The Maricopa Experience

Online Quizzing in the Absence of a CMS

2011-01-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

I survived my first semester of online teaching sans Blackboard. Overall I felt as if it was a success, but there were some things that I just wasn't happy with. The biggest being the lack of a good quizzing feature. Now I'm not saying quizzing in Blackboard was any treat, so this is by no means a negative on my switch to Wordpress for my online classes. In fact, I think if I were still using Bb, I'd more than likely start using my new quizzing solution with it as well.

So here's the run down. I like to give reading quizzes to keep my students on their toes and hold them accountable for the required reading in the class. These quizzes are not major and usually consist of about 15-20 questions. I'm not a fan of "multiple guess" questions, so I like to be able to ask questions in a variety of ways. My favorite quiz question types are fill in the blank and matching. My solution last semester was to use ClassMarker to create and deliver my quizzes online. It's actually a fairly good tool, but I had two problems with it. First, I couldn't write fill in the blank and matching quiz questions. Well, I could do fill in the one blank, but no multiple blanks, and no matching at all. I was bummed, but I made do. The second problem was that I couldn't embed the quizzes into my Wordpress site. Students had to visit the ClassMarker site, log in with a username and password, and then take the quiz. This doesn't sound like much of a problem, but it just creates one more username/password for students to remember. They already have email, the class site, and the online gradebook, plus we used Diigo and Bibme for our research projects. I did simplify things my making everything I set up for them use the same student ID for username, but I still felt guilty about the number of required logins students needed.

So for this semester my goal was to try to simplify things for them, and my first solution was to retire ClassMarker and find a better quiz solution that would allow me to create flash quizzes that I could install on my own web server and then embed right in the course site. I don't really need anything fancy for storing or analyzing quiz results. This is not real assessment for me. I just want a score. I was surprised to find many tools available, but I narrowed it down to two. What follows are my thoughts on the two products.

Wondershare QuizCreator

Wondershare QuizCreator is a powerful Flash quiz maker that enables trainers and educators to make quizzes with multimedia objects for online testing.

I like QuizCreator because it is easy to use. I can create 9 different questions types, and I can create questions with images, audio and narration, and embed videos. But best of all I can publish a flash quiz to the web that sends student results to my email address. I created an orientation quiz in QuizCreator. I was able to create the kinds of questions I like: True/False, Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Fill in the Blank, Matching, Sequence, Word Bank, Click Map and Short Essay. But one downfall is I couldn't create fill in multiple blanks questions. Also I didn't like that you couldn't easily award partial credit for a question if students got part of the answer correctly. To do this, I think I would have to make each part of the answer worth at least 1 point and then go in individually and designate each part of the answer as worth 1 point. That makes the question worth too much then. I would like to have partial points (1/4, 1/2). I like how I could add images, videos, and audio. I can either upload or record audio right in the question, but videos have to be in the flash format (swf or flv). That was a bummer.

In quiz properties I had the option to collect name, email and other information about students or even create accounts for students. That was a nice touch. The default was to ask for a username and email address. I would love to have it ask for a real name instead of the username. I could also create a one password entrance to the quiz and set it up so the student results are emailed to both me and the student. You can buy a QuizCreator educational license for $99.95, and I certainly think it is worth it.

iSpring QuizMaker

iSpring QuizMaker: Create interactive and fully customized Flash quizzes with 10 different question formats and results based feedback.

QuizMaker is also very easy to use, but right off the bat I noticed that QuizMaker has a much nicer look on the published quizzes. I'm not sure what the difference is, but it just looks nicer. It also has different question types: True/False, Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Type In, Matching, Sequence, Numeric, Fill in the Blank, and Multiple Choice Text (Choose one correct answer in each drop-down list). The Fill in the Blank can have multiple blanks (Yay!), and I've never seen the Multiple Choice Text question, but I already love it. Questions can be marked to score with partial credit without having to figure out the scoring on your own. It does it for you. I can add photos, videos and images. I can't record audio directly into the question, like with QuizCreator, but for videos I could upload all the major formats (avi, mpg, mp4, wmv). I'm guessing it converts it to flash for you, saving you the extra step.

In the Settings, I don't have as many options for collecting student data. Default is to request real name and email address. Quiz results are sent of my email address by default, but there is no option to send results to the student as well. You can buy a QuizMaker educational license for $150, although I think that is just a tad bit high if I have to pay out of pocket. Interestingly enough if you buy a User Pack of 10, the price is $98 each, so it's cheaper if you get your school to buy it for you and 9 other teachers.

Overall Impressions

I really like both, and both do so much more than I mentioned in this post. I just tried to touch on the differences. For instance, they both have customizable players, integration with Blackboard and SCORM compliance, offer an online LMS to manage quizzes, testing time limit, pass score, shuffle questions, question pools, custom feedback, and self grading. Both are fairly inexpensive and offer a free trial so you can try it out. I could live with either, but iSpring QuizMaker almost makes it feel like I'd be choosing a Mac over a PC. They both work great, but it seems to work and look just a little bit better. And just like a Mac, it costs more. I have 30 days to decide, or better yet, beg for some money from the college. I haven't tried that yet at GCC. Wish me luck.

What does an Online Course in Wordpress Look Like?

2010-10-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

So I've been writing about my escape from Blackboard to Wordpress for my online course management system. Some people were wondering what this looks like. I can't just give you the link because the classes are live and are in locked down mode (private), so I create a screencast so you can see an what an online course in Wordpress might look like. I also talk about the feature I like best in comparison to Bb.

Saying Goodbye to Blackboard - Part III: Missing Essentials

2010-10-29T15:35:00.002-07:00

The hardest part about doing away with the standard LMS is replacing the essentials like gradebook, quizzing, and assignment dropbox. The assignment dropbox feature is used to collect assignments from students. I’ve tried using email for this in the past, but I’m not organized enough or consistently organized enough to make that work. Besides I’m a stickler about submitting assignments on time, and if your email inbox is your dropbox, you can’t simply turn that off or lock it down when the due date has passed. So I had to come up with a solution for this, as well as a gradebook and quizzing function.

Increasingly book publishers are replacing standard LMS services with new companion sites that come packaged with textbooks. Last year we adopted both the McGraw-Hill Guide with Connect Composition Plus and Cengage’s A College Writer with Enhanced InSite. Both offer online textbooks and companion sites that provide lots of resources for both faculty and students. I chose to use the McGraw-Hill text with Connect Composition Plus.

Connect Composition Plus provides comprehensive, reliable writing and research content that is searchable, assignable, and inviting. It includes a fully integrated eBook with exercises, peer review tools and editing skills diagnostic tests.

With this new tool, it’s easy for me to assign custom assignments for students that provide detailed instructions and then gives the students a place to submit the assignment. Connect Composition, as well as Enhanced Insite, have built in grading features. I can quickly annotate student assignments and post grades for students to see.There are also features in both that allow for students to peer review essays.

This is a great setup as it gives me one place for all submitted work, and one place to go to grade submitted work. I can create as many assignments as I want and set due dates. The down side is that their is no internal gradebook attached. There is a gradebook, but you can’t add outside assignments or exclude ebook assignments or grammar exercises you might assign students for extra practice. Basically you don’t have any control over the gradebook - weighting grades and assigning point value. Everything is just graded on a 100% scale. Ultimately I would like to see a gradebook built into this system, but in the mean time, I’ve decided to use Engrade for my gradebook.

Engrade is a free set of web-based tools for educators allowing them to manage their classes online while providing students with 24/7 real-time online access. It's private, secure, truly free, and unbelievably easy to use.

It was very easy to set up all of my classes in Engrade. I just created rosters with the FirstName LastName IDNumber (MEIDs for Maricopa) and Engrade creates an access code for each student. I just emailed this access code with instructions to all students along with instructions on how to access their grades.

Engrade just recently added a feature that allows you to create quizzes, although it is a bit limiting at the moment. You can only create multiple choice quizzes. That doesn't work for me, so I'm using Classmarker.com for my quizzing needs.

The ClassMarker online testing website is a professional, easy to use, online quiz maker that marks your tests and quizzes for you.

ClassMarker has educational pricing at $24 for the year and I'm able to create quizzes with different types of questions, including fill in the blank and essay - my favorites. It keeps track of all the scores and I can provide feedback on the quizzes. Initially I wanted to use ClassMarker because they have an external quiz feature that allows you to embed quizzes into your site. I couldn't figure out how to make that work, but that is ultimately what I want to see on my Wordpress site, quizzes embedded directly into the site.

So those are the three essentials that I had to replace when I made the move from Blackboard to Wordpress. I'll discuss more about the social aspect of Wordpress over Blackboard in my next post.

Saying Goodbye to Blackboard Part II - Student Blogs & Privacy

Saying Goodbye to Blackboard - Part I

Saying Goodbye to Blackboard Part II - Student Blogs & Privacy

2010-09-16T06:35:00.000-07:00

In my first post I explained how I am using Wordpress as a course management system, and in this post I will explain how I was able to easily add students to the class and set up their blogs. Keep in mind that my new course network is completely private, so only registered users can see who users are and participate in activities. To achieve this privacy, I installed a plug-in called Private Wordpress. “Private WP will make sure people can only read your blog after they log in. Already logged in users will see no difference. Users who are logged out will get the login page, and only that.” I like to keep my options open, so although we are completely private, I still set up the students so they can have an option to use an alias.

First I added every student as a user to the main “hub” blog using their MEID and their Maricopa email address. This information is easily accessible in both Blackboard and SIS so I can do this before the semester begins. After I add them to the network, students are sent an email with log in instructions and a password to access the site. When they log-in they are instructed to edit their profiles to add their real name and a photo. At this point they can choose to display their first name only, first and last name or just their MEID. They can also use a chosen alias instead of their real names if they want. Students cannot change the initial username given (MEID), so no matter what they provide for their names, I can always identify them on the back end by the MEID. So far, all of my students have chosen to use their real names or stick with the MEID as the display name.

Next I create a blog or site for each user. You are given the choice between sub-domains or sub-directories in Step 4: Installing a Network. This means each additional site in your network will be created as a new virtual subdomain or subdirectory.

Sub-domains -- like site1.example.com and site2.example.com
Sub-directories -- like example.com/site1 and example.com/site2

I wanted to try them both, so ENG101 uses sub-domains and ENG102 and ENH295 both use sub-directories. I think I like sub-directories better so. To add a site I need a site name, site title and an admin email. For the site name I used MEIDs again because they will be easily identifiable by me, and if students neglect to make their site private, they are not automatically identifiable to the world. For site title I use the student’s first name temporarily, and then I add their Maricopa email for the admin email. Once I add the site, students are sent another email with log in instructions. They are then instructed to either leave their blogs public or make them private by using the same plug-in I used on the main site. If they choose to go private, I instruct them to choose the option to “Allow all feed access - Guests may continue read your blog via feed readers. “ This is essentially the same option we would have in Blackboard if our district had the balls to turn it on. The blogs are not accessible by search engines, and you have to have the feed url in order to see the posts. So it’s still private, but I can still access it via a feed reader. This makes me very happy. :)

Students are also instructed that they can change the title of their blog to whatever they want, thus removing their names. So they can change Mary’s blog (default) to MJ’s Hangout if they want. I don’t really need to have their name in the title because when I set up the blogs initially I created a blogroll for each class using their real name and subscribed to each blog using the real name. This blogroll list is only viewable by logged in users from the main site, and my Google Reader list is private as well. When I want to grade Mary’s blog, I either click on her real name or visit my GReader. And if I ever get confused I can just look at the URL: http://eng102online.com/mar1234567 (fake) and the MEID on the end will identify the student. My initial impression is that either students don’t care about privacy or they’re too confused to care. Not one student has changed the name of their blog, and I haven’t check to see if any have gone private. I’ll do that soon.

Blogroll at the bottom of the main course site.

