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ATRC Podcast
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 Podcast
for October 20, 2006 - Episode 37
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Play time 48 minutes - Program Notes
"The
only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from
one moment to the next." ~Mignon McLaughlin
October is breast cancer awareness month. The
tree of remembrance will be in the student quad on
October 24, from 11am-2:30pm, at which time it will
be moved to the second floor of the library. Place a
pink ribbon (which will be available next to the
tree) in remembrance of a survivor, or one who has
succumbed.
Tech news briefs: A 60-day trial of the
TurnItIn anti-plagiarism product will commence
Monday, October 23; IE7 was officially released for
download Wednesday, and soon will be released as an
automatic update; Apple acknowledged shipping a PC
virus in recent video iPods; Sony is recalling Sony
Vaio batteries; we have a new Teaching with
Blackboard screen video promoting the Assignment
feature; and Google and U. of Wisconsin announce a
joint project. We also
have news of training opportunities at Palomar and
beyond, including @ONE, Adobe, and
Horizon Wimba. Haydn has a Teaching with Technology segment titled
"An Online Instructor's Best Friend."
David's Blackboard Feature of the Week is title
"Spring is Busting Out All Over," to acknowledge the
creation of the Spring 2007 Blackboard course shells
this week. My Tech Talk
Topic extends my discussion last week of the Windows
Live Writer. Finally, our gizmo this week
makes you look like the geek you want to look like,
with a techno-prosthesis, and gives you a super
power to boot.
Palomar Tech and Download News
-
We have talked for some time about
TurnItIn anti-plagiarism software and now we are
doing something about it. Starting Monday, October
23, we will begin a 60-day trial of the product here at
Palomar. Watch for an official announcement from
Dr. Haydn Davis Monday. We ran a survey asking
when to do the trial, and the consensus was the last 60
days of the semester. The trial will end on
December 18. It will be deployed as a Blackboard
building block, and users will need to create TurnItIn
Blackboard assignments. Entries in the Blackboard
gradebook will be created for these assignments, and
grades entered through TurnItIn will be reflected back
to the Blackboard gradebook. At the professor's
option, students can submit drafts of their papers to
TurnItIn in order to receive an originality report prior
to officially submitting the paper for grading.
Details on how to use the product will be released
Monday along with Haydn's announcement. (See our
review of TurnItIn from
episode 11).
-
File under "O my prophetic soul:" On Wednesday, October 18 the final version of
Internet Explorer version 7 was released. The
download site is at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx
At this time you must download the installer (or run
from the web) in order to upgrade. Soon, the
upgrade will be made part of the Microsoft Automatic
Updates, though users will be informed before
installation occurs and given the opportunity to opt
out. Its release will be a High Priority Automatic
Update. Genuine Windows validation is required to
perform the upgrade, both now and will also be required
when it is released as an Automatic Update. IE7
runs on Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP
Professional x64 Edition, and Microsoft Windows Server
2003.
Blackboard has announced that IE7 is "compatible"
with Blackboard 7.1 SP1, the version that is run at
Palomar College. Which means that they have been
testing it and found that it works acceptably.
This is not the same as it being "certified" to work
with Blackboard.
Internet Explorer has not been updated functionally
since 2001. There are very significant security
enhancements to the new version (which is why it is
being released as a High Priority security update) and a
host of new features too, including tabbed browsing,
screen magnification, print preview and shrink-to-fit
printing, native RSS and RSS enclosure (podcast)
subscription with live feed detection, optimized menu
bars, and more. Read/listen to a review of the new
features from our Academic Podcast
episode 23. The Technology Overview from
Microsoft can be found by clicking
here.
-
Monday morning brought two new MS patches to
address security vulnerabilities, out of the
sequence of second Tuesday updates. Both
had to do with the XML parser in Windows XP:
- The MSXML 4.0 SP2 core XML services (KB925672)
- The MSXML 6.0 RTM core XML services (KB925673)
- It was
revealed this week (MSNBC) that Apple shipped iPods
carry a PC computer virus. Apple said that
since September 1, "...less than 1 percent of
Video iPods...legt its contract manufacturer
carrying the virus RavMonE.exe..." a Windows
virus. Then nano, shuffle and Mac OS are
not affected and the virus has been cleaned from
iPods still in stock. Apple reported under
the headline "Small
Number of Video iPods Shipped With Windows Virus,"
emphasizing the smallness and Windowness of the
problem, and included in the report the
following statement: "As you might
imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being
more hardy against such viruses, and even more
upset with ourselves for not catching it."
I know you are, but what am I? Can you say
"No quality control? At the same time,
it was announced (NY Times) this week tha
Apple profits rose 27% in the last quarter, on
sales of more that 8.7 million iPods.
- Sony is joining the roll call of companies
recalling Sony batteries. They are
recalling batteries on 90,000 Sony Vaios, the
majority of which were sold in Japan and China.
they join Dell, Apple, IBM/Lenovo, Toshiba,
Panasonic, Hitachi and Fujitsu in toting up over
8 million recalled lithium ion batteries
manufactured by Sony.
- We have uploaded a new
Teaching with Blackboard screen video which
was originally titled "Thinking Outside the
(Digital Drop) Box," but is now more prosaically
titled "Using
the Assignment Manager." The video was
originally part of a vodcast from
PCOX, and is now available on the
Faculty Services page of PCOnline.
- Google and the University of Wisconsin this
week
announced that the 7.2 million holdings of
the UW-Madison library will be added to the
Google Book Search project.
Training Opportunities
- Academic Technology Training
We
will be presenting the following workshops next
week:
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.
