This was a very productive early morning (4:30 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.). Blogger.com uses atom instead of RSS and regardless of the reasons, it just wasn't working with my pluck or feeding into my web page. So, I used the feedburner (feedburner.com) to make my blog friendly regardless of the reader that someone uses. This assumes that you used the setting at blogger to use site feed and that you are on a free blog account). Anyway, I used the step-by-step process to take my XML (http://jlmitchell.blogspot.com/atom.xml) in Atom format and convert it. That generates a new address from the feedburner site that you can successfully use in pluck or any other RSS Agregator. Next, I used that addess in my JavaScript (see http://accounting.smwc.edu and go to Blogs) to pull in five or so of my postings. I also pulled in some late breaking business news just to see how it would work. I will warn you - on a slow SMWC account, it took awhile to pull it the first time, but future visits seemed quicker.
I noticed that feedburner also has a mobile feed reader for select handheld devices. I want to try that next. That would mean that I could read my favorite blogs on my handheld! I could go for that.
I will post a complete tutorial of this soon AFTER it gets included in THE book.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Auditing Blogs at Woodsonline!
Today, I'm working the Auditing AF website to incorporate the blogs of everyone. We may want to use this site in our presentation at the EDUCAUSE conference so I'm trying to spruce it up a little. I'm going to test the theory of incorporating an "RSS" reader into WebCT, to see how well it will pull in the blogs as they change.
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Site Feed Added & Learning Object Using FARS
Today, I added a site feed to The Ramblings mostly so that I can show my students how to do this. Now that I have more than a dozen students blogging, I want to get it organized. The students in BU327AF are using blogging to reflect on ethical cases, readings, and their journey through the audit case. Only one student in the AF class had a blog and she said it wasn't current. Well, I hope this changes things for them - I want them to take the time to reflect on some of the hard ethical issues using this technique.
I also created a Learning Object today on FARS for both the Auditing students and the Intermediate Accounting II students. I used Camtasia Studio 2 to record the screen while I looked up the most current information on Earnings Per Share. This required capturing me entering the FARS site, clicking on "Current Text," changing to the JAVA option, and drilling down to Earnings Per Share. I added a screen image made from a PowerPoint slide for the introduction and then added some callouts to point out the alphabetical order and that you open the folder by clicking on the "+" key. I saved the production as raw .avi, wmf, and swf. I wanted to see how each of them worked. I found out that .wmf files don't do well when I used a zoom feature in Camtasia Studio - so I'm learning as I go.
Camtasia also lets you use options for SCORM - basically adding metatags, but also making it possible to zip up all you need to export it to an e-Learning environment (like WebCT, Blackboard, etc). I haven't tried that yet, but I will soon.
I received an email from SmartMeeting. They've extended my trial version and are requesting that I update my version to try it. I think I'll give it one more chance!
I also created a Learning Object today on FARS for both the Auditing students and the Intermediate Accounting II students. I used Camtasia Studio 2 to record the screen while I looked up the most current information on Earnings Per Share. This required capturing me entering the FARS site, clicking on "Current Text," changing to the JAVA option, and drilling down to Earnings Per Share. I added a screen image made from a PowerPoint slide for the introduction and then added some callouts to point out the alphabetical order and that you open the folder by clicking on the "+" key. I saved the production as raw .avi, wmf, and swf. I wanted to see how each of them worked. I found out that .wmf files don't do well when I used a zoom feature in Camtasia Studio - so I'm learning as I go.
Camtasia also lets you use options for SCORM - basically adding metatags, but also making it possible to zip up all you need to export it to an e-Learning environment (like WebCT, Blackboard, etc). I haven't tried that yet, but I will soon.
I received an email from SmartMeeting. They've extended my trial version and are requesting that I update my version to try it. I think I'll give it one more chance!
Saturday, February 12, 2005
SmartMeeting & WIKI
SmartMeeting did not work for us on the 9th of February! Instead, we talked some on the phone and worked on the Wiki. The WIKI is set up for our paper that we plan to present at Educause. The WIKI is called Digitizing Inspiration3 (for the three of us) and is housed at SeedWiki.
