Hey, some good stuff going on today. Worked on the welcome page and getting permission to use SMWC logo in it now. Visit it at http://woodsonline.smwc.edu:8900/public/BU428/index.html and see if you like the format for a welcome page.

Started into another chapter - working with Emphasize Time on Task (chapter 5). The book will now be seven chapters instead of eight. I'm going to fold the chapter 8 stuff into an appendix or possibly into 5 and 6.

Spent a restless night without a/c again. Can't wait to get it fixed.

Lost a good friend at The Woods - Mary Margaret Bowles passed away yesterday. She didn't even find out she was sick until after the January WED return. Cancer took her so quickly, that I didn't even get to say good bye really. She was in Virginia with her family though, so that helps.

Found some great references today and put the links on My WebCT, now to see if all the students see them!

Leo is on a new radio station - I'm going to see if I can hear it since he is no longer on Call for Help at the TechTV/Comcast ruined station.

I'm somewhat frustrated with the chapter on Prompt Feedback. You ever been really close to understanding something, something that you've worked on for a few hours and then everyone wants your time? Well, that's the way I felt today. I then was labeled grouchy - so be it.

Sorry family, but sometimes....

Anyway, things are quiet and I have made some real progress on this chapter but still need to write about Respondes & Flashlight. Just wanted to vent - now I'll get back to work - no one is bothering me now - (since I'm so grouchy....)

I've been working on the assessment section of the Prompt Feedback chapter this week. After reading 100s (and I literally mean that) of articles, I've come to the conclusion that faculty do NOT agree on the term "authentic assessment." I had not heard of WIDS Performance Assessment Task Library before and when I visited their website, I was NOT impressed - BUT, I judged too quickly. The website might be bad, but the product, well, I get it now. In effect it has over 50 model assessment tasks that can be customized to meed the needs of a varied disciplines and outcomes. The examples that I saw (after some researching) were related to the medical industry. So what they do is take standards from disciplines, chunk them into tasks and set activities to them with accompanying assessment. AT least that's my perception. Again, I worked with a mapping concept map software from Mindjet. I've decided, I don't learn that way well. I get systems with document symbols, but this is stretch for me. I'll probably try the 21 day trial. One think, the founder of the Mindjet fought a battle with leukemia and won. The software came from that experience. I digress...

Just an added bonus - a story of hiss...
We have an above ground pool (tall). I turned off the pump so that I could clean the basket. I took the lid off and I hesitated because of all the cicadas floating and something that looked like a yellow and brown striped hose. Well the hose reared up and looked at me - you guessed it - it was a snake! Looking at me looking at him! After some screaming, my son and husband took the net and flipped him out of the pool. Now I really don't want to weed eat behind the pool!

Attended a graduation party for T.J. Coburn this afternoon. But time to update the blog for anyone that's reading on the progress of my book. I've been working with SharePoint. SharePoint is an add-in component to Microsoft Windows 2003 Server at no additional cost. It allows wonderful collaboration for teams, including supporting document version control. The templates would get any team off the ground running as my Dad used to say. I set up a trial version (30 days) of SharePoint service hosted at APPTIX and have showed some great screen shots of team functionality in my book.

I also worked Friday and Saturday on the concept of attaching discussions to Word documents that were saved as html. Now I'm sharing some of the annotating text online features, or at least examples of them. I love the Journal of Interactive Media in Education, and the Annotation Engine. I think other faculty will love them too.

I've worked on three different chapters in the last week. It just seems to work when I find something really relevant, to just go ahead and write about it at the time I find the good info. I have no idea where the time went (since really March) - I know I had trouble writing at first and now I wish I'd pushed myself a little more. I still want to have the book done by July 1. That way it can be bound and ready for faculty.

