The Insanity of the Two Location Workshop

September 9th, 2010

Yes, we did it back on May 7, and perhaps it was beginner’s luck, but all went well.

We had me in Elluminate with the online participants, and Elluminate showing on the screen in the lab on campus, where Jim Sullivan was presenting. We had a video camera there plugged in as a webcam, and a microphone on a long cord. Online, we could see and hear Jim, and also talk ourselves in the chat. On campus, they could see me (if I had my webcam on), hear me, and read our chat.

We had one volunteer, our wonderful Laura Paciorek. She sat at the computer in the lab, got things hooked up, and communicated with me for set-up and throughout the session using the chat. We had one helper from Media Services, our fantastic cameraman Alan McCarron. The only thing that didn’t work was the room speakers in the campus lab — but the desktop speakers on the presentation computer worked fine so they could hear online participants. The subject was using online resources for professional development.

It went so smoothly that this semester, the Program for Online Teaching will be offering simultaneous on-campus/online workshops on the First Friday of the month at 2:30 pm PT. We’re calling them simulcasts, but since the participants on both sides can actually participate, they really aren’t “casts”. I don’t know what to call what we’re doing.

Our first of the year was last week, on September 3.

We tried for the same setup we had on May 7, but this time I had more support from Media Services, so it got increasingly more complex as more technicians got involved. At least five people from Academic Information Services, in various capacities, responded individually to try to help get this going, even meeting separately for a trial run. Ultimately I think it was made clear that all we needed was a person manning a video camera that can plug into the USB port and act as a webcam, plus a pair of computer speakers in case the room system doesn’t work.

There was some confusion about the camera, because Alan had used a regular video camera (the Sanyo Xacti HD) as a webcam, and it had worked great. When that set-up was tried this time, it didn’t work and the feed was switched to a regular webcam (which had given us a poor image on May 7 so we hadn’t thought of using it).

We had also purchased a USB omnidirectional microphone over the summer, with the idea that it could just be placed in the middle of the campus lab so we could hear the presenter and all participants. This didn’t work, and the presenter ended up carrying the microphone around to be heard properly.

Last, we were told the room speakers were now functional. They weren’t, but we still had the desktop speakers standing by and those did.

As it turned out, we didn’t even need a cameraman, because our newest faculty volunteer, Lyle Blackmon, did a great job managing the camera.

So for next time, we need to:
- use the webcam in the lab
- use the microphone with the long cord in the lab
- keep using the little speakers since the room speakers still don’t work

Our feedback from doing this has been very positive. The late afternoon time on Friday works for both associates and full-timers tied up in meetings till 1:00. Those who really need a f2f experience prefer being in the lab with the facilitator, and those who cannot come to campus appreciate participating online.

The only thing that went really wrong is that I failed to press the Record button in Elluminate before we started! The microphone issue became apparent immediately, and I focused on solving it instead of recording. Ah well, the price of experience. Enjoy what I did record using this link.

Posted in Conferences, Program for Online Teaching, The Gear, Workflows | No Comments »

First full-out test of WP in class

September 8th, 2010

Today was the first major “test of the system”, using the Wordpress blog for student activity.

They have been posting their thesis just fine, but today it was time to use the site in class, as the place for groups to create presentations with images.

I had to add two plug-ins to make the images happen in the first place — one is in Russian (no one seemed to notice) and provides a toolbar with an icon of a picture that lets you add the URL of an image on the internet, and one with a link that lets you add one from your desktop. Most of them used the first one, but they had to help each other figure out how to find the direct URL of an image (rather than the website it was on). I helped a few students with this, but most figured it out.

In my second day survey, 33 of the 40 students (now 38) said they could bring a laptop to class for the days we would use them, but not all did so. I had gone ahead and ordered all six (now eight) laptops from Media Services just in case. These laptops all have dead batteries and have to be plugged in, requiring a series of power strips and students to have to move their groups, but they’re better than no laptop. Last semester each group used only one, but I really needed one laptop per person. A few students tried using their smart phones — iPhones worked best.

Persian-history-5
The task was to find three images of primary sources from before 500 BC and create a thesis about what they had in common. In Ning, each group had its own section. In Wordpress, I made each group its own Category, then added a first post. Any member can then Comment to post something, and the image toolbar and link shows up.

The students were somewhat uncertain at first, but I don’t think that was the technology — each group had several people who were happy to experiment and use the machines to complete the task. It’s more that we are new to each other, Labor Day meaning this is only the fifth class I’ve had with them. Also, many did very poorly on the first quiz, so I started the activity after we discussed that and I gave them an additional quickie extra credit question. (If you’re pedagogically curious, this was because I noticed on the test that they did better on questions from lecture than on reading, and I wanted to see if they retained something we talked about after almost two weeks.)

