Jerry Lewis - CBC eLearning

Spring Quarter WebCT Wrap-up

2010-06-22T15:58:00.000-07:00

This message pertains to the quarterly transition for WebCT, and should be read carefully (printing it out may be helpful) by instructors and others using WebCT. You can see some of the changes I made to this message over the quarters because some are in blue (or a very subtle light blue/gray).

Some words about the transition to Angel.
We are moving to Angel and would like to have everyone migrated by Fall 2010. Practically speaking, this means you should plan to migrate your Fall classes during Summer quarter. This is especially important for classes that are going to be online. Moving support for face-to-face (F2F) classes is less critical, however you will probably have a better experience if you start working on Angel now. Brad is planning on at least one more F2F session, and there are online opportunities to learn Angel during Summer. David and I are available to assist on an ad hoc basis, as well as some instructors, such as Brad Sealy, or in Health Sciences, Eric Nilson may be around to assist. I can do a F2F training.

After December 31, 2010, we will not be licensed to use WebCT for instruction. As long as the server does not croak, we will keep it running to retrieve course backups and to support transitioning courses to Angel.

Spring quarter finish
I am planning on backing up and resetting Spring quarter classes on Thursday 6/24, starting at about 2 a.m. I probably won't take WebCT off-line to do this. You may wish to print this out. Please, at a minimum, read down to the second bullet point.

In general, it is better to let me backup and reset your classes (feel free to backup your class, but let me reset it).

The backup and reset only apply to classes which have had students loaded and updated for Spring quarter, other classes are untouched.

Given the gap between the end of the quarter and the reset, your students may try to contact you when you aren’t checking the class. It would be a good idea to set your e-mail address in the private mail settings and turn forwarding on. See text description below or a quick video tutorial on doing this (see below for text description). That way, you will get their messages in your regular e-mail box and they won’t be lost in space.
If you have special needs to retain a class with the student data, or need to keep a class from being reset, please contact me.
If you have discussion messages you need to save, you can select them, then click the compile button and save them as a text file for copying and pasting back into the class. The discussion folder structure (and probably mail) appears to be left intact.
The reset procedure clears all student data, discussions, e-mail, student homepages, etc. It does not affect organizer pages, quizzes, content modules, etc. This also includes conditional or selective release, so if you have conditional release on anything, it may restrict your next quarter students from accessing the resource. This is something you need to check if you are using selective release for anything.
The backups I make can be restored to a snapshot of the class as it was when the backup happened, including all postings, student data, etc. If I do not take WebCT down to do the backups, it may result in some student (or instructor) activity between the backup and reset. That activity will be lost. From 3-6 a.m. there should not be significant activity.
Students with current logons should be able to continue to access those after the reset, but their old classes will not be available.
If you do end up needing data from a reset course, I can restore that snapshot and it will be just as it was before it was reset.

If you need to preserve calendar entries, you can download them prior to the reset and upload them afterwards. You can see a tutorial on this at http://faculty.columbiabasin.edu/distance/faculty/export_import_calendarV4_viewlet_swf.html .

You may wish to check your class the night before the reset to see if students sent you any new messages prior to the reset. Alternately you may adjust the mail settings to forward messages to your regular e-mail box. To do this, click on your Private Mail icon, then the Message Settings button. In the Mail Forwarding section, make sure the Allow users to forward ... setting is checked (this is the default), then check the Forward my mail to: setting and put your e-mail in the text box. See video tutorial on setting forwarding.

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

P.S. Blackboard bought out WebCT several years ago and now the version we are using has a Blackboard name, however for convenience, and due to the familiarity, I have continued to call it WebCT. The Bb name is something like Bb Learning System 4.1 CE.
--
Jerry Lewis
Director of eLearning and Web Services
WebCT/Bb Senior Level Certified Trainer
Columbia Basin College
Pasco, WA 99301 -3379 jlewis@columbiabasin.edu
509-542-4465, direct
509-547-0511, ext 2465
509-546-0401 fax

SLanguages 2008 Conference

2008-05-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

I attended parts of the SLanguages 2008 Conference on Friday 5/23 and Saturday 5/24. The conference was about language education in virtual worlds. It ran from 10 a.m. to 10 a.m. - 24 hours (attendees were from around the world - China, Japan, Ecuador, Europe, Dubai, as well as at least one from Pendleton). I had mistaken the date and so I showed up late on the first day. Still, I managed to attend seven sessions, plus the conference wrap-up.

