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Higher education conferences over the past few years have been full of presentations, papers and panels on the processes involved in migrating a campus and its people to Google Apps for Education. While it is useful to hear about marketing tchotchkes, data validation, and the pros and cons of web clients, what seems to get ignored is the process that led to the decision to move to Google Apps in the first place. At North Carolina State University, where students were already using Google Apps, the decision to move employees involved almost as much time, effort and heartache as the technical migration. As the users saw it, they had a working system, even if that system only worked because of huge expenditures of time and money both on the backend server maintenance and the client need to implement terribly complex workarounds for simple functionality. The end result: a 94-page white paper and the realization that it's hard to sell ice to Eskimos1 , even if you show them that their ice has already melted. This paper and presentation will discuss the information gathering and needs assessment done by NC State prior to the decision to move employees to Google Apps, and the successes and difficulties involved.

We have an opportunity in course design, to bring all of the stake-holders to the table. Course design should not just be up to a dept. or a single teacher. Course development can be an opportunity to bring in a librarian, someone from student advising, disabled student services and programs, and developmental education. A course design process can show an instructor how to connect their classroom with other students, instructors, and experts in the field. It can be an opportunity to connect students with professional networks as well as other colleges and schools.  What I have been finding is that when you bring everyone to the table to talk about a course, you can discover many different ways to connect your course to the community than you would have ever thought of yourself.

Here are some resources for outcomes. I have written some guides, which are attached, along with an editable .docx you may use at your institution for training. I have attempted to break down outcomes design, building, and reporting through a 4-Step process and have provided a short video going through the steps

angel to canvas selection process

Following an evaluation process that encompassed almost two years, Michigan Tech selected the Canvas Learning Management System,from Instructure, Inc. It was the clear choice of faculty and student testers, and is very intuitive and easy to use.

"Canvas has drastically improved this process, so you should be able to easily import courses from your existing Blackboard course archive files. [Learn more about finding your course archives.] "

Why did 3.5 million people wake up in the mid-1990s and decide that they needed or wanted a college credential?

Coincidence is not a sociological construct so I assume there is some social process at work here.

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the AAEEBL ePortfolio Review (AePR)! Designed to provide space for emerging thinking about ePortfolio research and practice, as well as a publication opportunity for those working in and with ePortfolio, the AePR focuses on timely, important topics written by leaders in the field. The articles may focus on a current controversy in our community that perhaps cannot be quickly or expeditiously addressed through a careful research process or on specific topics of interest to the wider ePortfolio community (for instance, assessment, high impact practices, etc.). As such, we welcome articles that are initial reports on research, case studies of ePortfolio practices and pedagogies, and think-pieces that move the field forward. We want to ensure that the AePR is relevant to you and your work with ePortfolios so we also welcome ideas for future issue themes and topics - let us know if you have ideas!

Book review I know that our faculty friends in the humanities have a lot of advice to offer for facilitating student writing, but often it doesn't seem to fit the context of quantitative work (or at least, the benefits are lost in the translation of the process). Enter Student Writing in the Quantitative Disciplines: A Guide for College Faculty by Patrick Bahls, 

nstructure has engaged Securus Global to test the Canvas LMS product for security vulnerabilities. Instructure also invited me to be an independent observer - participating in the process and independently reporting on the testing and Instructure's response to any vulnerabilities identified.

The "publish" button isn't the end of the process. Now it's time to talk to-and learn from-strangers.

explore the design and evaluation of digital media assignments. Using basic technology tools to chart story lines and to design media projects, participants will explore the use of media as an argumentative tool. In doing so, participants will explore the different processes and stages involved in the development of media assignments. This workshop will explore the ways in which we can clearly articulate goals and criteria with our students and with a thorough knowledge of content driven media projects. Participants will leave the workshop with evaluation criteria that is useful not only for evaluating student projects but that may also be used to critique existing media productions.

The mission of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy is to promote open scholarly discourse around critical and creative uses of digital technology in teaching, learning, and research. Educational institutions have often embraced instrumentalist conceptions and market-driven implementations of technology that overdetermine its uses in academic environments. Such approaches underestimate the need for critical engagement with the integration of technological tools into pedagogical practice. The JITP will endeavor to counter these trends by recentering questions of pedagogy in our discussions of technology in higher education. The journal will also work to change what counts as scholarship - and how it is presented, disseminated, and reviewed - by allowing contributors to develop their ideas, publish their work, and engage their readers using multiple formats. We are committed first and foremost to teaching and learning, and intend that the journal itself - both in process and in product - provide opportunities to reveal, reflect on, and revise academic publication and classroom practice.