- The @ONE system is continuing with their
Lunch 'n' Learn series of online desktop
seminars throughout October. Registration
must occur no later than the Wednesday prior to
the seminar. The offering for October
includes:
- @ONE has also announced their Winter Institute
at MiraCosta College from January 9-11, 2007.
The following workshops will be offered. Pick
one to attend throughout the Institute:
- @ONE has also announced a new session
for "Introduction to Online Teaching and
Learning," a Multi-Week Online Course with
Joshua Stern to Start Monday October 30 and
running through Friday, December 1. Sign up
right away to reserve your space at:
http://www.cccone.org/de/06fall/courses/index.htm#IOTL
- Horizon Wimba will be offering webinars,
using their Live Classroom interface, next week
on the Live Classroom Presenter 101 (October 26
and 27), and Live Classroom Presenter Advanced
(October 25).
Click here for information and to
register.
- The next and final Adobe webinar in "What's
New in Acrobat 8" will be Tuesday, October 31.
Click here to register.
Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray
Spring is Busting Out All Over
Dave is back from vacation and comes to us
this week with a report on the newly created
Spring 2007 Blackboard course shells, which have
already been created. You may now copy
contents in or add new content.
Dave has produced the following Blackboard
life-cycle chart showing when course shells will
be created/purged over the next few semesters:
Note: To get to David's vodcast site,
click here.
Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis
Instructional Strategies to Enhance Online
Learning
Haydn's segment today is entitled "An Online
Instructor's Best Friend." He covers the
use of Merlot resources in preparing online
classes, and also references a University of
Oklahoma site which makes practical suggestions
on enhanced lecture formats for in-person
classes, which could be extended online.
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray
Live Writer Extended
Last week my topic was Microsoft's
Live Writer, which I had been testing and
generally liked, except for a little snafu with
Blogger.com, where they had automatically
designated my blog as a splog, and required
human validation before it would let me post to
it using Live Writer in anything but draft mode.
I am more than happy to report that the issue
was settled completely just the day after I did
that report last week, and that Live Writer
works perfectly with blogger.com--even the new
Beta version of blogger, to which I have now
converted (if you too, started publishing to an
old style blogger blog, and converted over to
the new, don't forget to change the user account
information in Live Writer to correspond to your
GMail account). I can now, without
reservation, recommend Live Writer as a blogging
tool of choice.
This week I would like to talk about a couple
of the extensions to Live Writer that you can
apply from the MS
Live Gallery.
Events. The first is the
Event Plugin which: "Inserts events into a
blog post. Enter your own events, or search for
them on Eventful.com. Several formatting options
are available and the post contains hCalendar
microformatting." Download/install it from
the Gallery. Once you do, you can
configure it to enter events via a form to your
blog in several different elegant formats.
Here is a sample from my blog:
As you can see, graphics can be included.
After installing the Event Plugin, Insert an
event from the Insert menu:
After using a form to enter a basic event,
you can configure it using one of three
templates:
Blog This. Another userful
plugin for Live Writer is the "Blog
This" button that can be added to IE's
toolbar. This tool can also be obtained by
installing the Windows Live toolbar (a rival of
the more widespread Google toolbar). Just
click the Blog It button ( )
and Live Writer will pop up, with a link to the
web page you are viewing, ready for you to add
your oh-so-piquant observations and click
Publish. There is also a
"Blog This" plugin for Firefox.
There are other plug-ins for LW at the Live
Gallery, like one that allows interaction with
Flickr, or one that allows insertion of code
snippets, but these two are the most useful.
Gizmo of the week
Bluetooth Superpowers
 This
week's gizmo has everything: 1) sex appeal
for 20-30-something technogeeks who like to have
those big cyborg prostheses accreted to their
heads; 2) absolute control over your audio
space; and 3) super-hearing powers. It is
the
SoundID Bluetooth Headset, a PSS
("personalized sound system). It looks,
yes, like one of those geeky bluetooth headsets
that the tech types wear blossoming out of their
ears, but smaller (sorry, guys) and not just any
headset. It is a "...super hearing gadget
that can work as a walkie talkie or give you
super sound hearing. They're for people who want
to hear better in all situations" (Gizmodo).
It has an amplification mode, for enhancing
surrounding sound and minimizing background
noise; a Phone Mode, that allows it to be paired
with a bluetooth enabled mobile phone; a
CompanionLink mode that allows you to hear the
comments of anyone with the CompanionLink
clipped to their lapel (or wherever) within
Bluetooth range; and a One20One Mode which makes
it possible to converse with someone in a very
noisy environment and hear clearly what they are
saying and speak clearly to them--a kind of
public walky-talky device that let's you
converse easily in very noisy environments.
It sells in two flavors, one for $249 and one
for $699. Go to the website for details.
Now you can look like a tech-geek and have a
superpower all at the same time.
(Source: Gizmodo)
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 "Now
and Zen" by
Norine Braun. "NOW
& ZEN expands on her penchant for jazzed up,
funk-tinged pop, and shows this gifted songstress
taking bold steps on her soulful journey into
self-exploration."
We used tracks 13: "Lucky;" 9: "Maya;" 1: "Jade;"
10: "Understanding;" 14: "Move the Clouds;" 4:
"Buffalo Nights;" 2: "Now and Zen;" 7: "Survival of
the Richest;" 11: "Maya 2."
Visit
magnatune and reward them for their generosity,
and if you like this album, buy it. Magnatune is not evil!
"The difference
between a violin and a viola is that a viola
burns longer." ~ Victor Borge
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