(for thought)
Hopefully by now you've gotten in the habit of using your CAT XX water bottle, bringing it with you to CAT events, and refilling it at our shiny new bottle-filling station.
You may wonder why we decided to stop purchasing flats of bottled water.
(Thanks to Olivia for spotting this amazing video.)
by Janice Florent
Video is a powerful way to make that essential human connection in online courses.
Michelle Pacansky-Brock created this infographic listing six simple tips for recording video as well as a few video recording tools you can use.
The infographic (produced using Piktochart) was originally posted in Michelle Pacansky-Brock’s 6 Tips for Recording Video blog post at Teaching Without Walls.
You can get more information about how to use videos in teaching and learning in these CAT Food blog posts: How to Effectively Use YouTube in eLearning and Bb Tip #108: Videos.
If you are interested in how infographics are being used in education, read this Educause article, 7 Things you Should Know About Infographics.
by Karen Nichols
Edutopia's 53 Ways to Check for Understanding offers several quick and easy activities for formative assessment. While these were established for a face to face environment, I think we can adapt several of them to our online/hybrid courses.
A number of the formative assessments listed require defining, identifying objectives, explaining why a reading is important, etc. For these types of assessments, Blackboard offers an array of discussion boards, wikis, journals, etc. They can be set up for students to view other postings and comment, thus providing opportunities for dialogue and collaboration.
Suggestion 20 is to create a collage using the themes from the current lesson. A word cloud can be used for this activity and it can be uploaded in a discussion board. Wordle is commonly used, but here is one I created from Tagxedo (Also item 35 in this article)--can you tell the topic I chose?
I've successfully used Item 45, Bio Poem, in my French classes. In my case, I used this idea for the students to practice using newly learned French vocabulary by describing themselves, but it can certainly be used to as a formative assessment check to make sure the students understand literary characters or historical figures. For those unfamiliar with the Bio Poem, here are the items to include:
Line 1: First Name
Line 2: 3-4 adjectives that describe the person
Line 3: An important relationship
Line 4: 2-3 things, people or ideas that the person loved
Line 5: 3 feelings the person experienced
Line 6: 3 fears the person experienced
Line 7: Accomplishments
Line 8: 2-3 things the person experienced or wanted to see happen
Line 9: Person's place of residence
Line 10: Last name
Let's be creative ourselves! Complete this bio poem about yourself or a literary or historical figures and share with us in a post!
by Janice Florent
Social media has evolved into more than a simple tool to stay in touch with friends or to share vacation pictures. Educators are finding interesting ways to use social media in their teaching and learning. Benefits to using social media in teaching and learning include putting concepts into context, keeping course content up-to-date, and fostering a sense of community both in and out of the classroom.
Facebook and Twitter may be ubiquitous, but there are many other social media tools out there that can enhance teaching and learning.
Facebook and Twitter are social media tools that are familiar to most people. Here are a few other social media tools that are being used in education:
You can read more about how three educators are using these social media tools in the Campus Technology article, 6 Alternative Social Media Tools for Teaching and Learning.
If you setup a discussion forum with date and time restrictions, once the scheduled available time has passed the forum becomes unavailable and disappears from the student's view. If you would like students to be able to read posts once the date restriction has past but not be able to submit new posts, you can "lock" the discussion thread to prevent new posts. Students may read the threads but not make any additions or modifications.
To lock discussion board threads, you should:
Step-by-step instructions are available [PDF].
Drip-feeding course contents to students.
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
by Janice Florent
QR (QR being short for Quick Response) codes were first created in 1994 by Toyota to track vehicles in manufacturing using a small barcode that allowed for high-speed component scanning. Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR code technology is experiencing a revival — but not in the automotive industry. The small, square codes are ubiquitous, showing up on everything from billboards and flyers to food packaging.
QR codes allow people to connect to video, audio, pictures, web sites and more by linking the individual to content on any supported smart phone or with a desktop reader. With the increasing use of mobile technology, QR codes are becoming more common in business and educational settings. The possibilities for their use are endless, and many translate into the classroom, offering a fun and exciting way for students to use technology for learning. If you are interested in how you might utilize QR codes in teaching and learning, read more in this article 50 Great Ways to Use QR Codes in the College Classroom.
Also, here is a link to my Prezi from a past CAT workshop on Educational Uses for QR Codes.
Are you using QR codes? If so, we would like to hear about it. Please feel free to leave a comment telling us how you are using QR codes in your teaching and learning.
You can use the course calendar to provide students with dates for course-related events. Instructors can create events on their respective course calendars. Everyone who is enrolled in the course will see the course-related events in their calendar.
The calendar displays a consolidated view of all institution, course, organization, and personal calendar events. You can view events by day, week, or month. Color coding makes it easy to distinguish which course each event is tied to.
Common calendar entries include:
Course items with due dates are automatically created in the course calendar. If an instructor edits an item to change the due date, the calendar gets updated as well.
Drag and drop works in the calendar. Instructors can drag and drop an item onto a new date to change the due date.
As a shortcut to view, edit, or grade attempts for an item, instructors can simply click on the item in the calendar.
You cannot import external calendars into Blackboard. However, you can import your Bb Learn calendar into an external calendar application (i.e., Google Calendar, iCal).
