Course Management Sytems

Hi Readers,
This week I took a look at course management systems. Thejournal.com gives the following definition;

"A CMS (Course Management System) is Internet-based software that manages student enrollment, tracks student performance, and creates and distributes course content." (http://thejournal.com/Articles/2004/10/01/Course-Management-Systems-and-the-Reinvention-of-Instruction.aspx?Page=1, retrieved 8/12/09)

A CMS consists of three elements; publishing tools, a virtual community, and data management.

PUBLISHING TOOLS
The publishing tools of a CMS allow the intsructor, and sometimes the student, to upload or hyperlink files. It is used to deliver class content, be it audio, visual or text. It can also be used for the creation of and administering of online tests. All of thee could be handled by tools we have worked with this semester. A Wiki could handle all of these functions. Some external software may be neccessary to support some functions, like aqui.com for the tests. But all of these are available without the cost of a CMS.
VIRTUAL CLASSROOM
The virtual classroom refers to online communication. This includes email, sychronus chat, asynchronus threaded discussions, and realtime classroom interactions on the internet. Each of these could also be attained at a far lower cost thatn a CMS. Turbomeeting.com could fulfill the realtime needs, and standard email groups and threaded discussions could be set up on a wiki already put together for the publishing tools.
DATA MANAGEMENT
The data mangement functions enable alot of the administrative uses. With these tools the instructor can create classes, and record the grades. The students can register for classes and in some instances even pay for them online. Some of these can be handled by the software we have looked at this semester. Agian aqia.com can create classs and keep all the grading functionalities. Registering for classes and the payment of classes may be harder to handle though, but many CMS don't offer these advantages anyway.

In conclussion I think that most of the functionality of a CMS could be pieced together with other software available on the internet. But just because you can doesn't mean you should. Todays long distance learner is a customer first, and a student second. If the students do not have a choice where to go, then peicing together a workable system may be a good option. If your students are not tied to your institution then the lack of an established CSM had better be made up for by the cost of the education. I would not want the NLC to stop using blackboard unless they had someone who was a fulltime administrator and IT professional to handle issues. In addition, with how many problems we have had with blackboard this semester, at least the NLC could point their finger at blackboard. If the system was run internally then these disruptions would reflect directly on the school itself. I am sure the CMS comes with technical assistance when problems arise, and if problems occur the school has a scapegoat. Also the CMS products out there are not dependant on the competence, and continued employment, of a single person creating a new system. There are also training considerations in regards to the instructors themselves. I personally think that if a CMS is finacially within the reach of an institution, then it is probably the best option.

Web based office aps

Hi Readers
It has been a busy week. I went to the National Labor College this week for a week in residence for my senior block. I was able to meet many of my instructors including Rob Morris. It was a hectic and challenging week! Now that I am back I took a look at Doug's list of ten important Union events, and added a little. I also posted a power point presentation on Zoho.com. It was relatively easy. I didn't really like that I couldn't copy the link and therefore neded to take an extra step amd email it to myself then copy it there. All in all it was really very efficient though. I think this could be very helpful in an educational planning situation when the cirriculum is being designed by more than one person.

Week 8, Web Polls

Hi Readers,
This week I looked into web polls. I started with freepolls.com and created the little gadget on the right. Now you can grade our school. I like how you get to see others answers to the poll after you have voted. It was easy to create, and I changed the original poll after I had installed the gadget to see if it would change the poll without the copy/paste HTML thing. It worked just fine, all you have to do is edit the poll at the freepoll website. Pretty neat. Unfortunately you need to subscribe to create polls with more than one question, but it is cheap.
After doing this I thought this could really work well for my senior block project. There is a research aspect required, and a survey will fit the bill. I went to Respondus first and it seemed great, if you have an educational tool like blackboard. I don't have access, and it would be serve as a barrier to getting the surveys answered even if I could get access to the programs. So I then went to Quia, and it seems to be more of what I was looking for. It could be set up for classes, with assignments and quizes and such, though not to the level of control that Respondus offered. More important for my current needs though was that I could create a survey and email it to whomever I wanted. I think I may try to email it to JATC instructors working for the IUPAT. I created a survey and would appreciate anyone who would answer the questions, if you are not a JATC instructor just make up answers as I am just trying to see how well it works. If this works well it could go a long way towards answering the logistics question of a research survey.
I really am enjoying this class. I have learned more in this class that I am using everyday than in any I have taken in years.

