TLT

It’s beginning to look like I’m on the advertising team for Google lately given my past blog posts but I have to tell you about one more thing, Google-related, that I ran across that I thought you might find interesting.

This site called 3DVinci, created by Bonnie Roskes, has tons of resources for ways to teach math concepts but the main thing they turned me on to was how to use Google Sketchup to teach geometry concepts.  I’ll be the first to tell you that I stink at math, especially geometry.  I also have a really hard time with visualizing 3D objects.  Going through some of these simple video tutorials offered on their sight opened up a whole new world for me.  I was able to create objects in 3D, not just draw them, and them move them around, see them from all sides.  It was amazing and really very easy.

Google SketchUp is a 3D modeling application that is free and works on both Mac and Windows.  Now if you’re like me you are probably thinking 3D modeling sounds like more than you can get into but trust me when I say it’s not hard to do at all.  While this application can be used to do very detailed 3D renderings of buildings and other objects it can also be used to create basic geometric forms and that’s what is focused on in the 3DVinci tutorials.  There is also a great community of users, many of whom are educators, that can help you through as you’re getting started.

Getting Started

Start off by downloading SketchUp.  Once you do that, you may want to take a quick Getting Started Tour, just to familiarize yourself with the interface.  Then dive straight into Bonnie’s videos.  I started with Creating Easy Tessellations in Google SketchUp.   You’ll have so much fun!

Bonnie and 3DVinci have many other videos posted on YouTube.  Check them out at http://www.youtube.com/user/bonnieroskes and make sure to click the “Show All” link in the right side menu or you won’t see them all.  Here’s a short list of just a few of the lessons on this site:

• Making an Icosahedron
• 2D Tesselation: the Hirschorn Tile
• Divide a Cube into Three Pyramids
• Conic Sections

In addition to the videos there are also pre-created models that you can download and use.

Resources and Links

• Download Google Sketchup
• Self-paced Sketchup Tutorials
• 3DVinci: Free Stuff for Everyone

Holy smokes it’s about time!   You can now share entire folders in Google Docs.  This is great news because so often faculty want to share large numbers of files with their students.  In the past you had to upload or create a file then share it with your class.  If you have 8 people in your class then no big deal.  However, if you have 60 people in your class this takes a really long time.  And this had to be repeated each time you uploaded/created a new file!  Now all you have to do is create a folder and share it and from then on everything you put in the folder will have the same rights you assigned the folder.  This is going to make life SO much easier!

Also new, and in the same vein as folder sharing, is the ability to upload multiple files at one time.  This will also facilitate the sharing of large numbers of files (docs, excel, powerpoint, images and pdf)

Happy sharing!

We had to make a minor upgrade to the blog server this weekend.  All looks good to me so far but if you have any problems with your blog please email the webmasters (webmaster@cofc.edu) and let them know.  Hope everyone had a great weekend.

I have no idea how long some of these things have been in Google Docs but I just discovered them today so I thought I’d pass them on to you.  There has actually be a bunch of features added but these are the things I think may be of the most use (at least to me

• Translate document
  You can now translate an entire document into over 40 languages. Learn more
• Drawings and diagrams
  Create your own drawings and diagrams in Google Docs and use them in your text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. As with the rest of Google Docs, your drawings are auto-saved and you can edit them collaboratively. To get started, open a document and select Insert > Drawing. Learn more
  
• Find and replace toolbar for text documents
  The “Find and replace” feature in the text document Edit menu has gotten a makeover and an upgrade. Now it’s a slick toolbar that sports case matching, whole word matching as well as regular expression-style matching. Learn more
  
• Plus the ever awesome Forms feature but that’s for a later post (mmwa ha ha)

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

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.

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.”

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).

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.

I have it on good authority that the CofC blog server is going to be upgraded to a new version within the week.  It’s a vastly different look and feel but it works the same way.  I am currently working on new tutorials and will post them as soon as they are ready!