Teachers Talking Technology

Author: kchamber

  • Assignment step calculator

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    kchamber

    Do your students have a research paper that is due during the upcoming months? The Assignment Calculator can help them stay on track as they research and write an assignment. Just enter the start date and due date, and the Assignment Calculator will suggest tips and deadlines for completing the steps of the research and…

  • Using spotlight comments for class files

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    kchamber

    There are many posts describing how you can use spotlight comments (or tags in Windows) to organize your files, but I wanted to highlight a few examples of why using comments/tags would be useful to faculty members–tracking course materials that are used in multiple courses and establishing a portfolio of student work. Tracking course materials Often you…

  • Class rosters three ways

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    kchamber

    As you prepare for Fall classes, you may want to gather student information to help create your course gradebook.  You can do this on the first day of class using a Google Form, but here are three different ways of getting some data during the summer. First, you can use your Moodle course page.  After…

  • Google Calendar CSV import

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    kchamber

    Earlier this week, George Williams demonstrated how to move your assignments and due dates from your syllabus to Google Calendar using the CSV import feature.  This import feature could also be used at the beginning of the semester to collect schedules from research assistants and independent study students.  By default, Gustavus publishes each student’s class…

  • Google introduces CloudCourse

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    kchamber

    Google announced its foray into the learning management system arena. CloudCourse is fully integrated with Google Calendar and can be further customized for your organization with the following service provider interfaces (replaceable components): Sync service – to sync CloudCourse data with your internal systems Room info service – to schedule classes in your locations User…

  • Office Add-in for Moodle

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    kchamber

    Microsoft Education Labs has released a Moodle add-in. The Office Add-in for Moodle (OAM) is an add-in for Microsoft Office (versions 2003 and 2007) that allows teachers to open and save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents to a Moodle website. Future versions will also allow students to save directly to Moodle from Microsoft Office products,…

  • Schedule advising appointments online

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    kchamber

    To schedule advising appointments last smester, I put a sheet of paper on my door with 15 minute time slots and emailed students asking them to come by and sign up for a time slot.  Simple enough…but there was one problem.  I kept forgetting to look at the signup sheet and add the taken times…

  • Using Google Moderator at Gustavus

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    kchamber

    Google Moderator allows an audience to “decide which questions, suggestions or ideas interest them most”.  Visitors to the site submit a question (or suggestion or idea) and identify which questions they like from other contributors.  The list of questions can then be sorted by the popularity of the question.  Recently, I’ve been thinking about how…

  • On margins, fonts, and paper usage

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    kchamber

    As I was carrying the 80 page faculty meeting packet from my post office box back to my office, I started to think again about paper usage on campus.  Last semester, Chloe Radcliffe pointed out that reducing default margin sizes from 1.25 inches to 0.5 inches reduces paper usage by 25%, and I see that…

  • Discovering mailing list members

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    kchamber

    I just figured out yesterday that you can use the Gribly to discover who receives emails for some email aliases.  For example, previously I had wondered what members of the Gustavus community receive emails that I send to the alias for the Academic Operations Committee.  If you use that email alias as your search term,…