The scheme is pretty simple:

Corrupted-Files.com, a Web site developed in December as a joke, its owner says, offers unreadable Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files that appear, at first glance, to be legitimate. Students can submit them via e-mail to professors in place of real papers to get a deadline extension without late penalties. For $3.95, the site promises a “completed” assignment file will be sent to the buyer within 12 hours, to be renamed and submitted by the new owner. By the time a professor gives up on the bogus file, in theory, a student will have been able to complete the actual assignment.

The article then goes on to explore ways to detect and possibly handle such events.

The comments section chimes in with two dozen or so additional suggestions - everything from "use paper" to "develop work process" with the selection of a topic, the submission of a brief reading list, then an outline, and finally the paper itself. The latter one appeals to me because it has the advantage of testing the assignment system, keeping students on track, and generally emulating best practices. The comments themselves could be edited to be a part of the "how to submit a paper" instructions.

Definitely a good read for courses with a writing requirement.

Marc Beja, 'The Computer Ate My Homework': How to Detect Fake Techno-Excuses, The The Wired Campus in The Chronicle of Higher Education (Online), June 10, 2009. http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3818/the-computer-ate-my-homework-how-to-detect-fake-techno-excuses

Image. A Google thumbnail found with a image search for [gremlin]. Alas, the source of that image is no longer on the page that google points to, illustrating another way the computer can eat your homework.

Posted by steve at 1:02 PM | Permalink

The Economist (Economist.Com) is sponsoring a series of debates on the future of education. Each debate topic considers the educational impacts of technology, globalization, and changing nature of social relationships. The third (and final) debate, which runs from from January 15th through January 25th, focuses on "social networking," specifically on the proposition :

Proposition: Social networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom. .

The debate is based on an online variant of the Oxford Debate rules - each speaker has three chances to advance his view - an opening statement, a rebuttal, and a final summary. Observers (who must register) may participate, mainly though a discussion with the moderator who will raise relevant points to the debaters. In addition, Observers may also vote for the side of the proposition they most agree with.

Speaking to the Affirmative: Ewan McIntosh, National Adviser on Learning and Technology Futures for Learning and Teaching Scotland. Mr McIntosh writes for The Guardian newspaper and the BBC on social media and learning issues, speaks internationally and consults for organisations on how social media can be harnessed for to improve learning in the organisation

Spealing to the Negative: Michael Bugeja, Director of Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, ISU. Mr. ,Bugeja is the author of 21 books, with research often being cited by NYT and IHT to name a few, Dr Bugeja was among the first to analyse the use of Facebook before many professors realised that most of their students were already registered and of Second Life before many students had ever heard of it.

Moderator: Robert Cottrell, Deputy Editor of Economist.com. Mr Cottrell has been deputy editor of Economist.com for the past two years, and online editor of Intelligent Life magazine since its re-launch this year. He is based in New York.

Image source: BBC News, Ban Foxhunting? - Oxford Union says no, Thursday, October 22, 1998 Published at 20:23 GMT 21:23 UK. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/198249.stm

Posted by steve at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (73) | TrackBacks (0)

The University of Vermont is now a member of Educause's Learning Initiative (ElI).

ELI explores the interaction among learners, learning principles and practices, and learning technologies. Membership benefits include reduced rates on ELI events and access to all resources on their web site, including archived web seminars and podcasts.

There are three upcoming events that may interest you:
January 14: Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 (online event)
January 28 - 30: ELI 2008 Annual Meeting - Connecting and Reflecting: Preparing Learners for Life 2.0 (San Antonio, TX)
March 18 - 19: Real World and Technology-Rich: Learning by Doing, Learning in Context (Raleigh, NC)

To access ELI resources and register for events, you will need to set up a member profile that connects you as an UVM affiliate. Go to the the Educause home page and follow the directions in the "Manage your personal profile" (under the "What would you like to do?" section).

We hope that you will explore the resources on the ELI site. If you find these resources valuable and/or are interested in attending an event, please let us know.

