Save Often!

In my "day" job, I am a Course Designer for Pikes Peak Community College. One of my duties is running another blog to support faculty. I thought today's post fit here as well.

Save Often! PPCC Desire2Learn:

As I go through my day with D2L, I find myself saying several phrases over and over again. The most common right now is “Save Often”. D2L has a wonderful way of showing your changes before you click on the Save feature. That way if you don’t want to keep your changes, you simply go some place else or hit cancel. The problem is, often we get going too fast and make changes we never save. So, slow down and hit that save button.

This is also something we need to be reminding our students. Just yesterday, I heard a horror story from an instructor. She had set her quiz to ‘auto-submit’ if the time had expired. Sounds reasonable enough. However, the student had gone through the entire quiz without saving a single question when time ran out. You guessed it. The student lost everything.

Save yourself from agony later. Take the extra second and hit 'Save'.

Is This Thing On?

After blogging for the past few weeks, I'm still the only one without any comments in the community.  While a touch discouraging, it's nothing to experiencing the same thing in your classes.  What do you do when your students don't seem to be reading the News or other items you need them to read on a regular basis?

I have an idea to try to generate some traffic here which may also work in your classes.  Let's see how many references to the Olympics you can put in the other blog writer's threads in the next week or so.  Make sure you are staying on topic, but when given a chance, mention something pertaining to the Olympics.  I've posted one in Phyllis' discussion area named "Old News" to get you started. 

The most creative ones I'll reference here.  (In your class, you could give extra credit.)  If anyone asks where you got the idea, don't be afraid to send them back here. ;->

Quizzzzzz

I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but why do outages (or slowdowns) always happen when you are trying to grade?

A Second Life Experience

The post below is being written over the course of several hours today as I play with SecondLife and then attend the Mixer on Colorado EduIsland.  It is a stream of thoughts, so please be patient with me...

Background and Bias- While I've been in SecondLife I think a total of about 5 hours, I've become the "expert" at PPCC on the subject.  I don't think I'm much of an expert because I know how to create an account, and follow some directions.  (It doesn't take much to see there's a TON more I have no clue about.)

I first logged into SecondLife about 3 years ago at Telecoop during a session and went back to try it in the room that night.  While it had some "WoW" factor (pun intended), I can't say I've found an application for it in my classes.  However, we've been pushed into looking at it again this year, so I'm going to give it a shot.

Creating a New Account- I'm creating a new account from scratch. It's pretty easy.  You put your name, email, password and gender in.  Then you pick a first name and it gives you a list of options for last names.  My name is Nate Wassep.  It's close enough to my real name to work as a public persona.

So, now it's time to pick out my avatar. (That word means something different now, doesn't it?)  There aren't a lot of options, but I'll pick the bald guy, because it fits.  Of course, the pigment of skin doesn't match me, but I'm pretty sure I can customize it.

After loading the software, I went through the tutorial.  I ran into two issues.  First, I couldn't see the buttons at the bottom of the screen.  When I went to do a screen capture, I discovered the buttons were there, just hidden behind my Tool Bar.  Once I un-maximized the screen, it worked much better.

The second issue is I couldn't change the pigment of my skin.  I want the avatar to at least pretend to be me.  I couldn't solve this second issue, so I resigned myself to the issue and moved to Colorado EduIsland.

Exploring EduIsland on My Own-  I wanted to go onto the Island before the crowd arrived later today, just to see if I can remember how to navigate.  I seemed to do pretty well.  (Maybe I am the "expert"!)  It was here I also found more clothes, skins, etc. for my avatar.  I wish I had known they were here before I started.

 

This is better, but he looks 10 years too young and has WAY too much hair! I have no idea why I care so much about my appearance.  Maybe I've played too many computer games. Oh well, it's a "second life", so why not gain some hair and lose 10 years?  I wonder if our students will have the same hang-ups on appearance I had.

Going to the "Mixer"- I logged in and there weren't too many folks.  Being a n00b (newbie), I walked off the edge of the platform:

After getting out of the water, I recognized a couple of people and started chatting.  I had some issues learning how to "Talk".  You really want a headset for this because the background noise can be really distracting.  In any case, if you click on the lock button, you can talk non-stop, but that's not always recommended.  It's a lot like a conference call.

The Tour- I wanted to check out the place, so off I went to the first building I saw.  It looked a lot like the Air Force Academy chapel, but with seats and a disco ball.  It looked like a good place to go sit down.

 

One thing I notice about Second Life which bothers me is the lack of people for the space.  This room is huge and I'm the only one here.

After flying off, Clarity joined me and offered me a tour.  Since I've been to the Island only once before, and that was a rush in and out in 15 minutes, I accepted the offer.

