Living On-Line

The on-line assignment from last week was a success. All students responded and completed the assignment as directed. On Two occasions, while I was on-line, students contacted me through Google Talk with specific questions relative to assignments and homework.

One student had the assignment to present to a large group, four classes meeting together. He prepared and presented his assignment in Google Docs Presentations. The documents are not real full featured, such as PowerPoint, but if one can learn to create within their parameters, the benefits of on-line accessibility and storage are fantastic.

The presentation I was scheduled to give last Friday got pre-empted. The opening presenter took an hour and 45 minutes when he was scheduled for 30 minutes; too bad.

Real World Distance Education

As I sat in my EdNet class of InsT 6870(Current Issues), I thought I would quickly check my Blackboard discussion posts for my InsT 5240 (Producing Distance Ed Resources)class. Yikes! There was a billion new posts. The buzz was caused by an assignment coming up soon.

The assignment was to develop and implement a distance ed project using Instructional Architect. The develop part was no problem, the implement part was a big problem. A reflection on the implementation is due Friday. Here's the big problem, I'm presenting at a state conference Thursday; Thursday and Friday nights I am a chaparone for a student leadership conference in Park City. PANIC!

No problem, I'll use Google Apps to make the assignment including some feedback from the students on their impressions of the Instructional Architect project assignment. I'll have them turn in their assignment by sharing a Google Doc with me and I won't even need to talk to the class face to face. I guess that is real world distance education.

I'm Watching

I had a unique experience this week with Google Talk. I had to take a sick day on Thursday. I was on-line to tie up some loose ends when one of my students sent a Google talk instant message asking if I was there today. I did respond that I was home sick and asked if the substitute was there. He responded that they were. A second student expressed his sympathies and wished me well. It was an odd feeling, kind of like I was watching with a surveillance camera or some such tool.

Captivating

I finally received the copy of Captivate that I ordered in June. I guess part of the problem was a version change about the time I ordered it, as well as Macromedia being purchased by Adobe.

I have been doing the tutorials and visiting the developer's site to collect some tips and tricks. The plan remains the same in that I want to use Captivate to create a lesson on the binary number system.

I usually spend at least a period or two at the beginning of each school year on binary numbering and number systems in general. The Hexadecimal numbering system is also covered in the curriculum and used extensively in computer science. I talk about numbering systems in general to scaffold up to the concepts of hexadecimal.

I make a big deal about zero and how it has a special function as a place holder. Zero is a "magic" symbol that makes all number systems work. I try to make a real distinction between numbers and quantities. I drive home the point that several symbols together represent a quantity. For example, when we see the symbols 10, we think of the quantity ten, but in fact, using different numbering system it could mean quantity two, three, four, or sixteen.

Next, I let numbers or symbols that represent a specific quantity represent something else. I use an example from US history, the story of Paul Revere. Most US students can complete the phrase, "One if by land, ____ ____ ____ ____." (two if by sea) This illustrates that quantities can represent something else if it is decided before hand what those numbers will represent. I then ask how much more information could have been communicated if they had used more than two lanterns. Perhaps we could communicate that the British were coming by land to the North, or by sea to the South. The students then pickup on the point that, if determined ahead of time, anything can be represented if we have enough "lanterns."

These are the concepts that I'd like to develop with Captivate.

Facilitated Feedback

The students finished an assignment in Google Presentations. The students submitted the assignment by "sharing" them with me as a collaborator. I went through each slide of the presentation and then provided feedback to the students via a new slide. The feed back included the advantages of including graphics in the presentation and requirement of citing sources.

The student attitudes were very positive. After receiving feedback. some students made corrections and insisted that I view the presentation again.

The Calendar

I love the concept of a single source to manage multiple calendars which Google Apps does. I have experienced some frustration in that the transition from one month to the next is abrupt, I can only see the days of the next month which share a week with the current month. The calendar offers different views like day, week, month, next 7 days, and agenda. One would guess the agenda would allow you to span months but it does not, it only shows the current month. Perhaps in future versions.

Formative Evaluation

Google Docs continues to be a focus of development. Today I tried a real-time collaborative research project with twelve students editing the same document at the same time. The end product was achieved but the means was not what I expected. The students, all editing the same spreadsheet at the same time, recognized very quickly that if they did not edit a particular cell first, their work was replaced with what ever was saved first. The students then began to save early and often. This worked for a short time but I saw several students simply allow others to do the work. In a future exercise, I would create a template and then have the students modify their own section of the template to produce the end results.