Want Moodle Continued…

Posted on February 21, 2012February 21, 2012 by admin

To continue from yesterdays post, my students installed moodle last night. I just wanted to share the process and lessons learned from this experience:

1. I had all students buy their own websites with shared server access where they each installed moodle. They are each creating their own courses in my class.

2. I had them download FTP.

3. I had them download Moodle and upload it to their servers. A note here, make sure they unzip the file. I had maybe 1/3 of my students try to upload the zipped file and of course it would not work. Also, uploaded took quite a while in some cases. Moodle is 91mb and has around 10,000 files, so it can easily take 30-60+ minutes to upload. Be prepared for this.

4. Next we set up Moodle. Now this will change depending on what kind of server you are using. This process was not too bad. Some students needed help due to some slight configurations that needed to be made to get everything working but overall this part was fairly easy.

5. Some students just had no luck. I also students who tried to use other web hosts that they own their own websites through and of course those services were sufficient to run moodle so they did have to buy sites from icdsoft as I had originally recommended. For the students that had no luck, I simply asked them for their usernames/passwords and upload the Moodle files myself. This solved all the problems – thus is was user error causing the problems.

I hope this has helped anyone looking to do something similar.

Blogger Features: How to use Blogger

Posted on February 4, 2012February 4, 2012 by admin

This video takes you through the main features of Blogger. I do not go into much detail but do go through each feature. Blogger is very easy to use and with this video I doubt many of you will have any other questions. This software is very user friendly:

*Note – if you need to see how to create a blogger blog, please see this post

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjL1oWA05ew]

How to create a blog with blogger

Posted on February 3, 2012February 4, 2012 by admin

Blogger is a free tool from Google. I use this tool in my courses and have become fairly impressed with it as of lately. It offers a lot of customization and is perfect for educators or just about anyone who wants a blog. It’s also very easy to use, so it gives novice computer users an opportunity to publish on the web.

Here is a video tutorial that I put together which shows you how to create your first blog with blogger:

*Note – To see the next post on Blogger features click here

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmOmQraJl0s]

Apple iBooks App

Posted on January 19, 2012January 19, 2012 by admin

Apple’s big announcement today: An app that allows a teacher to create their own book and publish it to iBook. Thus you can take a Word document and the app formats it to be read on the ipad. Its supposed to be very user friendly. I am excited to use this in my courses this semester. For more info see:

Mashable

Apple

What do hashtags # and other symbols on twitter and facebook mean?

Posted on January 15, 2012January 15, 2012 by admin

What is twitterspeak? Well it’s how we communicate on twitter and other social media sites of course:)

The hashtag (#) is simply a way to search. This was designed for twitter and is used as a way to search. So if I were discussing mobile learning in a post I could say #mobilelearning and then anyone searching twitter for mobile learning posts could more easily find mine. Now people are using this on facebook, however, facebook does not currently use these to search but that could be changed in the future.

Another symbol used on twitter is the @ symbol. This is used to refer to someone. So if someone were speaking about me, their post might include @raypastore which would then link to my profile. Again this is being used on facebook but does not actually link to the referenced person.

I hope this helps clear up two of the most common ‘symbols’ used on facebook and twitter and help people understand what they mean and how they are used.

Make a shortened ‘tiny’ url

Posted on January 14, 2012January 14, 2012 by admin

Want to post a link to twitter but it’s too large? Ever wonder how people create those tiny urls? Well they are very simple to create. All that you need to do is copy your url, go to a site like bitly.com, which is the most popular, paste the url in the box and it gives you a shortened url. For instance, here is the url for this blog: http://bit.ly/zWTT8l

Here is a video which demonstrates the process:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_OtexpH8JU]

Facebook privacy settings for educators

Posted on January 8, 2012January 8, 2012 by admin

In my EDN 303 class we discuss privacy issues and social media. One of the issues that comes up quite often is facebook privacy. Here are my recommendations that I give to my students:

– Make your profile private – do this so that only your friends can see your wall, photos, page, status updates, etc.

– Make yourself unsearchable. While it’s ok to be searchable it might just better to make yourself hidden so that your students cannot find you

– Do NOT become friends with your students. Do NOT chat with them on instant messenger, etc. While I will be friends with my students, they are 18 years old. I would never be friends with a student that is a minor. Just do not do it.

– Make a separate profile for work friends. I do this using LinkedIn. That way my colleagues can be my friend but do not have to see all of my personal photos if I choose to post them.

– If you want a page but are a little scared, create one using a fake name and just friend your close family and friends. That way you can see their pages

– The final thing – check the privacy settings at least once a month. Facebook tends to change their settings all the time, so please double check yours to make sure they are correct.

Here is a video that goes through setting your privacy settings:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA7GL507mrk]

MIT expanding open courseware

Posted on December 20, 2011December 20, 2011 by admin

MIT is going to be expanding open courseware by actually offering certificates from it. However there is a catch, or two:) The certificates will not be from MIT, rather a non-profit organization, and it will cost money.

My thoughts on this concept: Great in theory but this is going to go nowhere. People do NOT have the motivation or time to do things like this. Online courses in general have high drop out rates due to lack of motivation. So my question to MIT, what are you going to do differently here? Why should I take one of these courses and complete it? I just do NOT see the motivation but that does not mean it’s not there, I just might not have read it or maybe it’s still in development.

Link to article

Are we overestimating technology use in younger generations?

Posted on November 15, 2011November 15, 2011 by admin

For this piece, I am speaking about the current undergraduate – 18-22 year old in college, and not computer science majors. My experience is mostly with education and communication majors. Having taught at two different universities in the last several years, and teaching many technology classes, I have had a lot of experience with students of this age their perceptions and experience with technology. So…

I think we believe these students are inundated with technology, are experts, and all have new iPhones. What I am finding in my classes is quite the opposite. Here are my observations:

The students are not inundated with technology in their classes. In fact, many come to my technology classes with a little anxiety because they are going to have to use the computer in new ways. What I find is that many of my students are comfortable using Word and Powerpoint. They can check email and do basic web searches using Google. When I ask who has heard of Google Docs, maybe 1% of the class raises their hands. And this isnt just Google Docs, this goes for many Web 2.0 technologies with the exception of Facebook. Do these students all have new iPhones? I find that in general, less than 50% of my students have smartphones. In fact, some have hand me down smart phones from their parents. None have ipads but a few have used them because their parents might have one. All of my students have laptops. None have standard desktops. This is not surprising as the cost of laptops has decreased a lot in the last few years. A portion do have Macs which are more expensive.

So what does this all mean? I believe it means that these students are not using every new gadget that comes out. They do not have the money to buy the latest smart phones. And they are not tech experts, in fact, they are just as nervous about new technology as older generations in my opinion. Now will this change? I believe so. I have observed the current elementary/middle school students doing significantly more with technology in the classroom. So I believe in the next 5-10 years the undergrads will be much more technology driven than the current generation.

Having said all of that, there are the students that remind me of myself. They make it a priority to have the latest and greatest. They can recite every popular web 2.0 technology and read blogs such as mashable daily. But these are not the norm. These are the techies:)