Posted by wendy at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

Why don’t we see more crossover between higher education and K-12 professional and academic conferences? My feed reader brought me news last week of the upcoming Open Minds Conference: Open Source in K-12 Education:

The Open Minds Conference is the first national K-12 gathering for teachers, technicians and educational leaders to share and explore the benefits of open source in education. Virtual Learning Environments that provide 24X7 access to teaching and learning resources, cutting-edge and easy-to-use desktop applications, coupled with powerful management tools and low-cost computer strategies make the classroom of tomorrow available today!

This would be an interesting conference to attend from a higher education perspective. It’s not just that many of the tools to be discussed there are those that work just as well in a collegiate environment - in fact, most probably got their start in higher education. The real benefit for those in academia will be the insight into how our future clients (students) are using these tools, and how that shapes incoming student expectations, learning styles, and attitudes. I wonder what other K-12 conferences are out there that might provide more of this type of insight.

The presentation list for the K12 Online Conference doesn’t look all that different from the 2007 EDUCAUSE program. I do recall the annual Blackboard conference having k-12 tracks - however what few sessions there were seemed more product specific. Are there K-12 conferences out there with higher education tracks? What about other events that serve both groups?

Posted by justin at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Paul Stamatiou points us to the imminent release of Firefox Campus Edition - a “back to school” version of the web browser that comes with a few add-ons geared for students.

While only one of the add-ons, Zotero (which we’ve mentioned before), has a decidedly “academic” feel to it, the concept of bundling tools in this way is intriguing. Campuses regularly offer software that is modified to fit their user base. However with the web and even browsers themselves becoming more social in nature, the idea of deploying a customized browser presents all sorts of possibilities, from bookmarklets and toolbars, to customized search bars.

If you were going to build a customized version of Firefox for your campus, what would you choose to include? Keeping in mind that you can only fit so many tools into a browser, how would you balance and blend the social and academic tools that are out there into a cohesive and useable tool for faculty and students?

Posted by justin at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Click Here to take Endnotes Workshop survey

Endnotes Web Site, this is a great starting point for all resources and support related to Endnotes.

UVM libraries Web Site about Endnote

Download the file to search UVM libraries in ENDNOTE here!

Enjoy EndNote. It is a very nice tool. (when it works correctly!!)

See us at the CTL Dr Is In if you need additional help.

Posted by Holly B. Parker at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There are several ways to make Powerpoint slides available online. Some methods are better than others, but how you do it often depends on your audience. Will they be printing the presentation? Where are they likely to be viewing it - at home, at the library, at work?

We've talked about Powerpoint here before, and I've written elsewhere about the value of presentation skills. What follows is more of a practical publishing and distribution guide than a philosophical approach.

Printer friendly

Ask anyone who provides support for students in a computer lab, and they'll probably tell you that students want to print your lecture slides. The most reliable way to let them do this is to put up a document in pdf format. The PDF format is fairly ubiquitous, and often means a smaller file to download. You can also be sure that it will print the way you expect it to. Saving a Powerpoint as a PDF in handout format is a popular way of doing this.

Another way to allow your audience to print is to provide them with the original Powerpoint file to download and print. An added benefit to doing it this way is that viewers can choose the format and layout in which the slides will be printed.

Problems with powerpoint

Just offering the .ppt file can be problematic, however. A large presentation may take a while to download, especially if someone is at home on dial-up. The computer they are downloading the slides to may not have the necessary software, which would prevent them from opening the file. Finally, it takes a few steps to format the slides for printing. Users unfamiliar with the presentation software may have trouble printing in handout format. Users familiar with it still need to go through a few steps before they can do so.

Saving the presentation as html is not much of a solution, either. Printing is not really possible, the formatting doesn't hold when viewing it, and it is difficult to upload since it creates a lot of files.

Anywhere, anytime

For many, the end goal of publishing a presentation is to allow your audience to easily review it. As seen above, the act of downloading and opening a slideshow isn't always easy.

