by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program
So last week I was MIA from the blog for a couple of reasons, but the biggest and most important one is because I was working to fix some problems with the lectures in my online Standard Freshman Composition class.
So last week I was MIA from the blog for a couple of reasons, but the biggest and most important one is because I was working to fix some problems with the lectures in my online Standard Freshman Composition class.
We have a thriving distance education program here at SCCC. Of course, you may noticed this already because of the volume of emails coming from the Office of Instructional Technology about Blackboard training sessions. This summer, the college changed their official course management system from Desire2Learn (or D2L) to Blackboard Learn. Everyone who'd been teaching online or using D2L to web-enhance their traditional classrooms were instructed to copy, transfer, and/or archive any course material (and grades) they'd posted and saved in D2L before the conversion at the end of August -- because, with some exceptions, D2L is gone by now, and we have no way to access that old material.
For most of us, this was a more time-consuming task than a difficult one, and files were saved and grades were archived with relatively (relatively) few problems. And some of us viewed the change to a new course management system as a chance to revamp our courses, reviewing and editing, or perhaps even recreating, entire lectures or quizzes or activities as we geared up for the new academic year.
I was one such sucker person. In prior semesters, I'd posted my "lectures" to D2L in the form of essays inside each content module, or sometimes as a series of mini-essays embedded within the Discussion Boards. But as I moved material into Blackboard Learn for my online comp class, I thought I'd give those lectures a much-needed update and . . . cue the sad trombone music . . . use PowerPoint slides with audio recordings saved over them (wah wah wahhhhhh).
Yes, you read that correctly. I thought I'd use PowerPoint. Finally. Because updating my course means using software that was the hot new thing in 1990.
*facepalm*
So anyway . . . I reduced my essays to slides and then sat talking to my computer for 30 minutes or so for each lecture in an effort to give the PPT presentations a little more energy than subjects like "The Writing Process" entail naturally.
Two weeks ago, just before I was about to open the next learning module which held the "Writing Process" lecture, I decided to sit through my PPT and make sure everything was cool.
Everything was NOT cool. Everything was very much un-cool.
The audio would play, but it played about 50 seconds (if that) of audio per slide, even though I might have been speaking away merrily for 5 full minutes. So . . . I spent much of my weekend attempt to rerecord the lectures, without much success. And then (after wasting so much precious time) I did some online helpdesk trolling and realized that PowerPoint for Mac is essentially not-to-be-trusted when it comes to doing anything other than making rinky-dink slides. Because Apple wants you to use their presentation software, Keynote. And Microsoft wants you to forget that Macs have better firewalls and more lasting hardware, and begin buying a new Dell or HP every two years.
Where was I? Oh yes.Corporate America is trying to ruin my life. No, wait. The purpose of my story:
Well, it has a two-fold purpose.
One, to introduce you to the idea of online teaching (if you're teaching faculty), or at the very least, to the idea of web-enhancing your traditional classroom through the available course management system. You can apply to be assigned an online course that's already being taught at SCCC, or you can apply for release time to design an online (or Blended or DL classroom) course. If you're interested in any of these forms of online teaching, first go to your MYSCCC page and click on the Suffolk Online tab -- and then select "Online Faculty":
Then, scroll down and examine the left-hand side of the screen. You'll see these lovely options:
You click on the icons/pictures to access the documents. (You can't do that from here, though, silly.) The DE Guidebook will give you a fairly comprehensive look at our program at SCCC -- and those forms, well . . . if you can't read the fine print in that screen shot, it says this:
Also, the Suffolk Online tab of MYSCCC also lists all of those online training sessions in Blackboard which were referred to in the Office of Instructional Technology emails we received. Just in case you accidentally deleted those emails or misplaced them.
Why would I be encouraging you to teach online or web-enhance your classes when I've struggled so much this past week? Because you're probably more computer-savvy than I am, for one. But also because . . . despite my hiccups with the technology . . . I've been a member of our online faculty for a few years now, and I know that it serves a definite and specific student need at Suffolk. We have students who are caregivers to sick family; single parents; night-shift workers; people with limited physical freedom living in rehabilitation centers and nursing homes, but who still want to learn and exchange ideas in an academic forum; and students with unique living/work situations that most of us would be hard-pressed to imagine.
Teaching online isn't a fool's errand and it isn't easy. Teaching online takes a lot (A LOT) of work and really good time management skills (which I'm still -- still -- working on). But it's rewarding, and our institution needs good DE faculty.
My second purpose for writing this long blog post about my misadventures with PowerPoint (cue sound of teeth gritting) is that I think it may help you to know, teaching and nonteaching faculty alike-- about a potential problem with PowerPoint. For all of my jokes, I know a lot of us, teaching and nonteaching faculty alike, use PowerPoint in meetings if not classrooms.
I'm not sure how many of you have attempted to record audio with PowerPoint for Mac. Maybe most of you have Microsoft-friendly hardware. But I sure as hell would have been happy to know about these potential (read: inevitable) problems before I spent every free minute on a Saturday and Sunday (and most of the following Monday) trying to fix the unfixable. Maybe, if I share this story with you, you can avoid wasting your own precious time with technological rabbit-holes.
