Teachers Talking Technology

Author: kchamber

  • Web-based accommodations for students

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    kchamber

    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

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    kchamber

    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

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    kchamber

    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

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    kchamber

    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

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    kchamber

    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

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    kchamber

    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

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    kchamber

    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).  

  • Screencasting and podcasting follow up

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    kchamber

    Last week, we had a great session on creating digital content for your classes. Martin Lang demonstrated the use of Snapz X Pro for creating software tutorials, and Karla Marz demonstrated how to use GarageBand to produce digital lectures.  If you would like try screencasting, Faculty Focus suggests some free software options. For podcasting, instructional services has pdf instructions…

  • Changing Moodle themes

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    kchamber

    During our recent Moodle Users Group session, we discussed changing the appearance of Moodle from the default theme to one of Moodle’s other themes. Changing the theme will alter the color scheme and fonts. Compare the Gustavus default theme… …to the “formal white” theme. In addition, themes also affect the styling of the page, and…

  • Tracking recommendation letters using Google Forms

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    kchamber

    I’ve used forms to conduct experiments in class, to collect information about my students, and to create surveys for campus committees, but it just dawned on me yesterday that I could use forms to help track recommendation letters for students. I set up a Google Form (Sean has a nice video tutorial if you have…