Luckily, there's a solution. SlideShare is a service that allows you to upload and share your slides in Powerpoint, Keynote, PDF and other formats. Once uploaded, it converts your presentation into a format that can be easily viewed online, even embedded into a blog post or web page. Kind of like YouTube, for slideshows. Here's one that Hope uploaded, from our recent McNair Scholars laptop program:

As an added benefit, SlideShare allows you to provide a link to download the original presentation. It also provides a "transcript" of the show, to provide the content in text format. Adding the slide show to your blog, course, or even email is just copying and pasting the url or embed code given to you when you upload a presentation to SlideShare. All this is on the slideshow's page.

Putting it together

With the above in mind, here's a procedure for publishing your slides in a way that is easy for your viewers to use.

1. Save a version of your presentation in PDF format, and upload it to your blog, course. or web page.
2. Upload your presentation to SlideShare (create an account if you haven't already).
3. Copy the embed or link code from the SlideShare page to your blog or page.
4. Make a link to the uploaded PDF, and label it as the printable version.

SlideShare seems to be sorely lacking one feature, and that is a way to print the uploaded presentation. This is why we do steps 1 and 4.

This should ensure that your audience can quickly and easily review the presentation. They will also be able to print reliably by downloading the PDF file.

Posted by justin at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

We were talking today, again, about that recurrent concern over the reliance on PowerPoint for presenting complex concepts or sharing knowledge. I recently read Edward Tufte's Beautiful Evidence and the second edition of his powerful PowerPoint essay is quoted in the title of this post.

It's a perpetual teaching/learning issue. Not only is PP increasingly relied upon to support lecture, but more students are required to submit their course work in this format.

Some questions that I feel are worth asking are, Do bullet points and pictures inspire or require smart and rigorous thinking? How much of the blame for bad (i.e., diminishing, boring, soporific, flattening...) PowerPoint presentations lies with the user and how much with the tool?

Read more on Edward Tufte's blog.

Posted by inés at 5:43 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A student in his class reacted favorably to his project. "It's a pretty neat idea, but he also told us in class that you're going to get the most if you come to class and hear the lecture firsthand, so it's really a matter of choice," NCSU student Audrey Wilson said [1]. The student newspaper, the Technician, ran an article [2] also giving a favorable impression, but the editors of the paper disagreed [3] - wondering if this was a ripoff [should missing class be so expensive :)?].

The Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences was bothered by the practice and wanted time to think about it, and communicated this to Prof. Schrag who has, for the time being, removed the lectures from the site. UNC policy, however, allows professors to retain sole ownership of materials that they produce in their classrooms. [4] Notes and References

[0] Image: Robert L. Schrag, Mask. Image http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/communication/faculty/schrag/webpub/mask.jpg" on http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/communication/faculty/schrag/webpub/doodles.html

[1] Kelley Brackett, Professor gives students the option of purchasing his lectures online, technicianonline (N.C. State Student Media, Raleigh, North Carolina), http://media.www.technicianonline.com/media/storage/paper848/news/2006/09/13/News/Professor.Gives.Students.The.Option.Of.Purchasing.His.Lectures.Online-2268444.shtml. Robert Schrag records Communication 250 classes and offers them to students online for $2.50

[2] NBC17, Professor's Digital Lessons Put On Hold, NBC Channel 17, Ralleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. September 13, 2006. http://www.nbc17.com/education/9842776/detail.html "It's a pretty neat idea, but he also told us in class that you're going to get the most if you come to class and hear the lecture firsthand, so it's really a matter of choice," NCSU student Audrey Wilson said. "You can get the CD, or go to the live concert. A lot of people go to the concert because there's something about it being live, or a student being able to ask the question, not listening to another student's question."

[3] Unsigned editorial, The principle of the thing. Opinion: Professors should not charge for audio copies of their lectures when students already pay thousands of dollars in tuition and the university has free web space available. technicianonline (N.C. State Student Media, Raleigh, North Carolina) http://www.technicianonline.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&uStory_id=fc6306c2-6400-4fc3-8740-d499869a6c3f

[4] Andrea Foster, N.C. Professor Stops Selling Lecture Recordings Online After a Dean Raises Questions. Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2006. http://chronicle.com/free/2006/09/2006091501t.htm

Related

Wired Campus Blog, Online Lecture Sales Suspended, The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2006. http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1570/online-lecture-sales-suspended. The Blog leads off a discussion with the question "Do you think professors should be able to profit from selling their lecture recordings to students online."

