In August 2008 after eight years of intensive use of AIM, she wrote the following:

The 21st Century Pedagogy Alternatives and Tricks/Tools of the Trade
For the condensed summary page go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateel.htm 

Bob Jensen at Trinity University

How can you best publish books, including multimedia and user interactive books, on the Web?
Note that interactive books may have quizzes and examinations where answers are sent back for grading.

History and Future of Course Authoring and Distribution Technologies
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
(This includes modules on Blackboard, Moodle, and various competitors)

Organizing your papers and citations from the Web
Sharing and remotely accessing your bookmarks

Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases  ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#KnowledgeBases

New and Old Tools

Video Capture, Editing, Compression, Playback
(With Links to UserView for Viewing and Capturing Remotely Located Computer Screens and Audio)

Virtual World Research

Open Sharing and Adaptive Hypermedia

History of Spreadsheets in Education

Bye Bye Blackboard

Variable Speed Video and the BYU Noteworthy Success

The Future of Textbooks  

Devices and Systems for Mobile Learning

Distance Education Magazines and Journals  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm#Resources 

Resources for Faculty --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 

The Latest Experiments in Student Recruitment by Colleges

PowerPoint and Other Teaching Helpers (Socratic Dialogue Gives Way to PowerPoint)

How to Add Audio to PowerPoint Presentations

Finding, Capturing, Storing and Sending Open Courseware
(Including MIT's search engine for searching for topics within a video lecture and alternatives for making and capturing streaming media)

Future Lab (in the U.K.):
Developing innovative learning resources and practices that support new approaches to education for the 21st century.

Just-In-Time Teaching

Instant Messaging

Classroom, Building, and Campus Design (including LCD versus DLP) 

In a Nutshell:  Authoring Design and Software for the Web --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetoolsa.htm 

Innovative Cell Phone Technology

Response Pads and Clickers 

Tablet Computing 

Myths About Education Technologies

Ideas for Modifying Traditional Classroom Materials Into Online Learning Materials
(Including Updates on MIT's Open Knowledge Initiative called OKI)

Edutainment and Learning Games (including Dominos and Jeopardy and Monopoly)

Using the Monopoly Board Game for Education Edutainment

Second Life and Other Virtual Worlds

Virtual Reality 

Humor in Online Teaching

Example From a Texas A&M Professor Providing Distance Education in Mexico

Ideas for Teaching Online (including Distance Education via Centra Symposium and Webex)

Tools for Learning in the Boondocks

Technology Aids for the Handicapped, Disabled, and Learning Challenged

How To and How Not To Deliver Distance Education 
War stories from teachers in the first accredited online MBA program.

Cognitive Processes and Artificial Intelligence

Real Aud Audit Simulation

Interactive Network Simulation Learning Example

Advantages and Disadvantages of Education Technologies

Chris Dede's Vignettes

An Example of a Low Budget and Very Remarkable Online Course

Knowledge Portals and Vortals
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/portals.htm 

Web Page Design:  Ah, What Rotten Webs We Weave 

Resources --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources 

Classroom Use of Laptops and iPods 

Wikis Made Simple -- Very Simple

The Magic of DVR Recording 

RU THR? OMW ---The University of Florida Experiment With Text Messaging

Statistical Survey Sampling and Analysis

Computer Grading of Essay Questions --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Essays

Remote (online) Testing of Students --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus

Accounting Education Software --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#software

Software for administering online examinations and quizzes ---

Onsite Versus Online Education (including controls for online examinations and assignments) ---  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnsiteVersusOnline

Some universities, especially those with distance education programs, have online examination software. This varies greatly in cost and quality. You can read more about such software at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Examinations

How students can find internships
Helpers for managing student interns
Intern Toolkit --- http://www.interntoolkit.com/

Drama Simulations --- http://www.cob.tamucc.edu/ATABestPrac2K/drama-simulations.htm
(Including the use of Lego constructions in cost accounting classes.)

Bob Jensen's threads on classrooms and electronic classrooms are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Classrooms 

Bob Jensen's Education Technology Threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

A tools PowerPoint file is included at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/

The American Accounting Association has a page on tools and cases --- http://aaahq.org/facdev/teaching/teaching_tools.htm

Also see the AAA’s wider set of helpers on teaching at http://aaahq.org/facdev/teach.cfm

Introductory Quotation

The movie Dead Poets Society showed examples of why students recalled so much of their learning. There were changes in location, circumstances, use of emotions, movement, and novel classroom positions. We know that learners remember much more when the learning is connected to a field trip, music, a disaster, a guest speaker, or a novel learning location. Follow up with a discussion, journal writing, a project, or peer teaching.

E. Jensen (1998, p. 110)
Teaching with the brain in mind

From U.K.'s Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol
Social Science Information Gateway http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/

Browse by Subject	Map of the SOSIG sections
Anthropology Business and Management Economics Education Environmental Science European Studies Geography Government Policy   Law Philosophy Politics Psychology Research Tools and Methods Social Welfare Sociology Statistics Women's Studies

Question
How can you best publish books, including multimedia and user interactive books, on the Web?
Note that interactive books may have quizzes and examinations where answers are sent back for grading.

Answer
There is no optimal software for all authors, because different alternatives have different features that will appeal to authors in varying degrees. Below are a few of the leading alternatives.

You can read more about the terminology and history of both course authoring software and course (learning) management software at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

You can read more about authoring and teaching tools and tricks of the trade at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Author it in MS Word and save as an HTML file

Advantages

• The main advantage is that most authors are familiar with how to write in MS Word.
• This is the easiest Web alternative for authors who've already written their books in MS Word. All an author has to do is simply click on "File save as" and choose the HTM option in place of the usual DOC option. Updates of older HTM files created in MS Word are done in Word and the revised document can then be easily saved as an updated HTML file.
• Saving a DOC file to an HTML file enables the book to be viewed in all Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Foxfox, Opera, and Safari.
• Saving to an HTML file eliminates some MS Word features such as macros, but authors rarely write books with macros for readers.
• MS Word is probably the best alternative for importing other MS Office content such as Excel and PowerPoint content.
• HTML files work well in conjunction with extensive coding like XML and XBRL --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XMLRDF.htm
  For example company filings with the SEC can now be viewed in interactive XBRL linked from HTML documents. It becomes rather simple send HTML book readers off to SEC interactive filings on HTML book pages.