Map Building

Hi Readers,
This week I decided to take a tangent and try map building. I tried a couple of different sites. I tried http://www.wayfaring.com/ and it worked nicely. I am still having trouble getting it to show the map behind my notes without the viewer manually pressing the map/satellite/hybrid buttons, but I was able to add a note to clarify this to the viewer. As you can see by clicking on the map located on this page, the map has a lot of depth and information embedded in it. This could be very convenient in an educational setting when the students are not familiar with how to get to the campus. If a student can't find the class, they can't be taught! I'm not sure what other educational uses it might have, but it will sure make getting to my parents Lake House easier for my friends! I also tried the http://www.mapbuilder.net/ site. It really was not as user friendly, and I disliked the adds showing up on my map. It may be a decent alternative, but after starting with wayfaring it seemed like a downgrade. I also added a widget from the Nation Safety Committee on my blog so check out the weekly safety hint! Does anyone know how to create hyperlinks on this blog while inserting different text? On our blackboard I can make the links part of my text without showing the http address, and I like that much better than what I have had to do on my blog so far. If anyone knows how to do this I would appreciate the help.
-Mike

Picture Sharing at Flickr

Hi Readers,
This week I am exploring Photosharing. This was the simplest assignment yet. I decided to go with Flickr because it is a Yahoo company, and since I already have a yahoo account it made this easy. I just downloaded, filled out my profile, uploaded some pictures and there you go! I figured I would demonstrate how this could be used as an instructional tool by setting up a group of subject oriented pictures to view. I like how easy it is to pull the slide shows from Flicker, Picassa, and Photobucket. It was really user friendly. I have to admit I had already put this slideshow on my blog from a Picassa Slideshow, so its almost like I cheated, but not quite. I am still wary of putting pictures of my family up since this is a public blog, but here is a link to my Flicker site so you can see them if I invite you.http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikehartnett/

Happy Horsefly Day!

Hi Readers,
After listening to Keith Wright's podcast I decided I liked it enough to post it on my Blog. It is funny which parts of a nations history are remembered and those that are not. If not for some horseflies perhaps these truths may not have been self-evident. I hope that you enjoy his reading as much as I did.
-Mike

Podcasts, putting my voice on the net

Hi Readers. I hope your family had as nice of a 4th of July as my family did. We are all paying for it with sunburn this week. I also forgot I am not in my twenties and went tubing, now my arms cant reach above my shoulders. Such is the price of fun! Now that I am back I started working on a podcast. It was pretty frustrating at first. I took about ten takes to get it right. I then went to Gcast and signed up, quick and painless. When I tried to upload my recordingI realized my recording wasn't in MP3 form. I came to learn I didn't have the capacity to save it in MP3 form. I tried downloading Audacity, and that worked nice, but still couldn't save MP3's without downloading another program. That program was Wavepad, and it did have the ability to save MP3s, and do the actual recording too! So I stopped using Audacity and just went to Wavepad, which did all I currently needed.

(http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/index.html) Follow that link to get to the free download for Wavepad. click on the GET IT NOW, and you have one stop shopping.

Then I went back to Gcast and uploaded my MP3. It was as simple as pie! They also made it very easy to add it to my blog. I just added a HTML gadget, and copied the code that Gcast offered. I even added it to the class Wiki, which was not as user friendly, but still pretty straight forward.