Robert L. Schrag, Robert's Quarterly Journal of On-Going Works, The Compleat Worke, Volume 1, Number 1. http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/communication/faculty/schrag/webpub/distribution.html

Robert L. Schrag (Bob), Educause Profile. http://www.educause.edu/PeerDirectory/750?ID=38482. Dr. Schrag has taught in the Communication Department at NC State since 1981. He focuses on digital technology and has a special interest in the intersection between those technologies and expressive communication - painting, sculpture, music, etc., and various combinations thereof

Posted by steve at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While spending two days in New York attending An Event Apart, I saw some cool stuff about standards-compliant web design & development, CSS best-practices, and unobtrusive JavaScript. Most of that doesn't mean much to most of the people who might happen across this blog. However, one thing that I did see that could have a profound effect in education (and education on the web) was Eric Meyer's S5.

S5 is the Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System and was running each of the presentations that was shown at AEA. The beauty of it is that it uses some basic (pre-written) JavaScript and CSS to create a "PowerPoint" style slideshow using one standards-based, semantically-written XHTML file.

The bonus of this is that since the file is already HTML-based, it's already formatted for the web. And since it's relatively lightweight and doesn't require any server-side technology, it can be easily run locally from a laptop without an Internet connection or from within an LMS like WebCT or Blackboard, and it can be viewed without CSS or JavaScript as a simple outline (which after all, is all a PowerPoint show really is) on a handheld or other such devices. And, since it uses standards-based XHTML, there's no longer the ability to destroy your presentation with PowerPoint (and its ridiculous "feature" set (read spinny/twirly things)).

S5 - A Simple, Standards-based Slide Show System

Posted by at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

External Research & Programs: Tablet PC Technology, Curriculum, and Higher Education 2005 RFP Awards

BSAD and SoE have received funds from MiscroSoft to explore enhancing student use of TabletPCs in their respective departments. According to the blurb they also intend to "develop training seminars on Tablet PCs and associated software."

Posted by hope at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

So I know this guy who graduated from UVM a couple years ago and has since moved to San Francisco to work in a bio-medical research lab. More specifically, he studies the effects of rubbing chili paste on peoples arms...

Today, he sent me a very interesting Instant Message via iChat that I think has a great applications to Higher Education.

He was set to interview for Medical Schools, via Video Conference! The reason he contacted me, was that I use the "same internet" as the people who would be interviewing him from UVM. Granted this may be more exciting to me than for you, one has to realize the potential that this free technology can offer us! Imagine, instead of using Horizon Live or some other video conferencing service, a professor teaches their class infront of an iSight or similar device, a student has a question and is able to then join that conference via video to ask it! Maybe you apply to a job out in California from Vermont and the company really wants to meet you, but doesn't want to fly you out. Just hook up the old internet camera and make magic! True, the hardware is not free, nor does iChat support more than 4 or 5 users on even the best machine - but as soon as you realize the limitations of software/hardware, you begin to see improvements.

So there you have it, evidence of iChat being used for interviewing at UVM.....

Posted by at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The recently published results of the NetDay Speak Up survey revealed an interesting model of what students consider the ideal school.

When asked to "describe a new school for students just like you--what would be the No. 1 technology you would need," the leading response from students in every grade was access to personal laptops they could take home.

Also, students expressed a strong desire to learn in a more hands-on way. They said they'd find math more engaging if teachers infused more technology into their lessons. They also said they want to explore science through technology simulations, field trips, and "CSI"-like problem-solving exercises, rather than textbooks.

Links:

eSchool News Staff, For students, eMail already is outdated, May 3, 2006. http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/PFshowstory.cfm?ArticleID=6297

Netday "Speak Up" survey results, http://www.dell4k12.com/netday

Netday "Speak Up" survey tool 2005, http://www.netdayspeakup.org/

Posted by steve at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In one of the last colleague teas of the spring series, we talked podcasting. This included some production tools, ideas for teaching with the medium, concerns about how not to use this kind of technology, and of course examples.

