or
onlineclasses@palomar.edu.
-
Blackboard classes from summer of 2005 are no
more. We purged them according to our
"rolling year" policy of maintaining a years'
previous courses on the Blackboard file and
database servers. If you did not archive
or heed the warnings, it's too late now.
-
Finally on the Blackboard front, we are going
through hard-drive angst right now. Drive
0 on the database server has failed and bebuilt
itself twice in two days. A warning alarm
sounds, but there are no warning lights or error
messages. Diagnostics do not reveal any
abnormal conditions. There are firmware
upgrades we could run, and those might fix it,
but a) this is the busiest possible time for the
Blackboard system and it really should not be
down; and b) there is a remote possibility of
hosing the entire database server and having to
rebuild. What to do? We haven't made
the call yet, but expect to wait and see over
the weekend and attack the problem Monday,
unless something truly terrible happens.
-
We have set up a new
install point for the CPS ("Classroom
Performance System") software that is needed to
use the
new radio frequency clickers we now have
available for checkout. You must
install the software on your PC or Mac prior to
using the clickers. Login to the install
point using your palomar email address as your
username and your email password as password.
-
Speaking of secure install points for faculty
members, we also have a new license key for the
Respondus and StudyMate software. If you
use either of these products, login to the
install point and get the new license key.
If you want to use them, login and download the
software (PC only) and get the full registration
information.
Click here to access the install point.
-
On the Windows front, very little activity this
week. Perhaps they are catching their
collective breaths from the gargantuan security
update last week. Only the Windows
Defender definitions were updated this week (KB915597).
-
According to our IS department, 6 wireless
access points have been installed this week in
the "P" complex on the San Marcos campus.
The entire P complex now has reliable wireless
access. An access point has also been
installed over room ES-14 for the earth sciences
department, and the BE and BES buildings have
also received access points.
-
By now everyone has heard of the Dell battery
recall (Read the
CNet article).
Potentially affected
batteries were sold with the following models of
Dell notebook computers or separately as
secondary batteries:
-
Latitude: D410,
D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610, D620,
D800, D810
-
Inspiron: 500M,
510M, 600M, 700M, 710M, 6000, 6400, 8500,
8600, 9100, 9200, 9300, 9400, E1505, E1705
-
Precision: M20, M60,
M70, M90
- XPS: XPS, XPS
Gen2, XPS M170, XPS M1710
Here is the URL where you can tell if you own
one of the affected batteries:
https://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/
Training Opportunities
- Academic Technology Training:
Academic Technology workshops begin in earnest
next week. Here is the lineup:
- Register for all Academic Technology
workshops through the
Professional Development web site.
Click here to access our entire training
schedule,
here to access the new "competencies"
approach to our workshops, and other training
information.
- Free 1-hour, live online training from
Horizon Wimba on
Voice Tools and
Live Classroom. Select from a range of
dates from August 15-Sept 1.
- For those just beginning to look at their
Fall 2006 Blackboard course shells, and perhaps
staring at the vacancy, there are a series of
screen videos created by the Academic Technology
department which will help you along your way.
Access them at the PCOnline
Faculty Services page.
- Microsoft webcasts:
Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray
David's has another multipart feature this week:
- The latest course copy problem.
- How Blackboard courses are defined.
- How to copy an item from one course to
another.
- A reminder to faculty members about how to
make your courses available.
Resources:
Screen video on How to copy an item.
Screen video on how to make your course
available.
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
6:34]
See
the index of Dave's previous "Blackboard Feature
of the Week" segments.
Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis
Topic: A valuable but little used Bb
feature
Planning is an essential feature of all
classes – for faculty and students – but is
particularly important in an online class. In
large part this is because students don’t have
the discipline of the instructor reminding them
2-3 times a week what they should be doing. In
the online world you really are on your own most
of the time.
Therefore, having some tool to schedule and
organize your classes is valuable. In
Blackboard, one of the built-in tools to assist
with planning and scheduling is the Calendar
tool.
It’s simple for the instructor to enter
events on the class calendar such as test dates,
assignment due dates and so on, but it is
equally easy for students to create their own
calendar items. And these items can be about
anything so students could even use the Bb
calendar to plan and schedule personal events.
To make the calendar tool available to you
and your students you:
- Click control panel/Manage Course Menu
- Add Tool Link (click the down arrow in
the “Type” box) and choose Calendar
- In the “Name” box type “Calendar” (or
whatever name you want to give the item),
then Submit
- This will place the Calendar item right
on the menu where students can easily see it
- Finally, enter dates in the Calendar by
going through control panel and clicking on
“Course Calendar” (regardless of what you
named the item, it will be listed as Course
Calendar in Control Panel).
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
6:02]
See
an index of previous "Teaching with
Technology" segments.
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray
My topic is "What's New in Academic
Technology."