"iPad deployment includes all of the steps between buying an iPad and beginning to use the device. For an individual's personal iPad, this is often a very fast and easy process lasting no longer than five minutes: You just open the box, turn it on, download the apps you want on your device, and go. But for a school, or district, with potentially hundreds of iPads-each one requiring a specialized list of apps that need to be purchased before protecting the devices with a case and sending them out to classrooms. As an administrator or teacher, there are a few things you will need to know before you deploy your iPads. Lucky for you, the eSpark Engineering team has created a five step road map to aid in this journey, highlighting the best practices and considerations relevant to deploying and supporting iPads in education environments."

It's FREE! Processing videos with filesize up to 300 MB Analyse video files and provide in-depth information such as video codec, bitrate, resolution, frame rate... Video converter supporting all well known file formats (3GP, AMV, ASF, AVI, FLV, MKV, MOV, M4V, MP4, MPEG, MPG, RM, VOB, WMV). - Simple mode: select output video format only - Advanced mode: wider range of settings available video settings: video codec, resolution, bitrate , framerate audio settings: audio codec, bitrate, sampling rate, channels Add watermark text to a video file Cut video by setting new start and end time Crop video with just few clicks Merge several video files into a single one Demux video files (extract audio, video or subtitles from a file) Record video from a webcam or any other available input device Take video snapshots (make video thumbnails) Add (hard-coded) subitles to a video file Download flash videos from more than 20 video sharing sites

GeoTagging: The process of attaching geographic information to digital media, most often photos. Here, we focus on geotagging, geocaching, and even orienteering for schools, clubs, and organizations. See: http://edgis.org/geotag

"Retrieving legacy files As the old dropbox knew no separation of files by assignment (one of its major limitations), it was not possible to move these files into assignments during the upgrade, and there is no storage area facility available into which they could have been moved, so they are not directly accessible within the application after an upgrade or in courses restored from earlier versions. The old dropbox code used Perl, which has been completely removed from the web application in release 9, so the dropbox cannot be accessed anymore to retrieve the legacy files. A rudimentary Java-based interface is being provided to enable each user individually to download any legacy files they may wish to retrieve. These files can then be submitted in newly created assignments as desired or stored in one's Virtual Hard Drive inside the Blackboard Content System, if that is licensed by the institution and enabled by the system administrator. Unfortunately this interface is not exposed via any link in the application. System administrators or helpdesk staff can however make available such a link to their users, either assisting them with file retrieval on an individual basis or by publishing the download link to their users, e.g. in a system announcement. Community Engagement license holders may also wish to add an HTML portal module with this link, thus simplifying the download process, or add it as external link to the tool panel (in the portal menu column). The location of this interface (relative to your server root) is: /webapps/blackboard/execute/ddb It is important to note that this is not a file system location. You actually have to access the URL via a web browser! Sample HTML for a portal module named something like "Digital Dropbox Download": Download your digital dropbox files here When a user accesses this link, he will either see a message that no files were found for him, or a list of courses in w

Here's a valuable set of resources for Health Sciences education: "60 public access virtual patient cases released under a Creative Commons licence for open use and reuse. Cases were created working with subject experts in workshops across the province. Using the open-source OpenLabyrinth platform the PINE project has a research and development theme investigating common simulation, gaming and narrative patterns in educational case design. This is facilitated by the use of the Vue topic mapping toolset that allows authors to create visual representations of activities and decision making processes."

SimpleDiagrams is a small desktop application that helps you express your ideas quickly and simply. There's just enough functionality to describe a thought or capture a process. SimpleDiagrams keeps the visual expression clear through the simple design of library items and backgrounds.

Listen, create and share FREE geolocalized audioguides.

Via Judy "I just ran across a website that is a really exciting tool for anyone reflecting on their foreign travel or interested in practicing their foreign language.Woices  www.woices.com is a website that gives you the ability to create free geolocalized audioguides. Sample guides are:* a walk in Valencia http://woices.com/walk/33 in Spanish * a walk in London London http://woices.com/walk/13 in English. Students could create their own tours of places they have been. Woices walks you through the process and provides the map, a place to upload your own photos and the ability to record 10 minutes of audio at each stop. When you're done you can embed the production in any web page and download the audio file.It creates a very nice product and one that others would want to listen to and learn from.If you know someone not listed here who you think might enjoy this, please pass it on."