I just had to put up another post. I just got off the phone with Caroll Garriott, a January WED graduate from The Woods. She had sent me an email wanting a recommendation to Baker for her masters (SMWC doesn't have a masters in accounting). In our conversation, she mentioned her horrible experience with Phoenix Online. She started in a communication's class on a Thursday, and her instructor was not available until a week later because he had to attend an upexpected wedding. In her words, Who goes to an UNEXPECTED wedding? The syllabus showed that the coursework was to be done in teams. She was grouped with five other people - One from Russia, one from Mexico and three U.S. They had trouble getting together to even start their group project and when they did, one guy who had not read the assignment spent his time correcting grammar. Caroll finally had to take charge of the group (just like a Woodsie). What she discovered made her "livid." Two of the students were in the masters program because they were told that they could sit for the CPA exam. Get this - THEY HAD NO UNDERGRADUATE ACCOUNTING. Of course, after Carol provided them with the website that showed the requirements to even sit for the exam, they dropped out. Caroll could see the handwriting on the wall, and she dropped out too. One week with no instructor, and Phoenix still wanted to charge her $700. A normal class is about $2000. She was not impressed - in her words, "I'm not going to piggyback a team to get my good grade. I want a place like St. Mary's..." Even though the man from Russia called her at 11:30 p.m. her time and BEGGED her to stay in the group!

She of course then shared all the wonderful things about SMWC, and I couldn't agree more. It makes me so proud to work at SMWC and that just really gets me fired up to do a great job on a book that will support the faculty.

Well, I hear my fax grinding, so that means Caroll sent me the form I need. See you soon.

I wanted to write a short rambling on the book this morning. I did research almost all day on Thursday. I didn't realize how many folks are cynics. After research and highlighting about any article or criterion or testimony on assessment that has been published in the last year, I started writing on Friday. Much of Friday included some of the testimony of Dr. Carol Twigg and then I launched into creating questions and quizzes in WebCT. By Friday evening, I had 15 pages. On Saturday, I continued the assessment, prompt feedback, and even tied in a new term called FeedFORWARD.

The book is flowing faster than I can type it at this point. In some cases, I'm just typing in the headings in areas planning to come back to it because I'm hot on the trail of another section. I can't believe that way back in January, I wanted to organize the book around Chickering & Gamson's 7 principles of good teaching, because I see reference to those same concepts in almost every article I read.

Interesting points about online resources (specifically libraries). The science discipline is all amuck with the open access movement. But, I don't see how libraries can support $20,000 subscriptions to one journal either. Doesn't it seem that the movement toward electronic journals would make things cheaper? Well, apparently not. I still have a few more things to read on the Lure of Linking. Librarians seem to know exactly what this means, but I'm not sure - I think it is a management system of electronic holdings so that libraries can share, but I'm not sure and I won't put it into the book until I know exactly what I'm talking about.

I found it interesting that Thomson is doing a study on how often authors are cited by other authors. I know when I did some work in 1997, I was thrilled to run across a citation of my work in a recent article. I think I could really get into this writing thing if I didn't love teaching so much...!

Well, off to church. BTW, the time posted on the publishing of these blogs is off. I'll try to get that set later today. Don't forget to look at the archives to see what else I've talked about, although it is mostly book related....

Wednesday was not a day to work on the book. Instead, I did something for a friend of mine that took about 8 hours to get done. Have you head of Visual Communicator from Serious Magic? Well, it is a studio quality broadcast software that allows you to record and publish to a DVD or SVCD. I have written some about this software under the Active Learning chapter, but this was a labor of love.

Mary's daughter is married to a young man in Iraq. About six months ago, she brought tons of photos over of their wedding, their life in Germany, his re-enlistment into the military, etc. We scanned photos several different days, I converted them from tiff to jpg and then placed them in this software. Visual Communicator can create a web version, a hard drive version (that you can burn to DVD or SVCD), or an email version by different renderings. I had close to 200 pictures and the songs I had purchased from Napster would not work (I can't even listen to them now, I've got it so screwed up!). Anyway, I ended up creating a nice show and Mary will be over this weekend to revise - I probably got some of the pictures out of order. I'm kind of proud of the final product though and feel like it is my contribution to someone in the war, regardless of the media coverage of the prisoners.

I will get back to the book today. I just wanted to share this experience.