The first place she showed me was a discussion area.  These are simple areas where instructors can meet and talk with their students.  There aren't any special buildings or objects, but quiet places to hold a class conversation.

Of course, in Second Life, you can build much more elaborate "scenes" in "holodecks".  (Why am I not surprised the SL crew is taking terminology from Star Trek?)  In any case, the first holodeck Clarity showed me was a generic one.

 

But of course, we have some fine folks working hard on building customized ones like at a Childcare center:

Can you find the areas in the center which are out of place?  I sure can't but I was assured some items were not where they belonged to begin discussions with the Early Childhood Education students.

The last holodeck area was one for criminal justice, including a courtroom and jail.  Special detail is being included in the building of this area including locked doors and bolted down objects.

 

The next stop on the tour was the 4 floor Maze.  This included a navigation area for folks learning how to move around, go carts to learn how to navigate vehicles, games and a planetarium.

 

(At this point, I started doing something wrong with my screen captures, so I lost the cool pictures of the huge computer sitting on top of the planetarium.)

After checking out the computer, we went to the Fire Science area.  This is what it looks like right now:

 

Needless to say, it looks like it needs some work.  However, judging from the rest of the Island, I have confidence it will look cool soon enough.

The End- My tour ended here.  Unfortunately, a teleport snafu and the fact it's Friday afternoon and my "first life wife" wants me to come home on time lead to me simply logging out.

Quick Conclusions- The Island was much more developed than I thought.  Second Life doesn't really prepare students to go through the initial training very well.  Colorado EduIsland seems to fill that in very well.  Of course, will our students have Clarity to give us such a great tour?

I may add some more to my thoughts on my time in Second Life today after I've had a chance to digest it all.

Second Life Mixer

I'll be blogging about my experience at this event tomorrow.  Please join us!

Colorado EduIsland would like to introduce you to SecondLife!
Event:  “The Mixer” is a training and social event for everyone
When: February 19th, 2010 from 3-6 pm
Where: Colorado EduIsland in SL (follow the following link after loading SL you’re your Computer and you will automatically be teleported to the island).
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Colorado%20EduIsland/132/110/22 <http://slurl.com/secondlife/Colorado%20EduIsland/132/110/22>
About the Event: Colorado EduIsland is hosting a “Mixer” event. This is both an educational and social event to introduce beginning users (i.e., “newbie's”) to Second Life (SL).  New and experienced users are welcome to join in the fun as experienced “Avatars” escort and tour you through the educational facilities on the island. There will be discussions and valuable teaching tools for you to exhibit and see how to utilize SecondLife (SL) in on-ground and online classrooms.
If you haven’t recently visited our island, you will experience some new terrain for exploration and teaching purposes. Our training facility is now equipped with a Maze and a Planetarium to get up and running in SL in no time.

Activities, both structured and unstructured, will be staged around the island for educators and students to discover basic functionality, maneuvering, and broadening of proficiency skill sets. There will be a treasure hunt with door prizes and plenty of free gifts for participators! Of course you will also have a chance to meet new and old friends from various colleges around Colorado and other neighboring educational places.
Planned training stations activities and exercises will be available to instruct you on:
·      How to maneuver, fly, and teleport your avatar

·      How to access and utilize the program menus and tools that come with your account and avatar

·      How to Change appearances, wear objects, and work with the inventory that comes with your account

·      Also included are fireside chats and other discussions include topics on how to teach in SL and using various teaching tools, and other valuable educational conversations

If you would like more information to get started check out details on the CCCOnline Faculty Wiki at, Getting Started in SecondLife with the community colleges in Colorado <http://at.ccconline.org/faculty/wiki/Tech_Tools_-_Other_Tools_-_Second_Life> .

Out Sick Messages

This Tuesday, I was under the weather and didn't get my weekly News item up as scheduled.  While I got the message up on Wednesday, and didn't hear any complaints, I probably should have at least posted a quick note of the reason for the delay.  The same procedure probably should be done when traveling or dealing with other issues which take us away.

Students like to know you are in the class and when something isn't following the plan, they tend to get nervous. A quick little note letting them know why may well save an issue later.

Journal Problem

In my CCENT class, I require my students to write a journal.  This isn't a big assignment, but it gives my students a chance to tell me how things are going.  While I don't use this in my other classes, I've found it very helpful in this one.  In order to get students to do this, I like giving them a few points.

I haven't found a good way to do this in D2L.  In Blackboard, we had a Journal tool in the Discussion area which allowed for private conversations which were graded.  At the beginning of the semester, I thought I would just use an anonymous discussion and it would work.  The problem is, students can't see any posts (even theirs or mine) unless I release them to the entire class.  This defeats the purpose of the exercise.