I can definitely see how this could add to our educational toolbox. We could record lectures for our students, enabling them to listen when conveint, such as during their drive to work. This would also enable them to access the information at a speed they are comforitable with. It would be especially useful for those students that are auditory learners. Merle Rogers is using this technology with his students, allowing them to read chapters of the classes textbooks on a podcast for extra credit. What a great use of the medium, and free labor!
-Mike

Web Conferencing

Hello Readers, it is almost time for Fourth of July celebrations to ensue so I will make this one brief! I had a good web conference with four other students from my instructional technology course and it went well. The site we used was CentralDesktop, and it seemed to work fairly well. It could have gone better if we were all more versed in how it worked, and perhaps we could have tried one with less options to start, but we figured it out pretty quickly. Most of this was due to the superb hosting skills of Amanda. We used the website to put together a Powerpoint presentation that we are still editing right now, but I will try to post it tomorrow before I go to the family lake house. We also discussed many of the applications that this tool could have for education and agreed that it was very useful. We each had to call in on a telephone for the conference, but there was no video so no one had to look at my Mickey Mouse pjs. All in all It was a little confusing for a onetime thing, but would be very useful as a tool if used frequently, or as a presentation tool.

Social Bookmarking II: The Network

Hi Readers, I was just bouncing around my RSS and found that Keith put his delicious bookmarks on the WIKI page for LBED. This inspired me to do the same. But then a most amazing thing occured to me. I could add Keith to my network! So I did. I now can look at Keiths bookmarks whenever I choose! If anyone wants to find my social bookmarks then you could look at the WIKI, or follow this link.http://delicious.com/bills4mgh

I am currently working on a research paper. I have not yet committed to a topic but am considering:

1) The World Trade Center cleanup, its long term health effects, and how disaster cleanup could be better handled in the future.

2) The benefits of a well designed respiratory protection program.

Being a painter with the IUPAT since the late 90's I use respirators daily. I often see workers wearing dustmasks that offer no protection against the particles they are trying to protect against, or not being clean shaven enough for their respirators to work. Enough preaching for one day. I hope you check out and enjoy some of my bookmarks.

My Social Bookmarking Experience

Hello Readers. It's been a hot week here in Chicago. I haven't had the energy to do any blogging, but I did take a look at social bookmarking. I was impressed. After reading about it I decided to check out http://delicious.com/, and it was good. I have been using bookmarks for ages. I have always found them to be useful, but in order to keep them in line I had to edit and erase them periodically to keep track of what was what. Folders and rambling names that made no sense a year later. That was before I found out about tagging. Imagine that someday we will have a system to keep track of all these bookmarks, and categorize them in searchable way that makes them accessible to us, and even others, years down the line. Well someday seems to have been around since at least 2004!
I am currently in the process of writing my senior block paper for my BA in Labor Safety and Health at NLC. I have just found the single greatest too for organizing my research. Does it get any better than this? Yes? You mean I can check other peoples tags too? Wow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU

At this point in time I would officially like to thank Rob Morris of the National Labor College for giving me this gift.

Hi Readers, I hope you spend the time towatch some of the videos. The Canadian government takes it's public service announcements seriously, and they did a great job with their safety related commercials. If you want to find others just look up WSIB on the Utube. The videos are brutal, but they get the message across. They ae a good tool for getting a conversation on safety started.

Hi Readers. Now that I've had some time to play around with this blog, and visit some others, I am starting to see how valuable of a collaborative tool it could be. At first I was a little skeptical seeing as I couldn't easily access my followers blogs. But with a little footwork, or more properly fingerwork, I was able to track them down. After doing that, as a follower I recieve updates on what has happened on the other blogs without searching each of them. I can see how this would be more efficient than a wiki. Unfortunately I was unable to shamelessly plug my blog with a hyperlink in a comment on someone else's blog. Of course that is probably a good thing. Well I'm back to trying to get you readers a slideshow, so have a nice day!
-Mike

Hello readers,
This is my first time developing a blog ao I hope it's not too rough. It seemed pretty simple, though I'm still trying to get a slideshow going on Picasa. I now have a picture and some background info for you. That was the best picture I could get that didn't have kids climbing on my head, but thats the price we pay for loving our kids, right? I'm still working on some content so hopefully this blog will get more entertaining as time goes on.

-Mike

Hi, and welcome to my blog! My name is Michael Hartnett, and I have been a painter and member of the IUPAT (http://www.iupat.org/) since 1998. During the time I have spent in the trades I have found safety to be the most important issue we face. Every morning workers kiss their families good bye expecting to see them at the end of the day, and sometimes they never return. Some of them could have lived if they had only thought to follow simple safety procedures.