Screen Capture Tool - with Audio

Many instructors want to use new social tools and media, but worry that their students will struggle with accounts, features, understanding and options when faced with learning a new technology. Now, there's Jing, a free screen capture tool that allows you to shape and capture either a simple PNG screen shot, or an animated audio narration saved in SWF format. Very simple, straightforward and fast to produce visual examples and step-by-step instructions.

Jing Pro ($14.95 a year) allows you to capture as MPG4 and to upload straight to YouTube. It also strips all Jing branding from your material. Free can't be beat, and Jing Pro is worth the very small cost if you'll be doing a lot of documentation and want to make the most of it. Uploading to YouTube is helpful, as you will need to determine where to store your images and video if producing SWF videos with the freeware version. I put them up on my Website, but it is a few more steps. See my quick, easy video on sharing RefWorks folders.

Another BlackBoard Post: Assessment

The main reason so many learning designers embrace the new social media options out on the Web is they work well. They're easy to use, intuitive, collaborative, engaging...all the things we would want from e-learning tools. All the things we don't have in our current course management tools.

Anyone familiar with BlackBoard (and most of the other CMS/LMS still out there) deeply knows the love/hate emotions felt in daily use. Klunky, slow, hard to customize, with deep engagement tools hidden under ugly default skins and too-many-clicks. OK, let's accept that and move on, talking only about affordance and value. And today, let's talk about assessment. 
Online testing is an option that can change the way our students look at testing. But only if the instructor is open to that shift. BlackBoard provides the options for:
- allowing multiple attempts
- choosing to record the highest, last, first, or average score from attempts
- provide feedback on each wrong answer
- randomize questions
- and more.
The instructor has so many options now on creating not just simple assessments, but 'mastery learning experiences' for the student. By letting the student take the test multiple times, we're encouraging them to rethink material they didn't understand, and creating a support environment (rather than judgement)for their learning.

Sadly, many instructors miss the opportunity to make assessment part of the learning because creating tests in BlackBoard is NOT intuitive. So let's walk through a few simple, semi-hidden choices.

Tests are created in test manager within the Control Panel. BlackBoard has a decent help file on options and actions here (under Assessment).

Less Basic: You can also create a large pool of possible questions, used across tests or courses, and import them into your test. Pool questions have no point value on creation and are assigned points when added to your test.

Before creating the questions, do take a look at the 15+ types of questions that Blackboard supports (described under assessment home page). All questions are self-grading, except the essay question. For this question, students will receive a message after submission that their exam needs grading.

Details:
You've created a test. It's ready to go. Go where? Ah, that was never clear, was it? We deploy a test in a very different way than we created the test.

Deploying a test:
Pick the area where the students will go to take the test. You can put an announcement up that test is available, but you still need to choose where. You can link from the announcement, but link to where? Many instructors create a folder in Course Documents, Assignments or even off the root navigation menu. Wherever you decide, go to that area, and in Edit View, click on Test.

From this view, a list of your undeployed tests will appear, and choose the one you wish to deploy. You now make choices from all the deployment options by clicking on Modify Test Options. This is where you choose from Multiple attempts, amount of time allowed, dates/times available, randomizing questions (not different questions, just order of questions), etc. Go down the page, and answer each question/click box according to your choices.

Some practical advice on deployment:
- Don't choose 'Force Completion'. It often causes the test to freeze on a student, doesn't allow them back in, etc. Setting time allowed will provide similar control, without the bugs.
- Setting Presentation Mode for questions "One at a Time" makes it VERY hard for students to pace themselves. Do consider this in selecting. Submit, and the test will be available in the area designated, for the times you've chosen.

More options: Only in the latest version has BlackBoard allowed instructors to set grade for highest/lowest/first/average attempt. Earlier, only the last attempt was stored. To allow students to earn their highest score (thus encouraging them to try again, instead of 'holding' at 9 out of 10), you have to go yet another place.
Open the grade center, go to the column for the deployed test. IF you set test for multiple attempts allowed, a new option will appear under Column Information. This is a pull-down box for "Score attempts using". Here is the hidden set of choices for allowing highest/average/first attempt. Hidden, but valuable teaching tool.

