ctcLink

Starting April 1st, 2013 I will be starting a new position at Tacoma Community College.  I will be stepping down as eLearning Director to assume the position of ctcLink Project Director for TCC.  Christopher Soran, who also contributes to this blog, will be taking over as the eLearning Director in my absence.

What is ctcLink?  ctcLink is a very large project for the entire Washington State Community and Technical College system where we will migrate from our, very old, administrative system (registration, financial aid, payroll, etc...) to a modern platform.  This modern platform is an implementation of PeopleSoft from the vendor Ciber.

Tacoma Community College has been chosen to be a FirstLink college, which means we will be one of the first institutions to go through this migration.  My role as Project Director will be to try and make this migration run as smoothly as possible for the students, faculty and staff at TCC.  I am very excited about this project as it should make all the administrative processes at TCC easier to use.  

This new role will be taking up a lot of my time so I probably will not be able to post to this blog as often as I would like, but I do plan on contributing information about this project as it relates to student use of the new system.  If you would like to learn more about the project you can check out the ctcLink Connect blog.

Online Student Success

After reading Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences Across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas from the Community College Research Center (CCRC) (http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/adaptability- to-online-learning.html) I was very happy I had attended the Instructional Technology Council eLearning conference a couple of weeks ago.

This report looks at online courses in the Washington State Community and Technical College system. Although I may not agree with everything listed in this report it really did illustrate to me that we need to be doing more to support online student success. I believe that the eLearning department at TCC has done a great job supporting faculty and students with the technology used to teach/learn online, but there is more to teaching and learning online than just the technology. We really need to start incorporating other skills around time management, productivity and work/school/life balance to our workshops as these can be just as, if not more important, than some of the technological skills.

There were a couple of really good sessions at the eLearning conference that I think will be helpful as we develop activities to help promote online student success. The first session was a vendor hosted session on SmarterMeasure. SmarterMeasure is an assessment tool that helps students identify their readiness to take online classes. The assessment focuses on technical aptitude, school/life balance and time management. Once the student has completed the 30 minute assessment they receive a report that gives the student a good picture of their readiness to take online courses. This information is also available to eLearning staff so we can work with students on problem areas and refer them to campus resources as necessary.

The second helpful session I attended was about an online student success course that the Alamo colleges are offering. This course covered the technology but also focused on the other areas mentioned above that promote student success. This course was offered in the learning management system so students could become familiar with the tools.

I think using the SmarterMeasure assessment in conjunction with an online student success course will be invaluable to our eLearning students. Maybe this strategy will go a long way to change some of the troubling statistics that were mentioned in the CCRC report.  

What do you think?  If we created a free online student success course that was offered during Week Zero, would you be interested in taking it?  Let us know in the comments.

Free Video Editors for Windows

Well it comes to that video essay you've dreamed of for a very long time. Or, your video assignment for the speech class. You've got your footage, photos, audio bits, and now you're ready to mash them all in the nicest piece you've ever dreamed of. But one thing that beginning video makers and video editors spend more time deciding is the video editing software they will use for the post-production. Here is a list of some titles that you could use for just basic trimming, transitions, photo slideshows, and voice over. This list will not prioritize the titles by best to worst or vice versa, I am just sharing the ones I found useful and easy to learn.

Be also aware that these titles are freely available on the world wide web and so be careful where you download them from. I am including the links to the maker sites but if for some reason you decide to download them from somewhere else you are doing that upon your own risk. I would also suggest that you scan for viruses before you install any software downloaded from the world wide web. As free ware these titles will suggest that you install toolbars or search engines but you can uncheck the suggestive boxes during installation. Keep your PC safe!!!

1. Windows Live Movie Maker is a given one. It comes as a part of your operating system or you can download it from Microsoft's website. Follow this download LINK if you would like to use this editor.

Here is a number of tasks you could complete using this editor:

- Import and edit slide shows and videos.

- Add photos and footage from your PC or camera. 

- Move elements of your project around.

- Speed it up or slow it down - it’s up to you.

- Add a soundtrack and a theme.

- Add transitions and effects. If you choose a theme they will be added automatically.

- Share your movie online on Facebook, YouTube or other social networking and video sharing sites.

2. Avidemux [this one is actually available for Mac, Windows, and Linux].

This title is very simple and straight forward with basic tasks such as cut, paste, and encode. Avidemux will not allow you to add multiple tracks of video, photo or audio, though. It is just a very simplified and fast cutter. So, if you have a video you would like to use and would like to prep your shorts before mixing them up in an editor you could select the parts you need and get rid of the ones that don't have any useful content. 

3. VirtualDub. If you all you can get from your camera is an .avi file format then this editor is for you. Be aware that VirtualDub will not work with QuickTime files. Also, do not mix different type files as the program may crash and you will lose progress. Very simple and straight forward, this editor will cut and paste parts of your clips, rearrange them in the desired order but without transitions, and will also extract the audio if you desire to do so. Although VirtualDub can add filters to your video I am not sure how useful this could be in an assignment, but you have it anyways.

4. Free Video Dub is another video editor like the VirtualDub that will only trim your videos but there is no capability to rearrange the clip parts for your likes. This one will work with QuickTime files though.

5. ezvid is one of the latest video editors that is completely free and with an entire arsenal of features for your creative mind. The editor lets you edit and rearrange videos on a dynamic timeline to which you could add photos, audio tracks, and your voice over. In addition to a very powerful editor ezvid will also record your entire screen or just part of it, and this is recorded in full HD. It will work as your instant video messenger and will let you annotate on the screen while screen capture. The developer seems very excited about the speed control built into the editor and I believe you can find many uses for it. Check out the voice synthesizer but don't submit your speech assignment with this effect ;).

Again, I suggest these video editing titles, but you assume your own risk by running them on your PC. Don't forget they are free ware and could be discontinued without a prompt or become paid software. And, keep your PC safe!!!