Diigo Links for the Week (weekly)
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Asynchronous Learning and Trends – Faculty Focus
Asynchronous learning, or teaching and learning that occurs when the interaction between the instructor and students is not constrained by time and place, can cause feelings of isolation, resulting in disappointment and low retention rates in online classes. Faculty Focus examines new, proven collaborative learning techniques you can use in the online classroom to promote social interaction and have a positive influence on learning, motivation, and problem-solving.
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5 Essential Technology Podcasts That Geeks Should Listen To
from MakeUseOf http://www.makeuseof.com
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Using Twitter for Communication / Independence – Resources – TES
RT @tesict: This blog is full of tips on how make use of Twitter in your lessons. – http://t.co/qNcVIK3X #edtech #edchat
Diigo Links for the Week (weekly)
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Add Green Screen (Chrome Key) Effect to Screencasts with Camtasia
Useful for creating online lectures.
Diigo Links for the Week (weekly)
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Dropbox Takes Livescribe Notes To The Cloud [Updates]
from MakeUseOf http://www.makeuseof.com
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My ideal smartwatch [Opinion and Poll]
from Android Phone Fans http://phandroid.com
Diigo Links for the Week (weekly)
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MentorMob – Learn What You Want, Teach What You Love – MentorMob
MentorMob is an attempt to organize learning into relevant chunks i.e. playlists. Learning playlists are created by the community of users, and this collaboration it is hoped will lead to quality. As each playlist is rated by the community, the good ones will come to the surface.
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Free Technology for Teachers: How To Use Evernote for Bookmarking and More
from Free Technology for Teachers http://www.freetech4teachers.com/
Diigo Links for the Week (weekly)
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Piazza – Ask. Answer. Explore. Whenever.
“Welcome to Piazza—a place where students can come together to ask, answer, and explore under the guidance of their instructor. It’ll save you time, and your students will love using it. It’s also free, and easy to get started.”
Automating the Process of Grading Essays on a Tablet
When the first iPad came out, I remember saying, “that would be cool if I could grade my essays on it.” But I was thinking of the whole tablet PC method where you could use a stylus and mark up a word document with your own scribbles as well as highlights and what not. It took a few months before there was an app that could do something similar, but it never felt intuitive and never worked on Word docs, only pdf files. This process is clearly still evolving. Since then the major book publishers have improved their online offerings to provide some pretty good grading tools for grading papers online. McGraw-Hill has Connect Composition 2.0, Cengage has Enhanced InSite with the TurnItIn.com suite of tools built in, and Pearson has MyCompLab. I’ve used all three of these tools, and quite frankly they are all pretty good for grading papers online. I couldn’t always say that, but I’ve watch them all evolve into tools I couldn’t live with out. But I digress. You can’t use these tools on a tablet (yet).
So back to this grading on a tablet idea. Some people still want to be able to do this on their tablets. I don’t, not with Connect, InSite and MyCompLab available. I’d much rather grab my Macbook Air and grade on that in a browser than on my Samsung Galaxy Tab. Nevertheless, I’ve come up with a pretty good solution for those of you who would like to do just that – grade on your tablet with a stylus or your finger for that matter. So here goes.
First you need to choose the right annotation app for your preferred device. When I had an iPad, I played with and liked iAnnotate. On my Android devices, I’ve been using ezPDF Reader. There is an iOS app too. Both of these apps work well, although the stylus interaction could be improved, and it might already have been. My finger works well too for what it’s worth. The key is that both integrate with DropBox, so you can access files from your dropBox and/or save annotated pdf’s to your dropbox. More on that later. But here’s the problem. Both apps are pdf annotation tools. I don’t know about you, but my students have a hard enough time submitting .doc files to me. PDF files just might send them over the edge, so in order to grade on my tablet, I would need to convert all the essays to pdf files. I can do that in several ways. Here are a few options.
Option 1: Open every essay and re-save as pdf using Word. Not! Too time consuming.
Option 2: Use Wappwolf Automator for Dropbox. If you have a Dropbox account, set up Wappwolf to automate this process for you. Choose the folder in Dropbox that you plan to put the essays in, and then choose convert to pdf when you set up your automation in Wappwolf. That’s it. It will convert pretty much everything but Apple’s iWorks pages files. Does anyone even use Pages? Anyway, Wappwolf will convert and put the original doc files into a new “processed” folder. It will also auto-convert all the files already in the folder if you’re not starting from scratch.
