The most interesting presentation I attended at a recent BlackBoard conference was about a comparison of screencasting applications, or mainly TechSmith Camtasia vs. Adobe Captivate. The speaker serves on the advisory board of both companies and he offered an item by item comparison as well as demonstration of these two products. In the end, Camtasia seems to get a better total score, while Captivate scores higher on many other parameters.

If you have not used either of this, both applications help you to capture your screen activities and turn the recording into a movie file.

I have used both applications, and here is what I found:

PowerPoint Recording:

Camtasia is horrible for PowerPoint presentations. It would have to record your voice narration all at once. If you mess up somewhere in the middle, (or worse, at the end), you?ll find it hard to edit because the audio and PowerPoints slides are mixed up into one giant movie file from the very beginning. You cannot delete one without deleting the other. It simply does not have multiple tracks. No, there is not much you can do to edit. You?ll probably need to start all over again. If you are like me, who doesn’t happen to be the world?s greatest speaker, you’ll find it a nightmare to be starting all over again every time I say some wrong things during the presentation. Captivate 3, allows you to record audio slide by slide, which makes it so much easier to revise.

Tutorials:

Captivate has more bells and whistles which can make a file look really professional. For instance, you can add buttons, callouts to your file. You can edit any of these with ease. But Captivate also produces blank slides and redundant screen actions which can be a nuisance to edit. Camtasia just records everything that goes on on your screen like a video camera. If you are comfortable with yourself narrating your screen movements all at one stretch and you don?t need any editing, then Camptasia is a better choice.

Output:

Camtasia scores higher in terms of its flexibility in output. You can publish it as a whole bunch of file formats, including .mov formats as well as flash files, while Captivate can only export into Flash, and Word files, which is fine in most cases since flash files play in over 97% of world?s computers, but it is not possible to play it on a mobile device such as an iphone. However, there?s got to be a way to convert such files! I am sure there is some genius who have figured out a solution to convert flash file into a movie. At the very least you can re-record the flash file presentation using Camtasia! Also, please notice that Camtasia movies are usually rather large in size. Captivate files (flash) are usually smaller.

Editing:

As mentioned earlier, Camtasia doesn?t allow much editing. There are more things you can manipulate in Captivate, but that will take some learning.

Close Captioning:

Not easy with either of this. The speaker at BlackBoard 08 conference suggested that it is easier to do captioning with Camtasia, but when I experimented, I find it very time-consuming. I would rather use an alternative file (Word for instance) go with the movie file to fulfill ADA compliance requirements. After all, ADA requires ?alternative representation? , and close captioning does not have to be the only choice.

So, what exactly would I recommend? It looks like that there are two major types of needs that can be addressed with these two softwares: producing audio lectures (based on PowerPoint files) and producing tutorials. I would recommend Captivate for the former, and Camptasia for the latter for our specific needs.

My somewhat evil hope is that one of them gets purchased by the other so that we can hope for a ?Next Generation? screencasting application that offers the best of both.

Examples:

Here is a tutorial produced with Camtasia by Director Tamie Willis on the library web site (This may take a little longer to download as it is a movie file)

• Library Site

If you’ll excuse my accent, here is a presentation produced with Captivate based on a PowerPoint file (you’ll need to click the play button to proceed from slide to slide) produced with Captivate:

• I taught my dog to whistle: a presentation on design principles

You’ve got the iPhone, now what? See the following list of things that you can do to make it a powerful learning tool:

• 10 ways to make your ipod a better learning gadget

• 10 New iPhone Apps for the Thinking Person

• 20 most useful utilities for iPod

More such resources will be bookmarked with the North Institute Del.cio.us account

In 2003, New York Times declares Writing in Schools Is Found Both Dismal and Neglected.

Five years later, would the same conclusions apply?

A recent study by Pew Internet and American Life Project and the College Board?s National Commission on Writing finds the following data about the writing habits of teens:

• 86% of them believe good writing is important to success in life;
• 93% of them write for themselves;
• 58% of all them maintain some sort of social networking profile;
• 50% of them say they sometimes use informal writing styles instead of proper capitalization and punctuation in the school assignment;
• 38% of them say they sometimes use informal writing styles instead of proper capitalization and punctuation in their school assignment such as ?LOL? (which stands for ?laugh out loud?).
• 25% of tehem have used emoticons in schoolwork.

Not all bad news as people have predicted again and again these years.

While the use of emoticons in schoolwork may make a teacher frown, the teacher should be encouraged to know that students are writing more, and more often, mainly due to the presence of what is constantly called the ?Web 2.0? types of sites and the heavy use of texting. The sheer quantity of writing, the total time on the task, are factors that cannot be dimissed as irrelevant. After all, practice makes perfect.

In addition, if arduous written assignment is something students HAVE to do, constant writing for their personal social networking sites may become something they WANT to do. The whole motivation has changed.

Another major change that has taken place is the presence of an audience. Feedback from peers, teachers and even outsiders may engage students in more meaningful communication. Most students would value outside feedback on their writing posted in blogs, wikis or their social networking sites. Often they write with an audience in mind. Writing like this may be more targeted and relevant to them, which also works to enhance their motivation in writing.

