Posted on March 18, 2020 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
Free offer: Starting immediately and running until August 31, 2020.
Work From Home (WFH) Employees Across Business and Government Organizations of All Sizes Can Now Quickly, Easily and Securely Access Work Computer, and All Associated Data, from Home.
Work From Home (WFH) employees can visit the DH2i Work From Home Client Portal (https://wfh.dh2i.com/) to download their free copy of DxOdyssey.
The download is completely anonymous – no personal information of any kind will be collected – to provide the assurance that no sales communications will result during or after the download and use of the software.
All Set-up, Configuration and Tech Support Also Provided Completely Free-of-Charge. DH2i will be making its world-class support team available to answer any questions or provide assistance in the download and/or use of the software during business hours: 9:00 am – 6:00 pm Pacific Time, Monday-Friday – a service that is also being offered completely free-of-charge. Continue reading →
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Posted on March 17, 2020 by JimS
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
Prologue: Your [Jim] email came at an opportune time [17 March 2020]. I am sitting in a hotel room in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, waiting to see if the Uzbek government is going to give permission for a flight to leave carrying non-essential Americans from Uzbekistan. I’ve been here for two months and was scheduled to leave next week, when the Embassy suddenly contacted me on Sunday evening to tell me to get to Tashkent immediately because the government was closing the borders. At that time, there were four cases of Corona here. Now, it’s sit and wait. Our embassy and some European embassies are in negotiation trying to arrange to get their citizens out. I think conditions at home aren’t all that great, but in a crisis, there’s no place like home.
All of this is to say I was planning to write a piece about my work here with English teachers and online learning when I got home. However, your email prompted this piece [below], which is a little different than I was planning. -Lynn
Distance learning did not begin with the Internet. According to Harting and Erthal (2005), it had its beginnings in the 1700s when a reliable postal service was able to deliver correspondence lessons between teachers and learners. Then the advent of radio and television made another shift in distance learning. In a recent tweet, LoPresti (2020) repeated a story from his 94-year-old grandfather when Chicago schools were canceled because of a polio outbreak. He said that “classes were on the radio – newspaper published when each class would be on for each grade.” Continue reading →
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Posted on March 17, 2020 by JimS
By Satoru Shinagawa
[Note: On 16 March 2020, Satoru embedded an instructional video in a University of Hawaii email list on how to work around a log-in quirk in Zoom. Since the video includes private account numbers, we’re omitting it from this article. Later that day, Helen responded with instructions on adjusting the default settings to avoid this quirk. -Editor]
Unless you are familiar to some extent with the online conference software Zoom, this video [this video has been omitted for security reasons – editor] may not make sense. If that’s the case, please disregard this e-mail. Or if you find what I’m talking about confusing, please don’t pay any attention to this e-mail to avoid further confusion.
Now, unless you log in to your Zoom in a certain way, you won’t get to the meeting room assigned to your permanent Zoom ID. In the attached three-minute video, I did my best to explain how to log in to your permanent Zoom ID meeting room. To the best of my knowledge, this is how you log in. If I’m incorrect, please accept my apologies and delete this e-mail.
By Helen Torigoe
Hi, Satoru.
Thank you so much for sharing your solution to the annoying “default feature” of Zoom! That is a good workaround. Continue reading →
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Posted on March 17, 2020 by JimS
Posted on March 17, 2020 by JimS
[Published on 17 March 2020]
Helen Torigoe is an instructional designer at the University of Hawaii – Kapiolani Community College. Her areas of professional expertise and interest are educational technology, professional development, curriculum development, and e-learning with an emphasis on online teaching, online learning, blended learning, effective practices, research, web 2.0, web-enhanced teaching and learning.
List of ETCJ Publications:
Solution to Zoom’s Login Quirk: A COVID-19 Response
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Posted on March 17, 2020 by JimS
By Bonnie Bracey Sutton
In these times with schools being closed, teachers and students can go online and access so many resources. Museums and virtual learning experiences have always been my anchor. No school has all of the resources and experts that exist in learning places. When I was a child, I went on Sundays to see new exhibits and movies and to interact with the experts when possible.
