academhack

It’s no secret that I think Blackboard and WebCT are a scam. They charge excessive rates for a second rate, clunky product, and Blackboard is trying to patent and corner the market (all around bad for education). At any rate I think most of what Blackboard offers can be done for free, in a more user friendly way. For my purposes a blog covers almost everything I need (consider me to be edupunk). I do however realize that there are some feature others want that are not as easy with a blog (online grades, test quizzes, etc.). Some faculty are simply looking for a more robust Course Management Platform. Enter Nfomedia.

A couple of weeks ago someone emailed me about Nfomedia, suggesting I take a look at it. Nfomedia is trying to be a free online courseware choice, with a full list of features. (It appears that they are going to make money by charging for a “premium” service,” but the free set of features will more than meet most needs.) Once you create an account (this was actually the only annoying step-see below) it is relatively easy to set up a series of course pages. The site works like a wiki (I suspect that they are using wiki-software to run the back end) allowing the professor or teacher to simply add content. One can add a syllabus page, assignment pages, note, or content pages. All of these are treated as nodes so you can link between them, pretty much getting your students all the class info you would need. What’s more they also offer a gradebook and exams (although I wouldn’t necessarily store students grades on a third party site). Furthermore Nfomedia allows you to register students, or have students register themselves, allowing for email distribution etc. to all of the students. Finally the way Nfomedia is set up at the end of the semester you can roll over all the general class information and delete out the student specific information. So, if you are teaching the same class over and over again you only have to write the content pages once.

The only part of Nfomedia that was less than user friendly was the registration process. When you register if your University or School is not already listed, you have to wait for approval before creating a course page. (At first I thought this was to make sure you are associated with an institution, but I think it also might be so that they can collect all of the schools who are using Nfomedia-sort of a bragging process.) Whatever the reason for this step, seems to me that they could just let your start immediately and not wait for approval, perhaps waiting for approval before your site can go public. In fairness though it took less than 24 hours for approval, I just hate to wait for this sort of think.

Finally one last word of caution: It might not be as easy to get the data in an out of Nfomedia as a blog, if for example Nfomedia wanted to eliminate the free account, or if the site ceased to exist. Clearly this is also a problem for the big dogs like Blackboard and WebCT, if you institution switches it might not be so easy to get the professors’ data out.

No, that is not a screen shot of Keynote, it is from an online slide creation tool called 280Slides. The interface though is so similar to Keynote that one might accuse them of just ripping off Keynote, stripping it down and turning it into a web application. Indeed in reading thru the few blog posts it seems that the developers have a Mac bend. Given my preference for Keynote over PowerPoint (”Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely“) one might guess that I like the interface of 280Slides. Like Keynote it is designed more towards a visual presentation and less towards putting text on slides.

280Slides is relatively easy to use, and comes with the advantage of other web applications, i.e. working from any computer, accessing your presentation from any browser, not worrying about file compatibility, etc. And, while I might prefer 280Slides to something like Google Presentation, this still finishes a distant second to SlideRocket (which I reviewed here).

Occasionally when I write about word processors someone will ask about using LaTeX (that’s LaTeX, not latex . . . totally different things). LaTex is the hardcore version of Word Processing. I most often find it used by those in the sciences as it is much easier to type equations and formulas in LaTex. (Technically speaking LaTex is not a program but a mark-up language-like HTML, there are many programs which enable you to work in LaTex.)

Unfortunately LaTeX is rather complicated for the uninitiated. Fortunately though Arjun Muralidharan at The Productive Student has written a post about how he uses LaTeX as a Word Processor. As Arjun points out there are many advantages to using something like LaTeX, where content is separate from form, allowing you to concentrate on the text, leaving the format for an afterthought. Equally as important, is the way that LaTeX allows easy import of bibliographic data.

So, if you are interested in this type of word processing check out Arjun’s point, and perhaps this free users manual.

