ANGEL 8

Butler Online now uses ANGEL 8! Besides being able to use Safari and Google Chrome, it has a few new features that will make class management a bit smoother.

One of them is a change in the Dropbox. Remember, assessments have an Access tab which allows students to click on assessment and see instructions, and Interaction tab which allows the assessment to be taken.

The Dropbox now has an Access tab and a Submission tab, that act in a similar manner. The advantage here is that students can see instructions you provide by clicking on the Access tab, but cannot make submissions except within the designated time period. By default the dates are displayed and red text states that Submissions are not being accepted at this time, if the dropbox is closed.

Personally, I always have the Access open on both assessments and dropboxes, so that students can have an idea of what to expect, and to allow review (in the case of assessments)

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Create your own Logo - Free

Are you considering how you might enliven your course for this fall - spruce it up a bit? Take a look at Logo Type Creator. I made the logo above in just a few minutes and for free. Of course, you can spend money for added features but that is not necessary. If you don't like the first free images offered simply refresh the page and three new ones will be randomly generated. Make a logo for your welcome message or for an announcement. You might want to use a special logo to indicate a video or audio link or particularly important information.

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How will you Grade my Work?

I wanted to share a resource I started providing for my students this semester (see the table below). I did this initially to address QM Standards but have really been surprised at the positive student response.  In a general "How is it Going?" survey 85% of students mentioned in the additional comments question how much they like this tool. When I forgot to add it one week I received several emails asking for it.

Week 02 Assignments Point Structure

Assignment	Points
02 Discussion	10
02 Project 1 Reflection	20
02 Skype Address Dropbox	25
02 File Heirachy Jing	10

 

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QR Code, Skype, and a Funny

Hello everyone. I have a few things to share today - hopefully you will enjoy at least one of them!

I found this post from the Spicy Learning Blog intriguing. After creating QR codes for his blog in class, a student went home and created his QR code with Legos - and it works! Give it a try.

The Wichita Eagle today carried an article titled, "One Person Can Inspire". It concerns Heights High students conferencing via Skype with Taylor Mali, "A famous slam poet, teacher and advocate for the teaching profession". One 16-year-old student's response (quoting from the Eagle):
“He inspired me to write,” Garceau said. “Just the things he says, the way he says it. … My heart almost stopped.”

OK, this last one is a wonderful reminder. One of our Butler instructors created an agent to send students a gentle warning if they had not posted to the discussion forum by a given day of the week. Imagine her surprise when she got the email - twice! She said it gave her a good laugh but caused her to go post to the forum. You have to love it!

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2012/02/07/2206766/teacher-poet-taylor-mali-speaks.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

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Copying items in ANGEL

Let's say you are adding new material in ANGEL, and you want to create an item very similar to one you already have. There are several ways to do this. One would be to copy the HTML code of an item and paste it into a new item.
Another way is to duplicate your original.
First, find your original item (to be duplicated) and choose its Utilities link. Now select Copy Item. I overlooked this method for a long time because the subtitle states that you will copy the item to another section (implying that copying it to the same section was not possible). However, take a look at this screen.Make your two choices (Destination Course, Destination Folder) and then finish by clicking Copy.
This creates an exact copy, ready to edit. No (1) after the duplicate. It should appear directly below the original if you copied it to the same course and folder.

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Timing discussion posts

Do you have your students wait 24 hours between discussion posts? Do they know if it has been 24 hours?
You the instructor can mouse over the date of a post and see the time, and yes, a student can do the same thing, (actually not just their own, but anyone else as well)
I checked this out in student view and I don't know why it wouldn't work, as long as Java is installed. Thanks to Tiffany Welk, for asking.

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Making it personal

About six weeks ago or so, Linda shared some info she found regarding a little known function of ANGEL: tasks. From what we have found, it is a reminder tool for people who forget to check or update their calendars - like me. And a bit more.


You can add Personal Tasks for yourself OR anyone in your course

Click the Personal Task link in the Guide Pane (left side of ANGEL screen- it may be collapsed)
Click Add a Task. Now fill in a subject, body, due date and the task recipient (you or your student[s])

You can also transform an ANGEL email into a task. I think this could be a useful quick shortcut as a reminder to follow up on the content of the email. To add an email as a task, open the email and choose Create a Task from the Action Menu, and click Go.

The tasks now show up on your task pane within your course, and as icons on your ANGEL homepage with your course listing (see below). (You must have that function enabled in the settings for the Course nugget) You can ALSO add a nugget to your ANGEL homepage called My Tasks by clicking on Edit Page.

I think there may be more undocumented ways to add tasks, but I haven't found them yet. Check this out and please share any ideas YOU might have to incorporate this tool into your teaching.

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Create an ANGEL Page from an Excel Spreadsheet

OK, after I posted the Text Fixer tool, some people asked for a tool to create HTML code from an Excel spreadsheet. Well, here it is! Tableizer is a handy website that lets you create HTML tables from Excel. Using Tableizer you can generate HTML code from your Excel table and paste it in the ANGEL HTML Editor Source. Simply copy and paste the cells from the spreadsheet into Tableizer and click on “Tableze it!” button. The code is generated and ready to copy and paste in ANGEL.