The sessions were mostly interesting, and compared favorably to face-to-face [F2F] conferences I've been to, with the added benefit of being able to attend from work or home at no cost other than the electricity and the time.

The presentations varied from slide-show talks to virtual tours. There were over 350 attendees and some of the sessions must have had 50 or more participants.

Education in a virtual world

2007-12-07T14:10:00.001-08:00

The question may come up - why use a virtual world to do the same thing you could do in a physical class. It has been asked why the virtual world has buildings, chairs, TVs, etc and why you walk around (although in Second Life (SL) you can fly and teleport also).

This is a question that is being tested in many ways beyond the scope of this post, but let me offer a few ideas.

In many ways it's fantastical (I haven't seen a fat person yet - everyone is good looking and above average - my avitar came out of the box at 2 meters tall - over 6 ft.), and yet you have more of a sense of being somewhere with other people, even though they may be half-way across the world. Even though it's all virtual, you feel like there's a connection. Certainly more-so than asynchronous communication, and perhaps more than synchronous methods, such as text based chat, audio and/or video (all of which are available in SL).

When I first went in, I searched for some interests - Japanese and French languages. I found a site that offered English tutoring. I signed up to be an English tutor and have had two sessions this week tutoring Japanese students. The first was pretty last-minute and it took a while for me to get my bearings and figure out how to use the 'book,' which was projected up on the 'wall' of the room like a PowerPoint presentation. The second went more smoothly. We used audio, which worked much like a telephone, and was critical so that they could hear me speaking and I could hear them practicing speaking and correct and reinforce them.

Plus you have the capability of having simulations, such as the nursing one. The instructor demostrated a simulation where a 'patient' lies on a hospital bed/guerney. There's a big display with the patient's vital signs above it. Near the bed, there's an IV stand, oxygen tank, defibrullator and maybe other gadgets. The instructor has a control where he can change the vital signs and the student has a control where he can interact with the abovementioned objects to respond to the changes. So if the patient's oxygen level dropped, the student could give him oxygen, etc.

I also watched part of an archived presentation on using SL for education on the Edunation II Island (Centralia CC has an island, as does the SBCTC which is for the CTCs to experiment with.)

Second Life & Virtual Worlds in Education

2007-12-07T12:05:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I sent out a notice about a demonstration of using the virtual world, Second Life, in a Nursing class. The demo has been postponed, due to real-life floods in western Washington (the course is a Centralia College course).

In preparation for attending that, I set up an account and an avatar [the virtual person you use to navigate Second Life] and did some exploring. My avatar's name is Gerard Latte (your first name can be anything, but you choose the last name from a long list).

It can be confusing and hard to understand at first, because it's so different from the applications we use regularly. Bit-by-bit, though, you learn how to do things. At first I found some videos on YouTube that helped learn basic things, like changing your avatar's appearance. Yesterday, I met some of the other eLearning Council (SBCTC group) members and with the Nursing instructor as a guide, we looked at a simulation like the one he uses in class. He also answered a number of questions and demonstrated some things.

Since it's so new (well, not that new, but reaching a point where it is usable), the question is bound to surface asking whether this is appropriate or useful for education, or is it just a gee-gaw for the technologically obsessed. Although I think it's more than the latter, there is a lot of experimentation going on with the former. Some useful things will, no doubt, come out of it, as well as failures and time wasters.

A reformed online gamer asked me if it was a game, or like a game, with an objective and the ability to collect objects and points and such. While it resembles online games, there is no specific objectives, and while you can collect stuff, it isn't in the scope of 'winning.' The point is more to build and create your environment and interact with others. He then warned me that it could suck up my life, so to be careful.

There are other virtual environments. If I get a chance, I'll look at them and report back, or at least provide some links.