Challenges:
* Students made mistakes but could not edit or delete their own comments. I do not yet see a setting for that. I logged in on the class computer and went to the comments, so group members could come up and delete any mistakes, but of course that meant they could delete anything by mistake. Not a good solution, though it worked for today.
* Unlike Ning, Wordpress’ image plug-ins don’t have an intuitive way to resize an image.
* The right side column impeded the main column, making it too narrow — I’ll look into a fix for that.

Cool Things:
* I let groups choose how they wanted to work and present. Some chose having individuals add things; others chose to put it all in one comment.
* Once they got started, they were all working together and going exploring on the laptops. Looked like archaeology with laptops as the tool.
* I noticed during presentations that students used the mouse of the presentation computer in one hand (not on the desktop) so they could control things efficiently while talking — looked cool.

OK, gotta take a look at those settings!

Posted in CMS/LMS, Pedagogy, Students, Wordpress | No Comments »

Google Calendar Adventure

September 2nd, 2010

Late in July I set up Google Calendars for all my online classes, with reminders of posting and quiz dates. I said I’d see how it worked. The button was this:

Apparently it doesn’t work, at least not the way it was set up. A student contacted me a couple of days ago saying it wouldn’t go into her calendar. I sent her the direct link to the calendar, though, and it worked fine.

The URL for that was:

https://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=dXE0cW5hYTFhZmxlMjFsYWJxNml2M2M5c2dAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ

So now I’m going to go back, and using Google’s button image, but not its code. Instead, I’ll just link the image directly to the calendar. I tested it by logging out of Google, logging in under a different address, and adding it to my new calendar. Seems to work, but I’ll check with the students…

Posted in Students, The Web, Web 2.0, Workflows | No Comments »

Encountering Balrog 9…I mean, Blackboard 9

September 1st, 2010

Oh, my, that start page is ugly. Looks like all they’ve done is moved everything to little menus on the side.

OK, let’s customize that home page. Add my own banner, which has worked and looked beautiful on everything from a plain web page to Wordpress. Hmmmm….

Looks like maybe we’re not getting the idea of a white background?

OK, I’ll click that cool gearwheel on Announcements. Maybe I can change settings there to email students or something. Oh, a click down just to do this?

OK, I’ll do a welcome announcement. I’d like a snazzy font for it — this HTML tool bar, which I had to click Thawte’s “Trust” to get to appear, certainly seems full-featured. Oh, these are the only fonts?

It’s starting to feel a little Microsoft here. And it took me a minute to figure out how to get back to the Home Page, where my Announcement isn’t actually in the announcement box — it’s just a link.

So really, nothing’s changed except that you can now embed more media — the toolbar is more complete and lets you upload or link out to a URL. Very, very good. But the discussions are still threaded rather than nested, too many clicks are required to get to something simple, and it’s still got that DOS feel.

I haven’t gotten swiped off the bridge, but it’s not looking good so far…

Then my colleague Pilar Hernández did a screencast to show me how she’s made her Bb site for her class behave more like Moodle. We’re still in the mines, but maybe there’s some light showing…

Posted in Blackboard, CMS/LMS | No Comments »

A Second-Day Survey of Students

August 25th, 2010

Since I have planned a blog as a posting place, and in-class activities involving laptops, and since I am once again over-enrolled (40 students), I gave a survey to the 37 students in class today. Here’s what I learned.

Only half (18) have taken English 100 or 202, indicating many in the class are not prepared for college level writing. That was the bad news. The rest is good.

All but one answered correctly a quick question referring to Monday’s lecture.

The technology questions went well too:

  • 33 own or have access to a laptop they can bring to class
  • 30 use Facebook
  • 36 use email and text messaging
  • 37 use a cell phone
  • 34 have their cell phone with them in class every day
  • 34 or so check their email at least daily

This means the laptop projects should work, and I’ll consider using their phones as clickers. I’ll also consider asking them to use their phones to look things up, even though I tried that last semester with a student who had an iPhone, and he had no idea how to use it that way! I have already set up a Facebook group and linked it from the class website, but I have not yet mentioned it in class — I want to see what happens.

I also had one privacy question.  34 students were OK with having their real name appear on their posted homework, which is on a blog on the open web. Only three needed privacy. (I give this option because I have students who are being stalked, who have people under restraining orders who want to know where they are when, and nasty things like that — if they want privacy, I respect that!)

However, in a small test of Creepy Treehouse Effect, I also asked which of the above technology they like being used for class purposes, and most wanted to just use email.

Email, of course, is for old people. And, it seems, school!

Posted in Students | 2 Comments »

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