"The usual fortune
of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity."
~Samuel Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Tech news: getting started tools for Office 2007,
AppleTV and Sony's IVL, Mac patches and a Zune update, a
CCCSAT announcement, endangered species ring tones,
Internet complaints, a Blackboard military cadre, book
publishers' widgets, more on the Joyce Hatto classical
music swindle, and a featured book online. David's Blackboard Feature of
the Week is titled "Filling the Pool, Part 3"
continuing to describe the use of question pools.
Haydn's Teaching with Technology segment is titled "The
Best of Both Worlds?" where he discusses the use of
Horizon Wimba Live Classroom. My Tech Talk
Topic this week is a grab bag of Mac support questions.
Our gizmo this week presents the world's most beautiful
keyboard.
Technology News Briefs
The
Palomar College Computer Science and Information
Systems Career Day will be held on March 29, on our
San Marcos campus in the B building complex.
"The CSIS Career Day is open to the public and free
of charge. The event is an opportunity for community
members to explore high-paying, in-demand careers in
the occupations of computer programmer/analyst,
video game programmer, networking administrator
(Linux, Cisco, MCSE), desktop supporter, computer
engineer, Oracle database administrator, Web
developer and others."
Click here for more information, or call Dennis
Casey, at (760) 744-1150 ext. 2387 or Terrie Canon
at ext. 2610.
Click here to access a page created by Microsoft
titled "Getting Started with the 2007 Microsoft
Office system." The page contains a quick
overview of the new Office 2007 ribbon, download
links for truly useful "Getting Started" tabs for
Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and other useful
information on navigating the new Office 2007 UI.
Click here for a custom audio/text course (20-30
minutes duration) on the new look and features.
Apple announced this week that
Apple TV, due to have been released in February,
will not be delivered to market until mid-March.
We reported on Apple TV in
episode 32. It is Apples solution for
streaming video content from your computer to your
TV, to be priced at $299. Meanwhile,
Sony announced a July shipping date for their
IVL (Internet Video Link) which will adapt to
various models of their Bravia TV sets allowing
streaming of standard and high definition
programming from various free and for-pay content
providers like AOL, Yahoo, Grouper, Sony Pictures
and Sony BMG. Somehow, the price is also about
$300.
Speaking of Apple, it was a big update for them:
a
new java version for Mac OS X (10.4.8+) became
available, a new set of
security updates for Mac were released,
a
daylight savings time update for Mac (click
here for an explanation of this year's daylight
savings time changes), and for those of you with
Office 2004 for Mac, there was also an update to
version 11.3.4.
According to the
Zune Insider, the Microsoft Zune will be getting
a firmware update (1.3) mid-March.
It
fixes a skipping problem, improve reliability of
device detection, and some changes to the FM tooner.
Sad to say, there will still be no direct podcast
support for the Zune. Now, it is possible to
get your podcasts onto your Zune (see
our review by Shay Phillips), but it has to be
natively supported before the Zune can be taken
seriously by podcast audiences.
CCCSAT,
the California Community College Satellite Network,
wants you to know that the California Community
Colleges Board of Governors' Meeting will be
televised Monday, March 5 from 9:30am - 5:30pm and
Tuesday, March 6 from 9:30am-12:30pm. If you
can't or don't want to watch it on a TV, visit
CCCSAT's website ion Monday for the webcast URL.
To find the CCCSAT affiliate nearest you,
click here.
Is that my phone? No, dear, it's the parrot.
The
Center for Biological Diversity is giving away
free
endangered species ringtones. "You can now
set your cell phone ringer to the amazing and
intriguing calls of the
Blue-throated
Macaw, Beluga Whale, Boreal Owl, Mountain
Yellow-legged Frog, Yosemite Toad, or any one of
over forty other endangered critters."
Ringtones will be downloaded to your phone, provided
your phone can connect to the web. Figuring
out how to get your phone to use them is between you
and your phone's manual.
To hear government spokesmen and pundits tell it,
the scourge of the Internet is child pornography and
identity theft. Want to know what citizens are
really upset about?: auction fraud.
MSNBC published
a story this week on a 9-year, unresolved
philatelist scam on eBay "...that has seen thousands
of altered postage stamps sold to unwitting
collectors on eBay and other Internet auction
sites." The perpetrator is known, but has not
been charged.