We have been busy over the summer and have quite
a few new software and hardware resources. We
have reported on them as they were added, but would
like to summarize here.
- A new version of Blackboard (7.1) patched to
fix the bugs that became apparent over the
summer (SP1).
More...
- The Horizon Wimba voice tools and live
classroom, both available through Blackboard.
The voice tools include a tool for posting audio
messages in any Blackboard content area (the
voice recorder), sending voice email, creating a
voice discussion board, and doing voice
conferencing ("voice direct"). Live
classroom is a system that allows synchronous,
online meetings, supported by voice-over-IP,
scheduled through your Blackboard class.
More...
-
New "Teaching with Blackboard" screen
videos. David has created these screen
video tutorials, each focused on an important
Blackboard competency.
More....
- A new approach to our training workshops.
Click here for a fuller explanation,
here for the Fall 2006
training schedule.
- New web content:
- A web site for online
readiness: "Are you ready to be an
online student?"
- Indexes to AT podcast
segments
- A Teaching Online web
site
- Updated "How do I..." content
- A new podcast solution
More...
-
Updated versions of StudyMate
and Respondus. Even if you do not want to
download the updated versions, you need to
re-license your installed versions.
More...
-
The Academic Technology RSS
feed.
Subscribe |
How do I subscribe?
- Using Blackboard vodcast.
More...
- New Academic Technology blogs:
Terry
Gray's ATRC Blog
David Gray's Vlog
Haydn
Davis' Teaching Online Blog
- CPS ("Classroom Performance System") RF
Clicker checkout and use for Fall 2006 classes.
More...
- A new podcast solution for Fall semester
academic podcasts.
More...
- WS-100 digital voice recorder checkout.
More...
- New "How do I..." content.
More...
- A TurnItIn Survey.
Click here to take the survey.
- Reminders:
- Wireless labs are available to reserve.
We will roll it to your classroom.
More...
- The
faculty technology center contains
higher end workstations for faculty to
develop materials for their courses.
- Video production can be done through
PCTV. Contact
Bill Wisneski.
- We will produce web advertising for you,
if you want to advertise your underenrolled
classes.
More...
- We host PCPDF, a free web service, open
to faculty, staff and students, to convert
your documents to PDF format.
Click here to login and use the service.
- We will set up web/ftp accounts for each
student in your class at
your request.
- We provide streaming media, graphic
production, document scanning, and audio and
video production services in our offices.
More...
- We will do custom training for your
department. Department chairs should
contact
Haydn Davis to set up training.
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
14:52]
See
the index of previous Tech Talk Topics.
Gizmo of the week
Our gizmo this week is another service.
Last week we opened the floodgates in permitting not
just techno-hardware to be discussed here, but
techno-services too. You most likely have
already heard of our nomination this week--unless
you just pay not attention to technology news at
all, in which case you are probably not
reading/listening to this, but I was shocked last
week when I learned that one of our media professors
had never heard of YouTube.
YouTube is it. It is one of Time
magazine's
50 coolest web sites of 2006 and, after
MySpace, probably the most popular Internet
destination.
So, you really don't know what it is? It's
a site where "members" (to become a member, just
sign-up on a web form) upload video to share with
others. Too geeky to work, you're thinking?
Hardly. Here's a sample:
|
Yoda and Jar Jar Binks
stand in for Abbott and Costello in their
classic comedy skit "Who’s
on First?" (wikipedia
link) |
Click
this link to view the video on YouTube.
This video, granted, is way more sophisticated
than most--requiring hours, if not days of editing,
but it gets across the creative energy and simple,
enthusiastic, dare I say "viral sharing" embraced by
the YouTube community. Why? For fun.
Oh sure, for vanity, for gain, out of cruelty, for
prospective profit, but mainly for fun. It's
just that simple. So, get your camcorder out,
put the bozo wig on, and start sharing...
(Source:
neatorama.com and
YouTube.com)
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 was
"Automatic
Ordinary" from
Five Star Fall. "From the dazzling
liquid guitar loops of "Mercurial Girl" to the
analog synth telegram embedded in "What Planet Are
We On?," the restless Canadian lads of Five Star
Fall are known for tricking out their sparkling pop
with lots of satisfying sonic detail." Uh-hmm.
We
used tracks 3: "Five Star Fall;" 5:
"Between 2 Floors;" 9: "Song Number 9;" 8: "Star Dot
Star;" 4: "Headphones;" 10: "Turn The Light On;" 1:
"Mercurial Girl;" 7: "Automatic Ordinary;" 2: "What
Planet Are We On?"
Visit
magnatune and reward them for their generosity,
and if you like this album, buy it. Magnatune is not evil!
"Ninety-eight
percent of the adults in this country are
decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the
other lousy two percent that get all the
publicity. But then--we elected them." ~
Lily Tomlin
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