lorbethm's blog

This is a post I wrote for a Sloan-C workshop I'm currently participating in. I had to pick a Web 2.0 tool and evaluate it. I thought some of you might find it very useful! :)

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I'm finding creating a screencast using Screencast-o-matic is entirely too easy! It's simply a quick and dirty way to do a full screen capture with mouse motions. I used a Mac with OS X 10 to do my screen capture, as I've had trouble finding anything easy to use for screen captures that also capture mouse movements...or at least not as easy to use as Macromedia Captivate for the PC. My main complaint about S-o-matic is that you can't edit the screen lengths. I have quite a delay on a couple of the slides that in Captivate I can easily re-time. However, for a quick student hint or help, it can't be beat. It's cross-platform (thank you Web 2.0!!) and very simple to use. I found it very intuitive, actually, but I also have experience with Captivate, and the interface reminded me of Captivate a bit in the recording feature.  

Here's the URL to my screen capture. I captured how to create a new page in this wiki, of all things! ;)

The last time I mentioned Student Space, we had just gotten it working on our campus. I should explain something because the SS people were alarmed with one statement I made! The reason it took a while to get it to work on our campus is that we have a VERY secure network...unlike anything the SS folks had ever seen. It took several of us (me on our side, and two or three techs over there) to figure out what was conflicting between the two systems. SS is also very secure and the two systems did NOT like each other. So we finally got it up and running on even student machines. Yay for us! Then the next challenge hit us. Getting the data. Whoa boy. BIG challenge. We are a small community college which is a branch of a much larger university. The university controls all the data and getting to that data is like getting the keys to heaven. Impossible without death and there were a few times I thought it was going to my death! Thanks to Sarab talking and talking and talking to main campus folks, and main campus folks understanding and being able to see our vision for this software, we got the data this week. So now we are getting the data to Student Space and they are getting it ready to import into the program. I'm MOST excited, though, that we will be using the Web Portal. Boy, will that help us with the accreditation of our Online Associate of Arts degree! This is actually the final piece of the puzzle for our accreditation paperwork. We will now be able to do ONLINE interventions and degree audits!! We will be able to track the cohort easily and it will help us to meet the crazy, insane objectives of our pass rate in our grant. I can't wait until this is all live. We will be finishing up the final design and data input this summer so it will be ready to go for our first cohort in the fall. Oh, yeah...I didn't post that our first cohort in the Spring didn't make it. We had a few glitches between the campuses and still lacked some areas we felt should be in place (like what SS is providing!!) before starting the cohort. NOW we will be ready. AND I CAN WRITE THE ACCREDITATION PAPERWORK for the program to be officially an ONLINE Associate of Arts degree!!!

Good morning! Yes, it's been a long time since I've posted anything, and now that I'm posting, I have a favor to ask! I'm writing an article for LERN (http://www.lern.org) about Web 2.0 tools and how they can be used in the classroom. Do you have any favorite Web 2.0 tools? How are you using them? This article's audience is higher education instructors and administrators, but I can use K12 stories, too! If you want to look through some Web 2.0 tools, here is a GREAT link that lists just about every Web 2.0 tool out there! http://www.go2web20.net/

Just leave a comment here or e-mail me at lorie@nmsu.edu. Be sure to tell me what subject area you teach and location, if you can. :)

Thanks for your help!

I'm listening to Anna and Helen's podcast and they are talking about verifying information on the Web. It reminds me of the WebQuests that I have written in the past. http://www.loriemitchell.com/webquests/ I have included a link in my webquests for students to use that will help them verify the truth in their research. It IS so important to teach our children, and yes, even our college students how to verify information. I'm amazed almost daily at how people take information at face value.

My new love is podcasts and I think I just found a new way to do a podcast. I'm hoping I can gather some help with the podcast. If you are interested, let me know!! My idea is to create a podcast with a story with two choices at the end of the story with which way the story should go. At the end of the podcast, the student can go to a website to vote on the way the story should go. I would like to create it in the form of the old radio shows with character voices, sound effects, etc. I would love to see this grow into a huge collaborative effort of people potentially from around the world. If interested, e-mail me at lorie@nmsu.edu. At this point, I'm thinking we should do one for a boy and one for a girl. ages 6-10 ;-)

I just have a second to share a few links. The first is a wiki that my partner-in-crime and I will be working on that describes the work we've done to create our online Associate of Arts degree. The wiki is at: http://broadeningaccess.wikispaces.com/ Please feel free to comment and ask questions. We will be adding to it gradually as we have two years worth of information to add!

I have also added links to my links page: http://www.loriemitchell.com/links.htm. The page includes Web 2.0 links that are just incredible tools to be used in the educational field. I want to highly recommend Women of the Web (WOW2). Their link is: http://womenofweb2.com Even if you aren't a woman, you are invited to participate!

I didn't make it to Educause after all, due to sick kids and me being sick. If anyone has any information to share with me about Educause, I'd love to have it. :-)

Have a great week!

It's been a while, so I thought I'd post one honkin' long blog post... I'll see if I can keep my thoughts organized enough!