Click here for the citizens action group "Stamp
Collectors Against Dodgy Sellers" (SCADS). The
chart below is from the
2005 IC3 Annual Internet Fraud Report [PDF],
published by the
National White Collar Crime Center and the
FBI. The number 1 state of complainants:
California.
There is a new
Pew Internet and American Life Project report
out about the use of wireless Internet access.
Their principle finding is that 34% of Internet
users login to a wireless Internet connection either
at home, at work, or someplace else. 27% have
logged in wirelessly at a place other than home or
work. 19% have wireless networks in their
homes. 25% of Internet users say they have a
cell phone that connects to the Internet, and 54% of
that group use this ability to connect to Internet.
Majority users of wireless Internet connections are
Male, middle aged, white, college educated, with
incomes exceeding $75K/yr.
Click here to read the report [PDF].
File this one under: Blackboard saves the free
world. Blackboard announced this week that ten
academic institutions serving members of the United
States military have recently renewed or upgraded
their Blackboard licenses. They include:
Air University
Defense Acquisition University (DAU)
Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA)
The Joint Military Intelligence College (JMIC)
National Defense University (NDU)
United States Naval Academy
Naval Postgraduate School
Uniformed Services University of the Health
Sciences
U.S. Army Ordnance Center and School
U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command
Click here to read the official Blackboard press
release.
It seems
Random House, world's largest publisher of trade
books, and
Harper Collins, want more control over the
presentation and searching of their products than
they are getting from the Search giants Google,
Yahoo and Windows Live. Therefore, they are
presenting their own publisher's widgets: snippits
of code that can be embedded in web pages, blog
posts and other web-based marketing tools to search
and present limited content from selected books,
allowing, of course, the option to buy the book.
For example, here is Random House's widget (a larger
version is also available). We chose a title
from thousands available in the program:
Click here to learn how to use the Random House
"Browse and Search" feature, called "Insight," which
was officially launched last Tuesday.
Earlier in the week, Harper Collins announced
their own widget, called "Browse Inside."
Herre is a sample of their widget:
Click here for a description of Harper Collins'
"Browse Inside." The Harper Collins "Browse
Inside" catalog is much smaller than the Random
House "Insight" catalog, and it is a weaker product
because it does not allow keyword searching on the
text of the book. It's viewer is also less
friendly, in our opinion.
The
British Computing Society have begun podcasting (we
knew they would get there): "...amusing, engaging,
life changing and earth shattering," and more.
Subscribe to oddIT.
As a follow-up to
last week's story about the
faked recordings of classical pianist Joyce Hatto,
her husband has this week admitted faking "parts" of
her CDs, saying he originally did it to cover her
groans of pain as she recorded, because she was
suffering with cancer. As he got better at the
process, he added longer and longer sections, until
he began substituting entire albums. At least that's
the current story. "'It is
self-evident that I have acted stupidly, dishonestly
and unlawfully...I've closed the operation down,
I've had the stock completely destroyed, and I'm not
producing any more. Now I just want a little bit of
peace' he wrote, the label
told the BBC." Record companies are taking
a different view, their collective hearts perhaps
not as softened as perhaps the late pianist's husband
is hoping.
Our
featured book this week from our subscription to
Safari tech books online is:
The Official Adobe Print Publishing Guide, Second
Edition, by Brian P. Lawler. "The ke to
successful print production is an understanding of
the entire workflow, from scanning and file creation
through prepress and print production." Safari
Tech Books Online are accessible from on-campus or
with a
password off campus.
Free Microsoft eLearning courses: for a limited time access
to these excellent e-Learning products on Office
2007 is available.
Click here to access a gateway to sign-up for
training in the new Office interface, Access 2007,
Excel 2007, Infopath 2007, OneNote 2007, Outlook
2007, PowerPoint 2007, Word 2007, Visio 2007, and
Groove 2007. You may also download a free
e-book from this site titled
First Look 2007 Microsoft Office System in
PDF format.
Free online training is available for Horizon
Wimba:
Filling the Pool Part 3, or “Cart Before the
Horse”
Recently I’ve been covering ways to populate the
Blackboard Pool Manager, both with question pools
from publishers and manually. However, all mention
of how best to design pools and how to use them has
been omitted. This “Cart Before the Horse” mentality
is partially because describing pool structure
without any pools to work with is quite confusing,
and also because anyone who does get pools from a
publisher will likely need to restructure pool
content anyway.
