Web Site Story: A College Parady

Hope this musical parody brings a smile to your face about the use of Social Networking:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Getting Ready for The Translator

Greetings,

Many of us are getting ready to use The Translator and there are a plethora of tools available to us. I've been playing with a few that will hopefully add some interactivity to my lessons.

Zoho Creator offers the ability to create input forms and pull the information out in a variety of ways: spreadsheet, summary, calendar, rss feed, .pdf, and HTML. In their Free Account version, they allow you to create five (5) applications; however, within those, you can have as many forms as you like.

For this project, I've chosen to embed using the summary layout. Here, I can filter by book section or see all the comments at once. The data has been set to sort by "time added" in a descending order so that we can see the latest entries on top.
To give an idea of how this works, I've entered comments in the following sections: Introduction, Chapter 4, Chapter 7, Chapter 26, and General Comments. I've written "Nothing yet" in all other sections just to make sure I pulled data correctly.

Instructions

Add an Entry: There is a small "Add" link direclty below the word "Translator". When you click this link, a small entry form will open. Use the pull-down menu to select a section of the book about which you will write. The tag for "General Comments" is at the bottom of the menu.

View Entries: Use the Filter pull-down menu to view the comments for the section in which you are interested.

Let me know if you think these instructions require clarification.

NOTES:

• Twitter might be a good choice, but it limits the user to 140 characters and I haven't learned to set it up for filters correctly.
• In using Pageflakes to transfer widgets to this blog, I discovered Pagecasts which allow you to pull together information from given sources for your topic. Here is an example. This might allow us to pool our resources campus-wide or college-wide. Heather Sullivan, on EdTechTopia explains how to set up a class. Read her article, "Pageflakes for Education"
• One university seems to have chosen Pageflakes over Blackboard. Hmmmm. Click here to see an HTML version of their PowerPoint presentation.

Here is my attempt at a Pagecast for The Translator.

If you have time, please enter some thoughts about the book into the widgets--think of yourselves as Beta testers--and let me know what you think. Questions, comments, and critiques are always appreciated.


Aggie

Stephen Colbert Reads James Joyce on Bloom's Day

Hi All,

I couldn't pass this up--today is Bloom's Day, big observance of Joyce's Ulysses. The post contains a link to a free audio reading: Colbert Reads Ulysses

But look at all the other resources too.

Best, Alice

Summary: Student Learning Evidence Inventory

If you were at the Spring Faculty Day, you may have filled out the survey asking you about what types of assessment activities you provided in your courses.

Dean Sunny most appreciatively read and summarized the rich input. Read it here to learn what colleagues are doing as a college to surface what students are learning.

/AssessmentEvidence.pdf

Things to Look Forward to this Week

It's a optimistic Monday in the Office of Innovations: Finalists interview today for the Instructional Designer/Instructional Technology Trainer position, a Creating a Hybrid Course Workshop opens tomorrow with 15 enrolled, and Wed. brings sessions for 50 new nursing students with BBoard and Online Tools for Students.

On Thursday, CMC joins other Colorado Community Colleges in Second Life for the announcement of a shared-use island purchased by Colorado Community Colleges Online.

Woot, as they say in some circles. And stay tuned for a new assessment piece from Dean Sunny and a list of other training opportunities.

Cheers,

Alice