Nice Mother's day -
But back at it today. Finished an entire chapter since April 25th (April 25 to May 10), so not bad - even includes rough draft of cases, discussion questions and exercises. Lots of technology in this chapter too. Some great JavaScript. One was on random link + text description and the other one was on creating online quizzes that are more like self-tests. Listed some icebreakers in this chapter, but could have done a lot more of them. You know, you have to stop at some point and move on. Links to Javascript #1
The second Javascript was at Cool Web Effects

On a Sad Note...I can't believe that all of TechTV staff was fired on May 6. When new folks come in, it is like fire all, reshuffle and relocate. Not sure where it will end up

Moving along on the book - it seems to consume me - I wake up thinking about it, and I'm jotting down notes here and there - well, just everywhere! I really LIKE the format now - at first, I fought it with pages here and there always talking about putting it into the format. Why I did that, I don't know - it is almost like starting that section over. I should have just stuck to the format to begin with. I found some cool things this week. One is s rubric generator and lots of other good support tools at http://teach-nology.com/web_tools/ In the book this last week, I show how to set up "Team Space" in WebCT, connect to lots of sites that support creating content, including the W3C initiative - BTW, there is a 2.0 out now folks... I found a great resource - a complete book online called, "Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Deseign for Learning" at http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/

Also used Bobby to test my website and 10 schools in Indiana. NONE of them passed! What is that about! Although, I had 2 violations, they were minor - I'm going to fix them this summer (when I get this book done...)

Lots more done, but too much to share. Talk to you soon.

I'm glad to report lots of progress on the book. I must admit, I'm getting more out of this book than you might expect - I'm learning new things every day! I'm adding discussion questions and exercises and cases now. The cases are for teams or groups to complete. I have a ton of editing to do and major revisions on some of the chapters, but it is coming together! I'd like to include one cartoon with each chapter and that may get changed - I've spent 3 hours on the second cartoon and I'm still not satisfied. I can't seem to get the message into one pane - if I move to a 3 pane cartoon - it might work, but not too sure if it is what I want to do.

I've checked out some of my competitors of this book and we really don't cover the same topics and my organization and emphasis is different. This book is organized around the seven undergraduate principles for good teaching by Chickering and Gamson. There are seven chapters, one for each principle and one chapter called "Timesavers" where I'm dumping things don't really fit into the other seven chapters in this one. I may go back and move them around to keep to seven chapters. By far, the active learning chapter is huge - could be a book itself. Maybe, it should be split.

Still working with McGraw-Hill, but my main concern is to get the book done for my institution and then the revisions, etc. will be for McGraw-Hill.

Worked on the server yesterday and today - with a new router and DSL, the server became so slow.... Mapping the drive solved the problem. I didn't think of it, of course - Daniel did. After reading MS forums for hours, too....!

More later...

I've worked quite a bit today with Voice technology. Thiings like voice e-mail, voice discussion boards, virtual office hours. Attended one seminar on e-packs until I saw that I knew what she was talking about (besides the phone was ringing...) I set up a chat client on my http://accounting.smwc.edu and have already used it 3 times with a student. I sent a voice email to Eric, Mike, DJ and Kim. Kim LOVED it. She said it made her day. I must say I'm pretty impressed with it myself.

I just keep plugging along on this book. I need to get back to McGraw-Hill, but I seem obsessed about finishing at this point. Perhaps it's the rain?

I did a little reading today - we have several American History mags and Traces (an Indiana Historical magazine). I had no idea that the Tibet connection was more from Shelton (a medical missionary) than the DL''s brother in Bloomington. Gee, what you don't know in your own backyard...
Then I started reading about the NCR giant. Pretty interesting stuff. He was a lister and liked the number 5. Some strage habits (like 4 baths/day and green felt underwear) - but a giant in sales reform among other things.

Well back to the grind...

I'm thrilled that Leo Laportte is back on "Call for Help" on TechTV. I just hope that the new folks (Comcast) decide to keep him and expand his services on "The Screen Savers" too!