Obviously there will not be one “best way” to
design pools, since everyone’s test design
strategies and assessment needs will differ. But
before any discussion of pool design can take place,
we still need to examine the way tests can use
pools.
There are two options a Blackboard test offers
which can pull questions from pools: “From a
Question Pool of Assessment” and “Random Block”.
From a Question Pool or Assessment:
This option is available in both the Pool
Canvas and the Test Canvas.
Questions can be gathered from both pools
and tests by selecting individual questions.
Selected questions will be copied onto the
Pool/Test Canvas, and will display directly on
the Canvas.
If questions are placed on the Test Canvas,
each question will have its own, individually
customizable, Points Possible value.
A common use of the “From a Question Pool of
Assessment” choice is to assemble a cumulative test
from previously offered tests, simply by selecting
questions off the other test lists. Questions
directly placed into a test using this method will
display for ALL students taking the test.
Random Block:
This option is only available in the Test
Canvas.
Random Blocks may only be gathered from
Pools.
The Test Canvas will display a single “block
placeholder” but no individual questions display
on the Canvas.
Questions imported via a Random Block will
all have the same Points Possible value.
The “Random Block” option is what question pools
are really all about. As the name implies, a number
of questions are pulled at random from a single
question pool. Therefore it is important that all
the questions in any one pool be of approximately
equal difficulty; remember that all the questions in
a random block will have the same point value. (It
just wouldn’t be fair to have some students answer
“What is the name of Dick and Jane’s dog” while
others must answer “What significance is given to
pollution in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Return of the King”
and have each question worth 2 points.)
So if you intend to implement random blocks of
questions in your online tests, you will likely end
up with multiple question pools for each test. It is
essential that clear naming conventions are used in
the Pool Manager, just to save later anguish when
assembling the tests.
Next time we will take a look at some possible
pool design strategies, but for now you may want to
begin analyzing your own question pools to see if
questions are grouped appropriately by difficulty.
A recurring question that has surfaced a lot in
these Teaching With Technology segments is: How can
we incorporate the best aspects of an on-campus
experience with an online learning experience? After
all, we know that students learn a great deal from
hearing not just what the instructor says but also
how he/she says it. And of course students learn
from the comments and questions of other students as
well. I’ve talked in another segment about voice
tools that are now available in Blackboard and these
are being used to good advantage by some
instructors. Today I want to talk about something
that really does combine the best attributes of an
on-campus class with the best attributes of an
online class.
Live Classroom is an application, made available
through Blackboard, which allows you to conduct
class online. Students can log into your Live
Classroom, see your PowerPoint slides, hear your
vocal commentary, and see graphics and other media.
In addition, students can type their own comments
and even provide their own vocal comments. You can
conduct polls and quizzes in Live Classroom and
share applications and troubleshoot software (or
Blackboard problems). Live Classroom offers most
everything an in-person class offers and some other
features an in-person class doesn’t.
The program notes page contains a document that
walks you through the step of creating a Live
Classroom and in this segment I’d like to mention a
few ways it can be used. Consider the following
scenarios from which online students are excluded.
(1) Conduct review sessions with your students in
which you can ensure students’ understanding by
presenting in-depth material and allowing them to
comment and ask questions.
(2) Allow students to present their Power Point
project to the class while the other students watch,
ask questions, and provide feedback.
(3) Demonstrate how to do something (create a
student homepage in Blackboard, debug a software
program, use Power Point to insert a audio clip).
(4) After demonstrating how to do something share
your desktop with students to make sure they can do
it (and correct them if necessary).
(5) Send everyone to the same web page for review
and commentary.
(6) Allow everyone to come back later and review
the whole archived Live Classroom session.
See
the index of
Haydn's previous "Teaching with
Technology" segments.
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray
Mac Q & A
Here is a grab bag of tech support questions
related to the Mac.
Question: I want to take an online
course using my Mac. What OS and browser are
recommended?
Answer: The current computer matrix
for Blackboard, which most online classes use,
requries Mac OS 10.2-10.4. If you have 10.2
Firefox 1.0 and Safari 1.0 are compatible. If
you have 10.3 Firefox 1.5 and Safari 1.1 or 1.2 are
recommended. If you have 10.4 Firefox 1.5 and
Safari 2 are certified. To view our Blackboard OS/browser
matrix ,
click here [PDF].