Disadvantages

• Saving as an HTML file loses some of the author's desired security alternatives that are optional for DOC files
• Some of the features of imported content from Excel and PowerPoint may be lost when pasted into the DOC/HTML file in MS Word.
• MS Word is not the best authoring alternative for multimedia and interactive content.
• MS Word does not have a lot of the authoring wizards that are pre-programmed into other alternatives. For example, Toolbook has various wizards that make writing of examinations and answers to examinations much easier than writing them in MS Word.
• MS Word does not have built-in features for writing learning simulations and scenarios.
  
   

Author it in MS Word and save as a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file

Advantages

• This has all the ease of authoring in MS Word.
• PDF reader files are free and it's easy to update these readers from Adobe.
• Adobe Acrobat has the best security alternatives for protection of copyrighted material of all the Web publishing alternatives which is the main reason the major publishing firms choose PDF files when they want to make books available on the Web. For example, it's possible to make it impossible to easily select text for cut and paste from a clipboard.

You can see how this format is used in the many free electronic textbooks now available in most academic disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Disadvantages

• Some of the features of imported content from Excel and PowerPoint may be lost when pasted into the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat.
• MS Word is not the best authoring alternative for multimedia and interactive content. This content cannot be added in Acrobat since Acrobat itself is not authoring software.
• MS Word does not have a lot of the authoring wizards that are pre-programmed into other alternatives. For example, Toolbook has various wizards that make writing of examinations and answers to examinations much easier than writing them in MS Word.
• MS Word does not have built-in features for writing learning simulations and scenarios.

Author it directly into HTML files using such authoring software as FrontPage or Dreamweaver

Advantages

• HTML authoring software has some features that are not be available when saving DOC files as HTML files.
• FrontPage is more than authoring software. It can be used as a complete Website system.
• Some authors, not me, find Dreamweaver easier to use as an authoring tool without some of what I call FrontPage bugs and complexities.

Disadvantages

• Authoring directly in HTML loses some of the author's desired security alternatives that are optional for DOC and PDF files
• Some of the features of imported content from Excel and PowerPoint may be lost when pasted into the HTML file..
• MS Word is not the best authoring alternative for multimedia and interactive content.
• HTML authoring software does not have a lot of the authoring wizards that are pre-programmed into other alternatives. For example, Toolbook has various wizards that make writing of examinations and answers to examinations much easier than writing them in MS Word.
• HTML authoring is not an efficient alternative for pasting in multimedia.
• MS Word does not have built-in features for writing learning simulations and scenarios.

Author it in Toolbook that automatically saves files in HTML/DHTML files

Advantages

• Although I've not yet tried the latest version of Toolbook Instructor, authors who use this software contend it is much easier to use than HTML software such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver. One of the main advantages is that shells for writing book chapters are already pre-programmed. Watch the video at http://www.toolbook.com/demos/toolBook_demo/index.html
• It is much much easier to author multimedia and interaction (such as examinations) in Toolbook than in HTML software such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Watch the video at http://www.toolbook.com/demos/toolBook_demo/index.html
  You can author interactive books in either Toolbook Instructor or ToolBook Assistant.
• Toolbook makes it quite easy to author animations using built-in wizards.
• Whereas early versions of Toolbook required Toolbook Reader software, Toolbook now saves the files in HTML or DHTML files that can be read in major Web browsers such as Internet Explorer.
• ToolBook also has a foreign language translation system that automatically translates books into other languages --- http://www.toolbook.com/learn_translation_system.php

Disadvantages

• Toolbook authoring software is not commonly provided free by colleges as part of the installed software that computer centers pre-install in all college-owned computers using campus wide license agreements. The single-user license is currently $2,795 for Toolbook Instructor Version 9.01 as of March 2008. There are group-license discounts.
• Although I've not yet gone back to ToolBook, I was an early Toolbook enthusiast in the 1990s. One of my constant complaints in those days was the tendency of the company to send out software before its time and let customers find the many bugs in the system. The company's technical support often had not yet discovered the problems or their solutions. Toolbook today has only a miniscule part of the Web authoring market. Being small means that it will take longer to discover and correct bugs vis-a-vis big market share alternatives like MS Word and Adobe Acrobat. In fairness, however, it is now easier for Toolbook to pre-test its software than it was back in the days of its bug-saturated OpenScript scripting code. I'm just about convinced to give Toolbook another chance for my Web authoring. I've delayed this long because of memories of the days and weeks I sometimes wasted using bugged-up OpenScript software.
• If the book contains animation and interactive features requiring DHTML above and beyond simple HTML, this may restrict readers to read books in a smaller subset of Web browsers that are DHTML compliant. Fortunately Internet Explorer is DHTML compliant. But if DHTML declines in popularity among authors worldwide, newer browsers may eliminate these rather expensive code blocks from browsers. Fortunately there's no immediate threat of this happening.
• DHTML itself is a very inefficient coding/markup scripting alternative. More than a hundred lines of code may have to be written for a very simple task. This highly restricts authoring creativity of animations and interactions. Authors in Toolbook are for all practical purposes limited to the pre-scripted templates provided in Toolbook.
• Most colleges and business firms have firewalls that prevent two-way communication via DHTML such as when a student fills out the answers to an examination and then clicks on a "Send" button to transmit the an answer or set of answers to graders on campus. Some universities allow their Blackboard servers to receive answer files.