Grading/Viewing: In the gradebook, a pencil mark will appear for each learner/completed submission. Rest your cursor on the exclamation mark, and a 'grade details' option appears. Click on that. Another page appears, which allows you to 'View Attempt'. If you have an essay question to grade, or want to give feedback to the student, this is where you would do that.

Close your books: One other option available at ASU is the Respondus LockDown Browser. For instructors asking for a way to ensure that students don't go to the Web or other resources to look up answers during the exam, here's a way to 'lock' them into the test window until they've submitted. This also prevents them from copying/pasting the test and sharing with another student. Enable this from the Control Panel on any deployed test.

So many choices. So many options to design an exam that:
- helps the student learn
- makes it easy for you to grade
- makes it easy for you to give feedback (auto and personal)
- ensures that tests aren't copied or shared

Let me know if you have questions, ideas or comments on use of online tests for even better learning and teaching!

"Is our students learning?" (GWB)

The fact is, in higher education we really don't know. Unlike the standards of measure now being applied in K-12 through No Child Left Behind (draconian or controversial as they may be thought), no measures of success are demanded of higher education. Enrollment numbers, how smart students were before they arrived, how successful a football team...all are the current and inappropriate measures of value in today's colleges and universities.

So students continue to accrue previously unimaginable debt and nothing except the cost of an education seems to change in America. Many in HE have been waiting for a collapse similar to the shocking changes made to general medical care. We asked the medical industry to change, they didn't, and HMOs swept in and changed health care from the outside. One wonders who/what will have the authority to act as education's HMO? Private, for-profits like University of Phoenix with 225,000+ online students in 7 years? Community colleges asking for the ability to offer bachelor's degrees in a new 'communiversity' model? A public fed up with an institution that recognizes no customer and no obligation to serve? Higher education should step to the plate. It has a wealth of brain power that should be capable of a more thoughtful approach to solving its serious problems.

Kevin Carey asked some great questions recently about what it would take for HE to wake up and begin considering needed change. Seems everyone on the outside recognizes that HE is no longer offering the education the student and society wants or needs.
Seems if we put our heads together, those on the inside could come up with some ideas on how to drive down cost, improve access, increase desperately needed, new 21st century skills. Sadly, it also seems that we need to do it when our HE leaders (dressed in their finery/living the high life/increasing tuition AND lower division class size/jetting around the world)aren't looking.

At least Bill and Melinda Gates know a problem when they see it. And unlike our fat and happy HE leaders, the Gates Foundation wants to solve it. I think the thoughtful, working folk of HE should submit ideas to help them do just that.

Why we need a change in Washington

Recession. Health care. Women's rights to their body and their privacy. America's decreasing reputation, influence and place in the world. Our education system. The environment. Belief in the need for alternative energy sources. Thoughtful policies on changing the economic tailspin. We've all heard it, and we understand the very difficult choices ahead for the issues of our nation.
But the media is increasingly quiet about another nation many miles away. The death count continues to rise, the medical injuries are astronomic, and still John McCain claims our right to occupy Iraq for another hundred years.

Lest we forget, because the numbers and the caskets and carnage are being kept from us by an 'embedded' media:
American dead: +4,000
American wounded/damaged/maimed forever: +30,000
* data from globalsecurity.org as of Oct 2008

Our domestic problems are in the forefront of election news and ideas, but it would be a heartless cruelty not to remember, and track, and understand what we've done in Iraq and to Iraq. May God forgive us. May the citizens of Iraq forgive us, including the 50,000+ marching in the streets of Baghdad yesterday, demanding we leave now. May the world forgive us. And even if they don't, may we begin to take action to leave the oil and the grief and the occupation behind so that we can begin to forgive ourselves.

