6.26.2006

Our Story

For those that have yet to enter the blogosphere, this site might be just the conceptual nudge you need. At OurStory.com you post story-answers to questions posed by yourself or other users, or you just tell your own stories in whatever random order they come to you. The timeline structure organizes everything for you. It's certainly being marketed towards the family audience, but storytelling has a long tradition in education.

6.20.2006

Flock

Flock is a free web browser that makes it easier than ever to share photos, stay up-to-date with news from your favorite sites, and search the Web.

Flock — The web browser for you and your friends

If you are in the habit of blogging or sharing photos/videos/bookmarks, this browser has quite a bit to offer you. The browser has a built in blogging tool that links to your blog(s). All I needed to do to blog the above text was highlight it on the webpage, right-click and select "blog this". Photos can be similarly dealt with via a Flickr account. A Snippet bar is also available for dragging text or photos that you might need to use later. News and other RSS feeds are also nicely available. And the search bar is interesting as it catergorizes and leaves out the ads. A rather nice piece of work (WebCT 4.1 seems to function just fine, unofficially of course).

6.14.2006

Word to HTML

I think I found something here: Textism Word HTML Cleaner. Many faculty will first create syllabi and other course material in MS Word and either simply upload those word files or save them as bloated HTML files with the MS Word Save As Web Page/Web Page Filtered option. I decided I needed to find a better solution. Textism involves an extra step, but the end result is much cleaner! And it's free!! With this tool, the file to be cleaned must already be saved from Word as an HTML file. After the conversion, you copy and paste the resulting code into your HTML/Text editor and save it (or paste it directly into WebCT's text editor). There is also this software that I am exploring: Word Cleaner. It does the same thing except that users can theoretically choose which HTML tags to preserve and which to remove all from within the Word environment. It also allows for batch converting! But it costs a little something ($69 for educational license, trial version available). The complexity of the program seems to create more possibility for errors and I have encountered a few already. But it has incredible potential!

6.01.2006

timely communication

I went on vacation for a couple of weeks in May, and coming back I was greeted with over 200 emails (very little was spam)! I guess I am just that popular... and I do subscribe to a few e-zines and the sort. Of the emails I had the pleasure of sifting through some were student complaint issues. And there weren't all that many... maybe 10. But every single complaint concerned timely communication. The students were not getting it, and they wanted it. I can certainly understand their frustration. It's hard to begin an assignment if I question my understanding of the content or the requirements. And I don't mean just cognitively difficult, it is a motivational traffic jam! Does this thought process sound plausible?

"Well, I'm not sure if my paper should be double spaced and I don't really want to write four pages if I only needed to write two, and maybe my topic is too broad for only two pages, so I will just wait to hear back before I start."

Now, it's likely you include all the requirements in your syllabus and maybe you feel responding to course management questions is painful. But ignoring them is certainly not the way to go.

Following are some ideas you might apply to your courses to help students feel more connected:

  • Include a statement on how quickly and in what manner you will respond to them (24 hours is typical). If you don't check email on the weekends, let them know!
  • Sign up for an instant messaging service (AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, IMVU) and run it during office hours (or whenever you are at your computer). Ask to add students to your buddy list.
  • Call your students at least once a semester. Do this within the first two weeks and I bet your completion/retention rates will surprise you.
  • Respond to assignment submissions with "I received your assignment #2. Thanks."
  • Respond to course management questions that have been previously dealt with by pointing to the information rather than answering the question (e.g. "Refer to the syllabus for paper requirements")
  • If you have a discussion board available, make it lively and organized.
  • If you don't have time to respond to emails on a certain day (vacation, family emergency, conference, etc.), send out a mass email informing everyone before the fact or as soon as possible.
If there are others I am missing, let me know!

*edit: The other side of the coin is that many students DO have unreasonable expectations of their instructors. Many will assume someone is facilitating their course 24x7. So, to all you students out there, be aware that normal turn-around is 24 hours and instructors have lives on the weekends that might exclude their computers.