A cheap alternative for penetrating a firewall is to attach an answer file to an email message that penetrates campus firewalls. This can even be done via instant messaging with live graders responding to each answer in real time. But there are huge security risks to opening email attachments. Students can innocently or knowingly attach bad things to attached messages that will destroy your computer. Graders can reduce the risk by telling students that they will only open attached TXT files such as those generated in Wordpad.

Another alternative is to run your own server that will allow student returned answer files to penetrate the firewall (firewalls can be adjusted for degrees of security). If done right this is enormously expensive. First you must hire technicians to maintain the system. Second you much install back up systems such as RAID.

Another alternative is to hire a commercial online testing service our course management service, including Blackboard, that allows student returned answer files to penetrate its firewalls. Such services off campus, including Blackboard, will even serve up your entire book, although it is possible to have them only serve up the examinations and receive returned student answer files. Some testing services have course management systems and will serve up and manage entire courses and tutorials.
Examples such as eCollege are reviewed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

Other examples of testing services are provided at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardized_test

At this point you may want to read about SCORM standards --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORM

March 23, 2008 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@rio.edu]

Bob:
In respect to sending exam scores and exam answers as email attachments - it really isn't effective in just about any content authoring tool that offers it - Camtasia, Toolbook or Captivate because of security issues. Before the email goes out it goes to the email client and the student can edit the exam score if they wished. Because of security issues the "owner" of the system should be the only one to control outgoing messages.
 

Author it as an interactive video (probably a flash video) file.

Advantages

• Youth of today prefer video and animated games to reading an many, many instances. Even us venerable readers often prefer short video tutorials of complicated tasks rather than having to read the manual. For example, I much prefer to watch a video on how to install and operate hardware/software than having to read the confusing manual. Demonstrating is often a better pedagogy than reading.
• The video alternative is better for certain types of handicapped users such as attention deficit readers, partly blind readers, and users who like an easy choice of subtitles for use in alternative languages such as English subtitles to Japanese learning videos.
• Adobe Flash interactive videos can be created from the relatively inexpensive Camtasia Producer software suite that offers various video compression choices including Adobe Flash. Another alternative is Adobe's Captivate3.  Interactive Flash videos allow users to navigate nonlinearly through video modules. For example, it is easy to repeat short segments on the fly or drill down into details when a user chooses to drill down further or skip details when desired. I find interactive video authoring to be somewhat complicated for authors but neat for readers.
• It is possible to author books that are viewed by users as streaming video rather than files that have to be downloaded into a user's computer. This has the advantage of not requiring large amounts of storage capacity on a users computer. This also makes it much more difficult for users to save and modify the video files. It is possible to capture and save streaming video, but its somewhat technical and there probably will be a downgrading of quality for inexpensive capturing alternatives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

Disadvantages

• Even interactive video cannot be navigated as efficiently as text and large tables. A reader of text may speed read and scan paragraphs and tables at will rather than have to live with the navigation alternatives that authors pre-programmed into the video.
• Video files, even highly compressed video files, are enormously costly in terms of massive file size. They can be put on DVD disks or auxiliary storage such as thumb drives. But downloading on the Web may be very slow for big files. It is best to author in multiple smaller files than huge files, although this can limited interactive navigation through a video book.
• Streaming video overcomes the file storage problems, but there are drawbacks since users of streaming video must generally be on high bandwidth Internet connections. Also streaming videos must be served up from streaming video broadcasters. Most colleges do not broadcast streaming video, but there are commercial broadcasters available to authors. For example see the broadcast service available from Camtasia ScreenCast --- http://www.techsmith.com/screencast.asp 
• Video files are not optimal for simulation and game authoring, although they may be quite useful as modules within simulations and games.

May 1, 2008 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

This is a demo on how to use Respondus to create interactive exams using Excel. This movie was created with Jing – a FREE utility of Techsmitth.

http://www.screencast.com/t/ijBIqVtjSl4 

Richard J. Campbell
School of Business
218 N. College Ave.
University of Rio Grande
Rio Grande, OH 45674
Voice:740-245-7288
http://faculty.rio.edu/campbell

Author it in simulation/game authoring software, including Second Choice virtual learning

Advantages

• Simulation, interactive game, and virtual learning software can do things that just are not possible in other authoring software. You can read about some of the authoring alternatives at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_software
• Virtual learning books used to be expensive to author and sometimes required computers more powerful than cheap PCs. Second Life is an increasing possible authoring alternative that is cheap and relatively easy for authoring --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
  Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
• Video and computer games have huge attractions to 21st Century learners who grew up enthralled with playing such games in arcades and at home. These games are a way of reaching certain learners who are turned off by more traditional pedagogy. You can read more about learning games and edutainment at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
  The above site also links to some relatively inexpensive software for authoring learning games.

Disadvantages

• Simulation, learning games, and virtual learning systems sometime sound better on paper than they deliver in real life. These can be quite time consuming for students relative to other alternatives for a defined set of learning content. You can read about some of the problems at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
• Artificial worlds are just that --- artificial. It is only possible to program in a miniscule number of factors from the myriad of contingency factors and combinations of factors in the real world.

Author it in some of the other surviving course (learning) management software described at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Advantages

• Its one thing to author a book or a tutorial. It's quite another to manage an entire course with software systems. Course (learning) management software (CMS/LMS) software often includes software for authoring books and lesson tutorials. CMS software, for example, often integrates learning modules with e-Mail chat rooms and other student networks.
• CMS software can offers different levels of security. For example, alternatives like Blackboard and Moodle allow authors to control access to students enrolled in a course rather than making the materials available to the world on a Web server.

Disadvantages

• Authoring software embedded in CMS/LMS systems often is not a full featured as software designed for book, simulation, game, and virtual world learning.
• Blackboard increasingly has a monopoly on CMS/LMS systems and is beginning to abuse its monopoly privileges and pricing --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm

Organizing your papers and citations from the Web
Sharing and remotely accessing your bookmarks

February 16, 2006 message from Vidya Ananthanarayanan to the faculty at Trinity University

Dear Faculty,

Ever wished your bookmarks in Internet Explorer or other browsers were accessible anytime anyplace? Ever wanted to share your Internet resources with your class, research colleagues, or peers? How would you like to know what information sources other people in your field are using? Perhaps, you simply want to organize all your bookmarks in a manner that is more meaningful and personal to you? How often have you been frustrated by an outdated or broken URL and wished you could have saved the article or paper itself?