So is there a writing crisis? I don?t see one. Media scholar Marshall McLuhan argued that media are extensions of man. In the case of teens, newer media and technical methods have indeed extended them in ways that we would not have thought possible even ten years ago. We have more reason to rejoice than to regret.

No doubt, it is still essential to cultivate the habit of serious, lengthy writing. However, educators can probably relax a little. After that, it may be a good idea to chew the idea of leveraging the tools and methods of these multiple-channel youths.

Every morning I wake up hearing from the radio that gas prices have hit a new record, as if some kind of Olympic game is going on. In order to solve the problem, I ususally turn off the radio.

Chronicles of Higher Education recently carries an article Oklahoma Colleges Will Hike Tuition to Keep up with Energy Costs that seems to be bad news for students and universities alike, but what if distance education comes in? This is a tempting option to pursue. If universities reduce occupancy of classrooms by putting more courses online, or certain portions of a course online, it would be natural to think that reduces cost.

This is probably not such a big issue in Oklahoma where there is a greater provision of space than many other parts of the country. When I was studying in Syracuse University (located in the city) for a master?s degree, I took some of my courses in ?extended classrooms?, one of which is in a Diocese, another one is a nearby middle school. The university paid to these institutions for the use of their facilities. As a result, there is a lot of motivation of instructors designing courses online so that they do not have to fret about the classroom scheduling, or students driving to a middle school in two feet of snow.

Many suburban universities probably haven?t gone that far, but since the rising cost of energy has pushed up the cost for eggs, milk and almost everything else, there is a strong need to extend the campus to the virtual world as a cost-saving measure.

In a cover story of the July 2008 issue of eSchool News , online or hybrid courses were indeed mentioned as the future trend as K-12 districts learn about ways to cut costs, since all other cost-cutting measures hurt the students or their families (such as increasing lunch prices or refusing to provide transportation to students living within 1.5 miles of school). Technological innovations, however, are comparatively less harmful (if any).

Many colleges and universities are adopting this ?hybrid? approach?with some anecdotal evidence of success. In fract, if districts could connect to individual homes, or learning centers, through technoloyhg, perhaps they could reduce the number of days that some students attend their school buildings each week.

?Without fuel for mobility, and with the possible cuts in personnel and teacher bonuses, technology is a way to get more bang for your buck,? says McDonald [former associate professor at George Mason University?s School of Educaiton].

McDonald believes the current fuel crisis might be an opportunity to rethink, restructure, and reorganize the traditional educational system. There is a time for everything. Now may be the time to consider moving some educational offerings online.

I didn’t know it, but it looks like we are actually fixing global warming by teaching or learning online.

That doesn’t sound bad.

Jesus is a teacher that does not use the blackboard (I am not saying the upper cased-?Blackboard? which happens to be our LMS). When He taught, anything could become his instructional aid, and anyone could become His student. The example of the Samaritan woman drawing water is a good case:

In John Chapter 4 we noticed that Jesus once passed a well left by Jacob, an ancestor for the Jewish people. He rested there. At this time, a Samaritan woman came. Jesus talked to her and somehow made her a believer, and through her, Jesus developed a following among other Samaritans through the testimony of the Samaritan woman.

What was going on that brought about these changes? Teaching.

The most remarkable thing I noticed first is that He did not discriminate with regard to the types of students who approached him. Samaritans, people from the rather undesirable Jew-Gentile intermarriages, were the social underdogs in those days. A regular Jew would not respect a Samaritan, nor would he communicate with one. Jesus, however, deliberately included them in his teachings.

Today, teachers have pets. In some schools, Professors favor students from their own departments when they enroll in graduate students without giving equal chance to an outsider. Let?s reflect on such practices in the light of Jesus? tolerance.

Let?s also look at how Jesus? teachings change this woman?s heart in such a short time.

Getting attention

First, he got the Samaritan woman?s attention almost immediately. He asked for water from this woman: “Will you give me a drink?” (John 4:3) ?What??would be a natural response.
Indeed the Samaritan woman was quite shocked: ?”You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)?. If this does not get someone?s attention, I don?t know what would.

Presenting information

Once the woman?s curiosity was aroused, Jesus goes on to broach his topic: ?”If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10). So, he is about to talk about the ?living water.? Here he is using the well only as an illustration of the eternal life, a more abstract concept to grasp.

Processing information

Jesus gave the woman an opportunity to reflect upon what he had said. At this point, the Samaritan woman was still rather confused what He was talking about, and I believe she was also skeptical about Jesus? identity. Jesus then casually mentioned her husband, and then started to talk about her background. These shocked the woman, because Jesus was very accurate in all that He had said. She must be thinking about the parable of the ?living water?, and associating this with Jesus? knowledge of her life story. This kind of thinking prompts her to draw what we call an instructional conclusion, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior. Notice here that Jesus did not impose the conclusion for her. He allowed her to draw the conclusion herself. He gave her an opportunity to say ?Aha! This is Why!?

Providing Feedback

After the woman realized who Jesus was, Jesus confirmed her conclusion. And He asked the woman to believe in Him.

