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Episode 84 – The One Where We Didn’t Say G****e

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:19:58 +0000

This week we consider the question of whether Apple and five major publishers colluded to fix e-book prices and the prospect of a Department of Justice Anti-trust suit against them. We also argue the question of whether buy-in from Blackboard will be good or bad for open source learning management projects Moodle and Sakai and join the chorus of praise lauding the online release of the 1940 U.S. Census. On the lighter side, we check in on the ongoing saga of @FakeElsevier. Finally, we celebrate our unintentional, but surely very welcome, neglect of a certain not-evil web search and services company.

Late update: Since we recorded this episode on April 4, 2012, the DOJ showed its hand and officially filed suit against Apple and its partners in the publishing industry, announcing terms of a possible settlement with at least three publishers.

Other links mentioned on the podcast:
Bigger Than Agency, Bigger Than E-Books: The Case Against Apple and Publishers
Blackboard Buys 2 Leading Supporters of Open-Source Competitor Moodle
Fake Elsevier’s complaints about academic publishing leads to fake takedown notice
Big Day for Family History Hunters: 1940 U.S. Census Is Online

Running time: 45:38
Download the .mp3

Episode 78 – Death Knell for the Paywall

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:05:53 +0000

The clock strikes noon, and that sound might just signal the end of the bright morning for closed systems in higher education. On this week’s podcast, we discuss Coursekit, a free (for now) learning management system built by dropouts from the University of Pennsylvania; Commons-in-a-Box, a free (funded by the Sloan Foundation) academic social networking system of blogs and wikis that will be built by non-dropouts from the CUNY Academic Commons; and the Berlin 9 Open Access Conference, which seems to have convinced not only several universities but also the White House that peer-reviewed scholarly publications should be, what else, free. Our honored guest is journalist Audrey Watters of Hack Education.

Links

What Does Coursekit Say About the Future of the LMS?
“Commons in a Box” and the Importance of Open Academic Networks
Beyond the Iron Triangle: Containing the Cost of College and Student Debt
Berlin 9 Open Access Conference
Open Access Policy Adopted at Princeton
Open Access to Knowledge at Wesleyan
Request for Information on Public Access to Digital Data and Scientific Publications (submit your comments by January 2, 2012)
HASTAC Annual Meeting 2011

Running time: 50:35
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Episode 71 — The Ninth Circle of Google Plus

Amanda French — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:54:03 +0000

If there’s one theme in this episode of the podcast, it’s content being hidden from the open web. The new social network Google+ lets you create “circles” that will allow you to post certain content to certain people and hide it from others, but just as with Facebook, it’s not at all certain that future historians will be able to see any of it, or at least not in context. Computer scientists at Old Dominion University are working to estimate how much of the open web is backed up, and we’re happy to learn that at least thirty percent of it might be available for future study. Blackboard, the original turnkey for course content, is no longer a publicly traded company, and according to the well-read Mills Kelly, that’s because Blackboard may be losing market share to free and open source software. Finally, Tom and Dan tell us a little about PressForward, the Center for History and New Media’s new publishing initiative, which is made possible precisely because so much good work is not in fact locked down, but is freely available on the web.

Links to stories covered in the podcast:

Audrey Watters, Google Plus: Is This the Social Tool Schools Have Been Waiting For?
Jeff Young, Professors Consider Classroom Uses for Google Plus
Josh Lowensohn, Google+ Access Coming to Google Apps, Eventually
Jie Jenny Zou, Old Dominion U. Researchers Ask How Much of the Web is Archived
Audrey Watters, How the Library of Congress is Building the Twitter Archive
Steve Kolowich, Blackboard Gets Bought
Dan Cohen, Introducing PressForward

Running time: 53:50
Download the .mp3

Lunch and Learn: Dennis Hood on Blackboard 2011

John LeMasney — Thu, 05 May 2011 13:20:57 +0000

At the Lunch and Learn on April 27th, 2011, Dennis Hood spoke about what Blackboard users should expect from the latest version of Blackboard at Princeton. He demonstrated the cosmetic and functional changes that will come after the upgrade in June. Blackboard 2011 offers more straightforward navigation, tools for increased productivity with less clicks, and a cleaner look and feel.

A few changes were made in order to make the interface more friendly. In the new Blackboard, your name will again appear at the top of the page when you log in. Blackboard removed this feature in the previous release, but it reappears in this upgrade. The color of links in the page has been tweaked to improve legibility. Some people have reported confusion in the previous release about the menu-hide and menu-collapse features, and as a result, the handles for these features have been made more prominent.

Other changes focused on functional improvements. You can now choose to keep announcements ordered by a priority that you set. There are times in which instructors might want to keep an announcement up all semester, and others which they might only want to keep up for a day, or a week. The changes to the announcements area allow you to more quickly arrange, prioritize, and dismiss announcements for students.

