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Published on Leave a comment on Last Call for Slidecasts

At the Immigrant: last call for blackout beer

SlideShare has just announced that their "slidecasting" feature will be discontinued. Slidecasting is a nifty service that allows a slideshow (such as one might create in Powerpoint or Keynote) to be synchronized with audio content. In other words, it allows you to narrate your slides.

Nifty, yes, but apparently not popular enough to warrant ongoing maintenance. The folks at SlideShare cited lack of widespread usage in today's announcement.

At the end of February, users will no longer be able to create new slidecasts. At the end of April, existing slidecasts will be zapped into oblivion. Actually they will be converted into static presentations, i.e. plain old slide shows sans audio.

Attentive readers of this blog will know that I, Bart Everson, CAT's resident Media Artist, have created several slidecasts for eager faculty members who were unable to attend my workshops.

So, this is last call for slidecasts.

If you are interested in these topics, check out these presentations before April 30, at which point they will go silent.

This should serve as a cautionary note. Technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Free services offered by internet companies are liable to vanish quickly.

Photo: At the Immigrant: last call for blackout beer / CC BY-NC 2.0/

Published on Leave a comment on Advantages of Teaching Online

Teaching online has several positive aspects. Here are a few taken from the Teaching and Learning Online:  Communication, Community and Assessment, a handbook for UMass faculty published by the University of Massachusetts:

Teaching online courses can

  • Offer the opportunity to think about teaching in new ways:  Online teaching can allow you to experiment with techniques only available in online environments, such as threaded discussions and webliographies
  • Provide ideas and techniques to implement in traditional courses:  Online email discussions, a frequently-used practice in online learning, can be incorporated into traditional courses to facilitate group work.  Other techniques, such as web-based course calendars and sample papers posted on the internet (with student permission) can easily be incorporated into a traditional course.
  • Expand the reach of the curriculum:  Online teaching can expand existing curriculum to students on a regional, national, and international level.
  • Professional satisfaction:  Teaching online can be a enormously rewarding experience for teachers.  Teachers often cite the diversity of students in online courses as one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching online.
  • Instructor convenience:  Teaching online can offer teachers conveniences not available in traditional classroom settings; for example, at-home office hours and flexible work schedules.

I would like to add to the above advantages that teaching online can provide research and collaboration opportunities.  In addition, the online faculty at Xavier is a very collegiate and congenial group and working with them is another source of satisfaction!

It's interesting to read more of the University of Massachusetts' Teaching and Learning Online Handbook.

Published on Leave a comment on 10 Tips for Effective eLearning

Katie Lepi, who writes regularly for Edudemic, wrote an article listing 10 tips for effective eLearning. She writes:

Teaching online involves all the difficulties of teaching in person, with a few extra wrenches thrown in. Navigating the path of online learning can sometimes be rough, so the makers of the handy infographic below put together ten ‘links’ that make the ‘chain of e-Learning’ to help guide you on the online teaching path.

The-Chain-of-Successful-eLearning-Infographic

Want to read more? Read the entire article, "10 Tips for Effective eLearning," which is posted on the Edudemic website.

Published on Leave a comment on The Mindful Way to Study

Attention faculty (and students): For three days (January 16, 17 and 18) the ebook version of The Mindful Way to Study is being offered free of charge from Amazon.

If you have a Kindle or other compatible reader, grab this book now, and by all means let us know what you think.

Published on Leave a comment on Conversation #22: Grade Inflation

Download Conversation #22

Stuart Rojstaczer

I think there are serious deficiencies in today's higher education... If administrators and professors were honest with themselves, they would address them and improve the quality of education.

A conversation with Stuart Rojstaczer (formerly of Duke University) on teaching, learning and grade inflation.

Links for this episode:

Published on Leave a comment on Gadgets and Apps for our New Year’s Resolutions

Happy New Year!
Some of us at this time resolve to live healthier lives during this upcoming year. I thought I would share with you a couple of amusing gadgets available to help us keep our New Year's resolutions as well as a few apps that you may actually find useful and/or interesting.

TechCrunch has created the Happifork. The Happifork monitors how you're eating--speed and amount of food you are trying to eat at one time. If you have too much food on the Happifork, it will shake off the food until it reaches a more optimal amount for you to eat in one bite. I surely wouldn't want to use this gadget at a public place!

Have you heard about Google's talking shoe? Based on your movement (or non-movement) these shoes have attitude and aren't afraid to let you know what they're "thinking." While they can be "encouraging" during a brisk walk or workout, they seem to me to be more of a novelty than a real help to people who are trying to stay on task and move more in the new year. Decide for yourself:

Finally, Molly Kimball, a registered dietician who posts for nola.com, has made a few recommendations that you may find useful in your quest for a healthier lifestyle.
Find Me Gluten-Free, Map My Run and My Fitness Pal are among the ones she suggests. Check out her article and see all of them.

I have a few New Year's resolutions for 2014 and among them are to do a better job of buying locally and to actively be more compassionate. I've found a few sites to help me keep them. Good Eggs not only allows you to place your orders online, but will deliver your groceries to you either to a central meeting place or actually to your home. Most of our locally-grown produce is from the Northshore area and so delivery into New Orleans is usually twice a week. I've also become very interested in the Charter for Compassion as well as Sister Jane Remson's blog "Think About It-Pray About It-Act on It" which gives you the opportunity to be active by contacting your senator about an important issue for example.