Question: I have a Mac, and have
installed the Windows Components for QuickTime, as I
was told to do. Every time I start a Windows
media video, it plays
for a little while then slows down, then stops.
This all happens within about a minute. What is
wrong?
Answer: The Windows Components for
QuickTime Flip4Mac plug-in does not come
pre-configured to handle streaming versions of
Windows media content. Almost all Windows
media content from Palomar is streamed. To
configure it to handle streaming media, start a
video, and then click the drop-down in the lower
right of the video pane. Select "Plug-in
Settings..."
Click the "Movie" button in the
resulting dialog box, then place a check in
"Create streaming movies."
Close the Flip4Mac dialog box. Now start
another video. This time, before the video
starts playing, you will see the word "Buffering" in
the lower left of the video window, along with a
count-down indicator stating the number of seconds
left to buffer:
When you see this, you can be sure you are
playing a streamed video. The problem was that
QuickTime was attempting to both download and play a
very high bandwidth video simultaneously, and could
not keep up. When it operates in streaming
mode, it can keep up just fine.
It is worth noting that once you have done this,
it will work perfectly in Firefox for Mac. If you
are a Safari user, however, when you start a video
it will load in an entire web page (or an entire
content frame in Blackboard), instead of in a small,
embedded window. To get it to
shrink down to its proper size, click the "Play"
icon at the bottom of the Safari screen, or control-click
the screen somewhere and choose "Play." This
is a Safari bug.
The latest version of Flip4Mac Windows Components
for QuickTime is 2.1.0.33.
Click here to download it. It requires Mac
OS X 10.3.9 or higher, and QuickTime 6.5 or higher.
Question: I would rather play
Windows media content in the Windows media player on
the Mac. There used to be one. What
happened to it?
Answer: Windows media player version
9 for Mac OS X is still available. The current
version of Windows media player for Windows (XP or
Vista) is version 11. Microsoft
will no longer update its version 9 media player for Mac, so
this is your only choice, other than downloading the
Flip4Mac plug-in discussed above (which is
definitely the
better option).
Click here for the Windows media download site. It is
important to bear in mind that Microsoft "...has no plans to
provide future updates or product support [for the
version 9 player for Mac]."
This means that this player supports the codecs it
supports, and will not be supporting any of the
newer codecs. The bottom line is, not all
videos will play using this player, especially
videos encoded recently.
[NB:
Click here for an overview of all the different
versions of the Windows media player.]
Question: How do I "take a picture"
of a portion of my Mac screen in order to send it to
tech support? I don't want to buy or install
special software to do this.
Answer: OS X comes with a utility
called Grab, which you will find in the Applications
> Utilities folder, which you may find easiest to
use.
Natively in Mac, however, to grab a picture of
the entire screen, simultaneously press the command
key (pretzel), the shift key and the 3 key:
This "screen shot" will be saved as a picture (in
png format) to the desktop. If you would
rather save it to the clipboard, add the control key
to that key combo (contortionism my be requried).
This makes it easy to open the applications where
you want to paste it, and paste it in.
To capture part of a Mac screen, simultaneously
hold down, the command key, the shift key and the 4 key:
The cursor
will change to a crosshair (you can let go of the
key combination now before your hand cramps up). Hold down the
mouse button and drag a rectangle around the portion
of the screen you want to capture. It will
become shaded. When you release the mouse
button, a picture of the portion of the screen you
dragged will appear on the desktop in png format.
If you would rather "clip" the picture to the
clipboard, add the control key to your key combo
before releasing the mouse button.
To paste from the clipboard, open the
application you want to paste the image into--like
an email to tech support, select
the Edit menu (or control-click the app document
anywhere) and choose Paste.
Remember, only one image can be on the clipboard at
a time.
To capture a window, menu bar, menu, dock, etc.
press command, shift, 4 than press the space bar.
The cursor will become a camera. Move it over
the window, menu, etc. you want to capture and
click. To drag this selection over an area,
press the space bar again and drag. The cursor
will become a crosshair. Drag over the area
you want.
[Editor's Note: We have finally been
convinced that the rumor that the first Macs were designed
by an 18-digited, triple jointed Roswell survivor is
true.
Normal human's have difficulty articulating some of
these " keyboard shortcuts."]
Question: I would like to take an
online course in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Are the Mac versions of these programs acceptable?
Answer: Most of the time, no.