Anyway, on to the book. Today, I ordered Camtasia because I really think that all the features are worth it. I've been using CamStudio (free), but Camtasia will allow you to work with flash, including flash hot spots.

After meeting with my WED student on Sunday, I decided that the best Learning Object that I could create to show as an example in my book, would be one on Statement of Cash Flows. Students have trouble with this, and I think I have a great way of explaining it (the old auditing days really paid off for SCFs!).

I've been exploring Wimba this week. Wimba is the brainchild of a company that just joined forces with HorizonLive. Wimba has expertise in any technology that works with your voice (voice email, voice boards, voice conferencing, etc). They have a partnership with WebCT, so that is a plus, at least for my institution (Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College).

I'm still working through all the nuggets of knowledge that I gained at the Purdue University T&L Conference. Can you believe it? I won something - a WebCT seat in a distance course of my choice. So even more fun on the way! I'd like to go the Annual Conference for WebCT, but I don't know if I can work it in and get this book done. At some point, you have to get the mighty pen to the paper - or in my case, clicking the keys.

All for now!

Well, a few days have passed since my last posting, but I've used those days wisely. I attended a T&L Conference at Purdue in West Lafayette, Indiana and learned tons that can enhance this book. I can't understand why Purdue faculty didn't just flock to this conference, but I was thrilled that I went. I attended the "Creating Videos for the Web with Camtasia Studio," "Creating Interactive Instructional Materials with Lectora," "Tablet PCs in a Traditional Journalism Course," "Using Tegrity WebLearner to Capture Real Time Lectures," "Created Narrated PowerPoint Presentations with Impatica," Semiotics, Technology, and the Research Paper," and "WebCT Exemplary Course Project." I list them all so that I can remember this later (as much for me as anyone). Not only did I truly enjoy this conference, I even won a door prize.

I have already used a section from what I've learned in the book. I reviewed several of the exemplary courses and used them as examples in the book. Why I had not done that, I don't know - sometimes the simple solutions evade me, I guess...

Now, all I want to do is write - but here in Indiana, the weather is beautiful and I'm thinking alot about putting out a few flowers. Oh well, I'll work today and plant Monday. Sunday, I'm helping a WED student with Intermediate Accounting. I'm looking forward to meeting with her - believe it or not, I miss interacting with my students!

Well that's all for now.

Although somewhat busy with Easter services, I've been diligently working on the book. I'm still struggling with the RSS concept. I've learned a lot, but still not enough to really relate it well in the book. I still think blogging is a needed section in the book, but if I can't relate the RSS concept well, I may only touch on this and move on.

I found evidence that blogging is part of the college curriculum at several campuses, and a real way of conducting the profession (see Jon Udell's various blogs, etc). I'm off to look for Leo's blog (Leo Laporte is my hero at the ScreenSavers, with Patrick and Kevin fighting for second!).

Off to the book - more news will be posted soon!

Today, I backed up the technology book to CD including the bookmark.htm file, instead of backing up to the raid server. Why? Well yesterday, our business DSL was active. No more satellite glitches (when we have wind or rain, we often lose our internet connection). We have some more moving around to do, so not sure how much I can work on the book today, but I'm starting on it now and trying to shut my eyes to the stacks of things around me. Should be interesting!

Another thing about blogging. I kind of fumbled around to figure out the URL for updating the blog (posting). I finally realized that you need to go back to http://www.blogger.com, sign in and then you can post. In hindsight, I wished I'd chosen a different name for the blog. The Ramblings? Where did I get that idea?

Well, back to the book - we will see how much I get done today...!

Today, I found several good links that will help in the book. One particularly was right in my own backyard at http://thevid.org which is a partnership of ISU and Vincennes and some other instititutions. VID stands for Virtual Instructional Designer and it is full of tidbits, articles, and resources. What a nice find!

Also, I found "Sketches - Innovations in Education" journal from ISU that gave some insight to what they are doing in distance education. I will do this same approach with several other instititions in Indiana.

I added blogging to the first chapter right after the discussion web stuff.

Wrote about 2 hours, researched about two and still at it.