Monthly Archives: September 2014

assessment, tutorial

Send Message mode will not get you points in class

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Before you even answer a poll in class… how many icons are on your screen?  Does it look like this?

SM

It shouldn’t. This is the Send Message mode. Theoretically it is for asking the instructor questions during polling – but no one uses it really, and the messages you send go into a weird report that they never really have a reason to look at, so they won’t be seen.

It should look like this:

reg

 

To get out of Send Message mode… you must hit that back arrow in the lower left corner.

assessment, pedagogy, Teaching, Uncategorized

Open Book Thoughts

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These are clips from many different educators talking about the use of open book student assessments.

…more significantly would allow students to trade information with each other throughout the test in ways which would be extremely difficult to monitor.

“With new technologies, new cognitive possibilities arise. Educators need to create new activities when new technologies are introduced into the classroom. If the calculator is used to add 2+2, it is the capacities of the calculator that are solving the problem; when calculation is “off-loaded” onto the calculator, the student is free to solve more complex problems.” – Jenkins, 2009

classes have moved away from traditional tests and towards project based and/or essay based exams.

Gamify the test?

exam duration is set to match the time necessary to answer the questions, without much slack.

demonstrate mastery of their art through practice

“for today’s graduates into the digital age, possession of knowledge is far less important than the acquisition, analysis, and synthesis of that knowledge”.

SBCapture, Teaching, Video Creation

Need to record video?

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You have a few options for this.  You can reserve a room that has SBCapture built in, and let us know the schedule so I can setup the recording.  You need to use a mic when recording, so talk to the AV desk if you are unsure about that part.

You can record your lecture with a camera (or ipad/iphone), and get me the recording afterwards and I can publish it to your course. I have some courses that drop off camcorders and others that share files with me via Google Drive.  I even have one instructor that sends me the recordings created when using Doceri.

You can use personal capture at home or in the office to record them at your leisure and send the recordings to blackboard afterwards for all of your students to watch. Personal Capture records everything showing on your screen, video from your webcam and audio from a mic. Tell us about your recordings so that we can hook in the publishing options.

Coming Soon: One Button Studio.  A physical location, where students and instructors can go and with the push of a single button start recording in a well equipped mini studio.

 

 

Personal Capture request form:

https://docs.google.com/a/stonybrook.edu/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEM3c0Y2QzNKb3hFMkFrR1RiVzRfR0E6MQ#gid=0

Schedule single SBCapture recording:

https://docs.google.com/a/stonybrook.edu/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFpJdWhfZ29FYVpFb3VCaTJOMzJwS1E6MQ#gid=0

Video Drop Off form:

https://docs.google.com/a/stonybrook.edu/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDhvVWRGQUdzSTgzOXRyd2pHeUY2MXc6MQ#gid=0

Still shots of the video captured from each available room for room based capture in SBCapture (in addition to this video stream, students are also presented with the video feed of what is projected in the room):
turningpoint cloud image
assessment, Teaching, troubleshooting

checklist of Turning Technology Cloud woes

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We use clickers with an LMS – namely Blackboard (9.1.110082.0).

  • When you use an LMS, you need to register your online Turning Technology account with your school email address and indicate that you are either an instructor or a student.
  • Once registered as a student you can not start the TurningPoint Cloud program.  So, if you have to use clickers for a class – and you have to run the software because you are a TA, you will need to use a non-university email to register as an instructor. You won’t be able to sync anything like your roster, because the email address isn’t associated with your LMS.
  • No explanation has been giving for why allowing students to run the program is such a bad thing.
  • Once registered as an instructor, you can not register a clicker.
  • The instructions for how to use your license code that come in the box with a new clicker, contain instructions that are for students that do not use an LMS.  Following them can result in needing Turning Technologies’s support people to assist.
  • Courses that have rosters of more than 400 people cannot successfully connect with the Turning Technologies server without experiencing a time out. This goes for downloading the participant list and also for uploading grades. Turning Technologies currently is manually delivering the participant lists to our instructors via a support account that has been entered into those classes as a TA or Instructor. They are working on this and need to fix it. Fixed by software update from company. On the other hand, maybe not.  they are blaming our Blackboard “trafficking” on server time out issues.
  • Courses with large enrollments also getting server errors when attempting to start responseware. Fixed by software update from company. ??
  • During the first two days of class, students were receiving messages when trying to register saying that the code was invalid – but this was only because their server was over welmed. Apparently it was actually taking the license.  If a student tried again later, they would get a this code has already been used error.
  • Due to the tightening of security on the turningpoint system, session files and participant lists can no longer just be shared with another person by dragging it out of the folder and attaching to an email or shared drive space. (Note course coordinators!) These files must now be exported with a password that you then share with whomever you want to be able to open the file.
  • Also note previous post: https://you.stonybrook.edu/jadams/2014/08/26/turningpoint-cloud-is-damaged-and-cant-be-opened-you-should-move-it-to-the-trash/
  • There is no longer a  lookup device IDs for students who have registered in the Cloud only.  I used to use the Device ID lookup tool quite often to assist with Lost and Found devices.
  • Using RemotePoll for remote clicker sessions (we use it mostly for courses where we have more students than we can fit into one room. In this case we would stream the video into a second room and setup remote poll so that the students in the overflow room can still participate with the clickers), is now only between two windows machines over direct IP.  It used to have to be on a windows box in the remote room, but could be mac on the presenter machine.

I will update this as issues are resolved. Our classes started on 8/25/14.