Students have most of the same controls over their blogs that I have over mine. When I add and install plug-ins to the main blog, I have the option to activate site wide meaning students will now have access to the plug-in on their site. I can even control what themes are available to students, so if I want for their blogs to all look the same, I could just provide the one option. Or in the future I like to create a custom theme built just for writing portfolios for my ENG101 class. I could have all the pages prebuilt to make it easier for students. It can be a little confusing at first for students because they have two sites, the main class site (hub) and their own blog. When they click from the main site to go the dashboard, they end up first in the main site’s dashboard and there is not much there. They have to then click on the My Sites to see their blog and to be able to get to that dashboard.

Students cannot add themes or plug-ins to their site on their own. They can only activate themes or plug-ins that you have activated sitewide. The only problem that I can see so far is with the spam filter Akismet. I activated it sitewide so that all the student blogs could be protected, but it prompts all students to add their API key that you get by signing up for Wordpress.com. I didn’t want to have students go through all of that, so at the moment all their blogs are exposed to spam. I like how the Private Wordpress plug-in reminds students to activate privacy on their blog in case they missed my instructions to do so.

Overall, I'm pleased with how it’s all working out. I created lots of screencasts to help students, and I haven’t had too many questions about how to do things. I haven’t had too many complaints yet either. Only time will tell. In my next post I’ll talk more about how I’m collecting assignments and doling out quizzes and grades.

Saying Goodbye to Blackboard - Part I

2010-09-15T12:10:00.003-07:00

Ah, free! It’s a great feeling to be free of the closed course management system. I could say tons about why I wanted, craved this freedom, but I have enough to say with how I freed myself. So this post will focus solely on that -How I said goodbye to Blackboard for good.

First off, let’s discuss what I’m currently using. Wordpress recently came out with the latest version, 3.0, which added the old Wordpress MU install into the regular installation. What this does is provide the opportunity to create a network setup where you can have a blog as a hub, and then have students’ blogs branch out from the hub to create a network or class. So you have a class site (hub) that students are all users, and each of the users (students) has their own blog. For a writing class this is a perfect set up. Students have space to write and collaborate with classmates. So Wordpress replaces the main CMS function of housing course content and student interaction (blogs, groups, discussions), but I needed some other tools to replace the other functions of a CMS like gradebook, dropbox, and quizzes. I will talk about these functions in a later post.

Setting up Wordpress is actually quite easy, but if schools adopted this method, the most challenging part can be done by IT departments before a faculty member even signs on for this adventure. This part involves installing Wordpress on a server and setting up the network. Since I don’t have help from my IT department, I did this myself. Most hosting companies have one-button install, are cheap, reliable and optimized for your WordPress blog. I currently use HostGator and Siteground to host my blogs. For my three classes this semester I’m paying $6 month to host all three sites on HostGator, and HostGator has one click install.

Adding the network part is a little more difficult, but not impossible. You just have to follow directions and know how to edit the wp-config file. You also have to be familiar with FTP programs. I followed the directions straight from the Wordpress site – Create a Network, and I used the FireFTP addon for FireFox to upload files to and from the server and Notepad on a PC to edit the wp-config file. This is the part that IT professionals could do in support of faculty if a college chose to support this. If that were the case, then faculty could start the process with choosing a theme and adding course content.

Wordpress lets you create pages and blog posts for adding content. I use the blog posts for announcements and weekly activities (semester specific content), and I use pages for permanent course content (assignments, etc.). If you choose the right theme, you can have nestled pages with dropdown menus. I’m using the Mystique theme by digitalnature for all three courses. See photo below. This provides easy navigation for students. You have to really think about how you want to organize your content for this to work. It helps if you have modules. I can also set the default front page to be a specific page (i.e. syllabus) or my blog posts. I use my blog posts for announcements, so that is my default front page. Once students log in, they are dumped into the front page where they can read any new announcements before moving on to access the course content. This is where we see the first advantage over Blackboard. Since the announcements are now individual blog posts, if a student has a question about the announcement, they can quickly hit Add a Comment and leave their question. All students can see the question and any subsequent answer I provide.

Once you figure out how you want to add your content, doing so is quite simple. You can type directly into the page edit window in either Visual (WYSIWYG) or HTML. You can also cut and paste from Word documents using the Paste from Word option. This cuts out all the crappy Word code that you normally get. Mark that up as another advantage over Bb which takes your Word code and mangles it, making it almost impossible to edit. You can also set up page templates to help customize your content pages. Templates help remove the sidebars if you need to so you can have a bigger column for showing movies or just to have less distraction on the page. My current theme came with built in templates, so I’m current just using those.

For my discussion forums, I had a few options. I started out with a plug-in called Mingle Forum, and it worked well, but there was something missing. Can’t remember what. So instead, I decided to just use blog posts for discussions since they have threaded comments built in. In order to get them to show up on a page and not just in the blog post (announcement) page, I had to install the Page Links To plug-in, which allows you to create a page that links to a URL. So what I did was created a category for discussions and added each discussion question post to that category. Then when I click on the category tag it takes me to a page with all the posts in that category. I grabbed the URL and add that to the Discussion page I create. Now when students click on the Discussion tab they see all the discussions in one place. To participate in a discussion, you can just leave a comment. Commenting in Wordpress is threaded, so students can comment to each other, and it’s very easy to follow the conversation – another plus over Bb. Also their profile pictures show up next to their post so it adds a little personalization to the discussion. I can turn off commenting on any post at any time, in effect closing a discussion. So far it works great.

In my next posts I will talk about adding users (students) and user blogs to the main site. I will also share with you how I replaced the other aspects of the course management system, like gradebook, dropbox, and quizzing.

New Portable Document Camera Review

2010-07-16T12:19:00.003-07:00

IPEVO Point 2 View USB Document Camera

Last week I was reading my feeds in Google Reader, and I came across a post by Steve Dembo (@Teach42) titled: Accessorizing the iPad. I don't own an iPad, but I wanted to see what new accessories people were using with it. In his post, Steve writes about different methods for displaying the content on your iPad. Of course, Apple doesn't have a simple way to hook up the iPad to a projector and display everything on it. The VGA Dock Connector only works with certain apps on the iPad. If you want to display the other stuff, you'll need the IPEVO Point 2 View document camera.

