TeachTech

It is time to get ready to get ready as we work towards the start of the 2008-2009 academic year! There are ton of teachtech related sessions this year during our in-service. Here are a few of them:

Best Practices for Teaching Online - A faculty panel discussion (Goins Auditorium)
Friday, August 15 9:45 am

What you need 2 learn about the NEW Desire2Learn (Goins Auditorium)
Wednesday, August 13 10:45 am and 3:30 pm

myPellissippi Overview (MC 146)
Wednesday, August 13 10:45 am and 3:30 pm
Friday, August 15 9:45 am

Tomorrow’s Gonna be a Banner Day (ER 327)
Wednesday, August 13 10:45 am and 2:15 pm

NoodleTools: Plagiarism Prevention tool (ER 147)
Wednesday, August 13 2:15 pm

Making the Transition from Office 2003 to Office 2007 (ER 327)
Friday, August 15 9:45 am
Friday, August 22 10:30 am

Communicate/Create/Share: Using Web 2.0 in your teaching (AL 151)
Friday, August 22 9:00 am

PLUS - the D2L Open lab is scheduled for Friday, August 22 from 1 pm - 3 pm.

Memphis FUSION 2008-1.JPG

Originally uploaded by AJ Wms

The (Not So) Stupid D2L Tricks session at the FUSION 2008 conference in Memphis was pretty well attended. Before I started, I asked everybody to give me some hand signal representing their state. I see T for Tennessee, W for Wisconsin and O for Ohio but I think there are others in there as well. As for the tricks, well, you all heard them first here!!!

The other cool thing is that I got meet one of my Flickr pals in person. We started following each other’s photos after last year’s FUSION conference and then, this year, met up in person and recognized each other from our pictures. Fun!!!

If you are not able to go to the FUSION 2008: Desire2Learn Users Conference next month, here’s something to consider.

There is a Hitchhikr site created now.

Hitchhikr, you say? What is that?

From their site:

we can’t always make it to the conferences we need to attend to mix with the people we need to see — face-to-face. This is why Hitchhikr was invented, to provide you with a virtual space where, thanks to blogs, podcasts, and RSS, we can connect, share, respond, and grow knowledge out beyond the place and time of the event. Here are some tutorials on how to tap into the emerging technologies that make Hitchhikr possible.

So, you can visit the page and see all of the blog postings, images, YouTube videos, etc as folks are at the conference and share what they are seeing and learning in a variety of ways.

Could be a fun experiment!!!

Photo attribution: Next Stop the top by lo2

Technorati Tags: d2lfusion08 fusion2008d2l

We were so happy to read the latest Respondus Update and see this article:

Respondus Update

In an update that will be released soon, Respondus will be more tightly integrated with Desire2Learn so you can upload your quizzes directly to your courses as well as “pull” them out of D2L for editing, exporting, etc.

Yay! That is great news!!!

Something to add to your summer reading list:

The second edition of Terry Anderson’s Theory and Practice of Online Learning (yes, youc can download the entire book for free - props to Terry for offering this option - entire book in .pdf). The book is also available for purchase. Anderson is a professor and Canada Research
Chair in Distance Education at Athabasca University. Topics include

• social media,
• philosophies of technology,
• mobile learning,
• cost decisions about technology,
• libraries,
• learner support
• and more.

Also, the great folks at the Common Craft Show have posted another “In Plain English” video. This time, they cover Social Media. If you are curious about all this fuss you hear about social media, student created content, etc…spend 4 minutes to get a really great and easy to follow understanding of what Social Media is all about.

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

As we move more and more into a solid Web 2.0 world (and probably are already in the bleeding edge of Web 3.0) - the ease of publishing and media creation with these kinds of tools and sites is astounding.

This means that student created content will be easier to produce and easier to share both in our courses and outside of the courses. As an example, here is a YouTube video from one of our recent International Studies trips through the Tennessee Consortium for Interational Studies (TnCIS).

We bring you: Set Dancing in Ireland:

ETS is happy to announce that we have added another tool to our Faculty Toolbelt of instructional technology. Starting this semester, instructors have the option of requiring the use of Respondus LockDown Browser (LDB) for tests, quizzes and exams in the Desire2Learn (D2L) environment for their online students.

From the Respondus website:

Respondus LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Desire2Learn. When students use Respondus LockDown Browser they are unable to print, copy, go to another URL, or access other applications. When an assessment is started, students are locked into it until they submit it for grading. (Supports Windows and Mac OS X 10.3.9+.)

In a nutshell, for any quiz in the D2L Quiz tool, you can check a box that requires it to only be available in the LDB. The browser is being installed in the open lab for the summer and is scheduled to be installed in the classroom labs for the Fall. Online students can download the browser from the support site so they will have it in place for any required exams.

One important note: the LDB will NOT be in the Testing Center as it conflicts with other software needed in the Center. Since the Testing Center provides a proctored environment, this should not be a problem.

For more information, visit the ETS Faculty Toolbelt page or join a D2L Quizzes workshop this summer at ETS!

Title: D2L Training: Discussions
Location: GN 232
Description: A look at the discussions tool in depth
Start Time: 10-00-00
Date: 2008-05-22
End Time: 11-30-00

Title: D2L Training: Content
Location: GN 232
Description: We will look at the Content tool in depth
Start Time: 14-00-00
Date: 2008-05-22
End Time: 15-30-00