Hood showed that significant changes were made to the content creation tools. The links in the content creation areas, in which instructors can create links, documents, and file downloads for students, now has three links for that purpose instead of the previous five. The most basic function in the content areas allows instructors to choose to create an item or create a file. Creating an Item works similarly to the way it worked in previous releases. Instructors can create a title, body and attachment in an item, and it is immediately available to their students, or delayed if they wish. Creating a File allows you to simply add a file without getting the textbox that creating an Item presents. Any file you upload to an Item or File page uploaded to a local file to Blackboard’s file storage system. When uploading content to courses, instructors can choose to browse your local desktop computer or from your course files that they have already uploaded.

Hood had a tip for Microsoft Office users. There is a particularly useful feature for people who use Microsoft Word to prepare their course content, such as their syllabus. In the past, copying and pasting content from a Word document often meant losing formatting, requiring a subsequent cleaning up of the document, and lost time and effort. There is now a Mashup button with a “Paste from Word” option in the toolbar that can help you to preserve line breaks and other formatting as you paste it in.

Hood told the audience to be aware of a misunderstanding in Blackboard that some people have reported to him. If an instructor wants to remove an item from a content area, it is important to click on the contextual menu next to the item itself. If you click on the remove command in the contextual menu for the content area at the top of a page, (e.g. Course Materials), you will remove the entire content area rather than simply an item within that area. Hood said that Blackboard has greatly improved its ability to deliver files directly to users, rather than as an attachment to an Item.

In the new version of Blackboard, you can add audio files and images as objects in content areas. Students can begin to use these files in one click, as opposed to having to click into a Blackboard item, then into the attachment. Blackboard’s mashups feature supports the use of various external media sites, such as Flickr and YouTube as a source for course content. The new Course Files, found in the Control Panel menu, can be populated with various files such as documents and spreadsheets, then browsed, linked to and shared according to access rules you set up. For instructors who wish to upload a lot of files at once, they need only drag and drop a folder or series of selected files into the course files area. Even if an instructor deletes a link to a file in course files, the file remains in storage until it is specifically deleted from course files. Also when you rename or move a file in course files, all links to it stay intact. For instructors who wish for students to have a place where they can simply drop files that will be shared with other students,, they can recreate the functionality of a WebSpace Dropbox using course files by setting sharing permissions on a course files folder. This eliminates sending students to a different application (WebSpace) for using the shared files folder.

Grade Center now has its very own top-level Control Panel item. Links to Grade Center smart views, where faculty can see, for instance, a subset of all students, can now be placed under the Grade Center link in the Control Panel. Instructors can quickly see items that require action, such as assignments that need grading, with the Needs Grading link. It’s easier to grade blogs, wikis, and journals in Blackboard now. Course Blogs allow items to be posted for student review and comment, and Course Journals & Wikis allow students to individually or collectively write about course content, all of which can be used for assessment. Instructors can now create rubrics to serve as guidelines for grading assignments and essay questions. These rubrics can be associated in the Grade center with the items to which they apply. The Grade Center now allows instructors to grade assignments without knowing who the student who completed the assignment is. This can help to prevent a positive or negative bias that the instructor may have acquired about a student. Another new and interesting feature is that an instructor can color code Grade Center entries in order to highlight certain students, grades or activity.

Finally, there is a new tab labeled Book Bag that shows students which books they selected from their course sites to order from Labyrinth. The Book Bag feature is an inter-application relationship with Labyrinth Books, and allows students to order and purchase books in Blackboard, then simply walk over to pick them up at Labyrinth.

Dennis Hood explained the ways in which Blackboard 2011 at Princeton will improve instructor and student productivity, file management, and media consumption. The interface is a bit cleaner and easier to navigate. The Course Files feature allows for more direct management and control of files in Blackboard. The Grade Center allows users to stay better informed of their recorded progress in courses. Even buying textbooks is easier. For more information, or if you have questions about Blackboard at Princeton, please contact Dennis Hood at hood@princeton.edu.

Blackboard 2011 Quick Start Guide

Audio Podcast of the talk

The New Blackboard 9: Finding Your Way

Jon Edwards — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:26:27 +0000

Ten years ago, Princeton adopted Blackboard as its course management system. During the past decade, the system has moved from serving a handful of courses to every course. What was an occasional convenience has become an integral part of the educational process at Princeton.

In June, the University will be upgrading the system to Blackboard 9. New features promise to improve teaching, learning, and course management. The most striking change initially, though, for instructional staff and builders, will be the new interface for editing and managing the course sites.