So on Steve's recommendation, I got on Amazon and ordered me a IPEVO Point 2 View document camera for $65. I ended up paying $75 total because I had to choose expedited shipping. I wanted to make sure I got it in time to try it out before we leave for San Jose, CA next Tuesday for our mobile learning workshop. So although I don't have an iPad, I do have lots of mobile devices that we will be demonstrating in the workshop, and my co-presenter Lisa Young will have several iPads with her. My IPEVO arrived yesterday, but I waited until this morning to open it and try it out. I literally had the thing out of the box, installed and working in 5 minutes.

We'll be using Lisa's MacBook Pro for our presentation computer next week, so I chose to test the camera out on my Mac Mini. I put the CD in the drive, chose Intel Mac over PowerPC Mac, and then clicked the icon once the software loaded. The program opened up and nothing was there. So I plugged the camera into a USB drive and a picture displayed in the program on my screen. It was that easy. The hardest part about the whole thing was sticking the camera onto the bendable display base. I was afraid I might break it since it is plastic.

I made this video to show you how well the camera works. The image is as clear as any image displayed on the ELMO document cameras we have a school, and those cameras cost over $700. The IPEVO is a steal. The displayed image looked great at all resolution settings. Resolution is adjustable to up to 1600 x 1200. It also has a vertical mirror setting so your image doesn't appear upside down on the screen, and it has an auto focus button the camera and on the screen in the program. That was all I needed. I'll try Zoom and Exposure later when I need it.

Keynote: Student Engagement for the 21st Century Learner

2009-12-27T12:10:00.004-07:00

Recently I was asked to present a keynote at Yavapai College in Prescott, AZ. I was both surprised and honored for the invitation, and I immediately accepted. I talk about teaching with technology all the time, so this was a great opportunity to share my insights on the topic. But first I had to narrow my focus, as there is so much to be said today about teaching with technology. Thanks to the help of my colleagues, Lisa Young and Shelley Rodrigo, I was able to come up with my topic of student engagement. One of my goals in this presentation was to try to engage my audience by using some of the same technology tools I would talk about in the keynote. I was able to use Animoto, Wordle, Poll Everywhere, YouTube, Voicethread, and MindMeister. The presentation was recorded and put together by Thatcher Bohrman at Yavapai College. Thanks Thatcher!

Links from the Presentation:

Animoto: http://animoto.com
CCSSE: http://www.ccsse.org/
2009 CCSSE Executive Summary (PDF)
Seven Principles of Good Practice: http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm
Pay Attention - Final Cut (YouTube video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT2E2F0DmyE and http://t4.jordandistrict.org/payattention
21st Century Literacies (pdf): http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/PolicyResearch/21stCenturyResearchBrief.pdf
Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/
MindMeister: http://www.mindmeister.com/
Voicethread: http://voicethread.com/share/802220/
Poll Everywhere: http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/NTA2OTgxOTc0

Presentation Slides: http://freshmancomp.com/Yavapai%20Keynote.zip

Student Engagement for the 21st Century Learner by Dr. Alisa Cooper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at freshmancomp.com.

Schedule Student Conferences with TimeDriver

2009-11-23T20:45:00.002-07:00

Every semester I schedule conferences with all my students to talk about their final papers before they start to finalize the paper. It was always a pain trying to schedule these 60+ conferences with students until I found TimeDriver. Watch how I use TimeDrive to schedule student conference fast and easily.

How to Collaborate Using GDocs (Students)

2009-11-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

We recently started our group project module in ENG101, so I introduced students to a few tools to help them be able to collaborate with each other during this process. One tool in particular is Google Docs. This video was created for students to show them how to collaborate using Google Docs to complete their projects.

Creating Macros in Word 2007 for a Grading Toolbar

2009-11-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

One of my most popular posts on this blog was a post on how to create a grading toolbar in Word. Well, it has since become outdated after Office 2007 was introduced a few years ago. I'm finally getting around to creating a new version, so here it is.

Teaching with Email in the Online Classroom

2009-08-24T17:02:00.011-07:00

Over the years education has continually changed, or evolved into something that is considerably different from what education was when I was in school. One major difference is the inclusion of online and hybrid courses into the course offerings. This is still evolving on most campuses, so it's understandable that many people in charge of educational institutions aren't always clear about how faculty use certain technologies in their classrooms. So I'm going to try to clarify some things.

First, we've used email for many years in our district, and all employees are given an email address to use to communicate official district business amongst ourselves. This system works well, as it's easy to find an email address in the district and send a fellow employee a message. We can even create distribution lists to send to certain groups of people. It works so well, that we used to get tons of emails on a daily basis from just about anyone who had a cause, a need, a show, or any important information they felt everyone in the district needed to know. Mercifully someone recognized the overload we all experienced, and we adapted to a "only specially designated people on each campus can send ALL district emails. Thank God or whoever made that decision. It was nice to see that we could recognize a problem and find a solution.

But as I mention, delivery methods of teaching have changed too, and faculty are now using email in lots of different ways. Before I started teaching online classes, I never gave my students my email address. I couldn't imagine how I would handle all that email, and there wasn't really a need. If they had a question, they could just ask me in class. When I first started teaching online, I recognized the need for students to be able to contact me and quickly created an email account just for that purpose. Since then how I use email in my online and hybrid courses has evolved along with the courses themselves. I don't use email as just a way for students to ask questions. It is so much more than that.

Email can be a drafting space, prewriting activity, organizational tool, assignment dropbox, conferencing space, peer review tool, and so much more. It is so essential to teaching online that it always surprises me that as an educational institution, we have never sought a more robust email tool for faculty to work with. It has always been up to us to figure out how best to make it work. It wasn't until webmail evolved that some of us began to dream big with email and start to use it in more ways than the obvious. Now it's hard to imagine teaching without it.

Here's a brief example of how I use email in the first week of school. I begin by sending all my students an email introducing myself and giving them a list of things I'd like for them to do before the first week of the semester ends. This list includes filling out a form and providing me with a convenient email address for them. If it's convenient, they'll use it and hopefully read my correspondence to them. I use the collected information to set up folders, filters and auto-responders in my email client. To get students familiar with using email in my classes and to help me set up the filters, I have students send me an email after they have completed the first assignment. That email is received, filed, and an auto-responder to that particular email is sent out. It all works quite smoothly. I get what I need and students get instant feedback.