Have you made any resolutions for the new year? If so, please share what you're doing and if you've found an app or gadget that is helping you.

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #83: Beginning of Semester Tasks

As you prepare for the start of the semester, it is a good time to get started setting up your Blackboard courses. Blackboard courses are automatically created using the course information in Banner a few weeks before the start of the semester. You can post your syllabus, course documents, and announcements to your Blackboard courses. You can also customize your course menu and/or add a course banner.

If you teach a course that is cross listed you will have a Blackboard course for each cross listing. You can combine the cross listed courses into one Blackboard course so that you can post course materials and grades to one combined Blackboard course. Combining courses may also work for you if you are teaching different sections of the same course and would like to have the different sections combined into one Blackboard course so that you can post course documents and grades in the one combined course. The beginning of the semester is the best time to combine your Blackboard courses before you add course material or grades to the courses.

Follow these steps to do it.

Listed below are links with instructions for

  • Merging courses [Web page]
  • Hiding old courses from view [Web page]
  • Getting started with the course environment [PDF] [Video]
  • Course structures and course themes [Web page] [Video]
  • Changing the display name for your course [Web page]
  • Adding a course banner [Web page]
  • Adding items to the course menu [PDF]
  • Posting announcements [Web page]
  • Copying content into another course [Web page]
  • Using date management to update dates after course copy [Web page]

Want more information?

Attend a drop-in session to get one-on-one help.
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
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.

Published on Leave a comment on Technology That Gives Back

In this season of gift-giving, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce you to a couple of gadgets that can positively impact people who are in emergency situations such as the recent typhoon in the Philippines.

Gravity Light (from Deciwatt.org) generates light from gravity. Using a sandbag for three seconds gives 25 minutes of light and the procedure can be repeated over and over. Imagine the uses during the nights after a severe storm when one knows electricity will not be available for days or weeks.

Another fun and practical solution is SOCCKET, a useable soccer ball that is a portable generator. You build power by playing with the ball and then you use it as a light source. So kids affected by the typhoon can enjoy a few moments of being a child again while storing up light for the family to see by.

If you know of any other projects of this type, please feel free to share and I wish everyone a very Happy New Year!

P.S. Thanks to lesliefisher.com for the great sessions at LACUE, including one on gadgets. More to follow. KNN

Published on Leave a comment on 3 Interesting Mobile Apps to Engage Students

This past Monday, my friend, colleague and full-time online instructor, Dr. Teresa Canganelli, came to CAT to present 3 mobile apps. For anyone who was unable to attend, I thought I would share them with you.

Tellagami is a free app that allows you to create avatars and record a message for your students up to 30 seconds in length. What a fun and engaging way to reach your students to remind them of an upcoming test or answer a question many of them were asking.

Audioboo is not only an easy and free way to record a message up to 3 minutes long, but it houses a vast library of recordings from around the world on myriad topics.  The site has been flooded with comments and recordings concerning yesterday's passing of Nelson Mandela.  Here is one from the Nelson Mandela Institution.

listen to ‘"Deep gratitude" for #Madiba, says @NOIweala, chairman of Nelson #Mandela Institution, Q&A:’ on Audioboo

Evernote is a wonderful way to manage files, lecture notes, documents , share them, store them and edit them. In addition, Evernote has numerous add-ons, some of which are free as well.  Teresa highly recommended Evernote Clipper which allows you to clip and save web pages.  This feature is great since websites may change or pages may be removed.

If you decide to look into any of these apps and have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll be happy to assist. x7692 Karen Nichols

Published on Leave a comment on Creating an Interactive Map

A faculty member came to me and said she wanted an interactive map to help her students learn about art history from a global perspective. She had poked on the web looking for such a resource but found nothing that suited her needs.

My mind started to reel as I briefly envisioned creating an interactive map from scratch, but I quickly came to my senses. Even if we couldn't find a ready-made map, surely we could find a tool for creating maps quickly and easily.

Sure enough: We found ZeeMaps.

It's extremely easy to get started with this site. You don't even need an account (though it might be a good idea to create one). Within seconds, you can have a fully navigable map of the world at your disposal, which you can use in many different ways.

We found it most expedient to drop simple markers on the map. You can add multimedia content to the markers, including text, photos, audio files, even YouTube videos.

Best of all, for our purposes, a web link can be associated with each marker.

This means that our intrepid faculty member would be able to link markers to existing high-quality web content. No need to fuss with tricky copyright issues. It becomes an exercise in content curation. The faculty member is able to focus on learning objectives.

A couple caveats are in order. At the free level, ZeeMaps is supported by ad revenue. So unless you plunk down some cash, your students will probably be seeing some advertisements. Also, I haven't tested this product extensively. There may be limitations of which I'm simply not aware yet.

If you need an interactive map for your teaching, you may wish to give ZeeMaps a try. Just head over to ZeeMaps.com and create a map to see how easy it is. Let us know how it goes.

(A lot of people seem to be importing lists of locations into ZeeMaps from other sources, such as an Excel spreadsheet of addresses or coordinates. For help on how to do that, see this tutorial from KDMC Berkeley.)