The logical choice would be to use "Journal".  There's one major drawback.  Students can't see my comments and I can't see theirs.  Unless I'm missing something major, this isn't really an interactive journal.

So, since I needed some advice, I went to my D2L mentor.  Carol understood the problem, but didn't have a great answer either.  She recommended I use the D2L email for the journals.  I really don't care for the email in D2L, especially for assignments, so I didn't want to do that.  The Dropbox is the next solution I looked at, but bouncing ideas back and forth can become burdensome. 

My solution, for the time being, is to add a one question quiz to each Unit.  This question will be manually graded and can be taken as many times as the student wishes before the due date.  I don't like the word "Quizzes" because I'm not after a specific answer, but it's an empty area of the course to use where we can interact for a grade.

Anybody else have an idea?  (I'll keep you posted on whether I find a good solution.)

The Most Important Thing

The most important thing any online instructor can do is login and check classes.  For me, this is daily.  Yes, seven days a week.  Over the course of the semester, there are days I don't get it done, but they are extremely rare.  So, I'm sure you are asking two questions; why and how?

Let's start with the why.  Your students want you to be in the class.  They don't want to feel like they are alone.  If they see you posting in your class daily, they will learn they can ask questions and get answers in a timely manner.  This will give them confidence in the class and in turn the material.  Retention and student success numbers show, active instructors equal successful classes.

The other side of this coin is how.  I know what many of you are thinking, "I have a life. I can't do this every day."  I say you can.  On weekends, do two things; check email and discussions once per day.  That's it.  No more.  While I try to reply to every email, my posts per day go down dramatically on the weekend.  One or two discussion replies each day to let the class know I'm there and that's it.  For my 3 CCCOnline classes, this rarely takes more than about 30 minutes per day.  That's an hour each weekend.  Experience has taught me, if I spend an hour each weekend in the class, I save at least twice that much on Monday picking up the pieces.

Squirels

Last summer, I took my daughters to see the movie "Up".  It's a great movie.  In the movie, though, the dogs have the issue of being distracted anytime they think a squirrel is near.


Unfortunately, I could relate all too well to the dogs when it came to teaching online.  There I was teaching my class, minding my own business when cool new tech stuff comes along.  Okay, let's get back to my class...Twitter, Facebook,  Blogs, YouTube, Chat, Podcasting, SecondLife,... UGH!  Too much stuff!

Okay, here's what I've learned about all of this.  Yes, there are many tools out there to do really cool stuff to your class.  However, you need to ask yourself, "Will this make my class better?"  Remember, you have to run the class, including being comfortable with the tools.  If not, you aren't making the class better.

So, pick one or two tools each semester and focus on doing them well.  That way, you aren't so distracted and confused by your class.  They don't have to be special either, especially if you are new to teaching online.

This semester, I'm adapting to D2L, focusing on the News items and Groups.  I want to focus on the News to be that "front page" for students as they come into the class.  I want it to be pleasing to the eye, while still directing them to the areas of the class they need to focus on.  The other item of focus this semester is Groups to better filter my crosslisted course. Items should not bleed over to the other class in the same shell and I'm hoping this filter will work.  So far, so good.  I'm seeing other tools I might want to add, but I'm not following such squirrels.

What are your tools you want to focus on this semester?  What squirrels are you trying to avoid?

Accommodations

I suppose a big part of this blog is talking about things which come up you weren't planning for.  Well, one hit this morning.  I got an email from Roxanne asking me to make accommodations for a student with learning disabilities.

While this is something I have done many times in classes at PPCC, it's a first for me at CCCOnline.  However, it turned out not to be a big deal.  The student needed some extra time to complete timed exams.  Since I only have six Unit Exams and a Final which are timed, I only had seven items to fix.

In D2L, the project became even easier to complete.  I went to the Quiz and clicked on the pencil and went to the Restriction tab.  At the bottom is Special Access.  I gave the student special access, picked the time I wanted to give and saved.  All is done and it took me less than 15 minutes.

Sometimes, the surprises aren't that big a deal!

Greetings

Greetings all.  This blog is to give anyone who wonders by a chance to look into my world of online teaching. 

Before that though, why don't I give you a bit of background.  I've been teaching online since the Spring of 2003.  I've taught both Computer Networking and College Prep Math for CCCOnline and Pikes Peak Community College.  Now, for my full-time job, I work in the PPCC Distance Ed. office as an online course designer.  So, I've seen all sorts of online classes and ways to run them.

In the coming weeks, you should get a pretty good idea of what's going on in my classes.  This semester, I'm teaching two CNG 101 (Introduction to Networking) sections and a crosslisted section of CNG 245/CNG 246 (Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician or CCENT).  Like teaching itself, it's often pretty uneventful, but you never know when things will get interesting.