To create a new event on the course calendar:
To add a course item with a due date to the course calendar:
To edit or delete an event:
Click and drag the event to another date in the main view (or on the smaller monthly view) to change the due date of the event. The time of the event and calendar it is associated with remain the same.
If the event is a course item that has date availability rules set, you should edit the item to adjust the availability dates.
Working with the Calendar
Using the Blackboard Calendar (video)
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
by Karen Nichols
Did you experiment with avatars when they were the latest craze some years ago? Maybe you created one (or more) to enjoy gaming experiences such as Second Life. Mardi Gras is a great time to re-visit the use of avatars in education because, like masking for carnival, avatars can provide you and your students with opportunities for role-playing as well as creating conversations and presentations as well as providing information. Anecdotally, my students used to tell me that if I send them a message in the form of an avatar, they'll actually open it and listen to it because they're fun and different and not boring like words on a page. As a French instructor, I would ask the students to create an avatar that speaks French or have them use the avatar to explain a cultural event we were learning.
Voki is the most popular free site for education, although there is a paid version of it too. It belongs to the company that offers a premium range of services for monthly fees called Site Pal.
If you would like to use simple avatars to dress up an email or announcement to your students or have the students create an avatar for a particular assignment, then you can start with the free site, Voki. Voki will allow you to create one-time avatars and messages without signing up for an account. Here are the directions:
1. Once on Voki.com, click on the Create tab, top left of the page.
2. Choose Customize your Character and then play around a bit to check out the facial features, clothing, etc. When finished, click the small green Done tab at the bottom right corner.
3. Next choose Give it a Voice. You'll see a variety of options from calling in or recording your text so that the voki will have your voice, to typing a message and choosing one of the voices already programmed. Note that if you type the text and choose a voice, there will be no emotion and some of the words may not be pronounced as you wish. This is the choice I made for the little voki below so that you could hear what I'm explaining. I also had to spell phonetically, Happy Mardi Grah, so that the US voice would not pronounce the "s". Remember to click the green Done tab at the bottom right corner.
4. Choose a background next.
5. Choose a player, the frame for the voki with the buttons the receivers will click on.
6. Happy with your voki? Click publish and name it. When you click "publish" you receive the option to email a friend, link to it via the website, or copy the code to embed the voki as I did below.
http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=11002983&height=267&width=200
Site Pal, the premium site intended for the corporate world, is much more robust and not only offers simple avatars like Voki, but other ways to use them. My colleague who teaches Spanish and I have experimented with Artificial Intelligence in the form of a Graduate Assistant avatar. You may have seen something similar if you shop online catalogs. Our Grad Assistant was available with a click on any page in the language course. She popped up and asked how she could help. The student would type in a question, and if we had programmed in an answer for it, she would explain it to them. We used the idea of a Graduate Assistant, but you could design an avatar that's YOU answering their questions, and thus be available for your students 24/7! Instead of masking as someone or something different for Mardi Gras, here you would be creating a "virtual you" who can keep working as you try to sleep or grade or research. Sound intriguing? If so, contact me and let's talk avatars!
by Janice Florent
Did you know that you can add voiceovers (recorded narrations) to PowerPoint presentations? Adding recorded narrations to PowerPoint presentations is a useful feature. Benefits of adding recorded narrations to PowerPoint presentations include:
It’s not difficult to add voiceovers to PowerPoint presentations. Your computer must be equipped with a sound card, microphone, and speakers for you to record and hear the voiceovers.
Kelly Walsh, of EmergingEdTech.com, created this 3-minute Teaching with Tech Tip: Voice Over PowerPoint 2010 video that explains how to do it.
The eLearning Department at Champlain College posted some tips for recording narration into PowerPoint that you may find helpful. Additionally, you can find further explanation on setting and using slide timings at Microsoft's website.
Caution: Adding voiceovers can significantly increase the size of your PowerPoint presentation. If you have a long presentation with a lot of recorded narration, it may take a little while for students to download the file.
"Drip-feeding" is a term you will likely hear in association with online and hybrid learning. While the term "drip-feeding" is new to many people, most are familiar with the concept.
Drip-feeding is "scheduled lesson delivery." Essentially, professors can determine when they want certain content in their courses to become available. Professors can configure their course content and then set-up the sequential delivery of that content. Once set-up, the Learning Management System (LMS) will auto-drip the content to students without any more work by the professor.
The “Date and Time Restrictions” in Blackboard control when items are available to students. Utilizing date/time restrictions allow faculty to create content at a time that is convenient to them and make it visible to students at the appropriate time. This can be very handy because faculty can set-up their course content well in advance of when they want it to be available to their students. For example, create all the course content at the beginning of the semester, set the date/time restrictions, and then let Blackboard auto-drip the content.
Some professors may be hesitant to set date/time restrictions for the entire semester because assignment dates/times may need to be adjusted as the semester progresses. This means, the professor would have to go into the content items to adjust the dates/times when necessary. The Date Management tool can simplify this process. The Date Management tool allows professors to easily change due dates, availability dates, and adaptive release dates at one time (all on one page). The Date Management tool will save professors some time as they will not have to edit each individual item to adjust the dates/times. My Bb Tip #125: Date Management blog post explains how to use this tool.
Drip-feeding course content will not work for every situation. However, if you think it can work for you, give it a try.
To set Date and Time Restrictions, you should:
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Photo credit: work found at ndbutter / CC BY NC-ND 2.0