Sometimes you need a no-cost way to work collaboratively and synchronously at a distance. For instance, earlier this year I was a member of a graduate-student team designing an interactive app for the iPad. We had a member in Saudi Arabia, another on the eastern seaboard, and several members spread across the Chicago metro area. We obviously couldn’t meet in person to sketch out ideas and critique them. We needed a way to post design documents, mark them up, and discuss in real time. Fortunately for us, we discovered Twiddla, a collaborative workspace with a free version that proved indispensible.

Getting Started

Twiddla describes itself as a real-time collaboration tool. I liked that it was simple and easy to use; just navigate to http://twiddla.com and click Start a New Meeting:

Twiddla gives you a clean, easy-to-use interface. The toolbar has controls for a virtual whiteboard, tools for adding and annotating documents, images, and web pages, and a real-time collaborative text editor that Twiddla calls an EtherPad. There’s a basic text tool for annotating the display and simple drawing and shapes tools too. Twiddla also offers some fundamental tools to edit and arrange items and a basic administrative tool that allows you to add users and edit your profile.

Once you’re in your meeting room you can edit your profile, invite other users, and load your images, documents, Web pages, or media.

Add and Mark Up Documents

My team needed to be able to see, discuss, and mark up each other’s sketches in real time. Here’s an example of a PDF uploaded to Twiddla and marked up with the drawing tool:

This ability to view and mark up sketches was invaluable to my team, allowing us to review, critique, and iterate in real time, despite being separated by thousands of miles. Twiddla now has a real-time voice tool, but we opted to use Skype for synchronous voice and created a no-cost, real-time collaborative workspace with a combination of ease-of-use and powerful visual tools I haven’t found elsewhere.

While I consider Twiddla far easier to use, more powerful, and better for my purposes than wikis, Google Docs, or Web-conferencing tools like Wimba, it also has extended functionalities like the ability to insert math formulas or upload widgets and code that make it a great collaborative tool for math, science, multimedia, or programming:

Is It Right for You?

There are of course some limitations to the free version. You don’t have a named user account, so you can’t set up a workspace far in advance and send out invitations later. You can’t hold simultaneous meetings, and you’re on your own for tech support. You also can’t archive or save your work for future use, and you can’t have a password-protected private meeting, which might preclude using Twiddla with students in some situations. Paid versions eliminate those shortcomings and add features like unlimited storage, SSL security, custom URLs, and presenter/moderator controls for as little as $14 a month.

However, the free version works really well for me. So if you’re looking for a powerful, no-cost, easy-to-use collaborative workspace, Twiddla deserves your attention. Check it out at http://twiddla.com.

Happy Holidays!

“We can take your classes! We can help you in virtually any subject. Our experts can take any online math, science, or business class. We will work with you on a budget and a deadline and get your work done on time. Also, with our services we will not ask you to pay upfront. Our students only pay AFTER work has been completed. with our services we stand behind a 100% money back guarantee.”

Hawaii Craigslist, 5-15-2011
http://honolulu.craigslist.org/oah/lss/2382899652.html

Well, obvious ethical issues aside, there is clearly a problem with boring online classes, at least in Hawaii. Unfortunately, the tools available to us in D2L to create online classes are limited. It also takes time and, seemingly, a lot of technical expertise to create engaging, interactive online material for students. As a result, we upload a combination of text-based lectures and slideshows to D2L, making it a parking lot for static content. In this blog post, I would like to introduce you to SoftChalk, an easy-to-use eLearning authoring solution that allows you to create, share, and deliver engaging, interactive content.

Introducing SoftChalk

The best way to introduce Softchalk is to show you a short lesson embedded right here in the blog. This is a complete lesson on learning Greek and Latin word parts and was created by an educator and shared with the SoftChalk community (more on that in a bit).

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As you can see, there are numerous activities mixed in with the delivery of the content, providing the students with the opportunity to become engaged with the lesson, rather than have the material simply delivered to them though a static lecture or readings. All of the content you see was created within SoftChalk and uploaded to a sharable content repository. The same module could be easily uploaded and integrated in D2L.

