Mendi Benigni

Seth Anderson just turned me on to this great link from Penn State.  This page gives you all the formulas you would need to make a great and effective gradebook using Excel. Some of the examples it covers are:

• Summing Up Scores
• Calculating a Numeric Percentage
• Convert Numeric Percentage to Letter Grades
• Weighting Assignments by Points
• Weighting Assignments by Percentage
• Dropping Lowest Score
• Dropping the Lowest Two (or More) Scores
• Keeping the Highest Score
• Keeping the Highest Two (or More) Scores
• Maintaining a Running Grade

Tags: English, New Stuff, Philosophy, education, tlt // Add Comment »

I just added some new tutorials that may be helpful to you and your students.  Check them out at http://benignim.pbworks.com/Tutorials

• Learn about RSS feeds, what they are and how to use them.
• Learn how to create a blog on the new CofC blog server.

Tags: New Stuff, tlt // Add Comment »

I know this has probably been around for a bit but I just noticed it today (thanks to Wesley Fryer’s Moving at the Speed of Creativity).  Now Google has easy to use, form-based templates that can be used with Docs, Spreadsheets or Presentations.  Finally you can get a decent looking online presentation.  These not only add a bit of punch to otherwise boring documents but can be very useful for teachers when teaching math or business or a variety of number-based concepts.

They are easy to get to but not very noticable.  Just log into Google Docs as you normally would.  Then from the top of the page you can either choose to search for a template by category or to browse the templates available.  Once you find what you’re after, just click “Use this Template.”

Tags: New Stuff // Add Comment »

I just heard about an online, free screen recording application called ScreenToaster so I thought I’d test it out.  It works pretty well.  The best thing is it doesn’t require any software to be downloaded to your computer, it’s totally online.

What is it?

“ScreenToaster is a free web-based screen recorder designed to capture screen activity in real-time to rapidly create and share tutorials, demos, training, lectures and more.”

Why use screen capture software?

• Create demonstrations
• Great for teaching math or science equations
• Create video “talking head” with PowerPoint slide
• Record lecture

These are only a few.  If you have others please add them via the comments area.  I’m always looking for input.

Compared to Jing

Some of you may have heard of or are using Jing which is a screencast program created by TechSmith.  I’ve been using this program for awhile and really like it.  However, the problem I have is that it only saves the files in .swf format and that is not easily converted for further editing.  Jing is an application that runs from your computer so it may produce smoother video captures since network speed isn’t an issue (although I’ve not tested this).

Tags: software // Add Comment »

Have you ever wished that you could have a threaded conversation within your blog instead of using WebCT? Well now you can. Thanks to John and Jared (CofC Webmasters) and the new blog server upgrade you can have threaded comments. It’s easy to do.

• from within the admin area of  your blog click on Settings
• now click on Discussion
• in the main window click Enable threaded (nested) comments next to Other comment settings
• from the small dropdown window choose the number of threaded levels you wish to allow
• click Save Changes

The second thing of note is that only a few blog templates allow the discussions to display as threaded even though you’ve turned threaded on in your settings.  To have the threading display properly you will need to use Twodder, Gear, Simplish or P2. Remember, these are the only themes that will actually display the threaded comments.

Now with your threaded comments you can actually track “conversation” in your blog posting making it much more useful for your class.

Tags: software, tlt, tutorials // Add Comment »