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Quick note to say that for those who are Mac users and looking for a Word Processor that doesn’t suck (yes MS Word I am talking about you), Maczot is selling Mellel at a discounted price. Mellel is by far my favorite word processor, a program designed specifically for the ways academics write. Normally $35 (educational discount) it is $24.50 today only. (Sorry PC folks, Mac only.)

I realize I am a Devon Think groupie, but the news that a new version is in the work for this year has me anxiously awaiting the release. In my opinion it is the best, “brain in a box” software out there. My largest complaint with Devon is the interface (it is rather dated an un-Mac like), but never fear reworking the UI is one of the upgrades.

Last week I had a request to detail how I use blogs as a course management tool, as a way to subvert and improve on the horrible ones most Universities encourage (sometimes force) faculty to use (yes I am talking about WebCT and Blackboard).

So, I am preparing said post, but in the meantime for those who use blogs in the classroom you might want to check out The Edublogs Magazine. Edublogs is usually my recommendation for those who want to use blogs in their class, not only because what they offer is good, but also because they have a large collection of tutorials etc., to help newcomers. You should though skip this post which recommends using a horrible piece of software. If I had my way the inventors of this program would be sentenced to a lifetime of watching “Saved By The Bell” reruns, the only thing I can imagine more mind numbing than the use of their program—laugh it’s a joke, I am only partly serious).

Looking for Education Tools? Try the Centre for Learning and Performance Technology’s Directory of Learning Tools. The list contains links to over 2,300 tools, everything from Word Processors to Content Management Systems.

(Thanks to Pedagogical Gregory who sent this to me.)

So over the past couple of months I have been writing here about my use of Twitter in the classroom. The first post garnered some much interest that I ended up writing a follow-up one. In both cases though I wrote primarily around the specific ways I used Twitter, or my reasons for doing so, without actually covering the how-to aspect. To be sure there are several tutorials (these two videos for instance), and an introduction from the Common Craft show, so what I thought I would cover here are the logistics of setting it up in an educational space.

There are several ways to do this, I am just going to outline the one that I think is most effective. The key step in all of this is getting your students following each other, and making sure you are following your students. If you do not have a twitter account already this is easy, as when you sign up you can just follow your students and each of your students can then follow everyone you are following. The difficulty becomes what do you do once you have a large network that extends past your classroom. For example I follow over a 100 people right now, if I were to try and get my students to twitter how would they know who is in the class and who is not? The solution (again not the only one just the best way I have thought of):

Step One: Create a new Twitter account. “Huh?” you say, “I can barely keep up with one why would I want more than one?” Don’t worry this account is just going to make it easy to follow your students, and get your students following each other, it does not need to become your “main account.” Register a Twitter account with a name that is descriptive of the class, say for example “Eng205z.” Login into this account and follow your “main account.” When you are done it should look something like this:

Notice how “Eng205z” is following only one person, me the professor of the class.

Step Two: Tell students ahead of time that they should bring their cell-phones to class. Have them log onto the computers and register for a twitter account. Walk them thru registering and attaching the service to their phone (more on the problem of excessive text messaging charges later). You want them to at least see how the phone integration works, as the “microblogging anywhere” feature is key to understanding the technology. Students will simply not get the full effect if they only use it at their computers. It is also probably worth showing them how to turn off twitter’s pushing to your phone during specified hours so the phone doesn’t go off at 3AM the night before a test.

Note: If your classroom doesn’t have computers, you will have to have them do this apart from class time, but setting up an account is easy. It might work to do this in two steps, first have them set up an account and follow your class account, and your personal account. Then, on the second day show them how to add in all of their classmates.