What is SoftChalk?

SoftChalk is a site-licensed software package that runs on both Windows and Macintosh operating systems. While it delivers complex, interactive lessons, there is a simple, nontechnical interface for module authoring. Here is a partial list of some of the features that you can build into a SoftChalk lesson or activity:

• Text annotation
• Six types of interactive self-check questions
• Seventeen interactive activities and games
• Images, audio, video, and media
• Widgets
• Polls and ratings (SoftChalk CONNECT)

The news gets better when you look at the different ways you can publish a lesson created with SoftChalk. Of course, you can certainly publish to D2L but you can also publish lessons as stand-alone Web pages, executable lessons on PC and Mac, or to SoftChalk CONNECT which is a sharable content repository under Creative Commons licensing. It is also worth mentioning that SoftChalk lessons are section 508 compliant for accessibility.

In short, SoftChalk allows you to create professional-looking lessons with no HTML programming required. You can choose the style, page navigation, and layout options. SoftChalk will generate a set of integrated lesson pages with built-in navigation and a professional-looking layout. Further, it will create a single file that you upload to D2L. If there are embedded assessments, you can extract a report of student performance from within D2L.

Need Ideas?

Are you short on ideas for your lesson? SoftChalk, from within the application itself, provides the ability to search content with its open technology partners, MERLOT, CONNEXIONS, College Open Textbooks, and the IMS Global Learning Consortium, as well as SoftChalk CONNECT.

SoftChalk CONNECT is a free repository for sharing open educational resources under Creative Commons licensing, allowing you to host your content in the “Cloud” for delivery anywhere. You can also create a private area on SoftChalk CONNECT for your own materials. If you only want to use one small feature of SoftChalk, you do not have to create a complete lesson; you can publish your activity as a widget and embed it in any Web page. Here is a sample accounting activity from the public area of SoftChalk CONNECT.

Open in New Window

How do I get it?

SoftChalk is site licensed by DePaul and can be downloaded from the Media Production & Training website at http://www.itd.depaul.edu/website/faculty/TechnologyTools/SoftChalk.asp.

You may want to visit both the SoftChalk and SoftChalk CONNECT websites for more information and additional demonstrations.

http://softchalk.com/

http://softchalkconnect.com/

Finally, if you need help with SoftChalk and want to know more about how you can integrate it into your online course, contact your FITS consultant, and they will probably call me.

Oh yes, one last thing. SoftChalk will release a new version this summer. The big news is that the published modules will also be compatible with mobile devices: smartphones, iPads, and other tablets with six new activities targeted specifically at these mobile devices. Fortunately, SoftChalk takes care of creating the proper content for each device; no intervention is required by the author.

When you’re preparing your course materials, you’re probably using Microsoft Office—Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. And depending on the size and complexity of the files you’re working with, you may want a better way to manage them then leaving them in a folder on your computer.

Google to the rescue!

Google Cloud Connect is a free plug-in for Microsoft Office that allows you to sync any of the Office documents you’re producing on your computer to your Google Docs account. And while this tool isn’t intended specifically for creating instructional materials, it’s been so useful to me that, well, I just had to share.

What do you need?

• A Google account (your Gmail login will work just fine)
• Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, or 2010 for Windows XP, Vista, or 7
• The (Free) Cloud Connect plug-in

What does Google Cloud Connect do for you?

• Cloud Storage – Every document you create or open and save on your computer is saved both to your computer and to your Google Docs account. That means if you need to work on it from another computer, you can just go to docs.google.com and download it.
• Version Control – Every time you click save in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel, Cloud Connect will save a new version of the document. Did you ever delete something by accident and then save the file? Or edit a document only to realize that the previous version was better? Version control can solve these problems. You can access old versions, listed by date, from directly within Word, PowerPoint, or Excel.
• Collaboration – Just like Google Docs, Google Cloud Connect allows you to share your documents with others just by entering their email address. Your collaborators can edit the files simultaneously, and if you both edit the same part of the document at the same time, you’ll be able to decide which version should be used.