Here’s the process for grading those essays now. Download the essays in bulk from your LMS. This works in both Canvas and Blackboard. Open the essay folder, select all files, and drag them to the Dropbox folder you chose in the first steps. Now all your essays are in that folder in your dropbox, and they are automatically converted to pdf files. Go to your tablet, open your Dropbox app, choose the folder with the essays, open a file using your pdf annotation app and start annotating. Usually when you choose a pdf file to open your device will give you a few options if you have several apps installed. Be sure to choose the annotation app to be the default. Annotate the essay and save it back to the dropbox. When you’re finished, upload the essays back to your LMS for students to view. Now what’s really cool is if you don’t change the names of the original files, Canvas will let you upload them back to Canvas in bulk. This is the only step I’m not sure about, as I’m not sure if Canvas counts changing the file type from doc to pdf counts as changing the file name. If it does, then the bulk upload back to Canvas won’t work. You’ll have to do it individually as you add the grade, like you probably do now.
*BONUS: Here’s a way to automate this even further. Skip the whole download the class essays from the LMS part and automatically add to Dropbox by using a JotForm.
Instead of having students upload their essays to the LMS, create a form for them to use to submit their essays. Embed the form on the assignment page in your LMS. Students fill out the form, attach their essay file and done. A whole bunch of cool stuff happens next. Students can get an email verification that you indeed received their essay. You too can get an email if you want. The file that was submitted gets added to a folder in, yep you got it, your Dropbox account. Then you just follow the steps above. Pretty sweet, no?
Here’s what I haven’t tested. JotForm creates a folder automatically for you in your dropbox, so when you set up Wappwolf Automator you need to be sure to choose the JotForm folder. Now what I don’t know is if Wappwolf will convert files in a subfolder inside the folder you set up, as JotForm creates a new folder for each form you create. So I have a folder named Final Paper Submission (from the form above) inside my JotForm folder in Dropbox. If it doesn’t work that way, you would need to create a separate automation for each essay/form you create. Still not bad.
So there you go. Now you have no excuse not to grade those essays. You can grade them on your tablet or your phone for that matter. Ugh, no thank you. 😉 Let me know if you give this a try.
Diigo Links for the Week (weekly)
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“There are a variety of teaching strategies that instructors can use to improve student learning. The links below will show you some ways to make your classes more engaging. “
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HYBRID Workshops for Effective Teaching through Online Environments – Main Page
Engaging the Learner & Building Community, Online Discussion, Promising Teaching Strategies, Teaching Critical Skills, Assessment, Testing & Grading and Web 2.0 Tools
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Communication in Online Courses: Strategies for Providing Feedback
“Students need much more support and feedback in the online environment than in a traditional course. This is because the potential threat that students feel alienated is quite high in the Virtual Classroom. Using effective feedback strategies will enable the instructor to identify and meet individual student needs as well as encourage students to participate and continue to participate at a high quality level. Here are strategies for providing feedback in the Virtual Classroom:”
Diigo Links for the Week (weekly)
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If you have a PDF file that you need to display on the web in HTML, than this website is exactly what you need. PDF files were not designed to be displayed right in browsers, and sometime converting them to HTML is the best way to display them. Using this service, the process couldn’t be easier.
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College teachers are always on the lookout for better ways to interact with their students. With technology bringing numerous innovations every day, teachers have a lot of interactive options to choose from. One of the best options available is a website called Coursekit, a free to use web service for teachers and students.
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How to Use Gmail’s Advanced Search Features & Create Filters – How-To Geek
“Gmail’s a Google product, so of course it has powerful search features. But some of Gmail’s search features are hidden and don’t appear in the Search Options pane. Learn Gmail’s search tricks to master your massive inbox. You can also create filters from any search you can perform. Filters automatically perform actions on incoming emails, such as deleting them, applying a label, or forwarding them to another email address.”
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“Effective online instructional practices may be applied to online and blended college courses. Carefully orchestrated online discussions support learning well beyond the limited face-to-face course time. Students gain greater depth of academic understanding and leadership skills if cooperative learning groups use research-based process and structure .”
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INTRODUCING ONLINE COMPONENTS TO A CLASS: HOW TO INCREASE THE LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESS
Diigo Links for the Week (weekly)
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Are Mobile Devices Destroying Your Body? [Infographic] – How-To Geek
from How-To Geek http://www.howtogeek.com
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How to Get Google Docs Form Data in an Email Message
from Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://www.labnol.org
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Learn Podcast Editing Basics With Garageband [Mac]
from MakeUseOf http://www.makeuseof.com
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Tools to get students feedback during class lectures. Integrates with Twitter and Facebook or stand alone tools listed here.