Following is a sample of a table I converted in Tableizer:

Media	Category	Purpose	Website	Ease of Use*
Audacity	Audio	Audio Editing(podcasting)	http://audacity.sourceforge.net/	♦♦
Ipadio	Audio	Audio Recording	http://ipadio.com/	♦
Camtasia	Audio/Video	Screen Recording and Video Editing	http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/	♦♦
Jing	Audio/Video	Screen Recording	http://www.techsmith.com/jing/pro/	♦♦

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Text Fixer

Text Fixer is a free online tool that converts the contents of a doc or docx file to HTML code, producing a much cleaner html code than Word. The converter strips many unnecessary styles and extra mark-up codes which, in turn, produces cleaner, easily editable pages in ANGEL. Text Fixer does not preserve images but it does preserve links and other basic formatting like bolding, bullets, tables, etc. in the conversion process.

1. Copy the text from your Word document


2. Paste the code into the Word-to-html-Converter


3. Click the Convert Word to HTML button and Text Fixer will produce the clean code


4. Copy the code


5. Click Settings on your ANGEL page


6. Click the Source icon in the tools at the top of the HTML editor


7. Paste the copied code in the Source of your ANGEL page


8. Click the Source icon again


9. Save

Voila, you have a clean ANGEL page. The page will look better and be much easier to edit than if copied directly from Word.

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Add a "Print This Page" Button

In order for students to easily print your syllabus and other course pages in ANGEL, you may want to add a "Print This Page" button. This is an easy process and allows you or the student to print the entire page by simply clicking the button.

Steps to Add a "Print This Page" button to an ANGEL page:

• Navigate to the ANGEL page that you wish to add the "Print This Page" button to.
• Click Settings.
• Click the Source icon.
• Type the following tag in front of the code on the page.

Note: you will not be able to copy the code from this blog. You must type it in. Once you have typed the code, however, you can use the copy and paste for other pages.

• Save.
• You should see: 

Note: You may need to refresh your page or clear the cache to see the changes.

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Embedit.in

Embedit.in is a great site I happened upon the other day. You can select a document, graphic, or web page and choose to embed as the full file or a thumbnail. Click "embed" and Embedit.in provides the embed code. You can then copy and paste the code in the Source of your ANGEL page.

As you can tell, it is diffucult to explain. The video does a great job though!

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Enter Zeroes in ANGEL Gradebook with 1 Click

You can also view a Jing demonstration of this tutorial.
Add an Agent to Enter Zeroes in the Gradebook With 1 Click

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Allowing Students to Share Documents in ANGEL 7.4

Did you know?
You can allow students to share documents as a small team or as the entire class on the Students team? This is a great feature in ANGEL. Students can upload a file such as a Word document and everyone on the team can access it. To edit a file, students would need to download and rename the file, make changes, and upload it again.

However, if students add Content and create a new ANGEL page, everyone with team access can view and edit the page. This would make for some truly interactive collaboration on projects.

Click  for Instructions to set-up file sharing in ANGEL.

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ANGEL 7.4 Gradebook

Melanie at Macomb Community College posted this presentation on SlideShare: Key Changes To The 7.4 Gradebook

View more documents from Melanie .

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View the Class Gradebook in ANGEL 7.4

Follow the steps in this video to view your class gradebook
in ANGEL 7.4.

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Post a Billboard to Get your Message Noticed

I may be a few hours premature in the ANGEL 7.4 announcement, but I thought you might like the opportunity to view a sample billboard. These are super easy to create and add to your courses in a page, announcement, email, etc.
Just go to Make Sweet to get started.

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Paper Rater - a Benefit for your Students

Paper Rater is a currently free service that spell checks, grammar checks, (yawn) but it also does a readability index for vocabulary and style...and it does a simplistic TurnItIn-style originality report.

At the moment, all said service are free. Between this tool and using GoogleDocs, students could have life pretty easy!

Services include:

* Grammar & Spelling Check
* Free Online Proofreading
* Plagiarism Detection
* Writing Suggestions
* No Downloads

Thanks to Mark Jarvis for this post. We appreciate the input!

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Embed Code

To embed any site in an ANGEL page, enter the html code below into the "source" of any ANGEL page in the html editor. Change the text that says URLHERE to the site you want to embed, e.g: http://www.butlercc.ed.

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When do you close assignments?

Many online instructors choose the very end of the day - 11:55 or 11:59. This might make sense if you want to give them as much time within a day to get an assignment in.

However, I close mine at 10 p.m. Why? No matter how many times you tell students not to wait til the last minute, you bet that they will. No matter what time it is, the last hour or so is the ONLY time that a student can complete a test.

So statistically more problems and panic arise at the hour of closing that any other time. I figure I should be available at that hour, and I do not want to stay up til the wee hours waiting for a test to close.

Any thoughts or debate on this??

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Embed Content on your Blog or ANGEL Pages

Yesterday I found the site Embedit.in. I have not had much time to work with it but I did embed a graphic and a .pdf as thumbnails here on the blog. I also added embedded a file in an ANGEL page and it worked quite well.

You can embed any file you wish either in full size or as a thumbnail.

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