Heidi Olson

I found this sweet little crossword puzzle creator that helps you create puzzles that you can post on a website (say, in blackboard) and you can complete online as an interactive game, or you can print out the puzzle, clues and answer key on separate pages (or as separate pdf files you can post on blackboard).

Check out elipsecrossword.com. It is a free download for window users. I downloaded a copy of the offline software to my MAC using my parallels cross-platform software. It was very quick to set up and use.

There many options for saving the puzzle and clues – I’m sure you’ll find a combination that would work for you.

Here’s a puzzle that I created: States and their mottos

and here are the puzzle, clues, and answer key as pdf files.

• About ediscio – ediscio.com
  via Maureen O'Halloran: Online Flashcards – create your own or create cards for a class. Add pictures, videos, tet, LaTeX-formulas. export or print cards for offline learning. Learning statistics to show exactly where you need improvement. Lots of features for classroom use as well as individual login results.
  (tags: flashcards learning activity game free)

Receiving feedback is an important exchange for distance classes for both students and teachers. Questions about whether student’s are getting the main ideas or concepts, understanding the importance of the big ideas and enduring understandings of your course, and being able to transfer what they are taking away from your class and applying it to their personal or professional lives are just some of the questions a teacher might be asking oneself as the course progresses.

In the same way, students in distance courses relying heavily on instructor’s feedback. Without comments from teachers, students will have no idea how to improve on homework assignments and will quickly loose motivation to improve or even continue in the course.

Here is an article from www.insidehighered.com that confirms the importance of feedback and offers an interesting way of providing it.

Little Shop of Horrors Cast – Feed Me (Git It) Lyrics
Feed me! Feed me! Feed me!
Feed me, Seymour
Feed me all night long
That’s right, boy
You can do it
Feed me, Seymour
Feed me all night long
‘Cause if you feed me, Seymour
I can grow up big and strong

from www.stlyrics.com

• VoiceThread – Digital Library
  Examples of using voicethread in class
  (tags: library digitalstorytelling education Multimedia digital technology voicethreads example)

• Aviary – Creation on the fly / blog / Capture any webpage: Just add Aviary.com/ in front of the URL!
  via Maureen O'halloran: This is a cool tool! Capture a web page, make annotations, add arrows and other graphics and save as .png. Advanced editor allows you to save as other file formats. Share to various social networks or get code to embed file. I did find that some sites I captured had some of the webpage image cut off.
  (tags: screencapture tools webdesign design web2.0 editing image webpage annotation)
• View Docs Online – The easiest way to view documents online
  via Kathy Baldwin: Open documents online if you don't have the software. Allows you to create a pdf or save as different file type. Limited to certain document types.
  (tags: online documents tools web2.0 free converter)

The beginning of the semester can be a busy time for students. When faced with events that meet at a specific time, students will often put those ahead of events that can be done at independently, without a specific commitment. It is easy for students to put off beginning their independent learning course. Sending a welcome letter as a student enrolls or at the beginning of the class is one way that instructors can make contact with their students and encourage them not to procrastinate and get with the program.

There are important elements that a welcome letter should include. Some suggestions have been added as a resource to the CDE Checklist.

• HippoCampus – Homework and Study Help – Free help with your algebra, biology, environmental science, American government, US history, physics and religion homework
  Multimedia content for high school and college-level courses. Open courseware option
  (tags: education resources math science history free elearning teaching opencourseware)
• Rubric for Online Instruction
  Cal State Univ Chico (woo hoo) Rubric for evaluating online course. Broken into 6 areas: Learning Support and Resources, Instructional Design and Delivery, Innovative Teaching with Technology, Online Organization and Design, Assessment and Evaluation of Student Learning, Faculty Use of Student Feedback.
  (tags: rubric assessment education evaluation teaching)

When revising your online course is it always good to review the effectiveness of the self-assessments and quiz questions. Are certain questions constantly being answered incorrectly? Do the questions need to be rewritten or are students not prepared enough to give a thorough and complete answer. It might not be obvious as students progress through the course but it is something that you should be aware of and change during a revision, if not sooner.

In Blackboard, you are able to review statistics about how your students are accessing the site, what time of day, how often, how long, but there is no information about the results of quizzes and which questions are most often missed. One solution is to download a spreadsheet with quiz questions and answers through the gradecenter, add some calculations and evaluate.

In the GradeCenter click on the downdown arrows in the quiz column heading and select Download Results.

You are then given some choices in what kind of file you want to download. I suggest selecting the tab-delimited option so you can use it in excel where you’ll want to manipulate the data.

I would also suggest you select By Question by User since you want to make conculsions on individual questions, not users.

If your tests are set up for multiple attempts and you want to see what the progression of missed questions might be, select all attempts to see the results of every attempt the students have made. Otherwise, select Only valid attempts.

Click on the Download Results link at the bottom of the page to download a copy of the file to your computer. Once you get the file you’ll see a lot of data that you might be able to remove. The columns that you are really interested in are the Question ID Question, Answer, Possible Points, Auto Score and Manual Score.

Open your document in excel or other spreadsheet application. Now its time to enter a couple of equations so that you are able to make decisions. I suggest:

1. Total up the Possible Points column.
2. Total up the Auto Score column.
3. Then determine what the percentage between these two columns is to determine the question’s success.

When reviewing the questions with a low percentage you can also identify the incorrect answer that is most often given. This might help to determine whether you need to rewrite the question or answers, readjust your content, , or make sure concepts are more thoroughly discussed or more examples are given. In this example 60% of the students got the wrong answer (FALSE).