Here is a YouTube video demonstrating XML with Excel 2013.  Using it for a class demonstration!
This demonstrates that you can connect video (or Jings) into a blog.

IFRS and XBRL

A start of a great career.  Did you see the article, "The Future is Now: XBRL Emerges as Career Niche" in the Journal of Accountancy?

XBRL

Sunday, I teach FL551 -Analysis and Reporting at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. This is a new course in the Financial track of the Masters of Leadership Development, affectionately known as the MLD program. To get prepped for the course, I completed the International XBRL certification course and I'm prepping for the exam.  The tagging concept was never difficult to understand  because I understand HTML and XML; however, I had so many misconceptions about XBRL before I took the training.  I would recommend this training to anyone.  I also want to take the AICPA US GAAP Taxonomy training when it becomes available. 

• XBRL Certification Center
• AICPA XBRL US GAAP Certificate Program

If your company has a story to share about XBRL, please feel free to comment.

Learning to Develop an Android App

My next journey is teaching myself how to develop an Android Application.  I'm using BuzzTouch to get started because I want to have the basics down before I start with a game app.  Here is what my BuzzTouch looks like to begin:

The reason I like BuzzTouch is that it has lessons, a great forum of developers, and I feel I will get a good background on the basics.  Yes, I realize that I will need Eclipse, the Android SDK, etc.  BUT, I think this is going be a good route for me.  I've watched a few YouTube videos (I like Ontario Britton), but I am not ready for Unity (game engine).  Let me crawl before I RUN.  I'll try to add more as I can.  I didn't have an idea I would enjoy this so much.  

Desire2Learn Conference

Just returned from Fusion 2012, the Desire2Learn Conference in San Diego, California.  Learned a ton, but one of the most valuable things was how to set up intelligent agents, and how to use D2L course shells for administrative purposes.   Some of the best keynote speakers.


Sal Khan, Rethinking Education started out the conference.  He was wonderful!  I knew about Khan Academy, but did not know his story.  Seven faculty members and three staff members attended Fusion 2012 and everyone loved Sal.

On the last day of the conference, Rafe Esquith, "Teaching Like Your Hair's On Fire"  shared his experiences working at Hobart Elementary in Room 56.  I don't think there was a dry eye at my table!


--if you want to see lots of pictures of Comic Con 2012, check my Facebook.  The conference started at the tail-end of ComicCon.  I saw some very strange sites and took pictures of several folks in costumes.

Success at rotating glossary in a D2L Widget!

Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College uses Desire2Learn as their learning content management (LMS) system and I want to set up rotating glossary terms in a widget.  Most textbook sites have glossary terms set up and I found that I could copy them to the D2L glossary tool.  I did this by copying to excel, added the proper headings to work in D2L and then imported them into D2L.  It was not hard. Next, I downloaded NVU (a web editor) and followed the information and steps in the Rotating Content tool to convert my 20 glossary terms to JavaScript. Here is a picture of how I created this in NVU.

I then published it to a Javascript and uploaded the .js file to D2L and created a widget, added a little javascript code, and I now have a widget with rotating terms with definitions.  It looks like this:

 Want the step-by-step instructions?  jmitchell@smwc.edu

BU215 Class Projects

Just another example of integrating REAL WORLD APPLICATIONS!

I wanted to share with you something that my students have been doing in BU215, Accounting Problems.

Here is the scenario:

1. The registrar at The College has requested help in redesigning her forms.  She's busy like the rest of us, so the class took about 8 of her forms to redo.  We had students pair up.  Students used the developer tab in Word to add text boxes, check boxes, added the college logo, and in some cases re-organized the flow of the form.
2. Next, the students did a Jing showing the registrar a little of how they re-designed the forms.  Here's an example:   http://www.screencast.com/t/O50iPLmr1ItX
3. Next, we took the "before" and "after" forms and bound them in a book.
4. Next, the students created a free "Wufoo" account to show the registrar how these forms could be posted online.  The College has a Wufoo account already, so the registrar office was particularly interested in this.  But it's hard for me to show you here because I don't want to give any account information away!
5. Finally, we invited the registrar and several others to attend a class demo.  It was all I could do to keep others from picking up the registrar's copy of the "before" and "after" book!

In general, students used:

• Word with the developer tab
• Jing
• Screencast.com
• Wufoo 

Before and After

Here is the BEFORE -  Independent Study Form

Here is the AFTER - Independent Study Form

FUSION 2011 (Main and Post Conference) - RegOnline

FUSION 2011 (Main and Post Conference) - RegOnline

MLD & MED Orientation

I've recently had the pleasure of participating in the graduate orientation for both the Master of Education and Master of Leadership Development programs at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. Both programs use a hybrid delivery model where students come on campus (or to a local site) for a weekend every other month and participate in webinars and online between the face-2-face weekends. Both programs can be completed in one year.

