Archive for 2011
Technology for Guest Speakers in Classes
During the Fall semester I included more guest speakers in my classes–a children’s museum consultant, a speech pathologist, a midwife, a school social worker, a city employee, a book publisher, and a toy maker. Some of the speakers were local, while others kindly volunteered to drive down from the Twin Cities. However, sometimes the guest […]
Google Forms for Class Waiting Lists
Sometimes classes fill up during registration. In the past, I have gotten emails from students asking me to place them on a waiting list. However, these emails don’t always contain information that can be helpful for tracking the requests and establishing priority (e.g., their full name, their graduation class, and their reason for taking the […]
Web-based accommodations for students
Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) has many adopters and potential benefits. At Gustavus, one of the most common implementations of JiTT is to administer pre-class quizzes through Moodle. For web-based quizzes to be the most effective, researchers have recommended establishing time limits. However, as an accommodation, students frequently request extra time on assignments, exams, and quizzes. To […]
Download all Moodle assignments as zip file
This morning I noticed that if you scroll to the bottom of a Moodle assignment page, you can download all the assignments submitted by your students as one zip file. I hope that this feature was added as part of the Gustavus Moodle upgrade this summer because, otherwise, I feel pretty silly for clicking at […]
Google Appointment Slots for Office Hours
Over the summer, Google rolled out Appointment Slots for Google Calendar. If you are already using Google Calendar for the Gustavus domain or thinking about making the transition this Fall, Appointment Slots might be an easier way than Tungle to manage office hours or advising appointments. Adria Richards has a nice video describing the process–both setting […]
Encrypting confidential files
As the college begins the laptop replacement cycle for faculty office machines, more faculty members will be traveling with their computer, using them in public spaces, and using them for personal files such as tax returns and medical records. Therefore, file security may be more of an issue than it was during the previous desktop […]
Moodle Analytics as Course Evaluation
What relationship exists between student activity on Moodle and final grades in a course? I downloaded all user activity for my Spring 2011 General Psychology course (68 students across 2 sections) and made a pivot table in Excel to summarize the activity by students and activity type. On average, each student viewed the course 114 […]
t3 Idea Exchange Summary
At the last Teachers Talking Technology session of the Spring 2011 semester, 21 faculty members gathered to generate topics for the t3 sessions during the upcoming academic year and a list of campus technology needs. Below are the points and issues that were raised. If you have additional ideas or would like to elaborate on […]
Come to our salon
The Classroom Salon is a new resource from Carnegie Mellon University that facilitates the online annotation and discussion of a shared text such as a peer’s writing, a speech transcript, or a scholarly article. (New approach to education uses social networking via Joe).
Is anyone using Evernote?
I am seriously considering moving to this for organizing my notes, but I’d like to hear stories, good or bad, if anyone is using it for their professional life.