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Replace clickers with students’ phones using PollEverywhere.com

2012/02/29 Leave a comment
  1. polleverywhere-with-sms
  2. PollEverywhere.com allows teachers to set up polls with answer options that students choose by sending a number code as text message.
  3. Pro’s
    1. Freemium.
    2. Low- to No- university infrastructure requirements. Best-used in a non-computerized classroom or during startup time of students’ computers.
    3. Content can be managed online.
  4. Con’s
    1. Freemium:
      1. “You get what you pay for”. “You may be the business”. What happens with your data
      2. Not free for students unless you consider a phone plan that comes with unlimited texts free. With increasing use of other messaging options over SMS, that may be not a given even if you deal mostly with an affluent student population.
    2. Low- to No- university infrastructure requirements:
      1. you are relying on students providing the infrastructure. Are they better keeping their phones in service  (on them, charged, turned on) than we are keeping our computer labs up and running?
      2. you are relying on mobile network operators, including the choices of operator that your students made.
    3. Anonymous: Not useful for assessment purposes.
    4. The number codes are long (6 digits, while 1 could be sufficient).
  5. Competitors
    1. The university has a clicker infrastructure which is partially outsourced to students (purchase and bring).
    2. The LRC has a Classroom Management system infrastructure which supports clicker-like activities.
      1. Sanako Study 1200 comes with Live Feedback and Voting.
      2. NetOp School comes with an examination/polling feature also.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, documentation, e-learning, mobile-phones, Screencasts, Student-response-systems-AKA-clickers, Study-program-is-any, websites

Live Feedback and Voting for clicker-like activities in Sanako Study 1200

2012/02/29 Leave a comment
  1. study1200-buttons-live-voting-live-feedback (Images are from the Sanako documentation, screencasts my own) .
  2. Sanako Study 1200 comes with Live Feedback.
    1. This is what it looks like: study-1200-live-feedback
    2. The teacher enables students to give Live Feedback from their student player interface by pressing the Live Feedback button.
    3. Live Feedback is designed for students sending basic information whether they are following or confused or neutral.
      1. These up to 3 answer options could possibly be repurposed, and the question displayed by separate means. Polls can only be anonymous, results cannot be saved.
      2. More importantly, the results are not anonymous, but appear on the student icons in the classroom layout so that the teacher can attend to those students that are confused or otherwise struggling.
  3. Sanako Study 1200 also comes with Voting.
    1. A brief demo screencast of Voting is here:
    2. The teacher enables students to give Voting from their student player interface by pressing the Voting button, entering questions, answer options, optionally marking one (and only one) answer as the right answer and clicking “send’ to the students, voting-teacher-gui
    3. on whose computer a window with will pop up with question and answer option voting-student-gui
    4. while the feedback voting results window pops up on the teacher from where the teacher can “send the correct answer” to the students once everybody has voted, and “create new” polls. voting-teacher-gui-results
    5. Results can be viewed by the teacher and displayed to the class, but cannot be stored (there is no storing mechanism. One could however save a screenshot of the teacher voting result window).
    6. The Voting is also “live” insofar as no content can be archived and reloaded. Maybe this Live Voting can be both accelerated and extended through the use of a simple PowerPoint displayed on the classroom screen, by just using live Voting’s result aggregation features and forfeiting filling out/displaying the question and answer options within the live voting interface for the teacher/students.
  4. Not free, but less limited: Sanako Exam.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, e-learning, Presenter-Computer, Student-Computers, Student-response-systems-AKA-clickers Tags: , , , , ,

Wimba Classroom –> Saba Centra: A running log

2012/02/15 Leave a comment
  1. http://teaching.uncc.edu/ctl-blog/centra-classroom-replace-wimba
  2. As this pertains to the LRC, more info will be posted here, as it becomes available, and issues and resolutions, as they come up.
Categories: Distance-education-format-is-Synchronous, e-learning, lms, service-is-documenting, service-is-project-managing, web-conferencing Tags: ,

How to navigate your Moodle gradebook more easily by hiding columns

2012/02/09 Leave a comment
  1. Clicking on the minus-icon next to aggregate columns will hide the assignments in this category; clicking the plus-icon will unhide:gradebook-minus-plus-icons-marked
  2. before (wide) italian-moodle-gradebook-collapse-columns0
  3. after (narrow, better overview) italian-moodle-gradebook-collapse-columns1
Categories: audience-is-teachers, documentation, e-learning, lms Tags: ,

How to bypass a Moodle Popup Window when using Respondus lockdown browser

2012/01/24 Leave a comment
  1. Problem: when starting the Moodle Lockdown browser to take an online exam, it opens with a popup window about messages. Popup window prevents access to the underlying main Moodle browser window (and exam). When closing the popup window, the entire lockdown browser closes, including main Moodle browser window. CIMG0088
  2. Cause: Moodle can be configured to show a notification window when messages have arrived since your last login. This notification window has poor compatibility with the lockdown browser.
  3. Workaround: In the popup window, click on the tab: “Settings” and uncheck (at least for this exam session) the checkbox to show the  message box as a popup when logging in. Close the popup window. CIMG0089
  4. Result: Even if this closes the main Moodle browser window once again, when you start the Moodle Lockdown browser again, the popup window will not appear again, and you can take your exam.
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-teachers, e-learning, Glitches&Errors, lms Tags: , ,

How a student takes a Moodle Single file upload assignment

2012/01/13 2 comments
  1. Find your assignment: 1
  2. read the assignment text: 3
  3. Create the file locally, according to the assignment text
  4. Click the browse box and upload your file from your hard drive:  4
  5. Once the upload finishes, click: “ Continue”  10
  6. You are done:  11
  7. Now wait for your grade.
Categories: assignments, audience-is-students, e-learning, lms Tags: ,

How a teacher grades a Moodle simple file upload assignment

2012/01/13 1 comment
  1. When you initially createdyour single file upload assignment, there were no student submissions: 13
  2. Once there are, the link in the upper right of the assignment will tell you and take you right to the gradebook: 2-assignment-created
  3. Here you have an (1) overview who has submitted, and can click (2) to grade;  14 
  4. In the grading dialogue, you can (1) download and open the file submission (see techniques of grading student audio submissions with Audacity), (2) write comments as you assess the file, (3) assign a final grade and (4) save and move on to the next submission (fastest, when you do batch grading, the notify student of your grading feedback is still useful under these circumstances, but even more so when you your self asked to be notified by email of student submissions as they come in: faster feedback)
  5. 15
Categories: assignments, audience-is-teachers, e-learning, lms, Speaking Tags: , ,

How a teacher creates a Moodle Single file upload assignment, with optional attached file

2012/01/13 1 comment
  1. turn editing on
  2. add activity / simple file upload 1
  3. Write the assignment instructions 3
  4. For your students to be able to download a fle with additional information (e.g. the model recording), select some text pointing to it and click the link icon on the editor menu7a-insert-link
  5. (1) button: “browse”, (2) click your file uploaded into your moodle course earlier, have the window close and (3) your URL appear (or type one manually, if the file is from the WWW), (4) click button: “ok”:  7b-inserted-link-form-file-browser-with-click2
  6. Voilà, your link: 7c-inserted-link
  7. set the other assignment options according to your needs :8-assignment-settings
  8. click button: “save and display”, you are done: 9-assignment-created
Categories: assignments, audience-is-teachers, e-learning, lms, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: ,