2015-05-10 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. May 8, 2015 Contents: Instructional Technology Workshop; Reading DayTechnology Workshop; LMS Survey Raw Results

2015-05-01 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips May 1, 2015 Contents: Free online art books from two great museums; GMail - much more than an email handler; WeVideo adds desktop recording; An answer to problems with embedded video in Blackboard

2015-04-24 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. April 24, 2015 Contents: Technology Committee News - LMS Planning; The American Dream Game; Make Your Own eBooks Using Google Slides; Online Writing Analysis

2015-04-13 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. April 13, 2015 This newsletter is a few days late so that I could include a couple of items, most especially the link to the online workshop. Contents: Technology Committee Meeting; Online Workshop; LMS Selection Process; Printer Upgrades; Map Your Cloudspace with MohioMap; Getting Appointment Slots in Google Calendar Right

2015-03-27 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. March 27, 2015 This is a short newsletter this week.  With Spring Break it has been a slow and shortened week.  I am also trying something new.  Because of Outlook’s inability to correctly parse line feeds, thus breaking lines in inappropriate spots, I am going to try publishing the full newsletter just in my blog.  I will include this first section, normally just the Table of Contents, in the email with a link to the blog-post.  Let me know what you think: dave.basener@net.elmhurst.edu Contents: Technology Committee Meeting; website MyReadingMapped taken down; Adding a Table of Contents to your Google Docs

2015-03-06 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. March 6, 2015 In this issue: Upcoming workshop on screen recording and editing; Blackboard Rubrics problem; updates to the WeVideo online video editor; learn Gmail keyboard shortcuts painlessly; use and create online annotated maps.

2015-02-27 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. February 27, 2015 Contents: Instructional Technology Workshop, Spam Alerts and Zip Files, New Section: Google Apps For Education, Sending a Set of Related Documents Without Zip

2015-02-22 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. February 22, 2015 Contents: Blackboard Issues, Notes on Classroom Hybridization, Google Image Search

2015-02-15 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. February 13, 2015 Contents: Blackboard reboots, Prezi workshop recording, Google search tricks, and an answer to a Prezi question

2015-02-08 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. February 6, 2015 In this issue: Prezi Workshop, System Status Access, Updates to the Google Apps Launcher and to Sheets, and an Online Graphing Calculator

2014-12-12 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. December 12, 2014

2014-12-05 Instructional Technology Newsletter

Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips. December 05, 2014

Connecting With Your Students Using (primarily) Google Apps For Education

2014-05-20

As part of the A. C. Buehler Library's informational program for Reading Day Spring 2014, I demonstrated a set of tools, based on Google Apps For Education, that help faculty connect more easily, in a more organic manner, with students.  The purpose of this post is to make the recording and my notes public.  My speaking notes are minimal and will serve only to jog your memory if you were there, and to give you an idea of what was presented if you weren't.

These are my notes.

This is the Google Hangouts recording of my desktop.  I knock the microphone off the table twice!  Clumsy or animated - you be the judge.

If you would like further information or assistance in setting up some of the suggestions I make, please contact me at dave.basener AT net.elmhurst.edu.

New Zero-Day Exploit Targets Internet Explorer

(2014-04-28)

The United States Department of Homeland Security is warning Americans to not use Internet Explorer, until a fix is found and disseminated for a major security flaw that was discovered by the security firm, FireEye.  One assumes that other nationalities should be wary as well.

I will go further and state that you should never use Internet Explorer at all.  Part of the reason for this is that since Internet Explorer is based on proprietary, secret software, no one really knows what is going on in the product.  In this situation, as in others, Microsoft has known about the flaw and said nothing until the flaw was found and publicized by FireEye.  No one knows how long they have known and what they are doing about it.

Writing Your Own Websites With Google Drive

2014-04-11

Google Sites are great and let you easily create and maintain rich websites.  But what if you want your very own look and feel, don't want to be limited to Google's themes, or need to demonstrate skills for a class?  

Quick and Easy Tools From Google

Quick and Easy Tools From Google (2014-01-13)

We are back from the Holidays and extremely bad weather here in Elmhurst, Illinois.  I thought I would post a bit about the easy (read "nothing to install") tools available right from Google Search.

These will work for all browsers, but if you use Chrome, or set your browser's default search to be Google, they will all work from the address/search box directly.

You probably already know that if you put a location, whether the name of a business or an address into the address box, Google will show map and other location based services at the top of the search results.  However, there are other context sensitive results available.

New Research on Maximum Recommended Instructional Video Length

New Research on Maximum Recommended Instructional Video Length (2013-11-26)

I don't normally re-blog - this is the first time actually.  However, this new research from EdX and University of Rochester should just be presented in its original.  In a nutshell, rather than the "10 to 12, and not longer than 15, minutes", instructional video length that I have recommended in workshops, this research implies a much shorter length: 6 minutes.  In fact, while the average viewing time for a 6 minute video was 6 minutes, after that, the longer the video, the shorter the time that students watched.  12 - 15 minute videos were watched for less time than a 3 minute video!

https://www.edx.org/blog/optimal-video-length-student-engagement

Google Drops Support for Internet Explorer 9

Google Drops Support for Internet Explorer 9 (2013-11-11)

Google attempts to be browser agnostic in all of its standard Apps offerings so that all browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox, on Windows and MocOS, work equally well¹.   In order to make this task manageable for these other browsers, Google limits the supported versions of those browsers to the current version and the next one previous².  

Google Maps as a Multi-Discipline Instruction Tool

Google Maps as a Multi-Discipline Instruction Tool (2013-10-04)

View The Amistad Slave Route & Revolt in a larger map
The ability to create your own content tied to a Google Map has always been ripe with promise for instruction in fields beyond Geography and Geology.  Tying the activity in novels, historically important events, political movements, migration patterns of animals and humans, changing climate data or anything else "mappable" to an interactive Google Map (or Google Earth) lets your students explore the topic in a way that a simple narrative restricts.

Circuits On The Web

Circuits On The Web (2013-09-30)

For electronics classes or Makers in general, a new (to me anyway) website, 123dCircuits, lets you create a circuit and share it online.  It even has an Arduino simulator so you can fully design your shield program and breadboard circuit before risking any sensitive components.