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Author: terrib (Page 6 of 8)

Week Ending September 11, 2020

Head shaped glass sculpture wearing a helmet

No real reason for this photo – clean desk(top) clear head?  Saw this sculpture in a museum at the cabanas in Guadalajara. 

Despite not having workshops or studios there was enough to do to keep busy this week, but also a little time to a some physical and digital cleaning up. I had a few un-filed files and things thrown on my desktop, and my desk that I put away. 


I went into the office on Tuesday so that I could hand off a laptop dock to Margaret and set up my own. We had a socially distanced conversation with Gerald, the Health and Safety Manager who lives across the hall (for now). Looking forward to seeing the NIC branded masks.


The Spanish class I signed up for has started. It’s a distance section but will probably have some synchronous clarification sessions. When I was a student, I was a student for a really long time. I hope I remember how… 


There were a couple of instructor conversations early in the week but that has slowed to crickets (as of Thursday afternoon) I expect more around mid-term and/or when the first of the grading starts. That kind of information – marking and grade center – doesn’t stick until one has to do it.

I spent a good portion of my Thursday just playing around with Kaltura Capture and trying to get a screen cast for how to turn on captions. I had a few false starts and managed a couple of ‘not-bad’ versions. Most of the issues were around getting the frame for the recording in the right place or not being able to grab the recording control to drag it out of the way in time. It was kind of fun to watch the recording and see where the Kaltura captions were different from the BlueJeans captions. Bluejeans came out as ‘bleaching’.  I will work on enunciation while trying not to sound like a robot. I will also try not to let perfection get in the way of good enough but I know I can do better. It gets easier every time. Practice, practice, practice. 

Friday was the first Education Council meeting of the term.  We have lost our Chair due to the faculty lay-offs. I’ve resigned from Planning and Standards and from the Fast-track Committee but since EdCo was an elected position I’m going to stick out my term. I’ve been thinking that committee work is going to look different going forward – along with everything else. 

A few requests came in on Friday afternoon and all were (nicely) directed to help desk. 

 

Week Ending September 4, 2020

boats in the harbourThings are busy, but calm for now. Next week we set sail.

Monday was a half day for me. This is the last week of the randomized work weeks.

Most of the morning was taken up with instructor meetings. One was a course walk through and checking up on settings the rest was general Blackboard help.  I also dis the prep for Tuesday’s BB Learn session., getting people in the studio course, creating folders, clean up etc. I still couldn’t get the new in line grading tool to work properly. I have to minimize the window and then maximize for the tools to show up. I want to do a quick video but I’d like to know it’s stable – something to talk with Mike about. Instructors want to know more about grade center and marking but I’m  not sure how much of that will stick trying to learn it right now with no practical application for it until the first assignments start coming in.

Tuesday Margaret and I did a BB Learn hands on studio. It was well attended. Some instructors aren’t new to Blackboard and they have their own ways of doing things that didn’t follow the studio practices. Interesting how some are keen to try a new/different way and some, not so much.  After our staff meeting, I booked time for some help desk tickets back to back in BlueJeans meetings.  One instructor had the wrong day so I spent my waiting time doing prep for the two Kaltura sessions coming on Wednesday. Some of hte features still aren’t working properly but shouldn’t affect the studios.

Albert and I did two Kaltura sessions on Wednesday followed by a couple more instructor meetings. These were the youtube and express capture sessions. If the studios carry on I want to look at the two different Kaltura sessions and maybe juggle the content between them a bit. I had a couple of instructor meetings again in the afternoon. I remember feeling really tired after the first one but the second one was actually quite energizing. I think I am picking up on the energy of the people I’m working with. Some of the fear and trepidation is coming through and it can be wearing. But then sometimes I can sense the excitement about new opportunities and exploring new ways of teaching and that is invigorating.

I think some of the instructors that are requesting time are really just looking for some supportive assurance that they’re going to be okay. And they will be.  I think they’re a bit punchy right now with all the changes and just need a calm presence to tell them they’ve got this.

 

Week Ending August 28, 2020

Ant climbing a fig on a tree

Sometimes, there are bugs.

