Some Kind of Joke?
You may think this is some kind of joke, but the
topic this week is finding ways to let students into
your Spring 2008 Blackboard courses. Yes, I know,
Thanksgiving isn’t even past yet, but class
enrollment started Wednesday, November 14th and
students are asking for details on their prospective
classes.
If the class in question is an online class,
there actually is a web address listed in the class
description of the schedule. However, a lot of
online classes never customize this address, so
students are presented with our stock “policy” page
which effectively tells the student that for details
they should contact the instructors. If that’s not
what you want students in your online classes to do,
let me suggest you have the SIS sheet for upcoming
semesters specify some other address with
information you do want.
Sometimes students will trawl the Blackboard
course catalog looking for details on classes. If
you make your course (or parts of it, anyway)
available to guests (click
here for instructions on enabling guest access),
then these students will be able to see some of the
material in your Blackboard course (as per the Guest
Access instructions found online
here). Often all the questions a student has can
be answered by a quick read through of the syllabus,
so why not at least make that available to guests?
Finally, recall that within an hour of officially
enrolling in your class, students will see a
reference to your Blackboard course when they log
into Blackboard. If you make your course available (click
here for instructions on making your course
available), then your students will be able to get
into the course site. Obviously you may not want
them able to access all the course materials, but
it’s simple enough to disable student access to
specific content areas, or even just turn off
availability of the content you want saved for
later. You could even set up a discussion board
specifically for allowing students to ask
“pre-semester” questions!
I know of four Spring 2008 courses that are
available to students already. Consider joining
them. (C’mon, all the cool kids are doing it…)
Note: To get to David's vodcast site,
click here.
Two Announcements; Two Ideas
Announcement 1: November 28th Online Teaching
Secrets & Tips workshop will be held in the PCTV
studio. I will have a handout compilation of the
secrets, tips, and tricks available for those who
attend the workshop. The workshop may be broadcast
at a later date.
Announcement 2: I have been working with a group
of faculty who (Nelson Altamirano, Chris Barkley,
John Tagg, Gigi Gonzales, Susan Miller, Jan Schultz,
and Barbara Schiffler) has agreed to conduct a
side-by-side comparison of two anti-plagiarism
services, Turnitin and SafeAssign. Both are
available in all Blackboard classes and, as one is a
paid subscription service and the other is free, we
really wanted to know if the paid service is
superior enough to continue paying the fee. If
anyone listening has used either service and
particularly if anyone has used both of these, I
would love to hear from you.
My Teaching with Technology contribution today
features two practices, two pedagogical questions,
and a free survey.
The first practice is something I read about,
rejected, and then reconsidered. An online
instructor was describing something she does in her
class that she has found promotes better writing. It
is very simple. The practice involves requiring
students to post responses to questions or scenarios
she, the instructor, posts. What she does that I
initially rejected is to allow students to modify
their answers – after reading other students’ posts,
and before the posts are graded. The instructor
found that, contrary to what one might think –
namely that everyone will simply copy the best
answers, students actually did incorporate some of
the best students’ answers, but integrated those
ideas with their own. The instructor claimed that
this promoted critical thinking and improved writing
skills.
The second practice comes from the University of
Texas at Austin web site. It is a practice there for
online instructors to conduct ongoing course
assessments. They have developed a survey bank of
items that instructors can use to obtain formative
evaluation of their classes. Unfortunately I
couldn’t get into that area of their web site to
take a look at what their surveys were like. I have
started one here and will make it available to
everyone in the hopes that others will modify it,
add to it, and send it back to me so that I can
start a survey question bank for other online
instructors to use. I know that many online
instructors do give surveys to their students but I
don’t think there is any mechanism for us to view
each other’s and take items we like to build our
own. If I can develop a repository of survey
questions, others could simply upload that survey to
their class and modify it as they see fit.
If anyone wants the survey, please email me (hdavis@palomar.edu)
or call ext. 2341.
Google Notebook Revisited
Back in
episode 61 we did a feature on Google Notebook.
A couple things have changed since then, but it is
still essentially the same product. Today I
want to summarize the changes in Google Notebook,
then publish a how to article with screen captures
so that those who wish to have a simple-to-use,
powerful, web-based note taking tool can get started
with the new Google Notebook.
There is one big change in the new Google
Notebook: the addition of labels. Gone are the
"section heads," having been replaced with the
ability to label, or tag, any note with multiple
labels. In this way Google Notebook has moved
closer to other web-based tools and further away
from the old paper notebook analogy. Tags (technorati
or blog-style keywords associated with a note that
become metadata to assist you in locating any
collection of notes from a large body of them) are
the web's answer to how to those clear plastic
stickies that make certain pages stand out.
Developing an intelligent tagging system prior to
engaging in a project is best, but, as with most
things, the organization develops as research
proceeds, so Google Notebook makes it easy to apply
labels retroactively. When you leave the
mini-notebook and go to your full-page web-based
notebook home page, you will see a panel dedicated
to summarizing and editing labels.
There are several small changes in the new
Notebook that make it more useful, too. There
is no longer a clip-button. The little star at
the bottom of the mini-notebook has become the clip
button. The Tools menu has more options now,
to accommodate the new tagging system. The
comments function works slightly differently too,
and looks less "Adobe-like." There are also a
few more text formatting tools, like a highlighter
and text un-formatter. There are also new Sort
& Filter tools to filter notes based on your labels.
Here is the handout I used in a recent online
workshop on Google Notebook. I hope you find
it useful.
Using Google Notebook
Wouldn't it be great to be able to take very
quick notes on web pages as you are doing research:
clip the URL, selected passages, images, your own
comments and queries, to a notebook that was
accessible without leaving the page you are on, and
then return to the notebook later when writing a
paper? That is the idea behind
Google Notebook.
