First Online Class

Posted on October 5, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

I teach a face-to-face course that is more or less a part of a freshmen block.  Traditional first-semester freshmen take my tech class, an introduction to education and a special education course.  The instructors for the three courses try to coordinate activities so that one course’s field experience doesn’t leave everyone else with an empty classroom. 

Last week most of the students were in the field.  I have a few online activities in the tech course so I planned an online class for Thursday.  Since my students were in the field during regular class hours, I had to have an asynchronous activity.  Most of my students had no high school experience in online courses, so this whole process is something new for them.

I recorded (voice and screen recordings) some background material using Elluminate and made it available to the students.  I created a discussion board and asked that all communication about the activity take place in the discussion board.

As is typical for this first online assignment, a few students can’t avoid emailing me their questions.  I kindly explain that other people will probably have the same questions and for that reason the questions should be asked in the discussion board. 

The more difficult problem for the students is creating the proper context for the question.  I see posts like:

I keep getting an error.

There is no sound.

I can’t save the file.

These “one liners” don’t give me a lot of information to work with.  I don’t know if the question concerns the resource material or the construction of the artifact.  I have to add a followup question to the question (which I don’t like to do) just so I can have enough information to understand the context of the question.

I have come with a three-step-bop for online course questions.

1 – Tell me what you are doing.
2 – Tell me what you expected to happen.
3 – Tell me what you observed happening.

Those first two items are usually absent from the post, but are needed to give me enough information to understand what is being observed.

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Internal Family Matter

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

Yesterday was a hot day for a high school class in Norwalk.  The students were suppose to learn how a bill becomes a law from a presentation by an Ohio legislator, but instead the students saw a picture of a topless woman.

Rep. Matthew H. Barrett thought he was opening a PowerPoint that was saved on his USB drive.  Instead he opened a picture of a nude woman.  Investigators found a folder full of similar pictures on his “flash” drive.

Barrett got more attention for his “government” lecture than he anticipated when he found himself face-to-face with local police, the State Highway Patrol and television cameras.  He said the USB drive was a gift from the State Library of Ohio.  A spokeswoman from the library said the drive was blank when Barrett received it.

At first Barrett said he didn’t know how the picture got onto the drive.  Last night he released a statement saying he wanted to “put the matter behind him” and it was “an internal family matter.”

The last major story I remember dealing with a teacher accidentally showing inappropriate pictures to students ended with a guilty conviction and a teacher (Julie Amero) facing a 40 year sentence.  The circumstances were different.  Amero didn’t intentionally download inappropriate pictures at home and save them to a USB drive that was then transported to school and intentionally projected onto a screen in front of students.

Amero had the wrong defense.  She should have said it was an internal family matter.

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KompoZer

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

kompozer.pngToday I went looking for a free WYSIWYG HTML editor that was good enough that my students could use it instead of purchasing FrontPage or DreamWeaver.  I found KompoZer.  It was everything I was looking for and more. 

From what I understand, KompoZer is an update to Nvu.  Both are open source programs, but Nvu is no longer being updated.

I was looking for a program that could switch between HTML and WYSIWYG modes while editing.  I have tried to use the HTML mode in OpenOffice, but have found it to be more of a “convert your Word document to a web page” instead of a program that can be used to create a series of pages for a more complex project.  KompoZer can handle a complex project complete with cascading style sheets.

I only played around with the program long enough to show it to my class.  In less than half an hour I was able to figure out most of the features of the program.  I was able to format text, drag and drop images into my pages and complete advanced table manipulates.

I have used DreamWeaver for more than seven years and don’t plan on switching to something new, but it is good to know that a robust program like KompoZer is available for free.

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DonorsChoose and Blogger Challenge

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

If you teach and need money for a project or work outside of education and want to help fund a specific project, DonorsChoose may be the site you need to visit.

The site has two purposes:

1 – Give public school teachers a chance to get money for classroom projects that otherwise would not be funded.

2 – Give prospective donors a chance to learning about and fund specific classroom projects.

When you create an account on the site, you are asked to categorize yourself as a public school teacher or a prospective donor. Teachers can propose projects that require funding and donors can select projects and donate money to them.

The site has also started what it calls a Blogger Challenge. If you have a blog, you can challenge the readers of your blog to donate a certain amount money during a specific time period. DonorsChoose keeps track of how much money that is donated through your blogger challenge. Tomato Nation (at the top of the leader board) has raised $35,000 impacting over 3000 students.

In the end, everyone wins.

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WiZiQ

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

If you don’t have money to spend and still want to have an interactive online class with audio, video and a shared whiteboard, take a look at WiZIQ.

Membership is free and there is no software to install.  Once you have an account, you can invite other members to your sessions.  Each session can be archived for future review.

Another nice feature is the “public session”.  This is a session open to anyone interested in joining.  All sessions (public or private) are tagged with key words.  You can search for archived sessions from other users based on these tags. 

Over time, these archives could be a great resource in and of themselves.

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