This week I spent some time with Blackboard Annotate – our new tool for inline grading. On Monday. I used it for Kaltura practice and while I was doing that I realized that I had some buttons missing. I found that adding a comment pushed the document to the left and there didn’t seem to be a way to hide the comments to get the document back to a larger view. The documentation shows that there should be some buttons for panning and zooming in and out but I didn’t see them. I tried Chrome, Firefox, and even Edge. We tried three different computers  at home with different browsers – no buttons.

I worked through this Annotate issue with Mike. I updated Chrome and the buttons still didn’t appear for me even after refreshing. Then I reduced the window size , expanded it again, and they showed up – but only in Chrome – and they work now.  Weird. This is what it looked like without the zoom and pan options:

Tool bar for BB Annotate with buttons missing

And this is what it is supposed to look like:

BB Annotate tool bar with buttons showing

 

 

I started Tuesday with another studio (with Margaret’s help). After that I went through some Kaltura updates with Albert and practiced a few things to see the settings.  Then got I the studio course(s) ready for the participants for Wednesday’s sessions.

I had three studios scheduled for Wednesday – the first two back-to-back. My first session got off to a rough start. There was something wrong in the BlueJeans room. The trouble was, it looked fine from my perspective… at first.  I could see my camera but didn’t know that no one else could. Some people could respond in the chat, others couldn’t. People seemed to have trouble staying in the meeting and while it looked like cameras were on, only the squares with their initials showed up.  And, there was no information in the call details. We resolved it by moving to a different BlueJeans session space and that seemed to work. I imagine there is going to be a lot more load on our systems starting next week.

Albert and I did two Kaltura sessions that went well. The second (Intermediate) one only had a few people so we ended up doing kind of a customized session to focus on what they wanted help with.  This worked as they’d all been in the novice session as well. It was good to get back into practicing with Kaltura too. I didn’t get much ‘serious’ recording done this week but I made and deleted a few videos for practice and did some demonstrations for the studios . The recent update doesn’t seem to have made significant changes for our purposes. People who are new to it won’t notice anything different and those who have been using it might appreciate the new analytics (that aren’t working at the moment…).  The captioning tool seems to work pretty well for the most part. I found captions on a video that I made last week when I replayed it on Monday.  When I made a demo video on Wednesday I didn’t see captions right away. It didn’t occur to me until Albert suggested it, captions will take some time to show up and we don’t know how long. By the end of our session the captions had shown up on my demo video. That is information we will add to the sessions.

This feels like mostly a process/tech type reflection this week but that’s how it went. There are things outside of our control. We roll with it, and trouble shoot it, and figure it out. September is just around the corner and I think things are about to get ‘interesting’.

 

 

Week Ending August 21, 2020

stuffed Llama on a deskReady! Le’ts go! Got right back into workshops on Tuesday morning. That was a good way to start. I spent some time on Monday getting ready and catching up on last week’s email. Monday wasn’t an official work day but I needed to make up some time and I wanted to feel ready to go on Tuesday.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all Blackboard studio sessions in the mornings. It was almost like we had a cohort going through them which was nice. most of the same people came for all three days. Some had to leave early because they were also enrolled in course re-design sprint but they told me they came back to the studio course to practice so that was good to know.

I had been meaning to ask Mike about an upgrade to our Blackboard assignment feedback tool (Blackboard Annotate).  We’ve both been on varying stages of vacation and haven’t connected as much as usual.  We were expecting to have Annotate back in June. Well, it’s here now. I discovered it during a studio session on assignments.  It looks much more robust than the older version and I will spend some time exploring it and will probably create a screen cast for it as part of my Kaltura practice. I’ll also see if there is a hand out that needs updating.

It turns out that there is a pretty good hand out from Blackboard showing the tools and features, and a short video. I had some time Thursday afternoon to look over the features while I was waiting for an instructor to show up in BlueJeans. I made one screen cast of Blackboard Annotate – it’s not great, but the point was to practice and it was good for that. I lost my Kaltura controls – that’s never happened to me before – and I couldn’t end it.  I’ll keep experimenting until it’s smooth.