As a teacher in a classroom, it was always my intent to involve, to explain, to engage, to involve students in learning that would help them explore other learning options that exist beyond the classroom. Sometimes, we made a classroom museum. Frank Withrow, Earthwatch, and National Geographic taught me to integrate learning places in interactive ways that include STEM subjects (always including art). With today’s crisis, i.e., teachers being forced to do online teaching, I recommend The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, E-Learning, and Online Collections. Continue reading →
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Posted on March 17, 2020 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
The following announcement was shared by Satoru Shinagawa, University of Hawaii – Kapiolani CC professor, via email on 16 March 2020. He has been teaching Japanese online since 1999.
Remote language teaching tool for Free until end of semester
Language education should be accessible to everyone but because of the recent Coronavirus outbreak, many schools are forced to limit their face-to-face classroom time. Sanako offers Free subscription to Sanako Connect – our new remote language classroom solution for schools. Continue reading →
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Posted on March 17, 2020 by JimS
By Harry Keller
Former ETCJ Science Editor
& President of SmartScience
Smart Science® Education Inc. is aware of the incredible strain the recent events are having on all educational institutions.
To assist, we are offering free 90-day access to our 300 Smart Science® Labs for K-12 and higher education science courses. Smart Science® Labs are virtual science labs that closely simulate a hands-on laboratory experience using real experiments.
You will receive free webinar PD to get your staff up and running quickly once you opt into this opportunity to share our online science labs with your science students.
Fill out this form to get Smart Science® Labs now:
https://www.smartscience.online/contact-us
Watch a tour video of the program here:
https://youtu.be/ID9zoPDlkfw
We are open to your feedback regarding how we can help in this difficult time.
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Posted on March 16, 2020 by JimS
By Ilene Frank
[Note: In response to a request from Bert Kimura (3/14/20) for sites that are “curating resources for teaching online (for emergency and on short notice)” for the TCC 2020 website, Ilene responded (3/15/20): “Bert, here’s some! [See list below.] I know there’s better stuff. But here’s some things I’ve seen on discussion lists, Twitter, etc. very recently (but where the heck was that really funny thread I saw from an instructor trying to video conference with her students getting interruptions from her husband and cats — and basically telling other instructors to embrace the goof-ups. She gave extra credit to students who could name all of her cats at the end of an online session or two.” -Editor]
A community getting together to discuss tackling the move to online teaching
Keep Teaching; Resources for Higher Ed
https://keep-teaching-resources-for-higher-ed.mn.co/feed
From Steve Covello – a suggestion to start your thinking about moving your course online here: The Ed Techie: Martin Weller’s blog on open education, digital scholarship, and over-stretched metaphors – “The COVID-19 online pivot“
Continue reading →
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Posted on March 16, 2020 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
For some instructors who have never taught online and are unfamiliar with their college’s LMS (Learning Management System), email may be the simplest and quickest way to move a course online. This approach would eliminate the steep learning curve for both instructors and students who are expected to move F2F courses into LMSs within the next week or so. The advantage of email-only is that everyone has an account, everyone knows how to use email, and students who don’t own a computer can get by with their smartphones1.
This email-only approach will work best with lecture-discussion courses that rely on papers and projects rather than quizzes and exams. For those requiring tests, a simple adjustment would be to require a paper, instead, that’s submitted via email2. For this approach to work, the instructor and students would need to have the email address of every person in class3. Continue reading →
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Posted on March 15, 2020 by JimS
By Davin K. Kubota
Davin Kubota, after surveying his classes, sent the following announcement to his students in preparation for the University of Hawaii’s move to online instruction for all classes beginning 23 March 2020, the day after spring recess. He also suggests ways to personally cope with the pandemic. -Editor
Based on your survey responses, here is what’s going to go down from March 23 to …? (I’m not sure UH President David Lassner will let us come back to school on April 13 if the coronavirus is still out of control in Hawai’i).
1. GoogleClassroom remains the core source of information and coursework upload.
2. Zoom will be used to accommodate those students who wish to live-conference with me virtually. My online office hours will be scheduled from 10 am to 1 pm Monday through Thursday. I will create signups for Office Hours accordingly. (Discord has too many privacy concerns.)