Step Three: Once the students have an account get them to follow your class account, and your main account. Now as long as you have the class twitter account, in this example “Eng205z” set to email you when someone follows you, all you have to do is log into your email and add the 20-30 students (this is really easy to do, and should only take you minutes). Once the class account is following all of your students it is easy for your students to find their classmates and start following. For, now when they look at the class twitter page under people it should show all of the students, making them easy to find. This avoids the hassle of sharing twitter names, or having them hunt through all those you are following just to find their fellow students etc. Plus this way you have one twitter account which will display all of the class tweets, making it easy for you to find later. I don’t think you want to isolate the class tweets and substitute this account for your main one. Instead continue twittering from your main account so the class discussion participates in the larger twitter-verse, but this does give you one place to go to see all of the tweets.

Additional Thoughts: If students do not have unlimited texting this can really drive up their number of text messages. To address this concern you can have them only follow all of their classmates, but have only 5-10 of them pushed to their phone. (This is an important distinction to communicate to students, just because you are following someone doesn’t mean you will get their updates on your phone.) While I think one of the aspects of twitter to understand is the mobile aspect (network of friends in your pocket) you can also have them use one of the various twitter apps for the computer (there are actually more than those which twitter lists—a comparison is here), so that anytime that they are at their respective computer they can use twitter. Also have them “track” their own username (you do this buy sending a tweet from you phone, “track @username,” where username is whatever your account name is), this way when anyone responds to them they will get the response on their phone.

Extend the Network: As I said above having them follow each other is useful and opens up a range of pedagogical opportunities, but you might also want to get them following others, to see how the larger network operates. Depending on your course material these suggestions would probably vary, as key names in respective fields will vary, but here are some I recommend.

• Dave Winer (Blogging and RSS pioneer . . among other things)
• newmediajim (Camera man for NBC)
• Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs)
• Barack Obama (or any politician for that matter, but who ever writes for Barack gets the medium more than some of the others)

Questions, comments, discussion . . .

Here is a list of things I have been collecting as of late, which may or may not be of interest to those in academia . . .

• I frequently make the argument that blogs are one of the most useful “tech tools” in education. In fact I now run a class blog for each of my classes, which becomes the primary means thru which students can access course information (cutting out WebCT and Blackboard all together). Even more importantly though in several of my classes I require students to blog as part of the coursework. So, I am always looking for ways to make the blog composing/maintaining process easier and smoother. Lifehacker’s recent post on the Top 10 Blogging Tools is worth a read, even for the most experienced bloggers. As usual, reading the comments to a Lifehacker post can be just as productive as reading the actual post (this is where I learned about Windows Life Writer which looks impressive for PC folks). Most of the tips here are for those who use Firefox and/or blog from their web browser, so not the most useful for those who use MarsEdit or Ecto, but well worth the read for those who don’t want to spend money on software for blogging.
• Powerset which has been in private Beta, recently went public. (Read the CNET article here). Powerset is one of the first stabs at creating a semantic web search (i.e. using natural English). You can watch the video demo to see how this works. Right now it only works as an interface for Wikipedia, but for me this is what makes it really interesting. One of the shortcomings of Wikipedia has been the interface, layout, and search function, Powerset improves all of this.
• Following up on last weeks post about online presentation software, Omnisio has also launched. Omnisio solves one of the problems with making your presentation available online. Before you had to either sink your audio to the slides, and not show yourself talking, or show the video of your presentation at the expense of not always being able to see the slides. No longer. Omnisio allows you to synchronize the video with the slides and show both.
• A reader sent me a link to jygy a mobile social networking site. Despite my interest in twitter mobile computing is not really my thing, so I have not really checked it out, but it does let you create texting “micro apps” which might be useful for teachers mobilizing the mobile space.
• The above not withstanding I do own an iPhone, which I might add is totally worth it, changed my life. As of now I have not yet jailbroken it (in other words I can’t install applications on it). For me though, the “killer app” so far has been anywhere access to Wikipedia (instant knowledge). I was using Wapedia for this, but have recently switched to Comoki which rather than splitting the information into several pages (like Wapedia) presents it in a collapsable outline (see below).