Quick Tech Tip: In the Firefox search box, click the icon on the left side of the box to select other search locations. Click “Manage Search Engines” to find others to include.

New blog feature: Quick Tech Tips (QTT). These will be short and sweet. Think of them as a technological amuse bouche.

Windows users: To minimize all of your windows, press the windows key on your keyboard and simultaneously press M.

Windows key

[Update: See a more recent post on new features.]

This is the tool I’ve been waiting for. Socrative turns your students’ smartphones into a powerful student response system. It’s like PollEverywhere (see this earlier post), but with greater flexibility and ease-of-use, the ability to attach student names to electronic quizzes, and free – even when you have more than 30 students. This promises to be a real challenge to the makers of student response systems.

You and your students have options for accessing Socrative. Access it via the website using a computer or any web-enabled mobile device. For the mobile devices, you can either just access the website, or you can download the free app (Android or iPhone). I tested it out by visiting the Socrative teacher site on my computer and using the student app on my Xoom.

Socrative includes a simulation on their website, so I took the liberty of taking screenshots. You can try it out yourself by going to the Socrative website, and clicking on “Hands-On Demo” in the lower right corner.

To experience it yourself, on your ‘teacher’ device, go to http://t.socrative.com. On your ‘student’ device, go to http://m.socrative.com. Yes, it’s just that easy. In class, you go to the ‘t’ website and send your students to the ‘m’ website. If you or your students have the app, just run the app.

Connecting student devices to the teacher’s device

On the lecturer’s device, you see “my room number”. When students run the app or visit http://m.socrative.com, they’ll be asked to enter a room number. They just enter the number you have on your device. You can change that number if you’d like. Just select “Change room number” (it’s on the bottom half of the menu, not visible in the screenshot). The number doesn’t have to be a number. It can be text, say, your name or the name of your course. Whatever you choose will be remembered both on your device and your students’ devices. The student’s device will show “Waiting for teacher to start an activity” until you, well, start an activity.

Multiple Choice Questions

Pose a multiple choice question orally, or by writing it on the board, or in your presentation slides. Tap “Multiple Choice”, and the students will be given A through E options.

Once the student chooses, the instructor gets a bar graph, and the student’s device goes back into waiting mode. Unfortunately, at this time, there is no way to display this bar graph to students other than displaying your device using an opaque projector, or if you’re using your computer’s web browser, displaying the web page.

Short Answer Questions

Pose a short answer question to your students. On your device, tap “Short Answer”. That generates a response box on the student’s device.

Here the student entered “I have no idea what the answer is.” That appears on your device, and the student’s device goes back into waiting mode.

Now, if you’d like, you can have students’ vote on the best responses by tapping “Vote on responses.” Each student device now shows all of the short answer responses that were submitted. In this case, just one.

Quick Quiz (Self-Paced)

In a quick quiz, you give students a set of pre-planned questions. After a student submits one question, they move onto the next one, and the next until they’re finished. The first question should be their name.

Here you can see that there is one active user in the room. We know that because that’s how many devices have entered the Socrative room number. At this point, no one has completed the quiz.

The student has answered all 4 questions in the quiz. On the lecturer’s device, click “Live Results” to see who has responded and how they did. Once everyone has completed the quiz, click “End Activity & Send Report.” An Excel spreadsheet will be soon emailed to you with all of the data from the quiz.

This is what the spreadsheet looks like. The green-filled boxes are correct answers; the red-filled are incorrect.

Tip: On the quizzes, change the first question about name into two questions. Question 1: Enter your last name. Question 2: Enter your first name. When you get the spreadsheet, you can sort by last name for easy entry into your gradesheet.

Exit Ticket

The Exit Ticket works in much the same way as quizzes. With 5 to 10 minutes left in class, click “Exit Ticket” and students respond with their name and quick responses to a question, such as “define independent variable.” Research has shown that responding to open-ended questions related to the course content at the end of class improves performance on exams. [See for example: Lyle, K.B. & Crawford, N.A. (2011). Retrieving essential material at the end of lectures improves performance on statistics exams. Teaching of Psychology, 38, pp. 94-97.]

The Exit Ticket should be editable, but as of this writing it doesn’t appear to be. Instead, you can accomplish the same thing by giving a Quick Quiz since the Quick Quizzes are editable.

Space Race

Students compete in small groups (maximum: 10) to answer your pre-loaded questions as quickly as they can. The team that gets the most right in the shortest amount of time wins. Again, when you’re done, click the “end activity & send report” button at the bottom of your screen (not shown). You’ll be emailed an Excel spreadsheet with the results.

CONSIDERATIONS

Not all students have smartphones, laptops, netbooks, or other portable web-enabled technology. On the quizzes and the exit ticket, once a student is done responding, they’re given the option to finish or let another student take the quiz. For activities that could potentially have points attached, there’s at least this option. If many of your students don’t have internet access in your classroom, consider pairing students so that the two of them provide one response.

I anticipate trying this out in the fall. If anyone tries it before I do, I’d love to hear what you and your students think of it!

Thanks to Free Technology for Teachers for posting on this technology!

TitanPad allows you to quickly collaborate. Create a public pad, copy the URL, and email it to your collaborators. They follow the link, then just start typing in the pad. In the top right corner, new visitors are assigned a color and are named “unnamed”. Clicking in the “unnamed” box will allow them to enter their name. Attached a name to a color allows you and your collaborators to see who added what. If others are logged in at the same time as you, you’ll see their changes as they type. Changes are automatically saved. With the chat window, text will stay there even when you leave. It’s a handy space for leaving messages for your collaborators.

When I last wrote about TitanPad two years ago, that was pretty much all there was to say. They’ve since added a lot of functionality.

Import/export. Import text from, say, a Word document. Or Export your TitanPad to, say, Word document.

Saved revisions. While TitanPad automatically saves, you can also create save points. Use this after a major revision so you can quickly restore to that revision at a later point if you’d like. With this pad, I clicked “save now” at two different points. Now, under “saved revisions” I have two restore points.

Time slider. Below is the time slider view. I can click on the circled bar to move it back in time, then I can click the play button to watch how the document changed over time. The stars designate when I hit “save now” to create a saved revision. But notice that with the time slider, you can move the slider anywhere I’d like, then click “link to” or “download as” to get that specific version.

The newest functionality, though, is the creation of a private space. In effect, the public pads are private. After all, you can only get to an existing pad if someone has given you the URL. But that also meant that you needed to bookmark the URL because that was the only way there was to get to a pad you created.

Now you can create a space where you and your collaborators can see the multiple pads you’re working on. Go to TitanPad and click on “Get your own private space” in the bottom right corner. Name your team site. For example, I might want a team site for my department – hccpsych. The URL I would give to my colleagues would be hccpsych.titanpad.com. Fill out the rest of the form, and click the “create team site now” button. [Note: Notice how it’s called EtherPad here? EtherPad was the original software. When it was no longer being supported, it kind of fell into the public domain. TitanPad was one group that adopted it.]

TitanPad will send you an email with a URL. Following it will take you to TitanPad where you’ll be asked to create a password. When you’re done, you’ll be taken to your main page. To add collaborators, click “Admin”, then “create new account.” To create a new pad, click “create new pad”. You can see all of the pads you’ve created with the “Pads” link.

The pads themselves operate the same way with the addition of two functions. You can name your pad. And there’s now a link at the top of that pad that lets you return to the list of pads you have for your team site.

I’m sometimes asked why use this instead of Dropbox. I use both. I use Dropbox for most storage and sharing of files. I like to use TitanPad for brainstorming, especially when others are editing at the same time. For example, we might be on a conference call, and we call up a TitanPad to take notes so we know we’re all on the same page. . A few times I’ve created a public pad, and sent the URL out on the teaching of psych listservs when I’ve been looking for new examples to use in class. With a public pad, people follow the URL, then just start typing. No login. No need to save. Just type and go.

Can you envision using TitanPad with your students? Maybe for small group work? It’s easy to learn how to use, and it’s easy to see who contributed what and when with the color coding and the time slider.

[Update 12/15/2012 : Effective January 2013, appointment slots will no longer be an option.  Try YouCanBook.Me instead.]

Google Calendar now lets you let others schedule appointments in your calendar. With YouCanBook.Me, any open time can be scheduled. With Google Calendar’s new feature, you decide which times are open to scheduling.

In Google Calendar, click on an open time slot like you normally do to add a new event. Click on “Appointment slots”.

Call it what you’d like, say, “Office Hours”, then I selected “Offer as slots of 30 minutes.” Change the time to another amount if you’d like, such as 15 minutes. That’s it. Edit the details if you’d like. Add a location, say. This is where you get the URL to the appointment page that you will give to your students. Expand the amount of time you want to make open for appointments. After adding three time slots, this is what my calendar looks like.

Here’s the URL to my appointment calendar where you can only see the times when I’ve blocked off.

https://www.google.com/calendar/selfsched?sstoken=UUpoRTdRcUdUMlNqfGRlZmF1bHR8Y2NmZDA4ZjBlOTYxZTEzZDlhOWRhZjg3OGYyNmVhOTE

Note that those who wish to make an appointment this way will need to have a Google Calendar account.

Once the appointment is made, it’s added to both my calendar and the appointment-maker’s calendar. If they delete it from their calendar, it will also be deleted from my calendar, and the time slot will once again be available to future visitors.

There’s a lot to be said for a good old-fashioned email list. One address emails a bunch of people. Fiesta.cc makes it easy to create an email list and makes it easy to manage it.

I use an email list for each of my classes. I live inside of my email, so it’s easy for me to send an email to all the students in a class, and easy for them to respond. While most course management systems have the same functionality, you have to log into it to send an email.

The email list software I have been using is hosted by my college, and it comes with the ability to customize every which way you could possible want. Most of it I don’t need.

Enter fiesta.cc. I’ll be using this with my classes come fall quarter.

I just spent 2 minutes creating an email list.

To create a list, you can visit fiesta.cc. Or you can just send an email to everyone you’d like to include in your list, and cc listname@fiesta.cc where listname is what you want to call your list. Done. Seriously, that’s it. Here’s what creating an email list called tech@fiesta.cc might look like.

Don’t worry about whether or not someone else is using the listname you’ve chosen. It’s fine if they do. That’s one of the nifty things about this (free) service. Each list is private and tied to your email address. For example, I created a list called tech@fiesta.cc. When I email that list using the email address I used when I created it, fiesta.cc knows it’s me, and so knows who else the email needs to be sent to. If your email is associated with this list, when you email the list using that address, fiesta.cc knows who to send your email to.

Each person you add gets this email message. (For the purpose of this blog, I just added another of my email addresses to this list. That’s why there’s only one person, me, listed as being a member.)

By logging in at fiesta.cc, participants can change the name of the list, but it will only change for that person. For example, let’s say that I added you to my tech@fiesta.cc list, but you wanted to call it something else, like BestTechToolsEver@fiesta.cc. Great! Log in to your account at fiesta.cc and change the name. I email tech@fiesta.cc and you email BestTechToolsEver@fiesta.cc; our emails will go to the same people.

With fiesta.cc, there is no list owner. Everyone who’s a member of the list can add more participants or remove participants. If they do, everyone else receives an email to that effect.

Fiesta.cc email lists come with plus tag functionality. This allows you all kinds of control just using your email. For example, if I wanted to add someone new to my tech@fiesta.cc list, instead of logging in at fiesta.cc, I can send an email to tech+add@fiesta.cc and add the person’s email address in the cc box. Alternatively, I can send an email to tech@fiesta.cc, put the person’s email address in the cc box, and put +add at the end of the subject line. Either way. Whichever you prefer works.

One quick tip. If I’m on the NY Times website, and I want to share an article with my tech@fiesta.cc list, it won’t work to type tech@fiesta.cc into the box on the website. Fiesta.cc wouldn’t know which tech@fiesta.cc list to send it to. To email a list, the message has to come from an email address associated with the list. Instead, I need to compose a new email message where I paste the NY Times URL into the body of my message.

Visit https://fiesta.cc/learn to read more about fiesta.cc’s functionality, including additional tips for use, and more plus tags.

I’ve been discussing QR codes in this blog for some time. In the blog for Discover magazine, they report on another use of QR codes. While this isn’t related to teaching, it does illustrate how pervasive those pesky QR codes are becoming.

“In a bid to boost online sales, grocery retailer Tesco covered the walls of a Korean subway station with photos of its merchandise arranged on store shelves. Each item was endowed with a QR code, those black-and-white squares recognized by smartphones, and commuters on their way in to work could snap pictures of the codes with phones to fill a virtual shopping cart. They paid for their items via an app, and the food was delivered to their homes after they got home from work.”

I’m frequently asked, “Android or iPhone?” The good folks at Lifehacker provide the “Top 10 Awesome Android Features that the iPhone Doesn’t Have” and the “Top 10 Ways iOS Outdoes Android“. Truthfully, if Apple had originally opted to open the iPhone to all carriers and not just AT&T, I’d probably be an iPhone user today. But I was very happy with Verizon, and I have a long-standing grudge against AT&T. So Android it was. And now that I’m here, I have no desire to change camps. Nor am I alone in that regard.

In December 2010, I shared my favorite Droid apps. It’s time for an update.

What’s new:

CamCard (free for the lite version). CamCard uses your phone’s camera to take a photo of a business card, then it pulls the relevant information into a usable contacts entry; tap to call, email, visit the website, or see the location on a map. Additionally, organize the business card photos into categories for easy access. Create a QR code for the business card so others can bring the information into their phones.

Swiftkey X (free, currently in Beta). Like the original Swiftkey keyboard, it offers terrific text prediction. It learns from what you’ve typed before and offers suggestions based on what it thinks you’ll type next. Give it a couple letters, and its guesses are very good.

SpringPad (free). SpringPad is an EverNote alternative. With the new ability to drop notes into notebooks, and the old ability to access SpringPad via a computer’s web browser, SpringPad is a solid place to store your ideas.

*************************

A quick recap of the December 2010 list:

Andricious (free). Still a good way to access Delicious bookmarks. Now that AVOS, founded by the creators of YouTube, have purchased Delicious from Yahoo, look for increased functionality from Delicious. One of the first things they did was make Delicious work with Firefox 4.0, of which I am very grateful.

Ask-WA (free). Ask-a-librarian for those of us in the great state of Washington.

Barcode scanner (free). Essential for scanning QR codes.

Business calendar ($5.68, try the free version first). I love this calendar. I can see all of my Google calendars. Swipe to the left to move the calendar into the future. Swipe the bottom bar to increase or decrease the number of days shown. Pinch to zoom.

Documents to Go (free, $14.99 for premium features). I admit that I haven’t had much need to edit documents on my phone, but it sure has been handy when I’ve needed to.

Dropbox (free). Essential for Dropbox users. The files aren’t stored on your phone, but you can quickly download whatever you need.

Epistle (free). Great for quick notetaking. It syncs via Dropbox.

Google Voice (free). While I have a Google phone number, I don’t generally use it. I do use Google voice for voicemail however. I like the transcription feature, although sometimes the transcriptions leave something to be desired. Recently a friend called to see if I was planning on attending their crab boil, which Google Voice rendered as crap boy. In addition to the transcription, you also get the audio file. For obvious reasons.

ICE: In Case of Emergency (free). Haven’t had to use this, but I like knowing it’s there.

Movies (free). Excellent for finding out what’s playing when and where – and whether it’s worth the money.

OurGroceries (free). I’d use this if I lived alone, but it’s essential if you live with one or more people.

PdaNet (free to try, $15.95). This turns your phone into a modem by tethering it to your laptop via USB cable. I use it when I stay in hotels that charge an arm and a leg for internet access. Some carriers aren’t thrilled about you doing this, so they’re blocking it. Android market, acknowledging the carriers’ wishes, has removed PdaNet. You can still download it from the PdaNet website… and the newest version hides the tethering from your carrier. Newer Android phones, such as the Samsung Droid Charge, include the ability to turn into a Wi-Fi hotspot, so PdaNet may only be a temporary fix.

Power Control Plus ($1.99). Very handy widget. It’s customizable to include just about anything you need. I have mine set to allow me to silence/unsilence my phone, change the brightness, use the camera’s flash as a flashlight, turn on/off Wi-Fi, turn on/off the GPS.

Reader (free). Easy access to my Google Reader feeds. I’m not entirely crazy about the interface, but it’s fine for now.

Swiftkey (free to try, $2.02). One of the advantages of Android over iPhone is the ability to install different keyboards. I’m partial to this one.

Tick! (free). Easy to use timer.

Where’s My Droid (free). I haven’t had much need for this one, but, like ICE, I feel better knowing I have it.

In my last post, I mentioned I was at the Pacific Northwest Assessment, Teaching, and Learning Conference. After my presentation someone asked me about concept mapping tools. (I wish I could remember who he was. He was very tall. If you happen to be reading this, can you send me an email, please?) I told him that I had recently read about a tool but I couldn’t remember in that moment what it was.

I’m afraid I still can’t remember what it was, but just a few days ago Richard Byrne of the Free Technology for Teachers blog wrote about the newly-released Spider Scribe.

I created this concept map in 15 minutes, including the 2 minutes it took to watch Spider Scribe’s introductory video. It is very intuitive, making it a great tool for students!

View this map.

After registering and creating a new map, you get a blank screen. At the bottom of the screen are 5 tools, which they call stencils: Text box, insert a file, insert an image, insert a map, or create notes with a time/date stamp.

To add a text box, just click and drag the text box stencil onto the map. Type whatever you’d like in the box. Want another box? Repeat the process. Click on one of your text boxes, and alter background color or text color by making changes in the “Properties” box on the right side of the screen.

Want to upload an image? Drag the image box onto the canvas and upload the image from your computer. Want to add another image? Repeat the process.

Want to resize a box? Grab the handle in the bottom left corner of any on-screen box and pull or push to change the size.

They’re still in beta (officially on 5/16/11), so look for the addition of new stencils and additional tools for each stencil, such as different fonts beyond the currently available serif and sans serif.

To link content, mouse over a box. See the circle at the bottom of the box? Mouse over it and it will turn into a + sign. Click on it to generate an arrow. Now drag the arrow over another box, and unclick. Done. The two boxes are now linked. Click on a box to move it around; the arrow will follow. To disconnect them, click on the arrow you want to delete. That’s it.

Maps can be private (only you can see them), or they can be public in a variety of ways.

• I can grant only certain people permission to view it.
• I can give certain people permission to edit it.
• I can get a URL so only those with the URL can view it. (That’s what I chose for the “view this map” link above.)
• I can make it completely public so that’s it’s discoverable by search engines.

Spider Scribe promises to be a very powerful concept mapping tool. I’m looking forward to watching it develop!

I had the pleasure of spending last Thursday and Friday in Spokane, WA at the Pacific Northwest Assessment, Teaching, and Learning Conference. This annual conference is presented by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (WA SBCTC) and draws mostly from this group but there was a smattering of faculty from the 4-year colleges and universities in Washington, Oregon, and California.

The plenary was given by Bill Moore, head of the Assessment, Teaching, and Learning wing of the Washington SBCTC. His presentation was largely a reminder that educators do not have to work in isolation. He concluded with an activity. We were seated at tables of 8-10 people. In this activity we each took a few minutes to identify a teaching-related problem we had. Then one person volunteered to take 5 minutes to describe their problem to the group. The group then had 5 minutes to ask clarifying questions. For the next 15 minutes, the person with the issue kept silent as the group members discussed the problem, proposing possible solutions. Finally, in the last 5 minutes, the person with the issue reacted to the discussion. While our table was initially skeptical of this process, some of us found it so useful that we may make it part of our on-campus professional development training.

My tech tools presentation was in the first concurrent session of the conference. When I walked in the room and saw that there was no projector, I remembered that presenters at this conference are asked to bring their own projectors. I have one. Unfortunately it was sitting under the desk in my office 300 miles away.

After doing much asking around, Jerry Lewis at Columbia Basin College offered the use of his. It was in his hotel room a bit of a hike away. He arrived 3 minutes before the 10:30am start time. He ran part of the way. (Thank you, Jerry!!) With 75-80 people in attendance, it would have been difficult to have them huddled around my computer screen. I suppose the alternative would have been an interpretive dance of the various tech tools. That would have whittled down the audience enough that we could have huddled around my computer screen. There were several people in the room with computers. If the free wifi at the Spokane Convention Center would have been faster than dial-up, I could have used JoinMe to beam my desktop to the participants. JoinMe does work on web-enabled phones.

To avoid that snafu in the future, I created a FollowUp.cc for the day before I am to leave for next year’s conference reminding myself to take a projector if I’m presenting.

For this presentation, I started with directing participants to my workshop backchan.nl. To get there one could either enter the URL directly into one’s web browser or smartphone users (approximately 75% of attendees) could scan the QR code I gave them. Participants used backchan.nl to offer their suggestions regarding the tools I discussed or additional tools that the participants might find useful.

Next up was Dropbox.com. Educators frequently have to access their files from their offices, their homes, their classrooms, and on the go, like when they’re at conferences. I would be remiss if I gave a tech presentation and omitted Dropbox. About a quarter of the attendees currently used this tool. After covering some of the major features, I suspect at least another 25% were onboard. In fact, some had it installed on their smartphones before the session was over.

The other tools I wanted to make sure I covered were YouCanBook.Me and Doodle’s MeetMe. In this presentation the only people who had heard of the former were from my college. Given the number of students and advisees we have, one of these tools, or something like them, is a necessity.

The other tool I wanted to demonstrate was Conduit’s web browser toolbar. Research shows that the fewer barriers there are between you and a behavior, the more likely you are to engage in that behavior. As one conference participant put it, “So the toolbar will be there when the student is on Facebook?” Yes, it will.

Of the remaining tools, participants were interested in Audacity for providing feedback to students. Other participants suggested alternatives such as Tegrity, a tool freely available to members of the Washington State Community and Technical College system. Another person was interested in PhraseExpress, another tool useful for grading papers.

What I especially like about this presentation approach is that I get to cover what I think are the most important tools while giving participants an opportunity to hear about the tools they’re most interested in.

It was now time for lunch. I had the pleasure of sitting with a couple psychology faculty from South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, WA. Our conversation covered a lot of ground, including both psychology and technology.

Oh. And I got an award. My sincerest thanks to my Vice President of Academic Affairs, Jeff Wagnitz, for suggesting the nomination and to my colleague, Social Science Division Chair, and friend, Ruth Frickle, for writing the nomination letter. Over the last 10 years I’ve done much work at my college around assessment of student learning outcomes. I’m now leaving that role to focus on the technology of teaching and learning. It means a lot to me to have my assessment work acknowledged and appreciated.

I spent the afternoon in the ‘eLearning Center’. That was a new addition at this year’s conference. Participants could drop in for help with any technology related to teaching and learning. While it was primarily used as a place for the tech folks to hang out and chat, those conversations were quite fruitful.

The second and final day of the conference started with a series of concurrent sessions. The first one I attended was by Stephanie Delaney at Cascadia Community College. She piloted a peer mentor program that was based on two premises: 1) The first two weeks are crucial to student success in an online or hybrid course; 2) Students who need the most help do not seek it out. With a small grant, she hired two student workers to contact approximately 200 students identified as high risk, including students in their first or second quarter in an online course. Two weeks before the quarter started, the target students were contacted by phone and/or email to see if they needed help with the course management system and to identify any roadblocks, such as no computer/internet at home. A week before the quarter started, students were contacted again with a reminder to log into the online/hybrid course next week and do something. At the end of the first week, they were contacted a third time to see how things went during the first week. At the end of the second week, they were contacted one last time. For students who were struggling, they were given information about where to get help as well as how to go about dropping the course if they had decided that online courses weren’t for them. Despite the program’s success, it was not funded for next year. Participants suggested other ways to run it, such as through the tutoring center or as a student government initiative.

The second session of the day was on Tegrity, lecture capture software, presented by Jerry Lewis from Columbia Basin College, my hero with the projector. I started using Tegrity earlier this year so there wasn’t much new in his presentation for me. I did learn how to solve one of my Tegrity problems. When I have my headset on and I’m playing a video, the audio only plays in my ear. It doesn’t play over the speakers. David Spiel, also of Columbia Basin College, told me the solution. I haven’t tried it yet. As soon as I get it working, I’ll post the solution here.

The third and last session of the day came from Tom Caswell and Scott Dennis, both from the WA SBCTC. Their presentation was on how to use third party tools, such as what I cover in this blog, in combination with a course management system. You can download their handout here, which includes some examples from the Google suite of products. Be sure to check out Scott Dennis’ tech tools bookmarks.

If you’re located in the Pacific Northwest or are looking for an excuse to visit, I hope to see you at the 2012 conference May 2-4 in Vancouver, WA. Be sure to say hi!