Show of hands, who has wanted to do this? Cartoons by Sydney Harris, used with permission

I'll talk about:

1. Why you might bring computer tech. into your teaching
2. Why you should not do so
3. Some issues to be concerned about (but don't panic!)
4. Some practical tips about specific applications

This talk can be found at http://bogart.colorado.edu/~weissj/TechTalk/. Included (at the bottom of the index) is a format better suited for printing.

• Why Should I Consider Using Computer Technology?
• Why Should I Consider Avoiding Computer Technology?
• Privacy
• Security
• Accessibility

After all, it seems like (and can be!) a lot of work

• Email lets you contact students about urgent matters (change of plans, hints on homeworks, etc)
• Can easily post syllabi and resources to web
• WebCT allows you to post grades confidentially
• Chat boards (on WebCT, usually) or email lists allow students (and instructor!) to have discussions out of the classroom

• Face it: a lot of us have really bad handwriting
• And many of us are none-too-swift at drawing, either
• Does it matter? Maybe. If students can't understand the writing or drawing, then it's wasted.

• You can post your notes to the web (easily, hopefully)
  • PowerPoint^TM has a "Save as HTML" feature (which makes somewhat nasty - but readable - pages)
  • Or you can just write the talk in HTML, as I did with this talk
• Also post a printable version (say the original PowerPoint^TM file)
• Post before class?
• Students can be more active in class
• Will students still come to class? Probably.

• Technologies allow you to give computer demos of otherwise undemonstratable things (such as orbits near a black hole)
• If demonstrations are accessible (i.e. - on the Web), students can also experiment with the demos, and gain insight outside of the classroom

After all, it's all so gosh-darned cool^*

^* - Yes, I know it's a blink-tag. Sorry, but it's meant as a subtle lesson. See three slides along.

• It takes time to set up websites, WebCT, etc.
• To say nothing of learning the stuff
• If something fails, that's more time

• If you have something critical posted and the website goes down, how do the students get it?
• This is a bigger problem in the classroom, because you're also in front of 300 students...
• Try stuff out ahead of time! And try to keep a backup handy if needed.

• Too many animations and ain't-it-cool? features can do more harm than good if they're distracting
• Especially true of students with ADD or similar difficulties
• This is extra true for you, the instructor; there are a lot of features you could add
• These features also tend to limit which systems the webpage/talk/what-not will work on
• Again, sorry for that blink-tag earlier, but you get the idea

• Might fall into using the same lecture year after year
• Also can squelch tendency to do participation components in class

So let's do a small-group activity.

• Get into pairs
• Discuss two examples of really bad problems you've seen
• Discuss two examples of really excellent use of technology in class which you've seen
• Take about 2 minutes
• We'll then share

• Must protect some student information by law
• Generally, give them an opt-in or opt-out choice about having data posted (such as name, email address, etc)
• This concerns should also extend to images of students
• Email addresses are especially worrisome, thanks to spammers

• Think about your own privacy, too!
• The risk of posting your email probably is outweighed by benefits (unlike student information, usually)
• There are other things you might want to keep off the web (and just put on the paper syllabus); home phone number, for instance

• Worry about hackers (or crackers, whatever) getting into your website
• They can mess things up if they get in
• Worse, they might be able to harvest private data
• Go through either ITS or your research institute (if the latter has a professional computer staff)
• I've never heard of a problem with this here, although not for lack of trying! But it is still worth a bit of paranoia.

• Is the information vital? Then make sure students can access it!
• Best option? ITS or your professional computer staff, again.
• But do note the history of the machine you're using - even ITS machines go down
• The same is true of any machine you're using to give a presentation; avoid ones that fail frequently

For these reasons, as well as hacker-risks and boneheadedness on your own part, Back-up everything often.

Bear in mind:

• Not all students have a fast machine with a lot of memory
• Nor will they all have high-speed connections

So try to avoid image-heavy sites or programs that require speed and memory. (Or any other specific hardware or operating system, especially along Mac/PC/Unix lines.)

• Not all students will have, say, Microsoft PowerPoint^TM
• So don't expect them be able to open PowerPoint^TM documents
• On the other hand, the Web and email are safe, as long as you stay with standard functionality (plain-text emails, for example)

• Not all students are proficient with HTML or specific software packages
• Be prepared to give help if you are using these kinds of things
• Again, reading email and browsing the web you can expect them to be able to do
• If not, ITS has help pages and classes you can refer them to.

Don't let this happen to you!

• Special effects are often distracting
• They are seldom necessary or even helpful
• Just avoid them by default (add them if you really think they'll help)
• Remember, just because you can, doesn't mean you should

• Make sure you have good color contrasts
• Also make the font large enough (to read from the back, or to read on-screen)
• Avoid overly fancy fonts. Sometimes boring is more interesting.