I also keep track of student activity on the course network via email. When students fill out the form, register for the network, and participate in the first discussion, I get an email notification for each. This allows me to quickly approve their registration and then welcome them to the network right away. Students feel a part of a community and feel as if there is someone present to interact with in the online environment. In the first week, many students are nervous about the online class and have questions. During this week, I try to answer questions as soon as possible. For instance, the bookstore had a mix-up with the books for my class. After reading the syllabus, students discovered that the book listed in the bookstore was different than what was listed on my syllabus. Many emailed me to asked about this. One student had even emailed from his phone while he was still in the bookstore and got a response right away. He was able to purchase the correct book right then.

I don't profess to respond that quickly all semester long, but to me it equates to all that extra time all faculty spend during the first week giving directions, advice, answering questions and just plain being "present" on campus for students. Students have responded well to this interaction in my classes. Just today a student responded to me with,

"Wow, I am seriously impressed by the quick response. I will have to remember this when I do 'Rate my professor'."

Once the first week is in the books, I continually use email as a teaching tool in my online courses. Students in the ENG102 course send me research prospectuses and we have email conferences about their research progress. Students collaborate on writing projects in Google Docs and use email to invite me to see their work and to receive updates on revisions made. And I use my email contacts groups feature to take role and keep track of attendance in my hybrid and face to face classes. These are just a few of the ways that email has evolved for me.

When I'm teaching, I don't have time to deal with emails about:
Biology instructors needed, weekly air quality, and employment opportunities. I'll handle that later when I get back to my work "office." I have email for teaching, and I have email for work. My work email stays at work, and my teaching email goes with me to my many teaching environments and teaching moments. I control when, where and how I want to deal with it. I love that freedom, and I love that it allows for me to serve my students. I couldn't do this if I had to deal with all my email in one standard, made for business, work email account. That just doesn't work for me.

Update your Calendar & ToDo Lists via Twitter

2009-07-05T19:26:00.007-07:00

My first post about Twitter, Little Known Facts about Twitter in the Classroom, talked about some easy uses for Twitter in the classroom. I said, Twitter is connected to everything. I can update my Google calendar and ToDo tasks via Twitter, and I can set it up so Twitter will broadcast my blog posts from my blog to Twitter with a link sending people back to my blog to read the post. Think announcements for students with that one. It's also connected with a very nice polling site, Poll Everywhere, that lets your respondents vote in your polls via Twitter. Twitter makes their API available so any company can develop tools that will work through Twitter.

This post follows up that and talks about the calendar and ToDo updates via Twitter. If you're busy, like most people are, you might find that your calendar and a ToDo list are very helpful in keeping you going. I rely heavily on both in my everyday life. Usually when I'm out and about, and I need to either add an event or meeting to my calendar, I find it a hassle to pull up my calendar program and add it. Same thing with my ToDo lists. But I've found that sending a text message directly to Twitter can do that for me. All I have to do is text a direct message to my Google Calendar or Remember the Milk ToDo service and it automatically posts to my calendar or list. Click the links for more information about each.

I use this when I schedule conferences with students. I grab my phone and send a text message to 40404 with "d gcal Meeting with 'Student' Tuesday at 11am." The d is for direct message, which is private on Twitter, and gcal is the Google Calendar Twitter name. The rest is the event I want added to the calendar. When I get to a computer, all the appointments are there in my calendar. And since I sync my Google calendar with my Blackberry, they show up on my phone calendar too within minutes. The screencast below shows you how this all works.

Part II of III tips for using Twitter in the classroom. Part I covers using Twitter via text messaging on your cell phone, Part II update calendar/ToDo list via Twitter. The last tip will show you how to use Twitter with a polling service PollEverywhere.

Teaching Kids Technology

2009-07-02T11:42:00.002-07:00

I had and opportunity to teach a bunch of Upward Bound students how to use various technologies over a 6 week period this summer. We learned to create photo essays using Animoto, and plain Word documents using Creative Commons images. We used Picnik to remix photos. We also learned to create videos using Flip cameras and Windows Movie Maker. And our last project was creating podcasts using Audacity. Below are a few of the podcasts they created. I was really proud of their work.

What's on Your iPod Touch? Mobile Apps for Learning

2009-05-28T11:20:00.008-07:00

We've been having a little exchange on our list about mobile gadgets and apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, so I decided to blog about what I have on my iPod Touch. Not so surprisingly, I have very little music. I have an iPod Video and Nano for that. The Touch is for mobile learning. I'm trying to see how this gadget can be used in education. The obvious is podcasts, both audio and video. It's easy to find good podcasts to share and recommend with students, as well as create your own. So I have over 3 GB of video on my Touch, mostly video podcasts. One of my favorite apps on the Touch is iTalk. I can hook up an external microphone and record lectures right on the Touch. Then I can sync and have the podcast uploaded to where ever in a matter of minutes. Sound quality is really good.

Most of my apps are free, unless indicated by (paid). Here is a list of my first page of apps on my Touch.

Google
YouTube
Remember the Milk (RTM)
Twitterific & TwitterFon
iTalk
Facebook
Bb Learn

These are all obvious choices. We haven't had a chance to try out the Bb Learn app yet. District says we will be able to do so after the upgrade, which just happened, so I'll check into that next week.

My second page of apps is a mixed bag. I have a few ereaders I'm trying out and some blogging tools.

Kindle & eReader & GReader (Readers)
Google Voice & GV Mobile (Paid)
Google Talk & Skype (chat)
Gyminee
Wordpress
Animoto
WootWatch
Tumblr
Where
Brightkite
TripIt
Nike +iPod

These are some of the more important mobile tools for blogging, reading documents, books and RSS feeds, and communicating via chat, voicemail and text messaging.