As is often the case, we looked at some examples to get us started. Tim Fox showed us his podcast, The Supportive Classroom, and talked a bit about the process he used to produce it, including how to get it published in the iTunes Music Store. We also looked at some podcasts downloaded from the music store, such as a chinese language instruction series, and a recorded classroom lecture.

We discussed a few of the tools available for creating and recording podcasts, including:

• Odeo - easy, web based software that allows you to record and store up to an hour’s worth of audio per session.
• GarageBand - audio recording software for the mac that lets you publish directly from within the interface
• Audacity - free, cross-platform software. Not as easy to use/install as some of the others.
• iTunes U - an iTunes music store geared towards higher education organizations.

One question that came up went along the lines of “Why podcast?”. An answer seemed to be that it was an easy way to publish and distribute media - anyone with a blog can syndicate audio/video material which can be easily downlaoded onto an audience’s computers, or portable media devices.

As the conversation moved on, we looked at and discussed “videocasting”, “screencasting”, enhanced podcasts (such as narrated PowerPoints and chaptered podcasts). We talked about some of the challenges of teaching with such a tool, which led us to some more examples of how to use it in the classroom. Paul Martin, joining us via instant message (thanks Paul!) pointed us to an example of an enhanced podcast he produced. We also looked at how he used podcasts in some of his courses, including having the students record podcasts which he posts on a course blog.

All in all, it was another successful session, with some great discussion. Afterwards, Steve Birnbaum sent us this great article regarding the Berkely iTunes U library being made available to the public (thanks Steve!).

UPDATE: Malachi pointed out that Apple offers some seminars on "Podcasting on Campus". Also, Charlie and I came across a great screencast on using Garageband to create enhanced podcasts (you may have to scroll down to find it - I couldn't find a permalink to the post).

Posted by justin at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An intriguing example/experiment with the Squidoo web service as a teaching tool. The "lens" is in this case a sort of shareable, comment enabled organized bookmark list. It kind of reminds me of a more interactive the bibliographic section of a syllabus. It's even got links to materials available on amazon. (Via Tame The Web.)

Posted by justin at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday we held another of our Colleague Tea events, this one entitled "Blogs at UVM". It was a cozy group, with only about five or six people attending, but it was a lively and enlightening discussion. I think everyone left with some ideas about how they could use this tool in their courses. Here are a few of the resources we looked at, along with some of the places and ideas we discussed.

At the beginning, we gave out a resources sheet with the blog.uvm.edu url on it and descriptions of the tools that could be found there, such as the Get a Blog! link, the Blogroll, and the "help" blog. This handout also had URL's for the Doctor Is In program, and the CTL Events calendar. We also had a "Blogging Lingo" (pdf) handout, definitions of common terms.

We started out with introductions, and discovered almost immediately that one of our participants was already blogging! She was excited to find out that she could set up a blog at UVM, in addition to using an external service - which she is currently doing with her Women's Bioethics Blog.

In after looking at that blog, we went to the UVM Blogroll and took a look at a few blogs currently in use in the classroom. The blogs of Paul Martin's canadian literature courses were examples we looked at, as were Charlie Rathbone's education course blogs.

After that, we briefly looked at the editing and posting interface, and how easy it is to upload and post a picture. Throughout all of this, we were pausing to talk about the differences between using this tool as opposed to others such as WebCT or regular web/"zoo" space. Along the way we also discussed various details of using a blog, such as being able to save posts in unpublished "draft" form. We touched on ideas such as publishing multiple versions of syllabii, re-using a blog space, as well as ideas for handling discussion and dealing with comment spam. As we wrapped up, it seemed that a few folks might really have more need of something like WebCT, for it's structure and tools such as quizzes and threaded discussion.

Toward the end, we looked at Technorati, and Google as ways of finding blogs of specific interest.

We also talked a little about feed readers.

All in all, it was a lot of fun. And the cookies were tasty!

Posted by justin at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)