We have a Kalutra upgrade coming Monday so next week will be getting familiar with that before the studios on Wednesday. I’m going to get familiar with it by creating as many screen casts and videos as I can (between other things) until it starts to feel easy.

Week Ending August 14, 2020

hand sculpture on a door Welcome back, but again, not quite a full week. I had two work days and half a vacation day so my work week technically ended on Tuesday.

I spent most of my time working through a couple of help desk tickets and catching up on all the new resources for faculty and students that are available.  I’ll be looking for places where there are hand outs or screencasts that I could create for support. I also started preparing for getting back into workshop mode next week. I need to clean up some of the course shells I used for studio sessions and make sure they’re ready for some new users.

I have some priorities that I’ll work on next week, in particular getting familiar with what’s coming for the Kaltura upgrade and doing some practicing with screen cast/video production.

Outside of NIC I was invited to facilitate a Facilitating Learning Online (FLO) bootcamp session for BCcampus this week.  I really enjoyed it. We worked with instructors from across the province on course re-design. It was interesting  to get a peek at what’s happening at other institutions. They covered a lot of material in four days. In fact I used to facilitate a similar course that ran for five weeks…

Back to three days a week for the rest of the month. Lots of emails to follow up with on Monday.

Week ending July 31, 2020

A bell shaped like a woman in a long dressThis bell is in the garden of the Villa Ganz in Guadalajara. Just ring if you need me. Feels for this week.

The best laid plans… it was a strange week for productivity. There were comings and goings, dog sitting, people we needed to be there for. Fortunately I didn’t have a lot of meetings and could be a little flexible with my time. Part of the strangeness, I think, is that a lot of people are on vacation, there are no workshops and the energy is kind of low. Even working remotely there is a lot of interaction when we’re busy. I do appreciate the time to actually get to work on some of the other things there hasn’t been much time for.

I had intended to be finished with the student training course by end of day Monday.  See above re: productivity… I did finish it (Thursday) at least in the sense that the information I wanted in there is in there. I made a few changes in how content was presented and I like it. It makes me want to tweak more though and at some point you just have to stop.

I also met with an instructor about BlueJeans so she could do some hands on and she now feels more confident about using it.

I sat in on a couple of BCcampus  sessions to get a feel for how the synchronous sessions in the  FLO bootcamp course were run. I’ll be co-facilitating the third iteration in a couple of weeks. It was interesting to hear the perspectives and experiences of instructors from other institutions who have had to make drastic changes to their teaching. Some instructors don’t even know what tools are available to them at their institutions.

I picked up a few links from these sessions (in no curated order).

  • Article on remote proctoring – creepy.
  • Nice resource that Josie Gray shared on accessibility and complex images. This was something I really struggled with trying to convert Power Point slides to html for a course in agricultural economics.  I think I’m going to get it printed in colour.
  • Someone shared this link for making infographics:  piktochart
  • The “impromtu gauntlet” technique for student presentations

Mike fixed the self-enroll option for the student training course and we tested it out as students. There is an ugly red error message that shows at the top but the option to enroll is in the course menu. I think I am going to add a little context to the existing Student resources tab about how to enroll.

I am off again for a little while. Using up some more vacation time. I’ll have a couple of days to brush up on studios and see where I can improve sessions and clean up the practice courses I use. I think we’ll be very busy again after the 17th. A little break before will be good.

I have September’s schedule figured out. I am going to try doing mornings four days a week and see how that goes.

Back again in a couple of weeks.

Week Ending July 24, 2020

Book and coffee by a camp fireOfficially the week work ends on July 22, but for consistency…


It was a nice ease back in to work after a couple of weeks off. As you can see, I sat around a camp fire and got to read a bit for fun. Camping is not the most ‘relaxing’ kind of time off as you still have to cook and do dishes, but getting away from screens was nice. 