3. Attendance online will not be taken. You will be responsible for checking GoogleClassroom for applicable lectures and PDFs. Class will be conducted asynchronously rather than synchronously, freeing up your time but making you responsible for doing your work at your own pace and at your own time. Revisions, too, should be addressed at your own pace and with my commentary. (I may decide to remove attendance altogether as a grading criterion. Those of you who showed up regularly until now will likely receive bonuses. I need to check with my department chair to see if I can do this.) Continue reading →
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Posted on March 12, 2020 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
In the morning of March 12, faculty and staff in the University of Hawaii System received news that all classes will be conducted online starting March 23, after the spring recess, to prevent the possible spread of COVID-191. For F2F and blended instructors with some knowledge of Laulima, the System’s Sakai CMS, the move from F2F to online shouldn’t be too difficult. Those with little or no knowledge, however, will face a steep learning curve.
Laulima is a complex Course Management System with powerful tools, which makes it difficult to learn and master. This difficulty is compounded by numerous complicated procedures that are nonintuitive. It is often klunky, confusing, mindnumbing, and unforgiving, but it also provides some invaluable tools for online instruction. For me, the two most valuable are the discussion and email tools.
To substantially reduce the learning curve, I’ve devised a quick and dirty method to move a standard lecture-discussion course2 completely online via Laulima’s discussion and email tools. Both are included as default tools in the left sidebar of the basic course structure. There are many other tools to streamline and enhance instruction, but in this emergency and in the interest of time, the focus is on getting up and running with minimal fuss. Continue reading →
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Posted on February 28, 2020 by JimS
Aloha!
25th Anniversary Webinar
4E Principles of Professional Development
for Online Faculty
Empathize, Engage, Emulate and Empower:
A trio of instructional developers will describe
an award-winning course for online faculty.
Full Information
http://bit.ly/tcc2020preconf
Date & Time
Tuesday, March 17
1:30 p.m. HST
4:30 p.m. CDT, 7:30 p.m. EDT;
Wed Mar 18, 0830 Tokyo, Seoul
Other timezones
Continue reading →
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Posted on February 21, 2020 by JimS
Join us!
TCC 2020@25 Worldwide Online Conference
VISION 2020
April 14-16, 2020
http://2020.tcconlineconference.org/
TCC is a three-day, entirely online conference for post-secondary faculty and staff worldwide that features presentations covering a wide range of topics related to educational technology and emerging technologies for teaching and learning.
Register now for early bird rates:
https://2020.tcconlineconference.org/registration/
Individuals participate in real-time sessions from the comfort of their workplace or home using a web browser to connect to individual sessions. All sessions are recorded for on-demand viewing. Continue reading →
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Posted on January 14, 2020 by JimS
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of messaging apps as more people use their phone and other mobile devices to communicate. In his March 19, 2019, article on the Motherboard website, Owen Williams asks, “Why Do We Need So Many Different Messaging Apps?” He poses this and other interesting questions about the variety of messaging apps that are available, who uses them, and how they are used.
I recently became interested in this question because, in the last few months, I’ve had to add What’s App and Telegram to my array of communication choices. I’ve always relied on email to communicate with friends and colleagues, occasionally using my texting function on my phone, Messenger on FaceBook, and Skype for messaging. Once I got my iPhone, this began to change. I started using iMessenger, which was on my phone. However, I couldn’t use it for international contacts, and I had a colleague in Albania who said she used Viber, so I downloaded it to IM with her about our project. Continue reading →
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Posted on October 24, 2019 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
With so many professional services competing for our interest online, I couldn’t remember when, why, or how I signed up for eblasts from ResearchGate (RG), but, last night, as I was pruning my list of incoming email, their subject line caught my eye: “Q&A Highlights for James Shimabukuro.” I moved the cursor from the garbage can icon to the subject line and clicked. This is what I found:
Continue reading →
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Posted on October 23, 2019 by JimS
Last updated 12/16/19 7:30 AM
25th Anniversary Special!