• Lists help
• Avoid lots of modifiers
• This keeps notes short so students attend class
• Yes, I thought of making this slide just a title

• PowerPoint^TM has a tendency to, er, fail
• Keep a backup for your lecture (overhead slides, or at least good notes)
• You can relax some if you've used the technology many times successfully

In addition to general comments, I add:

• Light font with dark background seems to work best for computer presentations
• The opposite is true of overhead transparencies, oddly enough

• PowerPoint^TM lets you run through a talk very quickly
• Fight this temptation: take your time
• Personally, I'd avoid the automatic slide advancement features for this reason

There are - technically! - standards on the web (see The World Wide Web Consortium). But they are often ignored. So:

• Try the pages in multiple browsers, to make sure they're readable
• Try them on multiple machines, if you can. You might be using an unusually large monitor, for example.

• Be careful with borrowing images and text, it often belongs to someone
• That said, you can learn a lot of tricks by reading people's "source code". HTML code isn't proprietary.

You can learn HTML from some simple online tutorials, like NCSA's. Here are a few of my favorites for making class-sites:

• List tags -
  • <ol> - Starts an ordered list (has numbers)
  • <ul> - Starts an unordered list (just bullets)
  • <li> - Starts a list item, such as each bulleted item on this page
• Table: <table>. Very good for displaying tables (duh), photo galleries and any time you want control over placement on the page
• <font size="+/-number"> - Changes font size. Big is good!

"Distro" lists are very handy for getting news out to students and for discussions outside of the classroom. There are two options:

• Maintain a list in your mailer
  • Gives you control of list
  • Only you can mail students
  • Worry about exposing email addresses?
• Get a list-server list through ITS
  • A bit more work to control it
  • Everyone can mail everyone else
  • People don't see each others' address

Email has a feature called "Blind Carbon Copy" (aka, BCC). This sends mail to people without them being able to see the names and addresses of all recipients. This is good for:

• Keeping email address private (and you may want to)
• Keeping people from accidently mailing things meant for you to the entire class
• Keeping the mail message from looking nasty (who wants to read 3 pages of addresses?)

• Be clear and use proper grammar (as opposed to most emails many of us send)
• Watch your wording when it might be mis-construed
• Also, watch your signatures (offensive quotes, etc)
• Still, you can be warm in your messages!

There are certain conventions in text-only environments:

• Don't use all-capitals, that's regarded as shouting (besides being bloody hard to read)
• Don't send messages intended for one or a few people to everyone
• Don't send HTML formatted messages, not everyone can read them. And those of us who can't see them as total trash:

  <p align=3D"center"><b><font face=3D"Arial" size=3D"6"
  color=3D"#FF0000">
  
  <a href=3D"http://7x24.businessonlinenow.com/cl5/"><font
  color=3D"#FF0000"= >FREE SERVICE</font>
  </a></font><font face=3D"Arial"
  size=3D"4"><br> 
   </font>
  </b></p> 
  <p align=3D"center">
  <b><font face=3D"Arial" size=3D"4">
  <br> <font color=3D"#800000">
  Mortgage rates have </font> <font color=3D"#FF0000">
  NEVER</font><font color=3D"#800000"> 
  been lower.<b= r>
  	

Signatures (those little bits at the bottom that are automatically included in your messages) are nice to have. They should include:

• Your name (just in case someone is unsure who you are)
• Contact info (phone, office, web page URL, whatever you like)
• Affiliation (University, department, research institute, whatever)
• A nice quote is helpful. I've been told that people always read down my entire messages to read my (randomized) quotes. So I know they're paying attention!
• Don't make it too long, though. Important stuff should be maybe 5 lines. Quotes can add more, but put them under the vital stuff.
• Example:

  			-John W. Weiss
  		       (The Cheshire Cat)
   ________________________________________________________________________
  |Duane D-1B31       | Dept. of Astrophysics and Planetary Science/LASP   |
  |(303)-492-7902	    | University of Colorado, Boulder                    |
  |weissj@colorado.edu| http://bogart.colorado.edu/~weissj/cheshireCat.html|
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  ...nothing has to be true forever. Just for long enough, to tell you
  the truth.
  		--(Terry Pratchett, "The Truth")
  	

These aren't technically related to much else I'll talk about, but I wanted to get these in here.

• Keep backups of grades with the dates in the filenames (like grades_20Sept.xls)
• If you're trying to splice together two grade sheets, the vlookup function might be just what you want

• Technology is here to help you teach better, not to make you look good
• Often, no technology is better than a poor implementation
• Don't panic! This stuff can be really helpful!
• Always be ready to seek help from others with problems
• This talk was prepared using makeTalk, a Perl program I wrote for this purpose. It handles all of the indexing, linking and formatting of the pages, and I just provide content and a few overall format decisions. I'd be happy to share the routine (and take suggestions for improvement). Contact me.

• Cori Krauss, whose excellent suggestion started me thinking about this kind of a talk
• Annette Thornton, for lots of good feedback and suggestions
• The Usual Suspects at Carleton, who shared lots of ideas on Caucus's Grad School conference
• Kisha Delain, Jim Maiwurm and Fran Bagenal, who gave feedback, suggestions for additions and proof-reading help

More or less my mantra for this talk