This is one the aims of this blog: to share information that has the potential to make your first year here more manageable.
To that end, I'm going to begin archiving the papers and presentation notes from our New Member Discussion Series events on this blog. Beginning this Thursday I'll publish, as a separate blog post, Misty Curelli's lovely paper from the Friday, September 12 event titled "Hindsight: What You Can Learn from My First Year." Then two weeks later I'll publish Nick Giordano's piece. And following that, Jason Ramirez's talking points.
This way, if you had to miss the event, you won't miss out on all of the information that was shared. (We had a large and fabulously engaged crowd -- thank you to everyone who attended!)
Yes, you read that correctly. I thought I'd use PowerPoint. Finally. Because updating my course means using software that was the hot new thing in 1990.
 |
| Me, more or less, trying to record audio on PowerPoint |
*facepalm*
So anyway . . . I reduced my essays to slides and then sat talking to my computer for 30 minutes or so for each lecture in an effort to give the PPT presentations a little more energy than subjects like "The Writing Process" entail naturally.
Two weeks ago, just before I was about to open the next learning module which held the "Writing Process" lecture, I decided to sit through my PPT and make sure everything was cool.
Everything was NOT cool. Everything was very much un-cool.
The audio would play, but it played about 50 seconds (if that) of audio per slide, even though I might have been speaking away merrily for 5 full minutes. So . . . I spent much of my weekend attempt to rerecord the lectures, without much success. And then (after wasting so much precious time) I did some online helpdesk trolling and realized that PowerPoint for Mac is essentially not-to-be-trusted when it comes to doing anything other than making rinky-dink slides. Because Apple wants you to use their presentation software, Keynote. And Microsoft wants you to forget that Macs have better firewalls and more lasting hardware, and begin buying a new Dell or HP every two years.
Where was I? Oh yes.
Well, it has a two-fold purpose.
One, to introduce you to the idea of online teaching (if you're teaching faculty), or at the very least, to the idea of web-enhancing your traditional classroom through the available course management system. You can apply to be assigned an online course that's already being taught at SCCC, or you can apply for release time to design an online (or Blended or DL classroom) course. If you're interested in any of these forms of online teaching, first go to your MYSCCC page and click on the Suffolk Online tab -- and then select "Online Faculty":
 | |||||||
Yes, I took this terrible photo with my phone because the Snippit Tool wouldn't allow me to capture the drop down option. |
Then, scroll down and examine the left-hand side of the screen. You'll see these lovely options:
 |
| A bit small, I know, but them's the breaks. |
You click on the icons/pictures to access the documents. (You can't do that from here, though, silly.) The DE Guidebook will give you a fairly comprehensive look at our program at SCCC -- and those forms, well . . . if you can't read the fine print in that screen shot, it says this:
The following are forms for faculty who wish to:
- Be assigned to their first online course
- Develop and teach a course never presented online before
Also, the Suffolk Online tab of MYSCCC also lists all of those online training sessions in Blackboard which were referred to in the Office of Instructional Technology emails we received. Just in case you accidentally deleted those emails or misplaced them.
Why would I be encouraging you to teach online or web-enhance your classes when I've struggled so much this past week? Because you're probably more computer-savvy than I am, for one. But also because . . . despite my hiccups with the technology . . . I've been a member of our online faculty for a few years now, and I know that it serves a definite and specific student need at Suffolk. We have students who are caregivers to sick family; single parents; night-shift workers; people with limited physical freedom living in rehabilitation centers and nursing homes, but who still want to learn and exchange ideas in an academic forum; and students with unique living/work situations that most of us would be hard-pressed to imagine.
Teaching online isn't a fool's errand and it isn't easy. Teaching online takes a lot (A LOT) of work and really good time management skills (which I'm still -- still -- working on). But it's rewarding, and our institution needs good DE faculty.
My second purpose for writing this long blog post about my misadventures with PowerPoint (cue sound of teeth gritting) is that I think it may help you to know, teaching and nonteaching faculty alike-- about a potential problem with PowerPoint. For all of my jokes, I know a lot of us, teaching and nonteaching faculty alike, use PowerPoint in meetings if not classrooms.
I'm not sure how many of you have attempted to record audio with PowerPoint for Mac. Maybe most of you have Microsoft-friendly hardware. But I sure as hell would have been happy to know about these potential (read: inevitable) problems before I spent every free minute on a Saturday and Sunday (and most of the following Monday) trying to fix the unfixable. Maybe, if I share this story with you, you can avoid wasting your own precious time with technological rabbit-holes.
This is one the aims of this blog: to share information that has the potential to make your first year here more manageable.
To that end, I'm going to begin archiving the papers and presentation notes from our New Member Discussion Series events on this blog. Beginning this Thursday I'll publish, as a separate blog post, Misty Curelli's lovely paper from the Friday, September 12 event titled "Hindsight: What You Can Learn from My First Year." Then two weeks later I'll publish Nick Giordano's piece. And following that, Jason Ramirez's talking points.
This way, if you had to miss the event, you won't miss out on all of the information that was shared. (We had a large and fabulously engaged crowd -- thank you to everyone who attended!)
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