Want to find out more about how you can do any or all of the above? Then mark your calendars for the Social Bookmarking: Tag & Share! TEACHnology Seminar in Library Room 103 from 10:00 - 11:15 am tomorrow. We will explore online services like del.icio.us and CiteULike, and discuss ways to leverage them in the classroom and in your research. Refreshments will be served.

Vidya Ananthanarayanan
Instructional Support Manager
Center for Learning and Technology
210.999.7346
vidya@trinity.edu 
http://www.trinity.edu/ims

Jensen Comment
The CiteULike cite is at http://www.citeulike.org/

CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special software.

Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer. You can share your library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about.

You're currently looking at a list of the last few papers submitted by all the CiteULike users. Why not register for a free account today and start organising your collection and see just the articles you're interested in? All we need is your email address, a username, and a password. It should take less than fifteen seconds.

The del.icio.us cite is at http://del.icio.us/

» keep your favorite websites, music, books, and more in a place where you can always find them.

» shareyour favorites with family, friends, and colleagues.

» discover new and interesting things by browsing popular & related items.

Free Public Affairs Case Teaching Materials and Sometimes Entire Course Materials from the University of Washington
The Electronic Hallway --- https://hallway.org/

The Electronic Hallway is pleased to announce a unique and progressive new product— Integrated Management: A Complete Core Curriculum — a previously untested venture in presenting an entire course package using online technology. This package represents a 30 week integrated core management curriculum.

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education and training alternatives are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on free online textbooks and learning materials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

From the University of Virginia
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities --- http://www.iath.virginia.edu/

IATH is a research unit of the University of Virginia. Our goal is to explore and develop information technology as a tool for scholarly humanities research. To that end, we provide our Fellows with consulting, technical support, applications development, and networked publishing facilities. We also cultivate partnerships and participate in humanities computing initiatives with libraries, publishers, information technology companies, scholarly organizations, and other groups residing at the intersection of computers and cultural heritage.

The research projects, essays, and documentation presented here are the products of a unique collaboration between humanities and computer science research faculty, computer professionals, student assistants and project managers, and library faculty and staff. In many cases, this work is supported by private or federal funding agencies. In all cases, it is supported by the Fellows’ home departments; the College or School to which those departments belong; the University of Virginia Library; the Vice President for Research and Public Service; the Vice President and Chief Information Officer; the Provost; and the President of the University of Virginia.

News Update from Campus Technology on January 11, 2005

Creating the Classroom of Tomorrow

What does it take to successfully integrate all systems across a campus? Planning, communication, flexibility, and more. In a new micro site sponsored by HP, you'll read how several campuses approached their IIS projects and what made them successful. Join a peer forum to discuss implementation and budget issues; read white papers, case studies and articles on the challenges of integration.

http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=11787 

December 12, 2006 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Perhaps the most significant new "feature" in the new release is the hook that Adobe is providing to other revenue-enhancing products like Acrobat Connect, which provides web-conferencing capabilities within Reader for a competitive price to www.gotomeeting.com (which I use). Incidentally, I personally believe that such a web conferencing product is an indispensable feature of any Internet-delivered accounting course.

One intriguing new development in the new Acrobat PROFESSIONAL version ( the pdf creation tool), is the ability to create forms that can be filled out and saved by users who have the free Reader. This is a departure from prior practice for Adobe, because they were trying to sell more expensive server software to facilitate that task.

Richard

Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases

This section was moved to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#KnowledgeBases

New and Old Tools

See Edutainment --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

See the online tutorial links at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

Educause Live --- http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?SECTION_ID=34&bhcp=1

Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence: Tools for Teaching and Learning --- http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/Tools/

Tools for Teaching and Learning

Look to our specialists to help you use best practices in your teaching. Whether you are new to our services, or an old friend, please don't hesitate to contact us at site@psu.edu with your questions.

Course Design and Planning

• Adult learners
• Developing learning objectives
• Online and blended learning
• Syllabus development
• Test planning
• Using tests creatively in course design
• Writing effective cases
• Cutting Edge Course Design Tutorial

Teaching and Assessment Strategies

• Computer-based testing
• In-class assessment techniques
• Inquiry-based learning
• Large class strategies
• Pedagogy in Action, SERC portal for Educators
• Problem-based learning
• Resources for Teaching Writing
• Rubrics
• Teaching diverse students
• Using discussion in the classroom
• Ways to avoid students sharing test information
• Writing good test questions
• Working with groups

Tools for Course Evaluation

• Classroom observations
• Midsemester feedback
• Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness (SRTEs)
• Using item analysis to improve tests and learning

Tools for University Assessment

• General Education Assessment
• Program and Department Assessment

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

• Public scholarship
• Service learning
• Teaching and course portfolios
• Writing a teaching philosophy

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Search Engine, ChunkIt, Marketed to College Students

Questions
How can you turn your email messages into free video messages?
How can you video conference calls?

Accounting Quiz Archives

August 21, 2008 message from Rob Nance [rnance@accountingweb.com]

Submitting 10-question accounting quizzes is great exposure for your accounting program. Check out the archives:

http://www.accountingweb.com/quiz/ 

If you would like to submit a quiz, reply to this message and I will send you the Excel template.

*****

Coming later this year: information on a scholarship program for your accounting students. AccountingWEB will be bestowing a load of money on three U.S. accounting students.