If you are thinking of a concept course like CSIS
105, then Office for Mac will certainly illustrate
the concepts being discussed. If you want to
actually learn the products, as in one of our
Business or CSIS courses, the PC versions of the
software will be the ones taught.
Question: Why can't I have Microsoft
Office 2007 for Mac? My PC friends all seem to
have it.
Answer: One word: late again.
Ok, two. Microsoft's middle name is "late."
The new Office for Mac is due out in the second half
of 2007. When Microsoft says "second half," they usually mean
December 31. Mac users seem to have a
persecution complex about these things, and perhaps
rightly so. We are told (and this may simply
be an urban legend) that Microsoft makes more money
when a typical Mac user buys Office for Mac, than
Apple does from the initial sale of the computer.
The only real solution is to continue using Office
2004 for Mac (which is updated regularly) and wait it
out.
See
an index of previous "Tech
Talk Topics" segments.
Gizmo of the Week
The
world's most beautiful keyboard. Fosfor
gadgets put together a list of
the ten most beautiful computer keyboards.
The
Apple wireless keyboard finished in the number 2
position, which ought to tell you all you need to
know about the compiler of this list. Also on
the list is the vaporware
Optimus keyboard, whose chief claim to fame will
be (if it ever gets to market) that every key is
"...a stand-alone display showing exactly what
it is controlling at this very moment;"
Das Keyboard
II, an all-in-black model totally symbol-free
(as if we didn't have enough trouble finding home
row, like one of those numberless watches you can't
tell if you have put on upside down); and the The
Luxiium Luxeed "...a keyboard that features
built-in LED lights in every single key. The key can
be programmed to display any of the available 512
colors which makes it possible to do program some
really cool night effects;" for those who spend more
time looking at their keyboards in the dark than
using them.
In any event, the winning keyboard is the
Logitech's diNovo Edge, at $199.99. The
feature set includes PerfectStroke: "A precision
micro-scissors mechanism distributes typing force
evenly across key surfaces;" an ultra-thin form
factor (11mm thick, 940g wt.); an "elegant" charging
base (as elegant as any black, semi-vertical stand
can be, one supposes); TouchDisc scrolling: "A new
type of touchpad, the TouchDisc™ unifies scrolling,
selection, and cursor control. Scroll at hyperspeed
with a touch of your finger;" backlit stealth
controls (for those who buy this model, send us
email to let us know how long it took you to turn
off this potentially annoying feature, and turn it
back on when showing off the keyboard to uninitiated
newbies (the wow)); bluetooth integration. I'm
torn, but the Logitech model surely does look nice,
and as long as someone else pays for it, I'd like to
have one.
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 by
Yongen titled "Yello
Haus."
"Yongen is
Chieko and Toshio Kamei, a songwriting and production
team formed in the Far East, and based in the London's
East End. Together, they make a uniquely sophisticated
dream pop with a big, but intensely graceful sound.'"
"The trouble with
America is that there are far too many wide-open
spaces surrounded by teeth."
~ Charles Luckman
Podcast
for March 2, 2007 - Episode 53
The
Palomar College Computer Science and Information
Systems Career Day will be held on March 29, on our
San Marcos campus in the B building complex.
"The CSIS Career Day is open to the public and free
of charge. The event is an opportunity for community
members to explore high-paying, in-demand careers in
the occupations of computer programmer/analyst,
video game programmer, networking administrator
(Linux, Cisco, MCSE), desktop supporter, computer
engineer, Oracle database administrator, Web
developer and others."
We reported on Apple TV in
It
fixes a skipping problem, improve reliability of
device detection, and some changes to the FM tooner.
Sad to say, there will still be no direct podcast
support for the Zune. Now, it is possible to
get your podcasts onto your Zune (
Blue-throated
Macaw, Beluga Whale, Boreal Owl, Mountain
Yellow-legged Frog, Yosemite Toad, or any one of
over forty other endangered critters."
Ringtones will be downloaded to your phone, provided
your phone can connect to the web. Figuring
out how to get your phone to use them is between you
and your phone's manual.
There is a new
The
British Computing Society have begun podcasting (we
knew they would get there): "...amusing, engaging,
life changing and earth shattering," and more.
Our
featured book this week from our subscription to
Safari tech books online is:
The
world's most beautiful keyboard. Fosfor
gadgets put together a list of
The
music for today's show was provided by
