Free, Interactive Timelines with Chronozoom

I would like to introduce you to a free, online educational tool called Chronozoom. A product of the Microsoft Research team and the department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Chronozoom is designed to create dynamic, interactive timelines complete with images, videos, and other forms of media. Once you register with a free account, you can choose to view a large variety of featured pre-built timelines, or you can start your own. After choosing a start and end date, you can populate the timeline with any number of events (called Exhibits) and link to various existing media from around the web. When finished, you can even create a guided tour through your timeline. If you have a Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) account, you can include documents or images saved in the cloud.

Create your own interactive timeline at http://www.chronozoom.com. Check out the videos below to learn more about the creation of Chronozoom.

A Virtual Art Library

Continuing a the theme of free online learning resources, Getty has made available over 250 art books in a new virtual library, with a promise of more to come.

Here's what James Cuno, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, writes about it in The Getty Iris:

When we launched the Open Content Program last summer and released 4,600 collection images to the public (a number that has since more than doubled), I cited this quote from the most recent museum edition of the NMC Horizon Report: “it is now the mark—and social responsibility—of world-class institutions to develop and share free cultural and educational resources.” This dictum continues to inform our efforts here at the Getty, and today I am very pleased to share with you our latest project in this arena, the Virtual Library: An open, online repository of more than 250 Getty publications from our 45-year publishing history, available as high-quality scans to read online, or to download in their entirety, for free.

Explore it here: http://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/

Making the transition from classroom to online?

On of the great misconceptions among teachers and administrators who have never developed or taught an online class and that is that teaching online is easier than brick-and-mortar classroom. teaching. The assumption is that once the course is online, it will somehow run itself.

Wrong.

Why?

I know it may not be politically correct to quote someone from Penn State (old rivalries die hard), but Dr. Lawrence C. Ragan has written a terrific, and succinct, commentary on this subject in "From Real to Virtual Classrooms: The 5 Key Transition Points." 

Here are Dr. Ragan's 5 points with a few highlights I find particularly worthy of mentioning…

1. Teaching Presence

"Contrary to the belief of many novice online educators, the role of the online faculty member requires more, not less, attention to the role of instructor."
and
"Many of the traditional teaching methods do not translate well to the online classroom."

2. Changing Classroom Dynamics

"The type of and frequency of interactions changes online, and new boundaries for classroom behavior may need to be established."

3. Time Management

"It is generally accepted that the online classroom will require an additional 10-15% of faculty member’s time to successfully complete the course."

4. Learner Characteristics

"This potential diversity of learners can also challenge the faculty member to reconsider what she knows and believes of the students in their class."

5. Technology Interface

"The specific technological skill sets required to “survive” a first or even third online course offering can be very different than those developed after five or more offerings."
and
"Most learning management systems are complex, data driven environments with hidden and often overwhelming levels of nuance."

Have I whetted your interest? Then go to Dr. Ragan's post to see more.

The LMS, IE, and Quirks Mode

For the more advanced user of WebCT Vista, Blackboard Learn 9, Angel, etc., who uses web technologies to design rich, visually striking, interactive learning content, there is a perpetual thorn in the side: quirks mode. What is quirks mode? In short, any time the doctype code on an html page header is not done properly (and the first thing the browser sees), most web browsers go into quirks mode to try to compensate for a web page that seems broken. Usually the web browser renders the page as an older version of that browser.

The problem? Even if your html pages are spot-on perfect and standards compliant, WebCT, Blackboard, etc., add a bunch of html and JavaScript to the top of your pages when they serve them up. This makes the browser think the pages are broken, and it goes into quirks mode to try to compensate.

If you use html to create course content to upload into your online course, you’ve probably seen some of the problems caused by this, even if you didn’t know the cause. Most of the problems are caused in Internet Explorer, which renders as IE 5.5 or 6. So any html page you create to upload into an LMS system must be designed to work in IE5.5 or 6, or it will break for your students, even if they are on IE 8 or 10.

For more information on what breaks in different browsers I quirks mode, have a look at quirksmode.org’s excellent guide. It could lead you to the cause of the persistent, mysterious, illogical html problem you’ve been having in your online course:

http://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html

Pulverizing Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty that involves taking another person's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. This type of cheating can represent a significant challenge for educators to mitigate. Listed below is a sampling of websites that will (for a fee) search the internet to determine if a person is misrepresenting someone else's work.

Catch It First 

Billed as "The most advanced online plagiarism detection service," Catch It First checks submitted documents against billions of web pages and generates what it calls an "originality report."

EVE2 

The Essay Verification Engine (EVE) Plagiarism Detection System generates reports that include the percentage of the paper that has been plagiarized along with an annotated copy that has all violations highlighted in red.

iThenticate 

iThenticate claims to be the "leading provider of professional plagiarism detection and prevention technology." It compares written documents against a database of over 32 billion web pages and 125 million content items. iThenticate is actually developed by Turn It In.

SafeAssign 

Hosted by Blackboard and offered to its clients is the plagiarism prevention service called SafeAssign. In addition to checking for instances of copying, this service has features designed to educate students about plagiarism and the significance of proper citation of any borrowed content.

Turn It In 

Using a proprietary algorithm, Turn It In compares documents submitted to several databases that consist of over 24 billion web pages, 250 million student papers, and leading library databases and publications. This service is very popular among educators and includes features such as OriginalityCheck, GradeMark, and PeerMark.

Keep Your Head in the (Word) Clouds with Wordle

A few days ago, a co-worker of mine introduced me to Wordle, and I was immediately intrigued by its potential. Wordle is a quick, easy, and free tool designed to help anyone create word clouds without the need for additional software. You provide the text that will make up the word cloud, and then Wordle outputs the resulting image. One can either copy and paste text into the tool or enter the URL of any blog, blog feed, or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed. After generating your word cloud, you have the option of changing the color, layout, fonts, and language.

As an instructional designer, I find that word clouds are often useful as an ideal way of positioning text to represent certain concepts visually. Wordle will benefit those interested in utilizing the educational value of word clouds without necessitating the acquisition and operation of expensive image manipulation software. Try it out today at http://www.wordle.net/. 

Cool Tools for Your Online/Blended Learning Course

For both face to face and online lectures, variety is important. In part, this is what chunking is about - breaking up the text with paragraphs, headings and even graphics. Nevertheless, you can take it a step further by presenting your material differently altogether. This may include using video, interactive scenarios, PowerPoint, or a combination of all three.

However, you can use some neat online tools for the alternative info-dump lecture. Best of all they are free! Here are a few of my favorite: