Snapshot Day 1

Snapshot got off to a good start today. The biggest part of what we wanted to accomplish seems to have gone well. Section containers were created correctly and students were enrolled into those containers as they were supposed to be. If you have found any problems with that part of the process, please let me know.

Henry Eimstad sent out an email to all faculty covering the password situation. We didn't originally plan to make the change to using WebAdvisor passwords until January, but that change will be happening tomorrow (Tuesday). Hopefully, students will see the notice on the login page.

Students and faculty that are not currently accessing their Blackboard courses using their WebAdvisor login should not see their passwords change. I guess the best advice is to just try all three password variations until you find one that works -- birthdate, WebAdvisor, or the one you've been using all semester.

Let's hope the Borg don't take over the computers tonight and make up entirely new passwords!

Bb Exemplarary Course Program

Blackboard has announced:

"The 2009 Blackboard Exemplary Course Program is now open and accepting course submissions for review and applications for ECP Reviewers.

Since its launch in 2000, the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program aims to help faculty use e-Learning technology more effectively by identifying and disseminating best practices for designing engaging online courses. Using a rubric, instructors and course designers are able to evaluate how well their own course conforms to best practices for Course Design, Interaction & Collaboration, Assessment and Learner Support.

Please consider participating in the 2009 Exemplary Course Program by submitting a course of your own or volunteering to be a reviewer or both!"

To learn more about the program visit www.blackboard.com/ecp. (look at the right side of the page)

Even if you don't want to compete for this honor, their rubric for evaluating a course is quite extensive and could give you a sense of how your course compares.

Snapshot Begins Today

By the time most of you read this post on Monday morning, you should see your new Snapshot generated section containers the next time you log in to Blackboard. If you are teaching next semester and don't see your new containers, you are probably using a Blackboard login name that is different than the one WebAdvisor thinks you should use, so go to WebAdvisor and see what login it is using for you.

I'll be giving five workshops during the next two weeks on Snapshot, so please come to them with your questions. As they are needed, I will add more sessions. Check out the workshop schedule and the video if you can't attend on campus on the Snapshot Workshop page.

Is Blackboard Slow?

IS (Information Systems) is trying to get more information about reports that Blackboard is slow. So if you experience Blackboard being slow, please call IS at 619-644-7547 during workdays, or send an email to ISOPS@gcccd.edu nights or weekends. They will want to know the answers to the following questions.

Are you using a Mac or a PC?
What browser are you using? (IE 7, IE 6, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, etc.)
Were you on campus or off campus?
If off-campus, were you using dial-up, broadband, something else?
What time did you experience the slowness?
What were you doing at the time?
What did it look like or behave like?

If you get reports from students of problems, please try to gather as much of the above information as you can.

Reduce PowerPoint File Sizes

Reduce PowerPoint 2007 file sizes by changing image formats. The Compress Pictures button in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 can often reduce your .ppt files by up to 50 percent. But that can still leave you with large files, especially if your images have been created from .png files. You can save even more space by changing them to .gif or .jpg formats. (Note: The .png format is more flexible than the other file formats. Flattening to .jpg or .gif reduces flexibility.)

Here’s how to reduce file sizes:

1. Save your PowerPoint file as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which creates an .htm file and a folder of the same name. This folder will contain all the images from the presentation.
2. Open the folder, and sort it by size to reveal which files are the largest.
3. Locate the largest images in your presentation. They may have been scaled, so they might look smaller than the saved image.
4. In PowerPoint, make sure that the image isn't grouped.
5. Select the image.
6. On the Picture Tools menu, in the Adjust section, click Compress Pictures.
7. Right-click the image, and then click Save as Picture.
8. From the Save as type menu, select .jpg or .gif (if you need to use transparency effects), and then save the image.
9. Delete the original image from your presentation, and reload the saved image at its original place.
10. Regroup the images if necessary.

From MS Office Tips and Tricks

Video of Snapshot Workshop

I finished up the video of the Snapshot workshop. This is a somewhat condensed version of the workshop that I gave Friday before the ITC meeting. Hopefully this will help those of you that can't come to these workshops get the information you need. Take a look at it if you haven't already had your fill of Snapshot.

http://www.cuyamaca.edu/cc/bb/snapshot/snapshot.htm

Power of Color Workshop

From Jodi Reed:

Please share this with any GCCCD faculty/staff interested in photography or digital imaging.

Cuyamaca College is hosting The Power of Color workshop November 20-22 with The Julia Dean Photo Workshops and the Museum of Photographic Arts. This workshop, designed for anyone working with color on the computer, promises ways to work with color and harness its power for personal expression.

The Julia Dean Photo Workshops has offered a reduced rate for district faculty or staff: $335 intead of the usual $635.

Presented by:John Paul Caponigro (www.johnpaulcaponigro.com), author of Adobe Photoshop Master Class and the DVD series R/Evolution, is an internationally renowned artist. A contributing editor for Digital Photo Pro and Camera Arts and a columnist for Photoshop User and apple.com, he teaches workshops both privately in his studio and at select public venues. A member of the Photoshop Hall of Fame, a Canon Explorer of Light, and an Epson Stylus Pro, his clients include Adobe, Apple, Kodak, and X-Rite.

See http://www.juliadean.com/2008summer/powerofcolor.html for details.

If you are interested, please contact Brandon Gannon, brandon@juliadean.com The Julia Dean Photo Workshops 310-392-0909

Free Screencasting Application

This is a rare sight. . . a screencasting web application that you can caption, and the price is right, it's free! It's still in beta, and you need to sign up to get in on their beta testing, but it seems like a good idea at the moment.

Demo Girl has done a good intro to this new service on her blog at: http://demogirl.com/2008/11/13/free-screencast-application-screentoaster-may-be-my-new-best-friend/

And here's ScreenToaster's own video: http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/demo

Here's the page to sign up while it's still in Beta testing:
http://www.screentoaster.com/register?loginErr=Wrong+login+or+password&dest=DisplayHome

Here's some info from their FAQ:

What is ScreenToaster ?

• ScreenToaster is an online screencast service allowing to capture screen activity.
  * To watch videos : Just click on a video to launch the player.
  * To record videos : Click on "Start recording" or "New recording", start recording using the shortcuts.
  * When finished, add audio and subtitles, describe and tag your video so other users can easily find your screencasts.

On which platform ScreenToaster is compatible ?

• ScreenToaster is compatible with Windows Vista, Mac OS and Linux.

On which navigator may I use ScreenToaster ?

• ScreenToaster is optimized to run on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera and Safari.

Is ScreenToaster free?

• Yes it is.

Snapshot Workshop

I will be giving a Snapshot workshop today (Friday, 11/14) from 1 to 1:30pm in room I-107.

So what is Snapshot? Snapshot is the process of automatically creating Blackboard containers and enrolling students into those containers. This is great news for all of you! However, it will change the way you prepare for the semester, so you need to know what those changes are and the best strategies to deal with them. Snapshot will begin sometime between now and 11/21, so it's happening soon!

This means that everyone that uses Blackboard should come to this workshop. If you can't make it to this workshop, come to the one on December 5th, at 10am in room H134.

Hope to see you all there!