Why Google Cloud Connect rather than other cloud-based options?

• Dead Simple Setup – Once you install the plug-in, just keep doing what you were doing. Every document you open and save in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel will go to the cloud. All of your version control and collaboration can be done from within Office—not on an external website.
• It stays in the Microsoft Office format – If you’ve shied away from using Google Docs as your primary productivity suite because of all the formatting options afforded to you by Word and PowerPoint or the learning curve of a different set of programs, don’t worry. These are Microsoft Office files getting saved to the cloud. They aren’t converted to another format.
• Edit Offline – You don’t have to be connected to the Internet to access your files, because they’re also on your computer. You’ll be able to sync any changes to your Google Docs once you have a connection again.

There are other tools out there that have similar benefits—Dropbox, Google Docs proper—but the little unobtrusive bonuses that Cloud Connect gives without making you change, well, anything about the way you work make it a winner for me.

A new version of Desire2Learn, D2L 9.1, has been released, and will soon be replacing our current version at DePaul. There are several systematic and aesthetic changes to the new version but one that will excite most teachers and students is the option to subscribe to discussion forums. With a simple mouse click, teachers and students will no longer need to check their courses for new discussion posts on a daily basis; the new posts will come directly to them.

In D2L 9.1, when you go to the discussions section of a course site, there are star icons on the left of the forums and topics list. By clicking on a star icon, you will be signing up for automatic e-mail updates whenever a new post is made to the discussion you subscribed to. A window will pop up asking you if you are sure that you want to subscribe to this forum and showing you the e-mail address that the notifications will be sent to. To change the settings of the subscription, click “Subscriptions” on the left-hand menu bar. From here you can choose how frequently you want notifications to be sent. For more options, click “Notification Preferences.” In this section you can change the e-mail address that the notifications are sent to if the default address is not one you check frequently.

Subscriptions to posts will be huge time savers for teachers and especially students who might have five classes each with several discussion forums. Students will no longer need to enter each course for updates or run the risk of missing a new post.

D2L still supports CD-ROM files

This certainly isn’t a bad thing, but it’s also not that cool. While this may prove useful to some users—teachers who use CD-ROMs provided by textbook publishers—it shows that the D2L developers are clinging to antiquated features and tools, which might eventually lead to an overbloated, slow product. And that’s not a good direction to be headed in when the product is already suffering from serious slowdown in certain tools, like Manage Files.

D2L tells you when there’s an error, but not much else

I should clarify: sometimes it doesn’t even tell you there’s an error. But in the cases that it does notify you of an error, D2L does a poor job of describing or explaining the nature of the error.

The above error occurs in the Manage Files area when you are trying to access a directory whose name exceeds the fifty-five-character limit. But instead it gives you some vague description about content path settings. And I’ve left out the best (read: worst) part: you can’t rename the directory from the Mange Files tool. So you’re stuck with a directory that breaks the entire copy-component procedure. The only solution from within D2L is to have the admin go through the database and rename the file manually.

D2L still uses pull-down menus for reordering content

While D2L does give us the option of going to the Course Builder tool where we can drag and drop to reorganize content, it’s just out of the way if you do most of your content building in the Manage Content area.

By the time I’ve gone to the Course Builder tool and reordered the content there, I’ve probably lost track of what I was doing in the first place. And if I use the pull-down menus to reorder in Manage Content, I have a hard time making a mental map of the reordered list once I start switching things around.

My wish list

• Stop supporting legacy features that aren’t likely to be used. Deprecate features like CD-ROM support and remove them in future upgrades.
• Provide more feedback and explanations on error dialogues (and in the error log).
• Make the Course Builder drag-and-drop functionality available in the Manage Content area—even if I have to click “Reorder” first to access it.