As I move through my app pages, the apps get less and less relevant to mobile learning. So far we've seen lots of social networking apps and reading and writing apps. That trend continues, but I start to add more home automation and fun stuff. I mean, you never know when you will need to Tivo a show for class, right.

myhomework (Keep track of classes and homework)
Evernote (This could be a big elearning app)
Shakespeare (Complete works on my iPod)
Yelp
Yahoo!
LinkedIn
i.TV & DirecTV & PhoneFlix (Schedule DVRs & Netflix)
fring (IM & Skype in one/VOIP)
Assistant (PageOnce - Acct Management)
WSJ (Wall Street Journal)
Flickr
Ustream (watching only)

I found lots of apps that have created collections of works like the Shakespeare one. This would make teaching a lit class easy in terms of access to free books. Evernote has the biggest potential for impact in the mobile learning space. I will be exploring this a bit more this summer.

My last two pages are just a bunch of games and sports apps like for the Master's and the NBA playoffs. Also MLB (At Bat) lets you listen to live game audio for $10 for the whole season. I also have the Stanza ebook reader, a dictionary, notes, and a calculator. That's it. And like I mentioned earlier, I only paid for 3 apps. As I explore and try new ones, I'll probably purchase more if they are worth it. We'll see.

So what's on your iPod Touch or iPhone? Leave a comment and let me know so I can add to my collection.

Little Known Facts about Twitter in the Classroom

2009-05-22T12:00:00.008-07:00

The whole world is talking about Twitter, so this post is probably nothing new to some. Most people get that you can post a short message about what you are doing, and anyone who follows you on Twitter will be able to see the message. I follow you, I see your messages. You follow me, you see mine. But many people still don't understand how it works beyond that. For instance, many aren't aware that you can have selective tweeters' tweets delivered directly to your cell phone via text message. And you can reply back to Twitter via text message. Once you and your students are signed up and properly set up, the whole process can be conducted via cell phone text messaging, making the whole process mobile and not tied to a web page on a computer.

Another little known secret to novice Twitter users is that Twitter is connected to everything. I can update my Google calendar and ToDo tasks via Twitter, and I can set it up so Twitter will broadcast my blog posts from my blog to Twitter with a link sending people back to my blog to read the post. Think announcements for students with that one. It's also connected with a very nice polling site, Poll Everywhere, that lets your respondents vote in your polls via Twitter. Twitter makes their API available so any company can develop tools that will work through Twitter. There are so many more, but in the following movie I focus on the first tool mentioned above. In subsequent posts I'll show you the other tips. Have a look.

Using Text Messaging with Twitter from soul4real on Vimeo.

Part I of III tips for using Twitter in the classroom. Part I covers using Twitter via text messaging on your cell phone.

One of the things I forgot to mention is once you get your cell phone set up to receive text messages from Twitter, you can post a tweet by sending it to 40404 from your phone. Next up, update your Google calender and ToDo tasks via Twitter.

Twitter Killed My Blog - Almost

2009-05-22T10:56:00.003-07:00

Wow! I hardly posted at all this semester. Two times. That's it. I'm going to blame Twitter on that. Who has time to blog when we're tweeting all day. :) Well, I was inspired to come back to traditional blogging after the MaricopaTech conference earlier this week. So here I am. I'm breathing a little life into "The Maricopa Experience" because it is quite an experience working in one of the largest community college systems in the country. Not only that, but times are tough, and as the district cuts more and more of our resources, like faculty professional growth, this blog may become a valuable tool. It can be used either for whining and complaining about the cuts or building resources for others who are stuck in the same situation. I'm leaning more towards the latter.

I anticipate next semester I'll have more to blog about since I'm transferring from my current campus to a much larger one, GCC. That should be enough fodder alone, but I have some ideas to share until I get to that point. My plan for this summer is a series on mobile learning. I will be reading up mLearning and playing with lots of mobile devices and programs designed for these devices. I'll also be looking a ways to enhance online courses using mobile gadgets. Can't wait to blog about all that. In addition, I plan a series of posts on how I'm using some of the newer Web 2.0 tools in my classes or how I plan to.

So the blog is not abandoned; just consider it having been on vacation. Now if you'll be patient, I'll be back with a post about "something" in a few. If you want, you can follow me on Twitter. I'm soul4real.

Wordles are Really Cool

2009-04-22T21:01:00.003-07:00

I've been seeing Wordles around all over the place lately, and I've been wanting to create one but didn't really have a need. I still don't, but I thought it might be fun to see what my Delicious bookmarks look like in a Wordle. If you're wondering the same thing, wonder no more. Here it is:

Moving on Up to the West Side

2009-04-15T13:17:00.001-07:00

I'm in a funk at the moment, and just can't get motivated to do all the things I really need to do. So I'm blogging. I think the reality of my decision to leave my current job has something to do with my funk. I decided some time ago to leave South Mountain CC and transfer over to Glendale CC. It's the same job, just a new location in the district. I spent a semester over there 3 years ago and enjoyed it, but I just couldn't pull the trigger on a transfer until now. So why am I leaving? Many have asked, and this is my response. It varies depending on what day it is.

I guess I'm leaving because I'm ready for a change. 11 years in one job is a long time to me. It's the same old thing over and over again each semester. And I realized that it's really up to me to make things fun, to make things happen. So for the last few years I've been social networking with other techie geeks in the district, some from my college, but most from other colleges in the district. I realized that Maricopa is a wonderful place to work because of the many resources we have available to us and the awesome people that work in the district. But Maricopa isn't always fair in their distribution of resources to the various colleges. South being the smallest gets left in the dust in many areas. As a result, technology isn't a big focus for most of the faculty on the SMCC campus. There's nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that I live for technology and with all the research I've done in the last 8 years, I realize our future in education relies on that technology.

So I guess what I'm saying is I love the people at SMCC, but SMCC isn't helping much for my portfolio in terms of being innovative and using technology in my teaching. I'm very limited in what I can do with the limited resources and expertise on campus, and I spend way too much of my money on resources and too much time on other campuses in the district learning new things. What I've learned is I can still be friends and socialize with the friends I've made at South, the best part of South, but work elsewhere where I'll have the resources available and the money needed for more. Those resources include a faculty that is experimenting with new technologies and teaching in creative ways I have yet to experience.

I will always love South and the people I've worked with for the last 11 years. It is truly a special place and has grown tremendously since I first arrived on campus in 1998. They even have wireless on campus now (except for in my building). South Mountain CC will continue to be a great college whether I'm there or not, but will I still be the teacher I want to be if I stick around. Who knows, but I'm not sticking around to find out. I am the master of my own destiny, and the master says I need to go give GCC a try.