Rob

The AccountingWeb student zone (including humor) is at http://www.accountingweb.com/news/student_zone.html

August 19, 2008 message from MERLOT Webmaster [barb@merlot.org]

Question
What does a student's blinkless stare signify?

a. Daydreaming
b. Confusion
c. Anger
d. Stoned

"Facial-Recognition Software Could Give Valuable Feedback to Online Professors." Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 27, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3126&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Many professors who teach online complain that they have no way of seeing whether their far-away students are following the lectures — or whether the students have fallen asleep at their desks. But researchers at the University of California at San Diego say they have a solution. They recently tested a system that can detect facial expressions of online students and determine when they find the material difficult, so that cues could be sent to the professors telling them to slow down.

Jacob Whitehill, a doctoral student at the university working on the research, presented results from the experiment this week at the Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2008 conference in Montreal.

In the experiment, eight subjects were shown short video clips of lectures while a Web cam tracked their facial expressions — looking for smiles, blinks, raised eyebrows, and the like. The subjects were then asked to report how difficult they found each section, and to take a quiz on the material. Mr. Whitehill says that the system correctly detected when students were having trouble (the most reliable indicator: students blinked less when they were struggling to understand).

The system could be used to give valuable feedback to professors teaching online, says Mr. Whitehill. “It’s not going to be perfect by any means,” he says, but it’s better than no student feedback at all. “Professors say that they can’t see the students. This could do it for them automatically.”

Visualization of Multivariate Data (including faces) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm

May 4, 2008 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

I have placed a (Camtasia) video online on omnisio.com, which allows comments to be placed OVER the video.

http://www.omnisio.com/v/49zPDUbdjhG/the-basic-accounting-equation 

This is a video that I have on youtube and just linked it to Omnisio.

Jensen Comment
There are some other cool things to do with video at http://www.omnisio.com/

"Microsoft Ramps Up Its Free College E-Mail Program," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 27, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3032&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Microsoft has decided to enlarge a service of keen interest to colleges, even as the company last week dumped another offering used by higher education, its Live Search Books program. Now Live@edu, the free Web-based e-mail and online collaboration program for students and alumni, is getting much larger inboxes, the ability to handle bigger attached files, true shared calendars, and the chance for colleges to block student e-mail containing words they deem offensive, the company announced today.

Tired of the 5 gigabyte inbox? Live@edu now offers accounts with 10 gigabytes, and the capacity to handle attachments up to 20 megabytes in size, says Bruce Gabrielle, senior product manager for the service. The boost is because the company has decided that, in addition to handing campuses Microsoft Hotmail accounts (with university-based e-mail addresses), it will offer accounts on the more powerful Microsoft Exchange Web access system. That gives users access to Windows programs like Outlook, with e-mail, full calendars, and a contact list.

It’s a solution used by many businesses, and Microsoft has been quietly offering it, in a form called Exchange Labs, to a few educational institutions since last fall. Drexel University, Hinds Community College, and the Colorado Community College system are some that have tried it.

With Exchange Labs, users at the same university can see one another’s calendars to set up meetings. E-mail tracking is enabled, so students can see whether a term paper was delivered to a professor’s inbox. They can also push e-mail to cell phones. (And they can use Exchange to wipe data from those phones if they happen to lose them.) Exchange Labs also gives university officials the ability to set up filters, like spam filters, for offensive terms in e-mail, though Mr. Gabrielle says he wasn’t sure what words, if any, that universities have tried placing on a “do not type” list.

At this point the service is not being offered to faculty members or administrators. “I think it’s a business model decision,” Mr. Gabrielle said, noting that the company may need to figure out whether it wants to allow ads on Web pages seen by those users; the student and alumni service is ad-free.

"SketchCast: a New Blogging and Teaching Tool," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 14, 2008 --- Click Here

Want to preserve that lesson you did at the blackboard today in class and share it with students online? Try SketchCast, a free blogging tool that allows users to record a digital drawing (and contemporaneous audio), and then embed the animated video onto a Web site. It’s essentially an easy form of animation.

Watch the video demo --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2998&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Comment from Charles

What a nice tool to capture and share ideas informally! I have been trying to capture tools and concepts for opening up collaborative learning on my blog www.collaborativenetworkedlearning.blogspot.com 

— Charles May 14, 08:50 PM #

"TextMeTV Is Either Future of Television or Beginning of Its End," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 13, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3240&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

Late at night on a television station in Lansing, Michigan, a new kind of program tries to make the audience the main attraction. It's called TextMeTV, and it goes like this: One or two young hosts, some of them college students, sit on a couch and read text messages being sent in live from viewers, and those messages are also posted on a box in the corner of the screen. Sometimes the hosts encourage those texters to debate topics of the day, other times they offer free iPods or other prizes to viewers who can answer trivia questions. The show looks more like a YouTube page than a television show. Though moderators do edit the text messages that come in before they post them to the screen, the show is live with no tape delay, says Helena Kirby, a producer for the show and one of its 7 rotating hosts. "There's no swearing and no sexual talk -- we keep it pretty clean," she adds. Viewers pay a small fee per text message to participate. Ms. Kirby says the show's best moments have been when viewers sparred about race issues or politics. "People get fired up," she says. But this January the show -- which has been on since last year -- began focusing more on games and contests, like trivia challenges, than on debates. One entertainment blogger recently called the show "the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard," noting that the show seems empty of substance. But Ms. Kirby argues that it represents a revolutionary new format. "I think some people are just afraid of it -- that this new concept is going to do something big, and they don't want it to," she says. "I say, Out with the old, in the with the new." Amariee Woods, another host of the show who is a senior at Michigan State University, says that younger audiences want to participate, not just passively consume media. "People want to put their comments on everything, and the faster they can do that, the better." A similar show in Texas called Subtext, which features students from the University of Texas at Austin, uses a similar format but focuses on dating. The shows are essentially trying to turn television into something more like the Internet. In fact, the shows would probably work better as interactive Web pages where people could put aside their cell phones and interact with their computer keyboards. But then the show's producers would not be able to make a cut of the text-messaging fees, as they do now. Do younger viewers now see one-way broadcast television as dull? Or are these interactive shows a sign that media companies are trying to mix many kinds of media formats? Use your computer keyboard to let us know what you think.