We plan to get together again to discuss some of the learning objects, support for learning objects, etc. BUT, we have not set a meeting date yet - shall we try SmartMeeting? I guess we will give it another chance...
We plan to get together again to discuss some of the learning objects, support for learning objects, etc. BUT, we have not set a meeting date yet - shall we try SmartMeeting? I guess we will give it another chance...
Monday, February 07, 2005
Midwest EDUCAUSE
Getting ready for the Midwest EDUCAUSE...
Lana Lytle, Nicholas Farha and I are presenting a paper on Learning Objects, Wikis, and Blogs..Oh my.. Lana is introducing blogs for reflection in her database class as well as using learning objects. Nicholas is doing a broad search on learning objects that relate to the I.T. field and has spent hours looking for learning objects that fit our working definition. In my classes (Auditing mostly), I'm using learning objects to explain some basic accounting concepts (not ones that I created yet, but ones that I found). In addition, I'm using blogs for reflection but leaving it somewhat open-ended by giving students a list of URLs that they can explore and use as part of their reflection. Basically, I incorporated lots of ethical case materials, news articles that reflect Enron, WorldCom, Xerox, etc, - even ethic cartoons...! Should be interesting. The students helped design a matrix for determining the blog postings. Now if I could just get them to add it to their signatures!
What is really exciting is the way we are working on this paper. We will meet February 9th in a Smart Meeting Room. If you've not tried this - you need to. SmartMeeting (http://www.smartmeeting.com) is a way to meet in a virtual office. You need a microphone, but not a camera. Instead, you choose a vivitar right down to hair color and clothing that represents you at the meeting. The vivitars are controlled by you and even include facial expressions like smiling, waving, yawning, voting, etc. Your vivitar can walk around, take a break in the lounge - play some chess OR get back to the board room and work. You can upload documents and powerpoints, watch live broadcast video, share a white erase board - well things that you would expect in a meeting.
Another piece of our experience is a WIKI. We are using a wiki at seedwiki (the name is Digitizing Inspiration 3. The 3 is for the 3 of us working on this paper. You may recognize the title Digitizing Inspiration - the short name for the book that Nicholas and I are working on. The wiki is located at http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/digitizing_inspiration3/. I think this new way of collaborating will add an edge to our presentation that maybe only the three of us will appreciate - but we will see.
More to come - but just had to share!
Lana Lytle, Nicholas Farha and I are presenting a paper on Learning Objects, Wikis, and Blogs..Oh my.. Lana is introducing blogs for reflection in her database class as well as using learning objects. Nicholas is doing a broad search on learning objects that relate to the I.T. field and has spent hours looking for learning objects that fit our working definition. In my classes (Auditing mostly), I'm using learning objects to explain some basic accounting concepts (not ones that I created yet, but ones that I found). In addition, I'm using blogs for reflection but leaving it somewhat open-ended by giving students a list of URLs that they can explore and use as part of their reflection. Basically, I incorporated lots of ethical case materials, news articles that reflect Enron, WorldCom, Xerox, etc, - even ethic cartoons...! Should be interesting. The students helped design a matrix for determining the blog postings. Now if I could just get them to add it to their signatures!
What is really exciting is the way we are working on this paper. We will meet February 9th in a Smart Meeting Room. If you've not tried this - you need to. SmartMeeting (http://www.smartmeeting.com) is a way to meet in a virtual office. You need a microphone, but not a camera. Instead, you choose a vivitar right down to hair color and clothing that represents you at the meeting. The vivitars are controlled by you and even include facial expressions like smiling, waving, yawning, voting, etc. Your vivitar can walk around, take a break in the lounge - play some chess OR get back to the board room and work. You can upload documents and powerpoints, watch live broadcast video, share a white erase board - well things that you would expect in a meeting.
Another piece of our experience is a WIKI. We are using a wiki at seedwiki (the name is Digitizing Inspiration 3. The 3 is for the 3 of us working on this paper. You may recognize the title Digitizing Inspiration - the short name for the book that Nicholas and I are working on. The wiki is located at http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/digitizing_inspiration3/. I think this new way of collaborating will add an edge to our presentation that maybe only the three of us will appreciate - but we will see.
More to come - but just had to share!
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