A Short Post on Palin and the Big Picture

This is a Blog on innovation technologies and use in higher education, but speaking on the Viet Nam war, MLK said "A time comes when silence is betrayal. " 

Now is one of those times. Invasion. Recession. Poverty. Homelessness. A government that protects the wealthy and allows New Orleans to disappear. A leadership that permits so many Americans to go without the simplest essentials while making enemies of the world. 

I watched the VP debate this evening and I am having trouble coming to terms with Sarah. She distracts me. Leaves me speechless. She's so sure and so grounded in the lack of need for knowledge. There is much of what she IS that I respect: funny, grounded, earthy, determined, energetic, charming, folksy, real. Pretty and rugged doesn't hurt. Ooh Alaska! 

What causes deep conflict is that she doesn't respect the things I hold inherent: intellect, study, discovery, knowledge, deep thought, ambiguity and wonder. She's read 'all' the newspapers but can't name one? Can't name one supreme court decision except Roe V Wade? Has no idea what the Bush Doctrine might be? Talks gibberish when asked direct questions? Doesn't suffer doubt or considerations of others' ideas? Doesn't worry about the big city people that now live in tents and lost everything while her family became comfy on Alaska bounty and oil revenue returns?

Sarah: this is not a game. America is hurting here!

MLK was right. Silence is betrayal when our country needs the voice of the people to speak up, speak out, be heard. I am an American and a woman and I admire Sarah Palin.  

But I do matter, and so do the homeless in tent cities and 'East coast' city dwellers SP dismisses with her crinkly grimace. 

I matter and I have a voice. I will soon be "Reduced in Force" (laid off) by a University I served for 17 years. My city has 20,000 empty homes in foreclosure and an anticipated 26,000 more to come in the next few months. We are a big city and we matter. We live in the desert and we matter. 

I am voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden in November.

I Still Love/Adore/Worship Google: Spreadsheet LookUps

Despite a few stumbles in the recent past (especially the offensive Knol, for which I won't even provide link), the Google kids astound me on a regular basis. There is so much, coming so quickly, I don't even have time to explore a new, disruptive/transformative tool or service before they provide another. And yet, getting under the hood, finding the deep features or integration gems within these tools, is where the real beauty of Google resides.

Here's my latest, which I'm quickly discovering that most of my high-tech friends are equally in the dark over. We should have intuited the possibilities, given that it's GOOGLE providing the service, and realized that search logic would be embedded, but we're not as smart as Google so we never imagined how...or how beautifully.

So,Google Spreadsheets provides the creator (you) with the ability to do a Google Search (Lookup function) on another cell. If I put "George Washington" in cell A1, I can do a dynamic look up of his birthday in A2 with a function =GoogleLookup(A1,"place of birth") . Here's Google's explanation of the function GoogleLookup. After it does the lookup, it also stores the sites where the information was found and verified. Rest your cursor on the response to see them.

Tell me, how cool is that? Wait! It gets better. I can then populate cells for that column with like information. When I click on the cell holding "George Washington", a small blue box appears in the lower right corner. Just as with Excel, you could pull down from that box and populate the column with many, many cells filled with our beloved first president. BUT, unlike Excel, when you hold down the CTRL key as you pull down through the column, Google will populate with other instances/objects/things that are 'like George Washington'.
Give it a try, and depending on how deep down into the column you pull your cursor, you'll see our other beloved (and not so beloved) presidents appear. Hand-enter a number of cells to better narrow the data. (eg: Enter Los Angeles and Phoenix if you want large cities; entering just Phoenix will return cities in AZ. Google chooses its own definition of 'like' and it may not be as same as yours if it doesn't have enough data).

Here's the thing...Google is NOT as smart as you. So you'll have to check the data returned, even if you're specific. I needed to erase "Benjamin Franklin" from the data on U.S. presidents. He's 'like George Washington", but not a president. I knew that, Google didn't.