TCC Worldwide Online Conference
April 14-16, 2020
Vision 2020
Proposal deadline extended: December 27, 2019
Deadline for accepted papers: December 30, 2019
Proposal deadline: December 20, 2019
Guidelines: http://bit.ly/tcc2020proposal
Homepage: tcchawaii.org
Hashtag: #tccsilver
Call for Proposals
Faculty and staff are invited to submit a paper or a general session proposal related to learning design and technology such as e-learning, learning communities, digital literacy, social media, online privacy, mobile learning, emerging technologies (AI, AR, VR), gamification, faculty and staff support, and professional development. Continue reading →
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Posted on August 14, 2019 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
The more time I spend with the Raspberry Pi 4, the more I’m convinced that it could stand in for a desktop for many uses. For light users and perhaps for schools and colleges, the savings would be astronomical. I decided to add a small monitor to make the unit less cumbersome and more portable. School and college faculty, techs, and administrators ought to look into this tiny computer as a possible replacement or substitute for expensive desktops for class or lab use. Experiment with it. Can it cover the functions that are needed?
Added a lightweight, portable 1920×1080 HDMI monitor1 and some updates.
Tweaks abound. Enthusiasts and pros are sharing, via YouTube, new and exciting updates and upgrades. Here are a few that I completed in the last hour:
Continue reading →
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Posted on August 2, 2019 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
Update: 4 Aug. 2019
The CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 Complete Starter Kit arrived yesterday evening. I got it up and running before turning in and did more extensive testing today. My overall early impression is “Wow!” Pi4 has all the earmarks of a desktop disruptor. Its tiny size and outrageousy low price is a dramatic departure from clunky and expensive desktops. I’ve always wondered why desktop computers have changed so little in the last ten to twenty years. Laptops, notebooks, tablets, and other computing devices are shrinking in size and price every year or so, but desktops seem to remain the same.
It was only a matter of time before a breakthrough like the Pi4 would occur. Earlier Pi versions didn’t have enough power to replace desktops. The Pi4 is a tipping point, marking the beginning of an era that might eventually see the decline of today’s major desktop producers as well as Microsoft’s monopoly on operating systems. For approximately $150, I have a desktop that can do almost everything my $1500 desktop can do1.
The Raspberry Pi 4 is the tiny box to the right of the keyboard. I have it set up for two monitors. The screen on the right is running a 1080p YouTube video. The screen on the left is running four apps: a webpage, an email page, a word processor, and a spreadsheet. The keyboard, mouse, and power supply are official Raspberry accessories. The two mini-HDMI and power cable with in-line power button are CanaKit products.
Continue reading →
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Posted on July 28, 2019 by JimS
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
Buzzy’s Adventures in Online Privacy, by Bilal Soylu & Paritica Aluskewicz, illustrations by Olga Pietraszek. XcooBee LLC. Printed by Amazon. 61 p. ISBN 9781095474815.
This book is designed for parents and other caregivers to read with children around five years old, kindergarten age. It’s a cautionary tale about the dangers that lurk online, which is a relevant topic for today’s young learners. The book aims to educate young children about the importance of privacy when online, such as not sharing information with strangers. The characters are animals, some representing children, others adults, and the cartoon-like illustrations would probably appeal to a child this age.
A page from Buzzy’s Adventures in Online Privacy.
However, I’m not convinced the book would be effective. It seems to have a dual personality, each of which is directed at a separate audience. The story that is directed at children addresses various issues at their level. It shows young animals on the Internet playing online games and using various apps being approached by strangers obtaining personal information in the guise of friendship. Continue reading →
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Posted on July 6, 2019 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
After nearly ten years, I decided to upgrade my desktop computer. It was being overwhelmed by the multimedia tasks that I’ve been throwing at it. After reviewing the available options, I ended up getting a gaming PC. I’m not a gamer and never have been, but the features that I need happen to be in gaming machines. I got the HP OMEN Obelisk Desktop1 with an Intel Core i7-9700 processor and 16 GB system memory.2 (See the details below.) For serious gamers, this is a modest system.
I completed the purchase online and drove to the store, which is about four miles away. While waiting for the order to be filled, I browsed the keyboard section. I decided it was time to get a new one with backlit keys. The search led me to gaming keyboards, and the best for my needs was the HyperX Alloy FPS Pro mechanical gaming keyboard. It was compact and felt substantial. It didn’t have a numeric keypad. I never use a keypad, so I welcomed the smaller size.
