Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Webinar: WA Faculty Open Textbooks

For those of you who were unable to make the “WA Faculty Open Textbooks” webinar on 11-18 … Here is the link to the recording and slide decks.

Everything is also online at the bottom of this web page.


Enjoy!

Monday, November 23, 2009

Winter Quarter in ANGEL

· What do I need to do to get ANGEL spaces for my winter classes? Nothing. If you are reading this, we will create a space for every class you are scheduled to teach. Winter ANGEL course shells will be created on November 30.

· What’s this I hear about a new version of ANGEL? We will upgrade to ANGEL 7.4 on December 16. This is largely an administrative upgrade. From a teaching perspective , you will barely notice it. I taught in ANGEL 7.4 last summer and it has some cool bells and whistles, but the basics are all the same.

· What do I need to do for the upgrade? Nothing. Your courses will be copied over for you.

· How can I learn more about the upgrade? Attend one of the overview sessions being provided by the SBCTC. The dates and times are below. I was not planning to offer any local training in 7.4 before winter quarter, but I can if you want me to. Send an email to Stephanie Delaney if you would like me to do some training on ANGEL 7.4 before the end of the quarter or during the break.

· Don’t I remember you saying something about archiving Spring class shells? Yes, Spring 09 course shells will be deleted in the next couple of days. I will have a backup, but you should have that content copied into a master course, your learning object repository or backed up onto your computer. Let me know ASAP if you need some help with this.

· Will Stephanie be around to help me with ANGEL and other technology stuff during the break? Maybe. I have jury duty beginning Dec 16. There is no telling how long that will be. I will also be taking a few days off between Christmas and New Years.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

ANGEL Tip of the Day #37 - Post first in Discussions

’ll bet you’ve seen it – the person who obviously read everyone else’s posts in the discussion and just copied the answers that seemed the most right. Well, you can put a halt to that with the Post First mode in ANGEL. When you set it, students can’t see the discussion board posts until they have made their own post.

To set a discussion in Post First mode, go to the Interaction tab in the Settings of your discussion. The first box there allows you to set the Mode. Choose “Post First” from the drop down menu. Note: This has to be done when you set up the discussion. Once a student posts to the discussion board, you cannot change the mode.








Now that you’ve seen all of those modes, you are probably wondering what the other ones are.

o Normal: All students may access and participate fully in discussion.

o Private user journal: Student posts and instructor replies are only visible to the student and the instructor.

o Private team journal: Posts by team members and instructor replies are only visible to team members and instructors

o Post first: Users must first post a topic before they‘re allowed to view or reply to other student‘s posted topics.

o Fishbowl: Select students or teams to participate in discussion while other selected students or teams may only view discussion.

o Hot seat: Students or teams “in” the hot seat read and reply to topics posted by other students or teams, but may not post new topics themselves.

ANGEL Tip Of the Day #36 - Default to advanced fields

When you are using ANGEL, many options remain hidden unless you select the Advanced option. Did you know you could set ANGEL to choose Advanced by default?


In ANGEL, click on the Preferences button (the little head on the left). From there, choose System Settings. Then, for User Level, choose Advanced. Then clickSave.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

ANGEL Tip Of the Day #35 - Guest Login

If you have guest speakers or people evaluating your courses, you may want to give them access using a guest log in.

Every course has a guest login created automatically. Here is the formula for a guest to access.

* Guest username = guestCASC_1234 ('guestCASC_' + course item number)
* Guest password = 1234 (item number only)

Thursday, November 12, 2009

ANGEL Tip of the day #34 - A quick fix to a slow loading ANGEL

If you find the main pages of ANGEL load slowly for you, try deleting your Theme Selector nugget. ANGEL is trying to load every theme in the planet every time you load the page. Deleting the nugget removes the problem.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

ANGEL Tip of the Day #33 - Clearing your Cache

If you ever need to call the Presidium Help Desk, the first thing they will ask you to do is clear your cache. Frustrating as that response is, it often works, so I encourage you to do it before making a call to Presidium.

Here’s how - For IE 7 and Firefox the following link also provided by Cleartechinfo.com - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljSntUi7Wtw

IE 8 Video from Youtube provided by Cleartechinfo.com - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsHrC9adzks&feature=player_embedded