 

TextMeTV (watch the video) --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3240&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"Making a Big Point (in class) With Your PC," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 23, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2932&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Pen Kenrick J. Mock says he loves recording lectures for his classes using his tablet PC. And the associate professor of computer science at the University of Alaska at Anchorage also loves projecting computational problems using PowerPoint or the writing program OneNote.

What Mr. Mock does not love is the inability to point to a specific part of the problem for his class. “It’s always bothered me that the pen cursor is a tiny little dot,” he writes in his blog on technology and teaching. “The problem is that I like to use the pen to “point” at things as I give the lecture, but it doesn’t help if the class can’t see it.”

He looked, in vain, for a program that would enlarge the cursor. And finally he gave in, remembered he was a computer scientist, and wrote a program himself.

The result is PenAttention, and it turns that minuscule dot into a minuscule dot with a big colored spotlight around it. It’s a little more distracting to write with this kind of cursor, but his class can finally see what he is doing.

The program is free, works on tablet PCs running XP and Vista, and can be downloaded from a link in Mr. Mock’s blog post describing it.

See http://www.math.uaa.alaska.edu/~afkjm/techteach/?q=node/52

"Microsoft Opens Free Online Workspace for Student Collaborations," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 5, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2795&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Microsoft wants to help students get their lives together (their learning lives, at least), and Tuesday it rolled out a product to help. As part of Live@edu, the company’s free Web-based email and calendar suite, Microsoft unveiled Office Live Workspace, which lets students access their work online and share it with others. Live@edu is in use at more than 600 colleges.

“The most visible new feature is the activity panel,” said Guy Gilbert, a Microsoft group product manager, in an interview with The Chronicle Monday. “Suppose you are in a work group with other students. You can look at the panel and see everything that anyone has done since you last logged on. And links in the panel take you right to that object,” whether it is a document, a spreadsheet, contact list, or database.

Users can also set up e-mail alerts that notify them any time an item is changed.

The service has been running in beta for several months, and of its estimated 100,000 users, 20 to 30 percent are in higher education, Mr. Gilbert says. Microsoft has worked with 13 colleges to fine-tune the service, including Florida Community College at Jacksonville, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Wisconsin at Parkside.

And if the new service doesn’t seem familiar to users of Google Docs, don’t worry. Microsoft’s arch rival also promises real-time collaboration, and the two companies seem to be running neck and neck in the education marketplace.

AtGentive:   New software platforms that incorporate artificial intelligence and social networking into their approach toward e-learning.

February 20, 2008 message from Glen L Gray [glen.gray@CSUN.EDU]

Attention Please! Next-Generation E-Learning Is Here ICT Results (02/14/08)

European researchers working for the AtGentive project have developed two new software platforms that incorporate artificial intelligence and social networking into their approach toward e-learning. AtGentive coordinator Thierry Nabeth says the first generation of e-learning platforms focused on replicating the classroom experience, but student's often had difficulty staying motivated and the learning program failed to keep their attention. To overcome this problem, one of the AtGentive platforms uses techniques similar to those found on Web sites such as Facebook that make them so popular as a means of staying in touch with others. The platforms also use artificial intelligence to keep students interested. "Artificial agents are autonomous entities that observe users' activities and assess their state of attention in order to intervene so as to make the user experience more effective," Nabeth says. "The interventions can take many forms, from providing new information to the students, guiding them in their work, or alerting them when other users connect to the platform." The artificial intelligence agents provide a smart form of proactive coaching for students by assessing, guiding, and stimulating them. The agents can alert students when others have read their articles, or when they receive feedback on their contributions to a collaborative project. The agents are also able to detect when students are not interacting with the system and try to get them to rejoin the lesson.

Click Here to View Full Article

http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/89524

Glen L. Gray, PhD, CPA
Accounting & Information Systems, COBAE
California State University, Northridge
Northridge, CA 91330-8372
818.677.3948
818.677.2461 (messages)
http://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f

Notes on the Smart Pen
The smart pen that Wired Campus flagged back in May was unveiled last week at a technology conference in Palm Springs, Calif. The company behind it, LiveScribe, has been aggressively marketing the device to college students with the slogan "Never miss a word." It's basically a combination recording machine and camera. Users take notes while a minirecorder, embedded in the pen, records whatever is being said. Later, to clarify the written notes, the user can touch the pen to a specific passage and listen to a recording of the instructor speaking those words. A tiny camera links what is being written to what is being recorded. In a takeoff on television commercials for pharmaceuticals, the smart-pen advertisement below features a student who suffers from "restless mind syndrome." The pen is offered as a panacea. Livescribe has set up a Facebook page to push the pen, and offers to pay college students to promote the device on their campuses. It's also advertised on the Web site ThePalestra, where Andy Van Schaack, a senior lecturer at Vanderbilt University, who is an adviser to LiveScribe, is seen praising the pen. Will the pen, which sells for about $200, take off with college students? Will it be used as a crutch for students who are too tired or distracted to listen to their professors?
Andrea L. Foster, "Notes on the Smart Pen," Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2719&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology

Questions
Will we soon be able to lecture without opening our mouths?
Can you send a "relational" database file to a friend by simply shaking hands?
Is this the beginning of a whole new definition of human "relationships?"
Can the message of a hug be digital and unambiguous?
New magic in a kiss or two?
Does your database have halitosis or dirty fingernails or a flu virus?
I'd better stop asking questions about this before I get in trouble!
 