We use a learning content management system here (Desire2Learn) that has been a very good system for us. In fact, you might want to check out the Fusion Conference to be held in July in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. Anyway, I digress....

What I finally realized, was a need to set up an orientation section in D2L that we could update and more importantly, students would have access to all the information after they return home. I thought you might enjoy some of the PPTs that I shared with them, so I'm uploading them here.

WIPTE Conference October 15-16

What a wonderful conference. More to come

2008 HP Technology for Teaching Grant - ELEVATE

I've added a portion of the press release to show you a little of what I've been up to this Spring. The good news is that the equipment came in this week on Tuesday (6/10/08). Rama and I are like kids in a candy store. I'll be loading pictures up here soon. But here is part of the story!
------------------
Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College (SMWC) was selected as one of 39 two- and four-year colleges and universities in the United States and Puerto Rico to receive a 2008 HP Technology for Teaching grant, which is designed to transform teaching and improve learning in the classroom through innovative uses of technology. SMWC will receive an award package of HP products and a faculty cash award valued at more than $77,000.

Bellampalli Ramachandran, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, served as SMWC's principal investigator for the HP Technology for Teaching grant proposal. Jennie Mitchell, Ph.D, professor of business in the Business, Art, & Media/Technology Department, and Dottie King, Ph.D, associate professor of mathematics and chair of the Sciences & Mathematics Department, served as co-investigators for the proposal.

Ramachandran said they were all thrilled when they received news that the College had been chosen as a grant recipient."It was exciting and gratifying to learn [that SMWC had been selected to receive the grant], especially since the competition was open to colleges and universities in the entire North American region," Ramachandran said. "In HP's words, 'This was a very competitive grant process with over 370 applications, so being selected is in itself a sign of success.'"

Each of the HP Technology for Teaching grant recipients will use wireless HP Tablet PCs to enhance learning in engineering, math, science, or computer science.Saint Mary-of-the Woods College plans to use the grant award package to strategically redesign courses to incorporate Tablet PC and Digital Inking technologies in instruction. These technologies, in conjunction with an appropriate Classroom Management System, will facilitate teacher-student and student-student interaction and thus create a highly collaborative and interactive learning environment for students.


Initially, a selected set of courses, including general chemistry, calculus, and business finance, will be redesigned. Several other SMWC faculty members have also expressed interest in exploring these technologies for their courses.

Eventually, more courses, and thus more students, will benefit from the grant."The project title 'Enhanced Learning Experience Via Advanced Tablet-PC Environment (ELEVATE) - Using HP Tablet PCs in Instruction at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College,' and its apt acronym, precisely describe what the project, and the grant, will mean for us," Ramachandran said. "It will 'elevate' students' learning outcomes as well as the educational excellence of the College to even higher levels."

Focus on the Nation

Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College had a Focus on the Nation, January 31, 2008. I was able to present, Sustainability & The Triple Bottom Line, as part of the program. The entire day was a wonderful experience. I'm going to try to upload my PowerPoint. I've been asked by several students to send my powerpoint since I didn't visit many of the links since I was afraid I would take time away from the other speaker during my session.

For more information, visit http://www.smwc.edu/

This next week, I'm working on QuickBook problems for Prentice-Hall. I should have had them done by Jan 31, yeah - that didn't happen. But this week looks a little better. Not Monday - but Tuesday looks better. Monday, Rama and I are working on the HP Grant. In fact, I set up Office Live for us and the other grant buddies to use. Have you tried that yet? Go to http://workspace.office.live.com/ and beg for a beta workspace. This rocks. You can save files directly to your workspace, and it is safely tucked behind a username and password. Then you invite others to play! Some of the greatest features include ready-made templates so you get a feel for how to use it. It's free now, so I'm going for it for all my shared meeting files.

Presented at Illiana Tech - Indiana State University

It has been months since I last blogged. I am ashamed of myself. However, I will try to catch up. I presented in the summer of 2006 at the Illiana Tech 2006 Summit. My presentation included showing Corporate Applications of Podcasting and RSS. I was a little disappointed that the Summit was not better attended. I had a nice group, but I felt that the Summit should have drawn more participants. It was held in the John Myers Technology Building, and had a reasonable conference fee and good speakers. Perahps the time (June) just didn't work for some.

I'm going to try to upload some of my PowerPoints as I can. I'm really enjoying the podcasting aspect, even if my voice is "gravel gerty."

Midwest Educause 2006

The Midwest Educause is held this March in Chicago, Il.

On March 13th, I will be co-presenting with Terry McCammon and Lana Lytle on Little Red Schoolhouse on the Virtual Prairie.

