Adding to the website

Good Monday morning! (or whatever day/time it is for you!)

For the past week I have been trying new software and services to increase the usability of my test website at www.tericoutu.com/myindex. There were two main items I was looking for:

1. A forum creator that I could easily add to each of the three mini-sites we will be offering for our tobacco programs
2. An easy way to develop a PowerPoint-like presentation that could include quizzes, embedded video, and more.

As I mentioned, my goal is to provide three mini-sites relating to our tobacco program: one for our cessation participants, one for worksites interested in developing tobacco-free initiatives, and one for our cessation facilitators.

I hired someone to handle the one for the cessation participants as we needed something available fast and professional. We are currently reviewing it and working out the bugs but it is available at: www.quitsmokingnowfirstcoast.com

For my WGA class, I am creating the one for worksites. And the third one will have to wait! We decided to use Bravenet for their free webtools, and it looked like a great deal because we could get a free forum (with ads), or pay $40/yr and get up to 20 different forums. I only needed 3, one for each mini-site, so I figured we would be all set. Unfortunately, so far, I have not been able to figure out how to show each individual forum on each site. When using the code Bravenet provides, it pulls up the overview page of all of the forums we have. So, that's rather frustrating. I have the web designer looking into this so that the participants, worksites, and facilitators each get their own forum, without having access to the others.

I did a LOT of research on quiz creators, as I thought I would create some short quizzes for the worksite learning module. I downloaded a trial of Adobe's Presenter, which includes a quiz maker, and some options for including audio/video, and Flash. I tried the quiz maker on two different machines, using PPT 2003 and 2007, and could not get it to work right. I downloaded the two patches that were available, and still nothing. I pretty much wasted most of a day trying to get it to work. I consider myself pretty PPT-literate but no matter what I did (timings, custom automation, etc.) when I clicked on an answer EVERY conceivable pop-up result appeared: Correct. Incorrect. Type your answer here. So, that was not going to work, and I decided to go back to creating something in PPT, the way I was familiar with. Still, I could not believe that there wasn't something out there that would make it easier. I did MORE research and found iSpring products. (www.ispringsolutions.com) They looked good, so I downloaded a trial of their presentation software, which was also an add-in to PowerPoint, and not a separate presentation package. The quiz worked, but by this time I had already changed the plan for the module so that it was less of a quiz, and more of a review. Overall, the quiz maker in iSpring was easy to use, and had both photo and audio options, but they did not work as I had hoped. The photos did not appear on the question page, (I didn't take the time to figure out why and simply blamed it on the Trial version.) and participants had to start the audio - I would have preferred automatic audio/video options. What was really nice about iSpring is that you could publish your work as a Flash file. That made it really easy to insert into my web pages.

As an aside, I recently purchased a Mac PowerBook Pro and tried Keynote '09 presentation software. It has some REALLY cool transitions and templates, but is not nearly as customizable as PPT. I was really disappointed by that as I have always been a Mac at heart, and was sure Keynote was going to be "the bomb." Oh, well.

The end result for me is that I think I am going to learn how to work with Flash to create what I want, how I want it. So far, none of the programs work as easily as I think they should/could. I have a list of improvements that PowerPoint, Adobe, and iSpring could incorporate that would make their product incredible, but I am no designer, just a demanding user!

Innovations in Technology: FCCJ Dental Hygiene

Every day I hear about more innovations in the delivery of education at every grade level and it amazes me to hear about the technology-based activities kids are involved in these days. I have seen "commercials" created by middle school students that were worthy of television air time. Some local high school students created a web site to teach their peers about the dangers of smoking. But, what I have been most impressed by is the increasing use of technology at Florida Community College Jacksonville (FCCJ).

This blog may be a bit biased as Dr. Jeff Smith heads up the Dental Hygiene program and is a member of the Board of Directors for my organization. Nonetheless, he is inspiring me to dig deeper into my technosoul.

Jeff and other professors at FCCJ are ahead of some of our local universities when it comes to using technology to teach. His newest 32" flat screen monitor (that size was needed for showing a class of students the most current digitally displayed topic) and superfast Mac computer, and the latest versions of video editing and complementary software have me green with envy. (Or maybe that's just because St. Patrick's Day is around the corner!)

The dental program offers most every class session in video format that students can download on to their computer or iPod. In addition, five other programs offer free educational/training videos through iTunesU. There are currently over 250 videos available in Dental Hygiene, Culinary Arts, Math, English, Medical Lab, and Financial Studies.

In addition to the technology being used to teach students, the students are also provided with an opportunity to learn how to podcast and edit videos as part of their homework assignments.