Google Notebook permits clip-as-you go
functionality. After clipping, you can organize and
search notebooks, add your own comments, invite
others to collaborate with you, even publish them to
the web if you want your notebooks be public. Here
is how it works.
To use Google Notebook, you need to have a Google
account (a Gmail account is the same as a Google
account). Begin by logging in to Google Notebook
with your GMail account information. Click the Sign
up link if you do not have an account.
If you need to create an account, and get lost in
your Google GMail area, just close the browser and
open it again at
http://www.google.com/notebook. This time
when you login you will see the Google Notebook
getting started information.
Next, agree to the terms of service, and download
the web extension that enables Google notebook
within your browser.
Note that this web add-in does not yet work with
Windows Vista except in a Vista-compatible version
of Firefox (version 1.5 or above). It does work with
IE7 on the Windows XP platform.
Depending on your browser and security settings,
you may see a yellow security banner at the top of
your browser:
If you see this, click the banner and choose
"Download File..."
If you are using Firefox you will see the
familiar Firefox Add-on installation box:
After installation, Google and your browser will
talk, and eventually you will see the Notebook icon
in the status bar of your browser (the bar at the
bottom of the browser window--look in the lower
right corner).
Click the "Open Notebook" link or the notebook
icon itself to activate the notebook.
You can begin clipping text, images or links
immediately, without leaving the web page you are
on. Just highlight the item you wish to clip, click
the "Clip" button in the mini-notetebook. You can
leave it docked to the status bar, or click the
arrow ("pop-out") control to float it over your
browser window. (It is called the mini-notebook when
it is docked to your status bar or floating on your
screen. The full notebook appears on the notebook
home page at Google.com.)
After clicking the Clip button, you will see a
note for the content placed in the notebook. Each
note will retain the title of the page from which it
is clipped, the URL of the page, and the content of
the note itself. Each note contains a drop-down menu
in its upper right corner in order to delete it,
move it (to another notebook or section), add labels
(tags or keywords you can use to organize notes), or
add a comment on the clipping. Making comments can
be very useful when building research queries on the
fly.
Notes can be moved by dragging and dropping on
your notebook home page. To drag and drop, go to the
Notebook home page (by clicking the "Go to my
notebook home page" item on the Tools menu in the
mini-notebook), place your cursor in the far left
margin of a note (the cursor will become a four
headed arrow), hold down the mouse button and drag
and drop to a new location, either within the same
notebook or to another notebook.
To create a new note, click the "New note" button
on your notebook home page. A blank note will be
created. Within any blank note, you can type your
own text, paste from a web page, add comments, or
add labels to help keep your notebook organized.
Labels are listed in the label box at the lower
left of the My Notebook page.
Clicking on any of the labels will display all
the notes containing that label.
Each individual note also has a comments section,
where you can annotate the notes as you gather them.
Simply click the comment button within a note and a
comments field will appear at the bottom of the
note.
Text within notes can be more elaborately
formatted from the Notebook home page. Once again,
to quickly get to the notebook home page, click the
"Tools" button and choose "Go to my notebook home
page."
Formatting options are minimal, but include the
ability to change font attributes, highlight, add
bulleted or numbered lists, add links or remove all
formatting (you may want to do this before pasting
the note into a web page or Word document).
As you gather a great deal of material in your
notebook, you will lose track of things, and that's
where Google's search technology comes to the
rescue. The notebook is fully searchable and, since
it is web-based, accessible from anywhere. Also, a
great way to keep organized as you are gathering
information for a project is to categorize the notes
with labels.
Use the search box at the top of your notebook
home page to search its contents, or search the web
if you are looking for other material or URLs with
which to build links.
The Tools button from the notebook home page is
different than the one in the mini-notebook. It
contains options for printing, exporting to Google
docs, renaming the notebook, and so on.
The Sort & Filter button enables the display of
just certain notes based on date, label, or label
status:
What will happen when you begin a project is that
you will not have developed a list of labels. After
you do a significant amount of research, you will
develop your labels, but then realize you need to go
back and apply them to past notes. That is what the
“Show unlabeled notes” and Show notes with labels…”
choices are about.
For group projects, Google notebooks can be
shared by invitation of the notebook creator. The
notebook creator grants access to others who can
then edit existing notes or add their own. Initiate
sharing by click the "Share options" from the
notebook home page and enter the email address of
those you wish to collaborate with, then click the
"Save Settings" button.
You will be prompted for text in an email to be
sent to those whose addresses you have included on
the invitation form. You do not need to put the URL
of the notebook in the email. It will be placed
there automatically.
If you decide to remove a collaborator later, you
will have that option on the Sharing options form
from your notebook home page.
Finally, if you wish to conduct research
publicly, for a class project, say, your Google
notebook can be published to the web. Its URL can
then be shared with others, and all public Google
notebooks can be searched. To publish a notebook
click the Sharing options from the notebook homepage
and click the Yes radio button under the "Publish
this notebook" label. You will be given the URL of
the web page to which it will be published and
prompted to invite others to view it by entering
their email addresses in a form. Note that graphics
will be displayed as thumbnails unless you clear the
"Use thumbnailed images" checkbox.
That is a quick overview of how to use Google
notebook. It is a great tool for gathering materials
as you conduct research on the web, and for
conducting group class projects.
Podcast
for November 16, 2007 - Episode 78
The
venue has been moved so that PCTV can film the
event. The workshop may be broadcast at a
later date, and video segments will be available on
the web. For more information, contact Dr.
Davis at 
YouTube
co-founder Steve Chen has confirmed that
high-quality YouTube video streams are coming soon.
The site is testing a player that detects the speed
of the viewer’s Net connection and serves up
higher-quality video if they want it...Chen expects
that high-quality YouTube vids will be available to
everyone within three months (
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