Prompting Action

Now what?

In many cases, our instruction is not over unless we prompt people to develop some sort of action plan. All learning theories would state that learning is, after all, a permanent change of behavior. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman what to do in her worship. ?God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24). He was addressing this specific issue because this woman was not sure which god to worship, how to worship or where to worship.

Swedish learning theorist Klas Mellander writes in the Power of Learning that the most effective learning happens if you follow a process of gaining attention, providing information, processing information, drawing conclusions, and learning applications. Even by this rather recent theory, Jesus is a master teacher.

Try this sequence in your own teaching and see how that works.

I sometimes procrastinate, and I hate that. I am sure you don?t. But self regulation can be a serious issue for students taking online courses. MIT behaviorist economist Dan Ariely devoted an entire chapter of his recent bestseller Predictably Irrational to ?the problem of procrastination and self-control?. In this chapter he did an experiment on student homework scheduling, and here are the three scenarios he gave for the three papers he asked his three classes to give.

1. Class A is instructed to develop their own schedules. They were asked to write

   • ?I promise to submit paper 1 on week ( )
   • ?I promise to submit paper 2 on week ( )
   • ?I promise to submit paper 3 on week ( )

2. Class B received a ?dictatorial treatment?. The professor dictated three deadlines for the three papers;

3. Class C was asked to submit their three papers any time before the final deadline.

Guess which class did the best in terms of timeliness of submission and the quality of work? The answer is B.

I have seen quite a number of Professors fight with student procrastination (though finding creativity from student excuses can be a nice tradeoff). A lot of interventions are given that probably involve the use of emails, announcements and the pulling of lot of hairs.

Sometimes, the problem is simply because flexibility for online courses is interpreted rather literally and given too liberally, assuming that students will stay on their heroic promises at the beginning of semesters. It is often a better idea to set specific deadlines for specific assignments. This may turn out to help students too.

By the way, I strongly recommend this book that talks a lot about why people do what they should not be doing. Armed with the knowledge of the irrationality of human behavior, we may even make good use of it to achieve our objectives.

In another chapter, the author argues rather convincingly about why we should not leave too many doors open, which links rather nicely to the procrastination issue.

In this chapter, Professor Ariely quotes a story from Chinese history:

In 210 BC, a Chinese commander named Xiang Yu led his troops across the Yangtze River to attack the army of the Qin (Ch?in) dynasty. Pausing on the banks of the river for the night, his troops awakened in the morning to find, to their horror, that their ships were burning. They hurried to their feet to fight off their attackers, but soon discovered that it was Xiang Yu himself who had set their ships on fire, and that he had also ordered all the cooking pots crushed?.

Xiangyu?s story is remarkable because it is completely antithetical to normal human behavior. Normally, we cannot stand the idea of closing the doors on our alternatives

?In the context of today?s world, we work just as feverishly to keep all our options open.

A few years ago, I heard from a professor a famous sentence that may work as a morale for this story: if you give them too much rope, they hang themselves.

Would you like to know how often your students are logging into your Blackboard course shell? Here’s how:

In Control Panel of the course, click “Performance Dashboard.” Look in the “Last Login” and “Days Since Last Login” columns to check a student’s access to the course site.

A popular axim in Web design is, “Your users aren’t stupid, so why does your site make them feel that way?” One way sites can make users feel stupid is by having useless links on the page. Useless links are links that when clicked take you to pages that are rarely used or updated. Typically, a user will click these links about three times, and if they do not see updates or new content, they rarely click them again. It’s sort of the “boy who cried wolf” principle in Web design–telling your users “Something important is there!” when there really isn’t. And, if you ever *do* put something there, they probably will not see it because they will not have clicked the link.

This principle carries over to instructional design, too, especially when instruction (of any kind) is offered on the internet. In Blackboard, for example, if you leave links on the page that go to empty folders, you will probably cause confusion — and students don’t need more confusion. After they try a few times and see nothing, they will be less likely to ever click there again. So, a good rule of thumb is to put all the important course content into ONE course content folder (e.g., Course Documents) and to use subfolders to organize the material further. Then, TURN OFF the links to the unused areas. Here is how you can disable those unused menu items:

• In the Control Panel of the course in which you want to disable a menu item, click “Manage Course Menu” (bottom left quadrant).
• To the right of the menu item you wish to remove, click the “Remove” button (instruction for simply disabling, see below). Click “OK” on the prompt window that appears.
• Repeat as necessary.
• To simply disable the item without removing it:
• Click the “Modify” button to the right of the item.
• Uncheck all the check boxes which allow a user to see the menu item.
• Click the Submit button.

Are you tired of asking the North Institute to add a TA or a Grader to your Blackboard course? Now you can do it yourself with a few simple steps.

Enroll User (TA/Grader)

1. Go to Control Panel in the desired course
2. Click “Enroll User”
3. Search for user
4. Check the Add box beside the desired user’s name
5. Click “Submit”
6. Click “OK”

List Modify User (TA/Grader) role

1. Click “List Modify Users”
2. Search for the desired user
3. Click “Properties” beside the user
4. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and select the desired role
5. Click “Submit”
6. Click “OK”