Created on Wednesday, 03/25/2009 6:01 PM by Ed Garay
Updated on Wednesday, 03/25/2009 6:01 PM by Ed Garay
 | Lynda.com online training tutorials UIC campus-wide trial April 2009 |
Just a heads up that ACCC is on target to run a campus-wide trial of the whole library of Lynda.com just-in-time online training tutorials in April. Instructions for students, faculty and staff to access the online training modules will be distributed the week of March 30th.
Lynda.com has hundreds of cool, well-done easy-to-jump-around just-in-time self-service tutorials, including several essentials and other (intermediate/advanced) titles on:
- OS Essentials: Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X (several versions)
- Office Tools: Microsoft Excel, Access, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Visio, OneNote, Grove, MS-Publisher and Microsoft Project; Adobe Acrobat (several versions), OpenOffice, Google Docs, WordPerfect; Apple Keynote, Pages and Numbers
- Web Authoring: Adobe Dreamweaver (several versions), Cascading Stylesheets, GoLive, FireWorks, HTML Essentials, XHTML, XML, Flash, Web Accessibility Principles, Web ReDesign Strategies, Search Engine Optimization, MS-Expression, Apple Pages, Adobe Acrobat
- Audio, Video & Multimedia: Adobe Premiere, Encore, Soundbooth, AfterEffects, Audition and Flash Video; Apple Garageband, QuickTime, iMovie, iDVD, FinalCut Express, FinalCut Pro, iTunes and DVD Studio Pro
- Graphics & Image Editing: Adobe Photoshop (several versions), Fireworks, Apple Aperture and iPhoto, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Painter, AutoCAD
- 3D Modeling: 3D Studio Max, Poser, Cinema, Maya
- Scripting & Programming Languages: JavaScript, Ajax, Using perl/CGI scripts, php, MySQL, Ruby on Rails, Adobe Air, Flash ActionScript, Flash ActionScript for game Developers, Active Server Pages (ASP), Microsoft Access, FileMaker Pro, Bento, ColdFusion
- Miscellaneous: eBay Essentials, Internet Searching, Podcasting, Blogging, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Color Management, Adobe InDesign, Quark XPress
For more information, contact the ACCC Instructional Technology Lab (ITL) at itl@uic.edu.
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SoftChalk LessonBuilder :: new version (permalink)
Created on Monday, 03/23/2009 10:33 AM by Ed Garay
Updated on Monday, 03/23/2009 10:43 AM by Ed Garay
 | New version of LessonBuilder 5 coming out this May |
LessonBuilder is a very easy-to-use program for creating class materials for the Web. ACCC purchased a site-license of LessonBuilder so UIC instructors and teaching staff can download it at no charge from the UofI Webstore at http://webstore.illinois.edu. If you know how to use Microsoft Word, Eudora or Outlook, you can master LessonBuilder with little effort to create engaging educational content, with optional interactivity and multimedia without knowing HTML or anything complicated.
A new version of LessonBuilder is slated for release in May. So of the new features include:
- direct publishing to Blackboard course sites
with the ability to re-open uploaded LessonBuilder lessons, edit and resave - seamless embedding of external widgets
so lessons could make seamless use of Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis or survey polls and videos - instructors will be able to optionally tell LessonBuilder to only display feedback to students after the entire online assessment or a group of questions is completed
- LessonBuilder lessons can be combined into larger e-Course modules, with seamless navigation
- various enhancements in creating simple assessments, student activities, content editing, accessibility and more
- for more information, see www.softchalk.com/pdf/v5_flyer.pdf
LessonBuilder run on Windows and Macs, and is supported by the ACCC Instructional Technology Lab. For more information, contact the ITL at itl@uic.edu or 312-996-9824.
ITL Virtual Conference :: April 20-24 (permalink)
Created on Tuesday, 03/17/2009 8:05 AM by Ed Garay
Updated on Sunday, 04/05/2009 5:27 PM by Ed Garay
ITL Virtual Conference :: Monday - Friday, April 20 - 24, afternoons
reviewing teaching and learning technology opportunities at UIC
an online conference for novice to tech-savvy faculty
Please mark your calendars to attend all or some of the presentations and meetings being planned for this Spring's ITL Virtual Conference, scheduled for the afternoons of Week 14 (April 20-24).
The conference will take place totally online, with live real-time sessions in the afternoons, and focused asynchronous discussions and social networking before, during and after the conference. All presentations will be recorded for on-demand playback. More information will be posted here, on the ITL Blog at www.accc.uic.edu/itl/blog, regularly, starting next week (Monday 4/6).
Preliminary Agenda (subject to change):
- What is new with teaching and learning technology on campus?
