Week 7 Stuff

Image posted by Uninen @ Flickr

• listen to weekly podcast
• course build: You know what to do here, just keep on building. In theory, I’m asking for a second module. In practice, do some building and ask the rest of us for feedback.
• blog entry: Reflection on learning from the week, discuss how your course building is going, and briefly discuss course content you found.

• wiki entry: I know you all took the district’s FERPA Online Tutorial so you would have access to the new SIS system; however, what really is FERPA and how/why is it relevant to online teaching and learning? Many institutions are starting to question whether or not students should be allowed to post class work in "public" forums like blogs and wikis, etc.
  
• find course content: Identify a guest speaker/lecturer you could ask to participate in course somehow. Who would it be? Why that person? How might you incorporate them into the course (online discussion, respond to a certain week’s worth of blogs, make a brief audio file you could upload, record and interview in Skype, etc.)?
• iGoogle: nothing required
• new technologies: Don’t forget that “low-tech” matters! The phone is a very useful technology in web-based teaching and learning. I definitely retain more students by calling people during the first couple weeks of classes if they are slipping; or heck, just taking the time to call. So many times they are just not getting one thing and are therefore falling behind fast. I find that the majority of my students can figure out the various technologies with very little support (beyond what the websites provide). In other words, I don’t spend very much time developing technology support materials. Instead, I spend my time trying to meet with the one or two students per class that really struggle with the technology. And I try to meet with them f2f (sometimes on the weekends at a Starbucks with my laptop). This may sound crazy, however, it is the price I pay for using technologies that are not officially supported by the college (like most of the stuff we are using in this course). Now, if you are using technologies officially sanctioned by the college, there are usually other support resources (ie, help desks) that you can have your students call for technology help. I have found, however, I still have to do technology support with my students; email and now instant messaging are helping a lot with tech support (as well as quick Jing videos).

week/deadline 6: Assessment

Image posted by Edublogger @ Flickr
To-Do:

• listen to weekly podcast: I'll get the podcast with my ramblings about online assessment up to gabcast by the end of tonight and hopefully to iTunes by tomorrow! :-)
• course build: Build one of your major assessments (test, major assignment prompt, etc.), Somehow share the assessment with the rest of us (share a document in Google Docs, post screen captures in Picasa, etc.). Please post a blog (including some pics or links) discussing the assessment and try to comment on a couple of your classmate's materials as well. Ultimately, just continue building. If it makes more sense for you to work on something else, work on it! Remember, if you really want the rest of us to give you specific feedback, be sure to ask us specific questions.
• find course content: RLO (reusable learning object). Hopefully you've realized I want you to stop, stop, stop building new materials from scratch. There are a lot of online learning repositories that provide pre-made lesson plans, assignment prompts, and other learning objects. Check out some of the following and search for something related to your discipline/course:
• MLX
• Merlot
• MIT
• and lots, lots more

• blog entry: reflection on learning from week and briefly discuss course content you found
• wiki entry: Post something to the course wiki about assessment and/or evaluation in online learning environments.
• iGoogle: add one of the gadgets from Google that could help w/online learning, in other words, just browse through the gadgets some so you can be amazed how many different things exist.

new technologies

online storage

• Rule #1: Always save your work!
• Rule #2: Always save your work in more than one location!

Consider savings current versions of all your major projects after you work on them in a number of locations. Of course you will want to keep them on some type of portable storage that you keep with you (thumb drive--check out these thumb drives ). However, those tools are fragile; consider backing up your hard work in the following methods:

• Online storage accounts--many of these allow you to "share" or "publish" individual files
• http://box.net
• http://www.stixy.com/ (visual layout and icon for material saved)
• many, many, more
• Email yourself—Google mail (http://mail.google.com/) is a free email account with a lot of storage space
• Online Document Sharing—Although document sharing programs are primarily for you to give other individuals access to your work, they also must save that work on a server. You can use either Google Docs, Think Free (http://www.thinkfree.com/) or Zoho Writer (http://www.zohowriter.com/).

large file transfers Sometimes you have students working on a project that is too big to upload in an email, discussion board, course management system (yes, your system administrators put caps on what can be uploaded). You can use online storage sites, or brief email-storage sites like TransferBigFiles and File123.

CIS237: Web-Based Teaching & Learning II #5

Gabcast! CIS237: Web-Based Teaching & Learning II #5

CIS237: Web-Based Teaching & Learning II #4

Gabcast! CIS237: Web-Based Teaching & Learning II #4

Week/Deadline #5

• listen to weekly podcast (week 4 and 5 will be up in Gabcast by the end of the evening 3/18 and up in iTunes sometime tomorrow!)
• course build: Basically get building! I'm hoping that you will attempt to build a complete module; however, that means different things to different people/courses. Once you've completed building some materials, please share them with us in some manner. If they are materials in password protected LMSs, consider taking screen captures and sharing them in Picasa or your blog. Please do post a "course build" blog entry that talks about the processes of building this module (difficulties, surprises, excitement, etc.). At this point I'm just a cheer leader! If you want feedback on what you are doing, please just make sure to invite feedback (ask specific questions) in your blog. The rest of us will be sure to go in, read, and respond.
  
• new technologies: Video, well, I already briefly introduced Jing as a method to make screen capture videos. There are lots of tools out there to help make videos from different raw materials; some examples include:
  • Animoto: make videos from pictures (If you want to make a video longer than 30 seconds, I have some codes from sxsw that I can share with you.)
    
  • Utterz: shoot videos on your cell phone and upload them
    

There are also lots of ways to "publish" video materials, with YouTube being the most popular (upload video that is then made into a Flash file that you can embed in other resources like wikis and blogs). Many schools (with Mesa CC being one of them) are slowly developing methods for streaming video from their own servers. Ultimately, video is a HUGE topic. If you have specific ideas or questions, ask below and we can start a dialog.

• find course content: Instead of making your own videos, find some pre-made ones. Sites to check out (and don't forget to think about copyright issues...) include:
  • TED
    
  • Google Video
    
  • YouTube
    
  • TeacherTube
  • Creative Commons Search
    
• blog entry: reflection on learning from week and briefly discuss a video you found (try to embed it into the blog posting).
• wiki entry: Please find a resource about accessibility and online learning and post it to the ADA wiki page
  
• iGoogle: add links about either your topic or about online teaching and learning to your online teaching & learning resource page (at least 4); remember, you have to re-share with me since iGoogle doesn't automatically update on my shared page :-(
• And for a good laugh...what would you do if you owned the internet? (video from TED)
  

Another way for screen captures

I'm seeing and getting questions about screen captures and such. Another tool I was recently introduce to, and like, is Jing. Jing allows you to do static screen captures as well as audio/visual movies of screen captures (the stuff I shared with you all the first week of class).

It allows you to have "embedding code" that I was then able to paste into the HTLM of this post and you get the image below. It also uploads to their site and you can get a link. And if you upload it to there site, you can go there and "save as" to get a PNG file that can upload to Picasa. It even looks like it allows you to send directly to Flickr...I didn't play with that yet.

Testing new Tech

Yes, I know...I need to catch up with you all. However, currently I'm at sxsw interactive and I've got a new list of technologies to play with. I'm so happy! I want to test this audio reply tool...so you are the GPs. Please do try to reply!