No longer is the control panel a single page you go to with links to everything you need to manage the site, such as content editing, the grade center, user management, email, and other tools. Now, site control elements are accessed “in-line,” from drop down lists attached to, or found below, the course menu. While this method of access is more logical, it will take some getting used to for those accustomed to the old single-page control panel.

At the May 5 Lunch ‘n Learn seminar, Dennis Hood, Princeton’s CMS Manager for ten years, demonstrated many of these and other improvements. “All the tools old tools are still there, plus new ones,” says Hood, “you just get to them through a different route.”

For assignments, instructors can now permit students multiple attempts to take quizzes and exams. Faculty will know when assignments and tests have been submitted. A todo list gives students a clear sense of what tasks are outstanding. It is now far easier to manage group assignments and tasks. And the new version offers a nice range of customizing features. For example, students will see only those tabs that contain information.

Faculty will appreciate that it is easier to upload syllabi and other course materials. And those who are giving classes that are similar to others they have taught will easily be able to copy older offerings into their new courses.

They will also appreciate the inline confirmations used throughout the system. The result is a more seamless workflow… fewer clicks to navigate the system and to complete tasks, and with embedded help throughout.

The new blackboard also offers a range of new tools, notably blogs and journals. With Blogs, students can openly share their thoughts. They can post text, images, links and attachments, and their posts are open for comments. Journals are self-reflective essays. Only students and faculty can comment upon these posts, though faculty have the option of sharing journal posts with the class. In version 10, which is expected in a year, faculty and their students will also be able to experiment with Wikis.

“The transition to the new version will be an easy one,” promises Hood. “But if you still have trouble, feel to call.” Assistance with Blackboard is available at 258-0737 or at blackboard.princeton.edu

The podcast and handout are available.

Mobile Princeton is Coming: Get out Your Smartphones!

Jon Edwards — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:48:40 +0000

For reunions last year, OIT created a special web site tailored for the small mobile devices that are now proliferating in the marketplace, cell phones with web browsers, iPhones, Blackberries, and the like. The experiment proved to be quite successful. To accelerate the development of such services, OIT signed an agreement in December that will give the University access to Blackboard Mobile, an environment that will permit users to access public information about the University in a format especially suited to such mobile platforms.

The result will soon be a Princeton-specific application, m.Princeton, for leading brands of smart phones.

Mobile Central was founded by a group of Stanford students who developed the core products offered by Mobile Central by rising to the challenge of a course assignment in a Stanford computer science class - the task: to deliver real mobile solutions for the Stanford campus community.

iStanford now permits users to search the campus directory and campus map, view athletics and course information, and a variety of other campus services. The students later formed the company TerriblyClever Design in 2007, and developed several more mobile suites for other colleges and universities.

During the past year, several universities, notably Stanford, Duke, and MIT, have used these same services to permit mobile users to access campus maps, directories of people and places, bus schedules and campus tours, event calendars, announcements and news, as well as images and videos.

Princeton is now building a full suite of such mobile applications for the benefit of the entire campus, as well as visitors, parents, and prospective students. OIT has assembled a team with representatives from several departments to complete the first phase of the work in time for reunions this coming May. The first phase will include a campus map, a campus directory, athletics schedules, course information, news, and the public events calendar.

During the first phase, Princeton will also assemble support for Reunions, from events and campus maps through directories and local restaurant menus.

The second phase will be ready in time for the fall. It will deliver real time shuttle information, access to the library catalog, an image gallery, additional video content, building maps (library floor plans, for example), as well as an online Orange Key tour.. Additional changes will be made as needed and will be delivered as updates to the existing application.

At the April 28 Lunch ‘n Learn seminar, Janet Temos ‘82 *01 and Ryan Irwin ‘10 of Blackboard Mobile Central discussed the details about the coming Princeton mobile apps. They noted that the apps will be delivered in formats that support the Blackberry Storm, Curve, and Bold, the iPhone, the iPod touch, and eventually the iPad. The apps will also work on any smart phone that can support a web browser. The application will be free, but users will need to download the application that suits their brand of phone.

The Apple applications will be available for download via iTunes. Blackberry applications will be available from the Blackberry app store. Blackboard Mobile Central and Princeton will host the web-based version.

Check back soon at www.princeton.edu/princetonmobile.

Janet Temos was trained as an architectural historian, and received degrees in art history from Williams College (MA 1992), and Princeton University (PhD 2001). She began working with the Educational Technologies Center (ETC), in 1993, and became a full-time member of the staff in 2000. She is now director of ETC, and continues to work with faculty who wish to use computer technology in their teaching. Current projects include courses on film, archaeology, medieval manuscripts, African languages taught in the US, and a collaborative project with the Princeton University Art Museum to develop an on-line repository of digital images of objects in the museum’s East Asian collection.

The podcast and presentation are available.