First of all, I'm very excited to be heading to Educause in Dallas again this year! I'm really looking forward to all the workshops and networking. I loved it last year in Florida and met some terrific people. I hope to do that again this year! Look me up, especially if you read my blog!! :-)

Secondly, I've finally started using Impatica and I LOVE IT! I'm teaching Computer Lit online this semester and decided to try it with my lectures. So far no student complaints except those who didn't have Java installed. It's incredibly easy to use and is a great tool for those auditory learners who need to hear me tell them what's important. It's allowing me to really have input into the class, too, in a lecture style. I'm enjoying using it and am amazed at how easy it is to use. I highly recommend it!! Here's a link to my Module 1 PowerPoint lecture: http://www.loriemitchell.com/chapter-0-powerpoint/chapter-0-powerpoint.html

I have found an incredible podcast I want to highly recommend. It's by the Tech Chicks and you can find it in iTunes. They give great links for educational technology products, and the cool thing is they try to find FREE things for us to use. They are both in the K12 system, but they've given me some great links for Higher Ed, too. It's a fun, short podcast that will have you writing links like crazy ... until you realize they post them on their website, too! Their website is at: http://www.techchicktips.net  and they have a forum at: http://techchicktips.net/forums/index.php which they are learning to check on a regular basis. ;-) I really hope you will check them out!

Well, after a few years, Student Space is up and running on our campus! We had a few network security issues that we finally worked out this week, and I'm very excited. We will be using this software for Early Alerts, Cohort Tracking, Degree Auditing, and Statistics (IR) to begin with. I'm sure as we really progress with it, our needs and usage will grow. Sarab was wonderful to work with, as was Scott. I loved it when Scott walked in and said, "Oh, I know that error." WHEW!!

We will be starting a new online Associate of Arts degree cohort in January. I'm ready to go out and recruit the students! I've had a large headache trying to make sure every aspect of the student's academic career can be covered online. We are using WebCT as our course content and the courses have been developed and the instructors recruited. We have worked out an agreement with our developmental studies department to provide online tutoriing for the online students using WebCT as the interface. I will be registering the students for their courses (with the help of Student Services) through an online portal. We are creating tutorials and orientations that will be delivered online for our students. We want to make sure they have access to all the services our F2F students have and it's a challenge meeting that objective. As an online student myself in the Master's program at NMSU, I've seen how we are left out in the cold at times, and I want to make sure our students never feel that way. I am hopeful my team is meeting that objective! I will be updating my blog here to track our progress of getting that first cohort going. :)

Can I just say UGH. I never wanted to see this day happen. Macromedia and Adobe are now one... and Adobe came out on top. Macromedia's website now says, "Adobe, formerly Macromedia." A press release has been posted on Adobe's website: Adobe Press Release With this merger will, of course, come changes to my favorite software packages, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Captivate. I know there's nothing that says the changes will be negative, but there is nothing that says they will be positive. I've always been so impressed with Macromedia's customer support and service...I love that I can write in to their wish list and have actual input into the next version of the product. Whatcha wanna bet that input will be taken away? I love PhotoShop, too, and I have taught PageMaker and InDesign, which are all terrific products, but they aren't user-friendly and really intimidate the common user...like my faculty. Now I foresee Macromedia products getting more difficult to use...and they were finally becoming less intimidating! Their user interface has gone through so many changes that benefit the user. I tried to use Adobe's GoLive one time and threw up my hands in confusion and frustration. With Dreamweaver, I was able to sit down and start using it immediately.

This week I have "played" with and learned SoftChalk's LessonBuilder and all I can say is WOW! It's VERY easy to use, even for the non-techie, which is most of my faculty. ;-) It has all kinds of interactive features such as crossword puzzles, matching games, and even allows you to upload images so you can create your own matching. This software will perfectly integrate with WebCT into the content module tool, too! You just zip up the files (LessonBuilder has that feature -- called package lesson) and then upload that one zip file, unzip it and link to the html file in the content module. It really couldn't be easier to use! I know I sound like SoftChalk has paid me off, but using it has made me such an enthusiast of this software. Marc Korchin, a salesman with SoftChalk, gave us a personalized "tour" of the features of LessonBuilder through a webinar using web-ex and Skype, which allowed us to communicate all online instead of having to use a conference call...which he figured out just for us, too!

My favorite features of LessonBuilder are as follows:

• Easy lesson creation that creates an html file without knowing HTML.

Well, I finally got the crazy TikiWiki installed on my loriemitchell.com site. What a headache! The main problem is setting up new users. I don't know how to let users only have access to certain things without giving them admin rights. I finally just threw up my hands and gave all of Title V Admin rights so they could get in and play with some articles I posted. I'm still not sure how to use it instructionally, either, but I just posted asking that very question to the INSTTECH list. Hopefully some people can give me good feedback!

I found a new WebQuest creator today at webquest.org. Either it's new, or I've been missing it for months! It's called QuestGarden and is located at WebQuest QuestGarden. You just create your own login, then you can easily create your own WebQuest. Totally cool and totally holds your hand to do it. Even the most novice of WebQuest creators can now create their own WebQuest!

I'm now playing with two new software packages and downloaded 30 day trial versions of both: SoftChalk and Impatica. I've been TRYING to play with Impatica for months now (poor Matt, my software rep is about ready to kill me, I think!)...I now have a specific project in mind, so I'm going to work on it. We'll see what happens. SoftChalk is very impressive in creating learning objects and quizzes based on those learning objects. It even exports the HTML file! I need to play with it more before I say anything else, but I was very impressed at the start. It's available for both Mac and Windows platform, as is Impatica for PowerPoint. Here are the sites: SoftChalk and Impatica