Japanese firm harnesses the power of human touch
They say you can tell a lot from a handshake. But while it's usually guesswork, the power of human touch will soon be used in Japan to transmit data. Telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) is planning a commercial launch of a system to enter rooms that frees users from the trouble of rummaging in their pockets or handbags for ID cards or keys. It uses technology to turn the surface of the human body itself into a means of data transmission. As data travels through the user's clothing, handbag or shoes, anyone carrying a special card can unlock the door simply by touching the knob or standing on a particular spot without taking the card out. "In everyday life, you're always touching things. Even if you are standing, you are stepping on something," research engineer Mitsuru Shinagawa told AFP. "These simple touches can result in communication," said Shinagawa, senior research engineer at the company's NTT Microsystem Integration Laboratories. He said future applications could include a walk-through ticket gate, a cabinet that opens only to authorised people and a television control that automatically chooses favourite programmes.
PhysOrg, February 21, 2008 --- http://physorg.com/news122793751.html

Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm

The Five Senses of the Future:  Threads on the Networking of the Five Senses (Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, and Taste) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/senses.htm  

Barbra Streisand - He Touched Me (1967) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO-wPOgVtqg

Question
What are real time virtual office hours?
Hint:
They operate a bit like a course chat room with some added features like microphones, and an instructor or teaching fellow is in the room at all times.

A tools PowerPoint file is included at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/

Question
What are the supposed Top 10 and the Top 100 e-Learning tools, at least in England?

Answer
Top 100 --- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html
Various experts list their Top 10 --- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/index.html

Jensen Comment
I totally disagree with the rankings of the Top 100 and the Top 10.

Where is Blackboard and WebCT? --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard

Where are the many important tools for handicapped learners? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

Where is Camtasia? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Where are the edutainment and learning game alternatives? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

Where is Matlab (used in virtually every U.S. university) --- --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB

Like it or not, Wikipedia is one of the most sought out sights in the world by e-Learners --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
There are risks, but the odds are high that users will get helpful learning information and links.

Where are HTML and related XML/RTF and XBRL markups?  --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm  

Where are the many huge and free online libraries? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

Where are the important blogs and listservs? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

I could go on and on here!

Bob Jensen

August 3, 2007 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Bob:
I agree with you that the list is flawed - Toolbook should be #1

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring, management, and presentation technologies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

August 3, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Richard

ToolBook should’ve been number 1 but it fumbled the ball. What proportion of e-Learners are now learning, today, from ToolBooks? My guess is that much less than one percent. A negligible proportion of instructors are developing learning materials using ToolBook dhtml files relative to FrontPage and Dreamweaver htm files.

The biggest innovation for e-Learners and authors was Adobe Acrobat’s tremendous development of online pdf files that could be read and electronically searched for free but not be tampered with by readers. Now major commercial publishing houses are putting new books on line as pdf files.

One of the biggest innovations I forgot to mention was the unknown (at least to me) date in which MS Office files (particularly ppt, doc, and xls files) could be downloaded and read from Web servers that at one time only could handle htm markups. In terms of e-learning htm, pdf, doc, xls, and ppt files are overwhelmingly the main files for e-Learning, although they are now joined by such files as xml files.

Another huge e-Learning innovation that I forgot to mention is the unknown (at least to me) date in which the above learning and research files could be attached to email messages. This made it easier to have private distributions (say to students in a class) without having to put files on Web, Blackboard, or WebCT servers. Anybody with email can not send files back and forth.

There is still a great risk of macro viruses when downloading MS Office files from the Web or email messages. However, most e-Learners are doing so from trusted Web sites and/or email senders such as files from their course instructors.

ToolBook could fade away and the world would hardly know about it or miss it.

Bob Jensen

Zotero software for  storing, retrieving, organizing, and annotating digital documents --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zotero

Zotero is a free, open source extension for the Firefox browser, that enables users to collect, manage, and cite research from all types of sources from the browser. It is partly a piece of reference management software, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. On many major research websites such as digital libraries, Google Scholar, or even Amazon.com, Zotero detects when a book, article, or other resource is being viewed and with a mouse click finds and saves the full reference information to a local file. If the source is an online article or web page, Zotero can optionally store a local copy of the source. Users can then add notes, tags, and their own metadata through the in-browser interface. Selections of the local reference library data can later be exported as formatted bibliographies.

The program is produced by the Center for History and New Media of George Mason University and is currently available in public beta. It is open and extensible, allowing other users to contribute citation styles and site translators, and more generally for others who are building digital tools for researchers to expand the platform. The name is from Albanian language "to master".

It is aimed at replacing the more cumbersome traditional reference management software, originally designed to meet the demands of offline research

"Mark of Zotero,"  by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, September 26, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/26/mclemee 

Zotero is a tool for storing, retrieving, organizing, and annotating digital documents. It has been available for not quite a year. I started using it about six weeks ago, and am still learning some of the fine points, but feel sufficient enthusiasm about Zotero to recommend it to anyone doing research online. If very much of your work involves material from JSTOR, for example – or if you find it necessary to collect bibliographical references, or to locate Web-based publications that you expect to cite in your own work — then Zotero is worth knowing how to use. (You can install it on your computer for free; more on that in due course.)

Now, my highest qualification for testing a digital tool is, perhaps, that I have no qualifications for testing a digital tool. That is not as paradoxical as it sounds. The limits of my technological competence are very quickly reached. My command of the laptop computer consists primarily of the ability to (1) turn it on and (2) type stuff. This condition entails certain disadvantages (the mockery of nieces and nephews, for example) but it makes for a pretty good guinea pig.

And in that respect, I can report that the folks at George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media have done an exemplary job in designing Zotero. A relatively clueless person can learn to use it without exhaustive effort.

Still, it seems as if institutions that do not currently do so might want to offer tutorials on Zotero for faculty and students who may lack whatever gene makes for an intuitive grasp of software. Academic librarians are probably the best people to offer instruction. Aside from being digitally savvy, they may be the people at a university in the best position to appreciate the range of uses to which Zotero can be put.

For the absolute newbie, however, let me explain what Zotero is — or rather, what it allows you to do. I’ll also mention a couple of problems or limitations. Zotero is still under development and will doubtless become more powerful (that is, more useful) in later releases. But the version now available has numerous valuable features that far outweigh any glitches.