New FAQ Avatar for my Online Students

2009-01-20T21:59:00.007-07:00

I've been playing around with SitePal for a year and a half now. I love the idea of having an avatar for students to interact with, but it has proven to be a bit time consuming and expensive. My initial investment was a cool $99 to get five avatars and scenes with 1 minute of audio each (Bronze). One minute is not a lot of time and during the first year I had a hard time keeping to the limit, so I ended up neglecting my avatar, dubbed Associate Professor Sam.

But instead of giving up completely on the idea, I decided to invest a bit more money into it and see if I could make it work. Initially the lowest SitePal plan costs $99 but didn't include Text to Speech (TTS). That is how I make Sam talk to my students. Without the more expensive plan, I had to create my own TTS, which I did with a separate program called TextAloud. The program works great and I use it for other non-avatar announcements from Assoc. Prof. Sam that are usually much longer than 1 minute. But if I was going to really utilize the avatar, I needed to eliminate a few steps. So I upgraded to the Silver package for this semester only (3 months). The additional costs ($100) is a bit much for me to have to pay out of pocket, but for 3 months it wasn't so bad ($24), especially since SitePal was offering a discount.

So I created a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) box for Sam and posted a few questions for students on the Ning Social Network. It was really easy to type out the answers to the questions and have SitePal convert to speech. They even had my same voice for Sam. I posted the widget below so you could give ole Sam a try.

Reflecting on an Almost Done Semester

2008-12-14T20:12:00.004-07:00

Finals start tomorrow, and I've spent most of the last week grading and tying up loose ends in my hybrid and online courses. I finally feel as if I have my hybrid and online ENG102 course right where I want it to be in terms of design. It only took 7 years. I started designing the course in 2001 when I started grad school. Back then it was just a face to face course with lots of different technologies added in here and there. It grew to a hybrid that I studied and wrote my dissertation on. Now it's a fully online Quality Matters certified course, one of the first QM certified courses in the district.

I'm proud of this course, but as I wrap up this semester and reflect on what I think went well and what I think didn't, I can't help but feel a bit down about the student retention rates in my courses. I've come to the conclusion that no matter how much time and effort you put into a course to make it the best it can be, sometimes your students just aren't ready for it. In the case with our students at South Mountain Community College, they're not ready in more than one way. Many are not prepared for a rigorous college load and still others are not ready for online and hybrid courses, yet they end up in my courses.

I teach the only hybrid and online English courses on campus, two hybrid and one online. There are plenty of other sections that are face to face available all through out the day and week, but my classes fill up. When asked, most students signed up for the class because the time fit well with their schedule and not because they particularly wanted a hybrid class. And I don't even want to start to talk about why students sign up for my online class. That's just down right scary. Anyway, student don't realize until it's too late that maybe hybrid or online is not the best course format for them. Not only do they struggle with using the technology, but some struggle with the demands of a writing class. It's almost as if they didn't expect that they would have work to do.

My students are having trouble completing just one assignment a week. The assignment is designed to take 2-3 hours to complete. When I designed the assignments, I followed an honors students around the library while he completed the assignments. I timed him and took notes about questions he had about the directions. Most assignments he completed in under an hour. I took that research and adjusted the assignments accordingly. The assignments are designed to guide a student through the research process culminating in an extended documented argumentative research paper. Each step is crucial to completion of the final product, and each assignment builds off the previous one. Students who are prepared do really well. I get a good number of A's, but I get even more drops and F's.

The students who fail or just give up and drop don't do the work. They turn in incomplete assignments. They don't do rewrites or come for additional help. It's like they don't even try. They complain that the assignments are too hard and take too long to complete. Even if an assignment took 5 hours to complete, a whole week is plenty of time to complete it. I'm at a lost as to what to do about all this. I think the only solution is to force students to a study session or tutoring. I'm not sure how I could do that, but that's where I am now with this. I'm struggling with the whole idea that I teach college, but I really can't treat all of them like college students, expecting that they will take the initiative to get help if they need it. It's frustrating indeed.

Educause 2008 was Depressing

2008-10-31T08:34:00.009-07:00

No, don't get me wrong. Educause is a great conference and definitely worth while to fly across the country to sit in on some amazing conference sessions. But when I start thinking about going back to my campus and never having the possibility to experience any of the great tech tools I learned about, I get depressed. We don't even have any IT leaders from our campus that even come to Educause, so I ended up hanging out with all the other IT, VP's, faculty and instructional designers from our sister colleges. What a treat that was as well. I get so jazzed hearing about all the cool things they are doing on their campuses.

I saw an amazing presentation this morning from some guys at Drexel University talking about a lecture capture solution they implemented on their campus:

Increasingly, colleges and universities are adopting lecture capture solutions to increase student satisfaction and learning. Join Drexel University's innovative team and other universities for an in-depth panel discussion focusing on how these institutions have implemented TechSmith's Camtasia Relay to integrate lecture capture into their existing infrastructures simply, quickly, and affordably.

It was amazing to see what they were able to do with Camtasia Relay in such a short period of time and even before the product was released out of beta. It was that easy. What was most amazing to me is that it was the IT guys and the instructional designer who came up with this solution and made it happen for the college. Sigh. Why can't we do things like that?

Our IT department and instructional designer are all caught up in doing other stuff to be able to come up with technology solutions for teaching & learning issues on our campus. I've been there 10 years and I don't think I've ever been asked what I need to help me teach my students better. Why is that? Is it not important because too few of our faculty will utilize it? or is it because only a small number of students will be impacted by the technology initially? Who knows, but it doesn't sound much like forward thinking to me.

Another session I sat in on this morning was Thinking Outside the Virtual Classroom presented by Shannon Ritter, Social Networks Adviser, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University.

Educating our students is certainly our priority, but how can we connect learners to each other in a way that provides more opportunities for personal growth, networking, and connections? By taking advantage of virtual spaces like Facebook, Twitter, and Second Life, we give our students space to learn outside the classroom.