Day one was primarily cleaning up email and getting back into the swing. I had set out some priorities before I left, the big one being the ‘Student Training Course’ for Blackboard Learn. I still don’t love the name but I guess that’s what it actually is. I made it several years ago when there was virtually no student support and the instructors who were using Blackboard felt that they had to explain how everything worked. It is still functional but needs a lot of work to bring it up to date. I met with someone from Student Technical Services to walk through my plans and some initial updates. I like the way it’s taking shape. I have a couple of new pieces to add, some screen shots to update and then some aesthetics.

I tried registering for a course this week and had an eye-opener. As a former student I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. There are a couple of ways you can work through the website and there is some key information missing the way I did it.  I figured it out eventually and we’ve sent a message outlining the issues to the powers that be.  I also met with one of our advisers and walked her through the steps I took. 

The more I dug into the student course, the more I want it to be better. It’s coming along. I’m going to add a section on how Kaltura fits in. 

I’m getting into the half-time groove and I think I have my fall work hours figured out Next week, it looks like there will be a little help desk and some instructor meetings. I want to go over the upcoming sessions I have in August and make sure everything is ready  as I’ll be taking the week before off as well to use up some vacation days. 

 

Week ending July 3, 2020

Ferns and trees with sun coming through in a west coast forest

A short but full week with Canada Day landing right in the middle of it. We pulled off seven studio sessions in four days. The numbers are smaller these days- I even had one private lesson – but with that we can really dig in and spend more time on the ‘why’ and ‘when’ to use things, not just the ‘how’.

In building my handout for the Assignment and Communication Tools studio I got into the 3 levels of interaction (Instructor – Student, Student- Student, and Student – Content) and which tools facilitate them. I kind of anchored the conversation around that and was able to circle back with each tool to tie in to creating student engagement. This session really brings out the good conversations around online discussion and everyone gets try things out as both instructor and student.

I enjoy the creativity the participants show in creating tests, assignments, and discussions on the fly in the studios. I hope they leave feeling more confident about how things function and with some understanding of what it’s going to be like for their students.

We did a hands on studio with Student Services using Mediaspace instead of Blackboard. We set up a channel for them to practice publishing videos to. They really dove in and created some videos with thumbnails and hot spots. They’ve now created their own channel for when they have ‘ready for prime time’ content.

I had a couple of instructor meetings and took care of some help desk tickets in and around studios. I learn a little more about Kaltura and Mediaspace as I use them.

I don’t usually take a summer vacation and I’m looking forward to a little time off. I plan to read some books, stare at some trees and count the shades of green on Quadra Island. There will probably be some staring at the ocean and likely some star gazing.  I’ll stop there as I can see my vacation time getting stacked up with so much to do. 

And now, it’s time to set that ‘Out of Office’ message. See you in a couple of weeks. 

Week Ending June 26, 2020

Bubba the cat at Villa Ganz in GuadalajaraAnother busy week comes to its conclusion. 

This is a picture of Bubba, the Manager of Guest Relations at the Villa Ganz in Guadalajara. I met him in 2015. I don’t know why but he just seemed fitting for this post. 

I got a course site set up for the Department of Accessible Learning (DALS) to experiment with. Mike added some quizzes. I’ve asked what else they’d like added so they can experiment with assistive tech and just get more used to functionality in Blackboard so they can learn what’s possible and figure out what to ask of instructors when someone needs an accommodation. 

Albert and I met to prepare for our Kaltura Studios, and I spent some time testing student submissions in BB from Kaltura. I learned that for a Kaltura quiz,  Instructors have to add the quiz under ‘assessments’, not just by adding Kaltura media if they want to create a Grade Center column.  Also, students have to select ‘Kaltura submission’ instead of ‘Kaltura media’ as their submission for it to work.  That makes sense as it will ‘freeze’ that media on submission so it can’t be altered in My Media.  I also found out that short answer quiz questions don’t get counted in the mark – only T/F and M/C.  It’s not super intuitive to find the student submissions.  In conclusion, Kaltura quizzes are probably not the best tool for ‘serious’ testing but can be really useful for flipped learning. 

I played assistant on a Kaltura guided tour with Margaret.  There were about 12 people and I think it went well. I’m feeling more confident with Kaltura every day and can now demonstrate two ways to use it – through Blackboard and through Media Spaces.   I had a little time in the afternoon for catching up on creating resources and doing the things I told people I would do. 