- Getting started with Web technologies for instruction
- Using Web 2.0 tools to facilitate class assignments and collaborative learning
- Best practices for engaging students off the classroom
- Email Security :: handling spam
- Modern Avenues of Communication in Academia
- Collaboration technology for teachers and researchers
- Social Networking in Higher Education :: a gentle overview
- Google Everything :: a review of various Google tools and technologies
- Personal and group Blogs and wikis at UIC
- Creating interactive online class materials, easily
- Quick and easy narrated lecture synthesis and educational tutorials
- Quick and easy Podcasting, for the rest of us
- Creating simple multimedia-rich online assessments
- Effective uses of video in the classroom
- Authoring YouTube-like educational video content in minutes
- Thinking about the mobile learning students in your class
- Publishers' electronic content, e-Books, the Amazon Kindle & other electronic book options
- Teaching & Learning with Technology :: A Students' Panel Perspective
- Teaching & Learning Technology Outlook :: A Discussion Among Learning Technology Directors from Several Universities
- Effective use of student response systems (clickers) in class
- The New Lecture :: now that your lecture can be recorded, what else are you going to do with the extra time?
- Teaching with BleedingEdge Technology :: Best Practices & Reality Check
- The new Blackboard Next Generation :: coming to UIC this Fall
- The Blackboard Grade Center :: a refresher workshop
- Too-easy Podcasting and voice recordings in Blackboard
- Best Practices for teaching with Blackboard at UIC
- Supplementing Blackboard with other instructional technology
The ACCC Instructional technology Lab is looking for additional faculty members interested in presenting at the conference. Interested instructors should contact Ed Garay directly at garay@uic.edu.
Deterring Plagiarism in class (permalink)
Created on Friday, 03/13/2009 2:21 PM by Ed Garay
Updated on Friday, 03/13/2009 2:21 PM by Ed Garay
MS-Office 2007 File Compatibility (permalink)
Created on Friday, 03/13/2009 11:50 AM by Ed Garay
Updated on Friday, 03/13/2009 11:57 AM by Ed Garay
 | Reading Microsoft Office 2007 files in Office 2003 Microsoft Office 2007 introduced new file formats for Word 2007, PowerPoint 2007 and Excel 2007, based on Open XML (hence, the new filetypes .docx, .xlsx and .pptx) which older versions, like Microsoft Office 2003 cannot open. Fortunately, you can install a quick little MS-Office 2003 add-on called the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, a free download from Microsoft to enable Office 2003, Excel 2003 and PowerPoint 2003 to open, edit and save (if really necessary) documents, workbooks and presentations in MS-Office 2007 file formats. The ITL recommends that you do not save your documents using the new MS-Office 2007 file formats; for best compatibility, continue to save your stuff using the regular, order .doc, .xls and .ppt file formats. The link to download this very useful little file format converter is: If you have any questions or need help, as usual, please contact the ACCC Instructional Technology Lab at 312-996-9824 or itl@uic.edu. |
ITL Tips & Tricks - March 2009 (permalink)
Created on Monday, 03/09/2009 10:39 PM by Ed Garay
A new version of Java, which many people routinely install on their personal computers is causing audio problems with narrated PowerPoint presentations compressed and delivered via Impatica.
The preferred solution is to re-compress these narrated PowerPoint presentations with PointeCast Publisher, which uses Flash instead of Java. Flash playback is ubiquitous on today's personal computers (thanks to the popularity of YouTube and many other Websites using Flash technology). Flash can also support all animations, slide transitions and special effects in PowerPoint presentations. PointeCast Publisher can also output an MP3 Podcast-ready file containing all the audio of the narrated PowerPoint presentation created as a Flash presentation.
The ITL supports, both, PointeCast Publisher and Impatica for compressing and delivering narrated PowerPoint presentation via the Web. PointeCast Publisher is the newer/better tool, so we strongly recommend that you use that. A free trial of PointeCast Publisher is available at www.pointecast.com ; PointeCast Publisher Lite sells for $99. The ITL-East and ITL-West has PointeCast Publisher Professional loaded on its ITL personal computers.
Other options for fixing the Impatica Java audio problems is to install or use the latest version of the Impatica program and re-compress and re-package the presentations as new a new Java Impaticized file (package). The least preferred solution is to tell your students to uninstall the latest Java software on their computer and install the older Java 1.5 software that does not cause the audio of certain Impaticized presentations to play incorrectly.
(2) Can't upload file attachments to Blackboard Discussion Boards?
You can add file attachments to Blackboard discussion boards ...if you type at least something in the body of the discussion board message. Type something like, "Enclosed is the attached file", and you will be able to attach files. ACCC Blackboard Tech Support has reported this idiosyncrasy as a bug on Blackboard.