Suppose you go online to gather material on some aspect of a book you are writing. In the course of a few hours, you might find several promising titles in the library catalog, a few more with Amazon, a dozen useful papers via JSTOR, and three blog entries by scholars who are thinking aloud about some matter tangential to your project.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on how scholars search are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

How to Avoid Expensive Adobe Software for Converting MS Office Documents to PDF Files

"Creating Documents for All to Read Inexpensive Ways To Convert a Variety Of Content to PDFs," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2007; Page D9 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118652753636390978.html

For years, people have accessed a variety of digital content in one of the most universally accepted formats: Adobe's Portable Document Format, better known as the PDF. A PDF holds images and text without altering a document's original fonts and layout. It can be searched, protected with a password, disabled from printing and enriched with bookmarks and hyperlinks that make it more navigable.

But while Adobe provides a free reader for viewing PDFs, creating PDFs yourself can be costly and confusing, even though the format is great for saving and sharing documents of almost any kind including images, Web pages, Word documents and emails. For users who want higher-end PDF creation and collaboration software, Adobe Systems Inc. offers its $450 Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional software program. But that's pricey for most casual users. So this week I tested some inexpensive or free methods for making PDFs.

There are plenty of Windows programs available for download online that will help you create basic PDFs. On Windows computers, I tried three programs, starting with the $20 standard version of deskPDF from Plano, Texas-based Docudesk Corp. (www.Docudesk.com). I tested a stripped-down and less-expensive version of Adobe's program called Create Adobe PDF Online, which works by uploading your document at www.CreatePDF.com and costs $10 monthly or $100 annually. And I also used a free program called CutePDF from Acro Software Inc. (www.CutePDF.com). If you own a Mac, things are even simpler. Macs come out of the box with the ability to turn documents into PDFs, and I tested that function as well. DeskPDF and CutePDF worked roughly the same way, though deskPDF costs $20 and CutePDF is free. Adobe's less-expensive program offered a few more features than deskPDF and CutePDF, such as the ability to add password encryption to a document or to make it unprintable by others. Making PDFs on the Mac was a cinch, including options to compress or encrypt a PDF. None of these methods allowed me to add extra features to PDFs like bookmarks and hyperlinks; for that, you'll need a more serious program. When Microsoft's Office 2007 program shipped early this year, many people expected that it would have the built-in ability to save documents in PDF format; it didn't. Users can find a patch that fixes this on Microsoft's Web site. Apple's operating system has long been known for the ease with which it can create PDFs using built-in tools. Put simply, any document that can be printed from a Mac can also be turned into a PDF. Users follow the normal steps necessary to print a document or Web site (usually File, Print), but can choose a button on the Print screen labeled "PDF" that converts the document. In seconds, I turned all types of documents on my iMac into PDFs, including images in JPEG and TIF formats, emails, Word documents and Web sites. This last conversion was helpful for saving not just a view of the current screen, but the entire site from the top of the page to the bottom. Options labeled "Compress PDF" and "Encrypt PDF" can be chosen in this Print screen. I chose Encrypt PDF and protected a PDF using a password in one quick step. The option to compress a PDF will decrease the size of an image in a document, but won't decrease the size of a text-only document. Two of the three Windows programs use a method similar to Apple's, letting me send documents or Web sites into print mode and converting them into PDFs. Downloading and installing deskPDF or CutePDF adds a virtual printer driver to the computer. Rather than choosing a separate button labeled "PDF," the conversion program is selected from a list of printers, and hitting the Print button saves the document as a PDF file. The first time I did this, I thought my document was printed rather than saved because a printer icon appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, as if the document was printing. But a screen appeared asking where I wanted to save the new PDF, and I specified a location. Docudesk offers free 24-hour technical support with all of its deskPDF programs, even trial versions. The company also touts its $40 deskUNPDF program, which restores PDFs to Word documents for editing purposes, one of the features also found in Adobe's $450 product. CutePDF writer and deskPDF must be used with separately installed converter programs, but these are small and free, and their installation is prompted after each of the core programs is downloaded. Both programs are also offered in upgraded versions that cost $50 for CutePDF Pro and $30 for deskPDF Pro, enabling advanced features like hyperlinks, encryption, password protection and printing restrictions. Adobe's Create Adobe PDF Online program offers a few more features than the others, but feels a bit disconnected because it uploads documents to the Web for PDF conversion rather than converting documents in an installed program. An option called Create Adobe PDF Online Printer installs a printer driver on your PC, like deskPDF and CutePDF. But this saves your PDF online forcing you to retrieve it via Adobe's Web site, an emailed link or an emailed attachment. After registering to use Adobe's online conversion product, users must select the file or Web page intended for PDF conversion. Security features are optional with each document, such as requiring a password to view it or not allowing others to print it. I tried both successfully. Once converted, a document can be delivered to you via email in a link or attachment. It can also be retrieved from a Conversion History section on the site or converted directly on the site. Most of these conversion programs are available in some free capacity. DeskPDF can be used five times free of charge in the standard and professional versions before it starts adding a watermark to each PDF, which is intrusive. Adobe's program can be used five times for each email that you register before you must subscribe to its conversion service. If you need to save a document in a format that has the greatest likelihood of being viewable by all of your recipients, PDFs are the way to go, and they aren't difficult to make.

Is Facebook the New MySpace?
MySpace has an impressive lead today, but things can change quickly in the fluid world of mass-market social networking sites. Just ask Friendster. First Friendster was everybody's favorite social networking site. Then Friendster fell out of vogue--precipitously--and people stopped going there. In its place, MySpace became the darling of the Web. MySpace provided not only a free place to host your own online identity, but a full set of tools for meeting and interacting with others. Now everybody is talking about Facebook, which fits the same description, but in a very different way. Will Facebook become the next MySpace? I think so, and here's why.
Mark Sullivan, PC World via The Washington Post, July 20, 2007 --- Click Here

From the University of Chicago
BiblioVau