Have you ever sat down to compose an email or make a phone call and realized that what you want to say would be better expressed by showing someone your computer screen while talking about it? Some processes, ideas, feedback, or explanations are difficult to convey with only visuals (text and static images) or only audio (a phone conversation).  In this situation, a screencast could be very useful. Screencasting software can capture the visual of what is on your computer screen—websites, mouse movements, Word documents—as well as the audio of your speech, creating a narrated video for your audience. This is actually the process that was used to create all of the helpful tutorials on the Teaching Commons Desire2Learn page.

I have found screencasting especially valuable when explaining assignments and clarifying expectations in an online course. It’s also useful for teaching my parents new tech skills when I can’t visit them in person. To discover additional ways that screencasting can make your life easier, read these screencasting success stories.

If you would like to spend hundreds of dollars purchasing screencasting software, you can. Or you can opt for a free, downloadable program called Jing. With Jing, your screencasts can be up to 5 minutes in length and can be uploaded and stored at Screencast.com. If you are using the Jing free version, you will receive two gigabytes of storage and two gigabytes of bandwidth per month. (As with most free software, there is also a pay version of Jing, which offers additional storage and features.)

The first time you run Jing, you will be prompted to provide an email address, create a display name, and choose a password. This creates your Screencast.com account, and you will use this login to access your files once they are uploaded to Screencast.com.

In the following video, I demonstrate how easy it is to create a screencast using Jing once you’ve downloaded the software to your computer.

If you want to share a video you’ve saved to your Screencast.com account, one option is to embed it in a Web page. In the Desire2Learn system, videos can be embedded anywhere you have a text editor box—for example, a News Item, a Discussion Topic description, or an HTML page. This video at the Teaching Commons site demonstrates the process for embedding a video in Desire2Learn. Screencast.com also provides a link to your video, and you can share this link with others.

Good luck future screencasters, and feel free to share your own success story with a reply to this post.

There is always a learning curve when it comes to making a major change. DePaul’s switch from Blackboard to its new learning-management system, Desire2Learn, is no exception, but don’t be afraid! With some knowledge, training from Faculty Instructional Technology Services, and a little practice, Desire2Learn skills are easily within your reach.

First, Consider the Metaphor

In Blackboard, course materials, whether for a fully online class or a hybrid course, were posted in a folder structure, with folders generally as buckets for weeks or modules. A syllabus, for instance, would be uploaded as a new “item” into a specific location, which was a folder.

Desire2Learn has a tree-structure, rather than folders. Navigation is across the top of the course, rather than on the left, as my colleague Eric talks about here. In Desire2Learn, a course generates with a more fluid structure in place, as opposed to Blackboard, which had a handful of set menu items. In Desire2Learn, you get to decide how you want your course to look and where your items should be.

Next, Decide How It Should Look

Think about how you want your course structured: Do you just need a place for students to access your syllabus and weekly readings? Are you teaching fully online in a weekly schedule? Do you use modules? Is your course ten weeks? Five weeks? FITS has a variety of templates for download, that, when imported into your course, will create a basic structure in which you can organize your course. The templates will build the empty “buckets” in which you can upload or create the course materials you need.

Then, Begin to Build

Once you’ve determined how your course should be arranged, you can upload files through the “Manage Course Files” section of your course (accessed when you click “Content” in the Navbar). Once you’ve uploaded the files you need in your course, it is easy to drag and drop them into the module or structure where you want it to live using the “Course Builder” tool. The Course Builder also allows you to create new pages, like a new “item” in Blackboard. You can copy text from Word documents (from, example, a syllabus) and paste it into a page.

And of Course, Ask for Help

Getting from your empty course shell to a fully built, fully featured course offering might not happen the first time you sit down in front of Desire2Learn. When you get caught up in a question you can’t answer, FITS is here to help. DePaul Faculty have access to on-campus training at Lincoln Park and in the Loop designed to teach the basics of course building, as well as proficiency with specific tools. FITS also offers an online, self-paced training course, which offers documentation, tutorials, and point-of-contact support.