Same with cities and populations. I created a list of American cities 'like Los Angeles" (SF, NY, Chicago, etc) and then did a LookUp on population. Google nailed it, but instead of population for Philly, it gave me "10,882 sq/miles"). Huh?

It also gave me the correct population for San Antonio, but doing a LookUp on state in another column, it gave me Puerto Rico. Huh? Not like, unlike, except in Google's flat world.

Thus, a thing of beauty but only as smart as the metatags. A great case for the need to infuse information literacy into the expected outcomes of 21st century education. And a great example of why we love Google in emergent learning, but desperately need a digital literacy curriculum that focuses on critical thinking, evaluation, meaning and the notion of ownership over mere acceptance. Teach them to use the information at their fingertips, and then to evaluate the returns.

Here's the demo sheet, if you want to see results in action: Google Spreadsheet w/Lookups and populated columns. You must try it yourself to actually get in there and wander around in the data and functions, though. Publishing takes away the dynamic aspects of seeing the functions, markers, references, etc. And owning and creating your data is much more fun. For those of you watchin the stock market tumble, check out how you can use Google's related GoogleFinance function to look up stocks, current prices, track the tumbles, etc.

Hey, not until I published my spreadsheet did I see that Google adds citation mark and all the referenced LookUps at the bottom of the document on publishing. It justs gets better and better. Now, let's start worrying about a world where Google owns the information channels, tools and data services of the digital age. Somebody start creating applications and services as beautiful as Google's. Please.

Meta-Reflection in a time of jest politics

Can't help dwelling on David Foster Wallace and how much he contributed to my understanding of how seldom we experience deep reflection. Hit and run thought is the currency of the constant, tuned in & digital moment. Reflection was DFW's way of being in the world, brought on perhaps by sadness and worry, making meaning through thought rethought annotation and explanation.



He could make me crazy, wishing for an easier read. And he could make me revel in the wonder and humor and depth and 'smartness' and dogged pursuit of theme. And I am so much the less for our loss of him.

So, I'm driven to stop the course of my day and think about thinking about thought on a topic of meta-reflection. Here's where it leads me:
- I'm out of step and a woman not of this time. Evidence: I took one of those inane work-smart personality tests recently. What did I learn? I should work on assertiveness, participation in social activities, and less waffling and subjectivity in my decision making. Bleccchhhh. If I had wanted to be Caribou Barbie, I'd maneuver a place on some rigid, assertive, only-our-way platform. My quiet, perhaps obsessive reflections and desire to get it right - even if it looks like waffling/revising/annotating/allowing multiple views has served me well in technology and so I guess this is here (somewhere) that I'll stay. If I had DFW's talent, I'd be writing 1000+ page tomes on the nature of it all explored in small moments and large themes, but instead...I'll think about designing perfect online courses where every voice is heard and every mind constructs their own understanding at their own pace in their own way. I think DFW would approve.

And I'll ignore workplace profiling that suggests women like Sarah Palin are the new role model: uncompromising, non-collaborative, "won't blink" (don't her eyes hurt??), no time or interest in her children (I know, none of my business...consequences be damned), mean-spirited, take-no-prisoners, & small. Not small-town for I've been there and done that...prefer it to city life...just small & small-minded. And I don't care how successful it makes one, man or woman, I want a quieter, more reflective mind and a kinder, bigger, more doubtful life.

I want to take the time to read writers like DFW, but sadly, (and here's my point IF I have one) there is no other writer like DFW and there is now no DFW. And as interesting as this current election is turning out to be in examination of presence over ideas, it hurts to think about it. We need tools to do it. Here's one from the Bamboo Project Blog: Debriefing Yourself.

A gift to all the hard, fast, mean-spirited folk that didn't have time or interest in the meta-thought and ideas of David Foster Wallace. Be careful when reading. You may wind up changing your mind. But, the good news is that, unlike your present state, you may also change the minds and lives of others.