HyperX Alloy FPS Pro mechanical gaming keyboard with backlit keys. All of the photos in this article can be enlarged by left-clicking the photo.
Continue reading →
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Posted on June 26, 2019 by JimS
By Harry Keller
Former ETCJ Science Editor
& President of SmartScience
When Jim wrote about 5-1/4″ disks, it triggered a cascade of memories from my half-century of computer experiences. Today, it’s all miniature flash memories.
Seriously, I remember 8″ floppy disks. I had a bunch of them, now long gone to the landfill. I worked in the computer industry before ANY floppy disks existed. Oh, we had removable disks and were careful not to drop them on our toes.
8-inch, 5 1⁄4-inch, and 3 1⁄2-inch floppy disks. Wikipedia photo and caption by George Chernilevsky, 6 June 2009.
It gets worse. I remember working with punched cards — myself! I even edited the binary cards returned to you after a compilation to save time. Woe betide the person who dropped their cards if they were not sequenced. If they were, then you had access to a card sorting machine. Old movies showed them as though THEY were the computer. Ha ha ha. Continue reading →
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Posted on June 26, 2019 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
The message on this tanktop is a reminder of how far we’ve come in a very “short” period of time. I got it as a gift this past Father’s Day and catch myself smiling whenever I wear it.
My first personal computer, in the early-1980s, was a Kaypro 2 that came with two single-sided, double-density 5.25″ floppy drives. For all practical purposes, we needed two drives back then: one for the program and the other for our files. Wikipedia photo by Autopilot, 19 Mar. 2015.
Continue reading →
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Posted on June 24, 2019 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
Officially released today, 24 June 2019, is the Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer that fits in the palm of your hand. It’s made by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a UK-based charity (nonprofit) that works to put the power of computing and digital making into the hands of people all over the world. They do this so that more people are able to harness the power of computing and digital technologies for work, to solve problems that matter to them, and to express themselves creatively.
The foundation provides low-cost, high-performance computers that people use to learn, solve problems and have fun. They provide outreach and education to help more people access computing and digital making. They develop free resources to help people learn about computing and how to make things with computers, and train educators who can guide other people to learn.
Continue reading →
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Posted on June 22, 2019 by JimS
By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
Three years ago, in 2016, four students (one was possibly an instructor) had a discussion on Reddit about an online course offering with a “lecture required” component. The original poster was byu:
Posted byu/[deleted]
[Subject:] Online Classes – Class Component: “Lecture Required”?
Signed up for a couple online classes and under the Class Details section is says Class Components: Lecture Required. The class is definitely listed as an online class, room says online and meeting day/times TBA, so what does this mean? Video lectures? Just making sure I don’t have to physically show up for anything.
TurtleWaffle: It could be a blended class. I had a class like this and we had 5 Saturday class sessions during the semester as well as the online stuff
Rhynocerous: In my expirience it means you have to physically show up at some point possibly for exams.
corner0ffice1: It sounds like a class with both an online lecture and online lab. You always enroll for the lab component, and then tack on the lecture, so SIS is just telling you that you need to enroll in both components. It does not always mean that you have to show up for anything in person. It SHOULD say if you have any on-campus obligations in the course description, but you can also ask the instructor to confirm.
If we took a moment to actually listen to our students, we’d learn that conversations like this pervade the higher ed landscape. In nearly all colleges, “online” is a confusing course label that can mean any number of things that fail to meet student expectations. byu’s “Just making sure I don’t have to physically show up for anything” captures students’ primary concern in selecting an online class.
Implicit in their expectations for an online class is the idea of not being required to “show up” in a specific place at a specific time. For them, online is virtual, a convenience that allows them to engage learning from anywhere at any time. Thus, synchronous meetings are also not part of their online expectations. “Online” ought to be reserved for courses that are completely online and completely asynchronous. Sync requirements are a real problem for students who choose online courses for their anywhere/anytime advantage. Many online administrators and faculty don’t realize that sync requirements are a carryover of F2F into the virtual environment. Requiring students to meet at a specific time is tantamount to requiring them to meet at a specific place.1 Continue reading →
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Educational Technology and Change Journal 
