Friday, February 28, 2014

Want a (free) Alternative to PowerPoint? Try Prezi



This tutorial demonstrates a free online presentation tool called Prezi.  It can be used as an alternative to PowerPoint in many academic settings and can make presentations much more interactive and interesting. Here is the URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7OsdIlmjm4

                                                                  Contributed by Matt Helinski

Create, Manage and Share Learning Content... in the Cloud!

Attention all Texas Community and Technical College faculty and staff,
You have free access to SoftChalk Cloud courtesy of a state license provided by the Texas Association of Community Colleges and the Virtual College of Texas.
The SoftChalk in Cloud Code can be found here:

SoftChalk is a fun and easy way to enhance learning with engaging and interactive lessons. Lessons created in SoftChalk can be easily integrated into Canvas. Find more information about SoftChalk at http://softchalk.com/

Contact Julie Nichols or Laura Tull if you have questions.

                                                                Contributed by Julie Nichols

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

BioSIG-ID - Coming to an Online Course near You!

What is BioSIG?  It is the multifactor authentication tool that the district has selected to make it more difficult for unauthorized users to access secure data or to commit fraud by posing as another individual.  Its intended focus will be to minimize academic dishonesty in online courses.  BioSIG-ID is fully integrated with our CANVAS LMS.  All fully-online and hybrid courses will be using BIOSIG-ID starting in Summer 2014.  We had a training on 2/12 @ 2:00 in Academic 101. If you missed the training, you can find a curriculum that can be accessed through AlamoLEARN that includes the recording of this training which shows best practices using BioSIG.
                                                                                   Contributed by Tracey Mendoza


Tuesday, February 11, 2014

How to Create a Podcast for Teachers

We all know that students have earphones on all the time listening to music. How about making them listen to us through podcast? The following tutorial walks through the steps for creating an audio podcast and offers some resources for creating podcast. It also explains how to create an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed for a podcast.

How to Create a Podcast for Teachers

                                                                                     Contributed by Matt Helinski

Creating a Lecture Video using Screen Cast O Matic

If you are looking for an inexpensive, comprehensive application for screencasting consider exploring screencast-o-matic.com.  This web application has everything you need for computer screen recordings and screenshots.   There are lots of options with the free version, but even more with the pro version (by the way, the pro version costs only $15.00 a year and allows you unlimited recording time).  

Host your videos on screencast-o-matic, or upload to popular social media sites such as 
YouTube or Vimeo.  You can also download your videos to your computer.   

Click on the following link for a tutorial that demonstrates how you can use Screencast-o-matic  to create screen capture videos that you can use for lectures.



                                            Contributed by Matt Helinski and Denise Menchaca

Friday, February 7, 2014

Guess What? Adobe is Coming to Town!

The TLTR Committee would like to share the following exciting and useful information:
The district has bought Adobe Creative Suite CS6 for both Mac and Windows. All faculty machines at NLC will be installed with Adobe Pro, if not yet.  The next step is to push the installation onto Staff machines.  Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, After Effects, etc, are all available.  If installation is needed, a request should be made to NLC IT.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Distance Education: What Do MOOCs Have To Do With It?

The MOOC phenomenon has exploded.  What is a MOOC, you ask?  MOOC (pronounced “mook” is an acronym for Massive Open Online Course.  MOOCs are courses that are being offered through a partnership between a learning entity and a business on a Cloud-based platform.  MOOCs are also classes that are taught online to large numbers of students, with minimal involvement by professors.[i]  Most of the courses can be taken at no tuition cost to participants.  In some cases, there are fees for such things as certificate of completion, books, etc.  Some of the major universities involved in MOOCs include Harvard, MIT, UC-Berkeley, Stanford, and University of Texas just to name a few.  Major players in the MOOC space include Coursera, Khan Academy, Udacity, and edX

The enrollment figures in some MOOC courses are staggering.  Harvard’s CS50x,”Introduction to Computer Programming” course has an enrollment of nearly 160,000 since it was introduced in 2009.   ER22x, "Justice," follows at nearly 70,000.[ii]  Sebastian Thrun’s Stanford course entitled “CS221: Artificial Intelligence: Principles and Techniques” has attracted 160,000 students from 190 countries.[iii]  According to statistics gather by EducationDive.com, edX has enrollment of 1 million registered users for 60 courses as of June 2013, while Coursera has more than 4 million students for about 400 courses.[iv]

The appeal of MOOCs cannot be measured only by the enrollment numbers. Participants are using MOOCs to gain educational advantages including:

·         Personal Learning (Gaining personal knowledge and skills on subject they want to learn)
·         Precursory learning (Prep work for an upcoming course)
·         Self-determining learning (For the participant who wants to gain knowledge on his/her own terms)
·         Accelerated Learning (Some MOOCS have no time limit and allow participants to accelerate learning)
·         Refresher Learning (When was the last time you took a Math or English course)
·         Gateway courses (Courses that serve as a bridge to college courses that is required for a degree or certification)

MOOCs can be a viable tool for institutions of higher learning, particularly for community colleges in placement and prework.  According to Dr. Barbara Illowsky, at De Anza College in California, MOOCs could help students prepare for and pass basic assessment exams in English math, and writing.  Dr. Illowsky explains that setting up a system that allows community college students to take basic subjects MOOCs prior to their enrollment would likely result in thousands of them being able to place into higher level courses.[v]  Broward College (through the Canvas Network) provides the College Foundations: Reading, Writing, and Math course that serves as a primer for college-level work.[vi]

MOOCs can also be made available to faculty members to use as supplementary contents and high quality learning objects that are created collaboratively with faculty.[vii]The Canvas Network provides instructors and institutions an open platform to share their expertise and institutional experience with the world.  It claims to have 4.5 million users.[viii] 

MOOCs are distance learning on steroids.   They are enabling anyone who wanted to learn anything in any field to have access to (in some cases) the best teachers in that field.  They provide excellent instruction for the masses at an affordable price.  In part 2 of this blog we will examine concerns and downsides associated with MOOCs. 
                                                                                                                     


[i] http://chronicle.com/article/What-You-Need-to-Know-About/133475/
[ii] http://harvardx.harvard.edu/news/harvardx-course-enrollments-break-500k-mark
[iii] http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2012/05/19/as-elite-colleges-open-to-the-world-online-questions-remain-on-business-plan/
[iv] http://www.educationdive.com/news/moocs-by-the-numbers-how-do-edx-coursera-and-udacity-stack-up/161100/
[v] http://diverseeducation.com/article/53565/#
[vi] https://www.canvas.net/courses/college-foundations-reading-writing-and-math-2
[vii] http://diverseeducation.com/article/53565/
[viii] https://www.canvas.net/learn-more

                                                                                      Contributed by: Jerryl Lowe