Albert and I got through two more Kaltura Studios where we had participants finding and adding YouTube videos and creating quizzes.  We’re now planning a hybridized version of our two studios to customize a studio for Student Services. 

Friday was a frustrating day. It started with a failed BlueJeans meeting and a couple of tickets without enough information to be able to work with.  The instructor got in to Bluejeans (late) but couldn’t hear or get a working microphone. I tried troubleshooting settings to no avail. She logged out and in, no luck. We tried the phone, the meeting ID didn’t work for her and calling her phone resulted in ‘out of service’ for me.  I tried email but still haven’t heard from her. Not much else I can do but I’m concerned and will follow up next week. 

I got one of the help desk tickets sorted out with Mike’s help. We determined that they weren’t actually looking for Blackboard help but it took a little back and forth to get there. For the other one, the instructor wants me to check out something in a course, but didn’t tell me which course.. and he has a lot of them in the system. Oh well, next week.  I listened in on the marketing town hall. We’re obviously focused on supporting faculty so it was a good reminder that there are forces at work to recruit and to re-assure students that fall will be okay. Different, but not a lesser quality experience. 

Even planning and recording screencasts got the better of me and Word formatting was particularly uncooperative. At least I was able to get a handout updated. I’ve got a start on recordings. I’m going to have to insert a few slides to be able to show the things I can’t screen cast. I’ve got it figured out and it should work. 

Lots of studios next week with varying attendance. More teaching, more learning. Bubba has his eye on things. 

Week Ending June 19, 2020

Sculpture "Turn" by Doug Senft in memory. North Island college Comox CampusIt was another good week of learning. More hands-on studios for Blackboard Learn and Kaltura.  The studio course spaces that I created seem to work well. I can make everyone an instructor and they can create things, then, they can use the student preview to create a student user and experiment with the tools from that perspective.  It’s useful to see how the tools work from both sides – that way we can remember how to create really clear instructions when things aren’t intuitive. The preview user allows them to add to each other’s discussions and submit assignments and they can see how that looks in grade center as an instructor. It’s good practice for me too because I can talk about the tools, how and why to use them but I don’t use them in a class type setting and see the functionality (or lack of) first hand. 

I feel pretty comfortable with the Blackboard studios and depending on who shows up things can take different turns but we always manage to cover all the material. Friday we spent a lot of time talking about discussions and had to rush through a couple of other things but we managed to build forums, create threads, and comment on them, as well as create an assignment and upload something for grading. I wanted to have everyone do an audio/video feedback in their assignment but we ran out of time. They know how, they just didn’t get to practice. I encourage everyone to go back to the course and look through and play with grading etc. anytime. 

The Kaltura sessions went well. In my head, I was expecting a repeat of last week where we did a novice and an intermediate even though, I knew they were going to be novice sessions. So, our second session was one we hadn’t done before and it felt a bit out of sequence – just because I was expecting the first time to be next week. We were ready but I didn’t have as much confidence going in because I haven’t used the quiz very much. Albert was a great help with that. We had fun and everyone was able to get a You Tube video into their folder in the course and then add some quiz questions to it. Some had been to the previous session where we created a video with Kaltura Capture so they had other video to work with. Everyone seems to enjoy it.  

We did a special session with the Department of Accessible Learning (DALS) around assessments and accommodations for students in Blackboard. I’ve built a course for them where we will add some tests and other items so they can see how things look, test out some assistive technologies and just generally get a feel for the platform and what’s possible for their students. 

Most of the helping  this week seemed to be related to checking settings for people. They aren’t sure how tests and assignments work, or will work,if they have a release date on them.  They are a little nervous but it’s not outright panic at this stage. 

I had good energy this week – the studio participants helped with that. The pace is much nicer lately but by Friday, and the last one of the week, I was tired.  Margaret and I figured out a calendar for August and left some room for the inevitable unforeseen things that will come up. We’re starting to get the Health and Safety information on returning to work in the fall. Turn, turn, turn…

 

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