(3) SafeAssign File Types
SafeAssign is an easy-to-use plagiarism detection system that allows instructors to either automatically collect homework assignments electronically and run through the SafeAssign plagiarism detection system, or instructors can manually submit individual documents or Zip packages containing multiple documents for plagiarism analysis.
SafeAssign supports a select number of file types; these are: Microsoft Word (.doc), Adobe Acrobat PDF (.pdf), HyperText Mark-up language (.html or .htm), plain-text-files (.txt) and Rich Text Format files (.rtf). Please instruct your students to save their term papers in one of these file formats, and to name their files with a filenames and filetypes; for example: week9.assignment.doc or final.project.pdf.
Also, when naming files, people should also stick to using alphanumeric characters, periods (.), hyphens (-), and underscores (_); do not use space characters, quotes, double quotes or other special characters in file names.
(4) Naming files, folders for Blackboard, WebDisk, LessonBuilder, etc.
Many systems and application software can have problems dealing with files and folders named with special characters. To avoid problems, use only alphanumeric characters, periods (.), hyphens (-), and underscores (_); do not use space characters, quotes, double quotes or other special characters in file names or folders.
(5) Blackboard Blogs & Wikis :: Date Idiosyncrasy
Blackboard allows instructors to create multiple blogs and wikis in Blackboard course sites. As usual, content creation, including blogs and wikis, can be further define to be available/visible during certain date periods, ...except that currently, our version of Blackboard blogs and wikis has a bug that does not show dates beyond 2008!
With the semester in progress, we decided not to upgrade the Blackboard wikis and blogs until mid May, so as not to disturb or otherwise run the risk of introducing other changes in the middle of the semester. As a workaround, simply don't set starting/ending display dates when creating blogs and wikis for instructors or students to use. Blackboard blogs and wikis, by the way, are a third-party application, i.e. not one actually written by Blackboard Inc. but by other people.
Let us know if you find these ITL Tips & Tricks useful, and please suggest other topics or questions to address on the ITL Blog. Thank you.
new Blackboard Next Generation - demo (permalink)
Created on Monday, 03/09/2009 9:41 PM by Ed Garay
Updated on Tuesday, 03/10/2009 6:33 AM by Ed Garay
Please join us on Tuesday, March 10, from 11:15am-12pm (from your office or from anywhere on the Internet) for an interactive live Webcast demo of the new Blackboard: Blackboard Next Generation, presented by Melissa Anderson, from Blackboard Inc.
Blackboard Learn 9 is the first release of a totally redesigned/rewritten Blackboard teaching and learning environment with an intuitive Web 2.0 interface, drag-and-drop simplicity, context-sensitive menus, notification dashboards, new collaborative learning tools, blogs, journals, personalized customization, Facebook and iPhone notifications, significant accessibility improvements, etc.
The ITL expects to have this new version of Blackboard in co-production for Fall 2009, with controlled/early access this Summer. For more information on Blackboard 9, visit: www.blackboard.com/release9.
Attending interactive ITL Webcasts
To attend next Tuesday's ITL Webcast, please click:
http://erooms.uic.edu/main/User/GuestAttend.jhtml?s_guid=000000c0890f0000011fd57aeb13803a
Make sure your Windows or Mac Web browser is configured to allow Java and pop-up windows. The first time you use the UIC Centra Web conferencing system, a very small Saba Centra java program will be installed on your personal computer. After the Centra java applet is installed, the Centra Audio Wizard will run to make sure your computer speakers or headphones are working.
Check your personal computer's speakers or headphones
You can run the Audio Wizard at any time after you have joined a Centra Webinar to make sure your computer speakers or headphones are working correctly -- you will need them to hear the presentation. Select Audio Wizard... from the Tools pull-down menu atop the Centra window.
Asking questions during the Web seminar
To ask questions during an interactive ITL Webcast, type your questions or comments in the Text Chat. Open the Text Chat by selecting Text Chat... from the Tools pull-down menu. Type your question and hit Send, then minimize the Text Chat window to continue watching the Web presentation. Re-open the Text Chat and type additional questions. The presenters will stop, from time to time, to read your questions and answer them. (ACCC e-Rooms' audience microphones are not used during ITL Webcasts)
Getting help to participate in ITL Webcasts
If you need assistance to participate in an interactive ITL Webcast, please call the ACCC Instructional Technology Lab (ITL) at 312-996-9824.
This presentation/Webcast is part of the Annual Reach meeting. It will be archived for on-demand playback and added to the ITL Recent Webcast Archives page at www.accc.uic.edu/itl/webcasts_archive.html
Teaching & Learning at UIC / ITL Update presentation:
http://webdisks.uic.edu/~garay/talks/Reach2009/reach2009.html
Hope you find these interactive live Webcasts useful and convenient.
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