This was a great presentation. Ritter talked about how students in online distance programs are missing out on the college experience and have no real connection to the college because those students don't get the same interactions with their peers like the on campus students do. Many aren't learning together, and they don't have a sense of belonging. So the Penn State World Campus created orientation videos to help give students a sense of belonging. They also use Second Life, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter to help building a sense of community.

This is the same idea behind my decision to use a social network to teach my freshman composition courses in. The network has some of the same features Ritter talks about embedded in the site, like videos, photos, walls, and updates. And the whole idea is to help students feel more connected to their peers, the instructor and the class.

Those were just two of the many ideas I experienced this week at Educause. Surprisingly some of the most valuable information was obtained just from hanging out with peers from the Maricopa district and my Twitter friends from across the country. That community we build is very valuable for sharing experiences and expertise in a wide variety of areas, and their willingness to help each other is refreshing. It would be really nice to have that kind of community on my own campus, a group of like minded faculty who like to come together and share ideas about education and technology. Some day, right?

Check out the live simulcasts from the conference:

Live Simulcasts

Those unable to attend the EDUCAUSE 2008 Annual Conference are invited to watch General, Featured, and Point/Counterpoint Sessions virtually in live simulcasts sponsored by Sonic Foundry, an EDUCAUSE Silver Partner. Watch and ask questions at the Featured and Point/Counterpoint sessions.

Get ready to watch the videos by reading the Mediasite System Requirements and Mediasite Player Tutorial.

Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp

2008-10-10T01:05:00.001-07:00

Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp

From: soul4real, 1 hour ago

Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: multimedia tyca-west)

Presentation for the TYCA-West conference in Clarkdale, AZ. Using pod/vodcasting in freshman composition courses.

SlideShare Link

Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp Live Presentation

2008-10-09T11:47:00.008-07:00

2008 TYCA- West Annual Conference
Reaching Across Communities: Service in and out of the Classroom
Friday, October 10 & Saturday, October 11
Valley Verde Campus of Yavapai College
Clarkdale, Arizona

My presentation, Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp (M-203), begins at 4:30pm on Friday, October 10th. Join me live right here or visit my Presentation Wiki: https://drcoop.pbwiki.com/TYCAWest08

Synopsis: Come see how the new generation of freshman composition courses use podcasting, video, still images and interactivity to engage students in the writing process. Using various Web 2.0 tools, see how podcasting can be used not only as a mode of delivering content, but also as a mode of interaction between faculty and students. Video is used not just as a prewriting activity, but also as a mode of expression and argument. These and many others can be accomplished with little training and inexpensive tools that many students already own.

Come Experience PodCampAZ Nov. 1st & 2nd

2008-09-23T08:23:00.004-07:00

I can still remember last year when I first heard about PodCampAZ. I was so excited only to discover that I had missed it. I was so bummed. But I'm not going to miss it this year, and I'm not going to let you miss it either. So mark your calendars for November 1st and 2nd at UAT in Tempe. VIEW MAP

This year is sure to be another successful podcamp. People still talk about it being one of, if not, the best one. So what is it anyway? Well, it's not all about podcasting, as the web concedes, but if that is your interest, you're sure to find plenty of podcasters abound.

PodCamp is a FREE BarCamp-style community UnConference for podcasters and listeners, bloggers and readers, and anyone interested in New Media. It was held for the first time from September 8-10 in Boston, Massachusetts and is now spreading across the world. (PodCampAZ.com)

Yes, it says free, and it is unlike any conference you may have attended before. That's why you just have to come out and experience it.

Shelley Rodrigo and I, along with ASU professor, Time Barrow, will be presenting on the use of Web 2.0 tools in education. There are many exciting presenters, so you're sure to find something of interest to you. Take a look at the line up: Look Who Is Speaking At PodCamp AZ and I'll see you on November 1st and/or 2nd at PodCampAZ.

Justifying My Teaching Methods

2008-08-27T13:22:00.003-07:00

I had an administrator object to my taking a regular class and turning it into a more dynamic hybrid course out of necessity, so I was forced to respond with this message:

(My Division Chair) searched high and low (that's the story she gave me) for an adjunct to teach the night class, and I'm all she could fine. I haven't taught a traditional class in 7 years. I'm not even sure how anyone can teach an ENG102 class without any technology. It's research. You need a library and you need the internet. How do you teach students to do research sitting in a room with nothing in it but a Smartboard hooked up to nothing. That's a nice smartboard, by the way. Anyhoo, I'm not complaining. I'm just saying. There are 10 students enrolled. 6 of the 10 were actively participating in online activities 2-3 days before the first class meeting tonight. The other 4 were excited about the opportunity after I explained the course to them.

Hybrid just means there's online content and responsibilities involved. I teach all my classes the same way even if they're not "labeled" hybrid, as this one is not. In order to be able to spend one on one time with students, you have to give them activities in class to free up in class time where the instructor is not the focus of the class. Online activities free up in class time so that students get more individual attention. But if the classroom environment doesn't support the activities, you move them outside the classroom.

Let me explain how it works, and I'm sure you'll see there is some benefit in offering a class this way. In this class there are 10 research assignments that require students to use the internet and/or the library (an uncensored internet and a college/public library). Research is independent in that each student has their own topic. Tuesday's class students meet in the classroom where they receive general instruction on the week's research assignment. Hopefully we'll at least have an internet connection and I can hook my own laptop up to that shiny new overhead projector hanging from the ceiling. On Thursday students will work online or at their local library (with several class library visits planned-not sure where yet). When working independently students can ask questions via IM, email or phone to me about their individual project (anytime, not just Thursday night). They can also schedule appointments during this time.

There are also online materials available for students 24/7. For every assignment there are written instructions, a student example and a screencast online demonstrating how to do the assignment. Reinforcement for what I teach on Tuesday. We also have weekly podcasts to reinforce material covered in class and live office hours via Ustream.tv (woot!). In addition, here's the best part. With students working independently on Thursdays, it frees up time to work one on one with students who need individual attention. I can schedule conferences with students during a time that is convenient for us both because it's already scheduled class time (Thursday). Good luck getting night students to come to a conference outside of classtime. It really works well.

That was my email response to why I turned a perfectly "good" course into a much better one. I haven't heard back from the administrator.