Is Dr. Smith concerned that distance learning may take students away from traditional classroom programs? No. "Why shouldn't a student be able to learn about the anatomy of a central incisor by listening to a lesson while waiting in line for their espresso at Starbucks?" he said. "Isn't it better to utilize the long hours spent in a car commuting to and from school to listen to a lecture on the nervous system of the head rather than a popular music station?"

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-01-31/story/technology_takes_class_outside_the_classroom

Tweet, Tweet!

Do you Twitter? I do. Not a lot, it really gets irritating so I am an on-again, off-again Twitterer. Still, I added it as a widget on this blog – so, be a fellow Twitterer with me!
Twitter is a technology that gives you 140 characters to broadcast a message to a group of friends/subscribers. These messages are received as text messages on mobile phones, without needing to know someone’s phone number.
The basic idea behind Twitter is to have people answer the question “What are you doing?”

I did a Twitter search for “Distance Learning” and several comments popped up. When you click on one, it will take you to a blog-like page for the person/business that posted their content. I wondered what implications Twitter might have on education, and actually found an article with some helpful info.

David Parry at the University of Texas gave his students a Twitter assignment and found it to be an excellent exercise. Some of the benefits were that it increased class discussion in and out of the classroom, and “seemed to develop a sense of classroom community as students began to develop a sense of eachother outside the classroom space.”
There are several suggestions on how to incorporate Twitter in education:
· Remind students about homework, trips, etc.
· Allow students to compare thoughts about a topic – in or out of class
· Work collaboratively on stories, letters, papers
· Use it as an alert system campus-wide

In addition, I found a blog that offered a list by Chris Brogan on “50 ideas for using Twitter in Business” that could be adapted for education. I won’t list them all here, but I will pick out my (adapted) top 10:

· Point out interesting things happening in your classroom/campus/institution
· Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
· Ask ANY question – Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions
· Follow interesting people through Twitter
· Comment on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community
· Twitter can help direct students’ attention to good things
· Twitter in the classroom helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
· Twitter breaks news faster than other sources
· Twitter brings great minds together, and gives everyone daily opportunities to learn
· Last, but not least, Twitter just has a cool name – that MUST count for something!

So, what are you tweeting about?

Resources:
http://searchenginewatch.com/3630980
http://pbalocal.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/trend-alert-twitter/
http://www.marketingshift.com/2007/4/how-twitter-could-helped-virginia.cfm

What's a Widget?

It was a great day when I created my first website using FrontPage, and another great day when I put together my musical MySpace page. I had fun developing this blog and felt like I was really starting to “get with the new technology.” But then suddenly I needed to know SO many new things and I had a huge number of questions. What’s a Widget? What’s StumbleUpon? Delicious? BlinkList? Simpy? Digg?

There are so many names and icons on the many webpages I have viewed, how am I supposed to know what I want on my sites when I have no idea what they are? So, I did some research on some, and originally thought I would list them out with a brief description. BUT, then I found that most of the names I was looking up offered the same service. So, let’s look at widgets and social bookmarking, and I’ll talk about other applications another time.

First, I want to answer the BIG question – What’s a widget?
Pulling from my now-favorite websource, Wikipedia: A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation.”
That definition must have been written by a techie. This part is better: “Widgets often take the form of on-screen tools (clocks, event countdowns, auction-tickers, stockmarket tickers, flight arrival information, daily weather, etc.)” Widgets are also known as modules, snippets, and plug-ins.

Blogger offers many widgets, and as you can see on the right-hand side, I have included two that seem applicable to this blog. There were MANY that looked fun, but I will use those for some other blogspace!

There are entire websites dedicated to providing widgets, and Apple has their own site for widgets appropriate for their products. I searched out several different widget terms including Distance Learning, and Education and found some great results. At widgetbox, you can even make your own widget that can be placed on your blog or website. (I will do that another time.) For your contemplation pleasure, I added the “Things to Ponder” widget at the bottom of this blog.
The main widget sites include:
http://widgets.yahoo.com/
http://www.widgetbox.com/
http://widgets.opera.com/


Social Bookmarking Sites: These sites are like giant search engines that let you bookmark your searches and the sites people like best. They let people rate the sites and then highlight those that are most popular. They allow you to access and share your bookmarks from any computer. For each of them I did a search for “Distance Learning”, the results are listed next to their name.
BlinkList:3968
Digg: 3
Reddit: 40
Simpy: 23,280 (this one included anything you could learn online. The top listings included several guitar lessons - which is neither here nor there, just interesting to me.)
Stumble: Didn’t give an exact number of listings but was approximately 65-70

Honestly, there are so many widgets, and countless sites with social bookmarking it is almost information overload. Nonetheless, there is some real value in these services. In the near future I will be using a social bookmarking site on a project with my team at work. As for widgets – I may just make my own soon!

Stay Tuned!
Teri