Day 11: Smart Pen or Voice Recorder?

I spent today's hours trying out the new Phillips Voice Recorder that Marcie found online and ordered for me. With her help, I was able to get it set up fairly easily and get the recording uploaded to Blackboard. The trick is to use Firefox, NOT Explorer! I've asked Celeste if it would be possible to get 2 more recorders. If so, I can then assign Smart Pens to 3 groups, the Phillips to the other 3 groups in my Grammar 5 class this term. They have an upcoming assignment wherein they will be interviewing faculty and staff on campus, using the simple past and present perfect. Since I have a few speaking assignments in mind for the hybrid I'm working on, it would be wonderful to test both devices to see which one is more user friendly, not only for recording but for uploading to BB as well.

I also emailed Leon today to see if he can meet with me this week to discuss the possibilities of setting up a proper ISF page that contains public, administrative, and student areas.

Day 8

Steve was in today and was able to help me sort out the calendar question. To have an Assignment show up on the Course Calendar, you don't add the assignment directly to the calendar (although that would seem the most logical!). Instead, add an Assignment link to the Content Area. To add the assignment to the Assignment area, click on Assessments, and enter the pertinent information, being sure to include the Due Date. Et voilà! It appears on your Course Calendar!

Also, an FYI for those of you who haven't already figured this out: Open My HCC through Firefox, and you'll be amazed at the difference in speed.

The remainder of the day was spent in a very interesting discussion with Steve, Jody, and Sophia regarding the use of e-texts and how best to gather information on their use, feedback from instructors, and how to market the idea. Steve and I also discussed ways to approach the idea of the an All-College Day presentation with April on how to shift from a teacher-centered classroom to a learner-centered one. As soon as I hear back from the ACD folks on whether 1 or 2 sessions is being offered, I'll proceed with the proposal or put it on the backburner for the spring in-service.

Days 9 and 10

This week has been spent on trying to actually get some assignments uploaded to the course. I have been going around in a few circles trying to get a handout with short answers completed and uploaded. In the end, it's mainly a matter of having to make sure every box is read carefully (yes, I was being a student!) and checked or unchecked. The handouts still need to be created in Tests and then deployed to the area in which you wish to have the student find them, in my case a link called Assignments. So, I finally have one of them uploaded. I went in as Test Student and completed it. Although the correct answers display, they don't display until the student has completed the entire handout. It would be far better to have the answers show up on each entry so that the student doesn't complete the entire assignment and discover at the end that she has done it all incorrectly. On Tuesday I will try to find a way to make that happen.

Yesterday I met with Rachel; she had some very good ideas that I will start working on next week, namely adding the Lesson Objectives and Expected Outcomes at the beginning of each lesson. I had totally forgotten about Brenda telling us about that. Rachel also endorsed a course she took over the summer, and I will try to find out what's being offered over the next few weeks. I think I'm now at a point where it would make more sense to me.

Day 7: The Calendar

I decided to start on working on placing a calendar on the class site. Strangely, when I opened the Course Tools and the Course Calendar, it populated itself with the EAP Lab Schedule. ????? After playing around with it, I discovered the same thing was happening with all of my courses. I called Susan, who told me to uncheck everything. More ????? Sure enough, on the left panel of the calendar, there was a place to uncheck everything:  Institutional and Personal. Tada!

So, now the challenge is getting the calendar built. I tried to place an assignment on the calendar, but because it insists on a Start time as well as an End time, I couldn't sort it out. Checking All day Event didn't work as it still needs a Start Day. (For some reason, it defaulted to a day in 1969. ??????)

Brain needs to reboot, and I will tackle it again on Thursday. It will probably be easy-peasy then; I've found that walking away and returning with a fresh perspective does wonders for making progress! And the wonderful thing about getting to work on this as a priority is that these little bumps are just that: bumps, not the stumbling blocks they posed while I was trying to do this in my "free time". :)

Day 6 - Uploading Files

Today I tackled the syllabus...again. Having a few days away from it, the format hit me as unreadable for the students. I took Steve's advice and placed the face-to-face dates together in a table, the online assignments and due dates in a separate table. Et voilà! It will no doubt change a few more times before January, but I now feel as though I have a good rough draft to work from.

I decided that it would be best to move the creation  of the  Tutorial for On-line Usage to the very end of the process (duh!), and instead skipped ahead to upload the syllabus to the Content Area as a linked file. Then I set about getting the next item on my time table completed: uploading a Content area for Handouts. Done!

Next on the list is creating the first writing practice with noun clauses. I want this be a combination of an explanation and examples from me, followed by their completing an exercise that will asses their work as they go along. This will require the use of Lectora, so it's time to see when Marcie can meet with me to help me get started.

Day 5 - Smart Pen, Dumb Me

I spent the better part of 2 hours today trying to get my Smart Pen set up, do a test recording and save it to Evernote. Everything seems to have been done correctly, but I cannot get my recording over to Evernote. The concept is very cool indeed, and after plugging onward  when frustration hit (I was totally stumped at one point and going in circles; haven't I seen this page before?),  I just kept trying, re-reading the tutorial, and hoping I would stumble upon the answer. It turns out that it takes a good long while for files to show up (an hour for 30 seconds of audio).

While it would be easy to dismiss this as a day wasted, I see it as finally having had the chance to try out the Pen and really see if it is a viable option for students to use as a recording device to upload to instructors. It is not.

However...it may prove to be of use down the road as an instructor tool for supplying students with supplemental material (class notes or the like).  In the meantime, Marcie is on the hunt for something that requires less setup and steps, so that students can do speaking assignments outside of class.