I thought I would “cheat” and make my blog posting this week an easy one. For those of you who do not know, Donna Guadet, Mesa CC’s fabulous instructional technologist, decided she missed the classroom and moved over to Scottsdale CC as a full-time math instructor. To allow MCC to run a full search to replace our instructional technologist position, I will be the acting instructional technologist for the 2007-8 academic year.

I just finished five years, full-time, in the English, Humanities, and Journalism department teaching writing and media studies classes. My scholarly interests generally include the interface between technology and humanity. My various scholarly projects are usually about teaching and learning with technology, technologically mediated professional development, and cross-media narrative studies. I have been blogging about my various scholarly interests for the past year and a half and just upgraded to my own domain.

Besides helping with workshops, course design, and various programs in the CTL, I will also be working on my own interests of scholarship at the two-year college (specifically how do we seek funding and do it). I will also be working on revising the ETL (excellence in teaching and learning) courses.

So swing by if you:

need help with some funky teaching and learning technology,
want to chat about redesigning your course,
like to share what projects you are working on, and/or
just need a place to hide for a while!

10. The first thing you think about when you get in a car is returning all those phone calls you haven’t had time to return.

9. You never watch a TV show at its scheduled time (go Tivo!)

8. While in the customer service waiting line, you call the customer service number on your cell phone and get faster service.

7. You use the alarm on your cell phone to wake up in the morning.

6. You regularly email yourself (and maybe even respond!).

5. When you say or do something you didn’t mean, you think “Undo.”

4. You use Google to research answers to all you unknown questions.

3. You don’t forward the “please forward this to 10 of your friends” messages to your friends (unless they really are profound).

2. You are regularly disappointed that you can’t surf while driving.

And…the number 1 sign of a modern techno-geek…

1. You send yourself a voice mail message then, when listening to your voice mail, you don’t recognize the caller!

Google wants to know from college students how they are using email to be more productive in their lives on campus. Students can take the Google Survey online: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/landing_pages/apps_edu.html

Pass the word along to your students….the survey is definitely slanted to give useful into to Google about their Gmail service. But, some other useful info could come of it as well. MCC is going to be switching students over to Gmail very soon, so it might be helpful to expose them to the survey.

Responses (from 14 MCC faculty) to a request for top three favorite podcasts (most are available inside iTunes)…if you did not get a chance to submit your favorites, you can add them in the comments area below:

Technology Related

• BuzzOutLoud (http://www.bol.cnet.com/)
• SlashdotReview (http://slashdotreview.com/)
• Twit - (http://www.twit.tv/TWiT) - This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte and guests
• TEDtalks - (http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/)

(more…)

Article Link

Hmmm…interesting. This research seems to lend support for the idea NOT to use PowerPoint as a way to place bulleted text on the board but rather images and diagrams and animations that illustrate the idea. So, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and get rid of PowerPoint. Let’s use it in ways that stimulate the brains of our students not ways that overload their brains and make learning more difficult.

Every class has an official end date that is programmed into the Student Information System (SIS). The live courses you have created in WebCT are automatically deleted two weeks after the official SIS end date. You will receive messages from TSS alerting you to the impending deletion of your course and the date. During the two week window between the end of the course and the deletion of your course, there are some procedures you should follow:

a) Create a development course from your live course - this will save your content for use in future semesters
b) Download and save student data (gradebook, mail, discussions, assignments) to your local computer- doing so will enable you to access student data quickly
c) Archive your course - preserves all content and student data in the event of a grade dispute, however, format is not easily accessible and requires intervention of a WebCT administrator

Steps for all of these procedures are located on the CTL web page at: http://ctl.mc.maricopa.edu/_resources/webct/end_course_procedures.html

Listen in on CTL Podcast with the Professor Episode 3 as Rod Christian, Business Faculty from Red Mountain, discusses his approach to providing feedback on student writing in his Business Communications classes.

Recording notes: The audio for this podcast was captured using portable podcast technologies (iPod video device and Micromemo recorder). The sound was edited the podcast was created using Garage Band.

 

 CTL Podcasts With the Professor - Rod Christian [16:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you ever have the need to reset an exam attempt for an individual student or students, follow these steps:

1. From the Teach Tab of your course, click Assessment Manager
2. Pull down the Action Link next to the assessment in question and choose “View Submissions”
3. Next to the date and time of a student attempt, pull down the Action Link and choose “Reset Attempt”
4. You will receive a pop-up message asking if you are sure you want to reset. Click “OK”.

[Note 1: If the assessment is set up to allow multiple attempts and you want to reset all attempts for a particular student, check the box next to the student’s name then click “Reset Entire Submission” then click “OK” at the popup.]

[Note 2: If the assessment submission date has passed, be sure to Edit Properties in your assessment to reflect new dates. Otherwise, your “reset” student will not be able to access the assessment.]

Fantastic use of blogs for education…tracking your movement through the maze of an academic conference session. “Walk” with Shelley Rodrigo, MCC faculty of English, this week as she attends and documents her experience at the CCCC conference.

Grading the same assessment question for all students in you class can help ensure that your grading is consistent. While this process is fairly easy to execute with paper/pencil exams not so the case in WebCT until the most recent release. To grade all instances of a single question, follow these steps:

1. From your course, access the Assessment Manager from the Teach Tab.
2. Using the action link next to your assessment of choice, select “Grade All Attempts of a Single Question”
   
3. Using the action link next to the assessment question of choice, select “Grade all Attempts of this Question”
4. A list of student names with links to Attempts will appear. Click the Attempt for the first student, grade the question, then click Save and View Next Attempt.
5. Click Done when all students are finished.