On March 14th, I will be co-presenting with Nicholas Farha on the Future of Learning Objects.

I'll post more AFTER the event.

PBWiki

I've found a new resource that I'm using in my Small Business Management class, called PBwiki. The students are divided into teams. Each team is using the wiki to coordinate the writing of a business plan. I can't believe how easy it was for me and the students! I would encourage you to consider using a wiki for collaborative projects in your classes and expect amazing results. For more information, try these links below!





Check out the PBwiki tour!

Get a free wiki at PBwiki.com.

Windows 2003 Server Lab 1-2 Active Directory & DNS

After plugging into the network each page looks exactly like what is in the lab manual - SWEET. Interesting info at the DNS Registration Diagnostics. Interesting - it gives an error message on the first one that you get to. It says the primary DNS server tested was dns.cp.msft.net (207.46.138.10) but of course gives an error. Selected the second one (Install and configure DNS server on this computer...) and it appears to work as expected. Actually the most difficult thing to do was read the text on the screen (since I'm using VNC, it is even smaller!).

For lab purposes, we are using a dynamically assigned IP address, but the Domain Controller works best was static IP.

Windows Server 2003 Lab Configuration

Student computers (where XX is the unique number assigned to students)

Computer name: ServerXX
Windows domain name: Contosoxx
Internet domain name: Contosoxx.com
Fully qualified domain name (FQDN): Serverxx.Contosoxx.com
--------------------
For the Instructor
Computer name: HALSERVES
Windows domain name: Contoso
Internet domain name: contoso.com
FQDN: HALSERVES.contoso.com

IP Address: 10.1.1.xx
Subnet Mask: 255-255.0.0
Default Gateway: get from network admn.
Preferred DNS Server: IP address of DNS server
Alternative DNS Server: IP address of another DNS server

Windows 2003 Server NAT/Firewall Device

What I discovered in this process is that unless you are hooked into a network, you will not see the server role list. It skips that step and goes to the Active Directory. This means that I will certainly need to connect into a network in some way. According to the class notes, the best way for this to work is to isolate the classroom from the rest of the campus network. According to the Lab Setup Guide, the best way to do this is to use a Network Address Transaltion (ANT) or firewall device. This will prevent IP addressing and name resolution issues with the rest of the campus. I will check with Mike and Eric to see if this will cause problems with other systems. The best bet is to configure a NAT/Firewall device or to set up IP addresses as 10.2.2.1 as the IP range. and Subnet mask as 255.255.0.0

Windows Server 2003 and VNC

This starts my blog on the Windows Server 2003 class. To begin with, I installed using the 180 day valuation package on HAL, my older computer from many years ago. I call him HAL because he has a blue light.

Anyway, HAL had Windows XP Professional on it, so I started the computer and then put the CD in it and then restarted it. It went through the process quite normally, although I could have used the Quick NTFS, but chose the normal selection since it checks the drives, etc. Yikes it really did take some time (37 minutes) and I suspect it will be even longer on the student machines. HAL has 256 MB of ram (the minimum required) and the student boxes only have 128MB on at least 4 of them. I put in a request for a ram bump, but time will tell if that can happen or not.

I was installing MS2003 in the design room of XCaliber, and David's music was not agreeing with me, so Daniel helped me set up UltraVNC. Ultra VNC allows me to set HAL about anywhere and use my own keyboard and mouse in my office - SWEET... Changed the display settings so it works for me and my HAL is talking at 192.168.1.55 - again, SWEET. Think to remember, plugging the network cord in the bottom port game me a different IP address - go figure.

I'm thinking this would be a good thing to show the students too, but I doubt that Mike will give me more machines for play. I may need my students to come out to XCaliber to work with a network unless the school will let me close off HH20.

In Windows 2003 Server, you use Ctrl-Alt-Delete to begin. I almost made that mistake and then realized the with VNC, I would be restarting my machine if I used that command. You use CAD on Ultra VNC to send that command to the machine.

My first podcast I attribute to a flood in my office...

On October 7, 2005, my office at SMWC was flooded. Three inches of water, rug floating, and smoke seeping out from under my desk where the surge protector was melting. Sounds like a bad thing, right? At the time, I thought so. However, several weeks later, with equipment replacement a possibility, I did some researching to find the best equipment to help me podcast my lectures - more like PROFCAST. I'm a novice, so I went for a podcasting kit and watched Carl Franklin's hands as he put together the kit. I have NOT been disappointed. It was easy.

It took me two minutes to record my first podcast. I kept it (just so I have the first one). I feel I'm a better podcaster now since I've worked on slowing down, adding inflection, working on the "ummms" and other distracting sounds. So here is my first podcast!

This is my FIRST podcast.