Useful Calendars for Planning Syllabus

Plan Your Syllabus Chronology

Still working on that syllabus?
School starts soon.

Getting the dates correct on your syllabus today avoids frustration in the future.

Jocalendars.com can help. Use their suite of calendar and chronology resources when mapping out the term.

 Here is a list of Mondays  you might find useful when organizing your syllabus.

Use the search box in the upper right of the Jocalendars.com site to search for other days, dates and calendar  information.

Don’t Panic: 3 Reasons Why ChatGPT is Not The End of Education (Updated)

Have you heard the news? Education is over.
Know why? AI.

Breathless media reports explain that an artificial intelligence (AI) service called ChatGPT will result in the obsolescence of the English essay, render teachers irrelevant and assorted other tragedies.

Give ChatGPT a prompt and it can create conversational essays.  The resulting text is generally a fluent and coherent response to the prompt.

In fact, ChatGPT is so good, it will lead to The End of High-School English. After all, students no longer need to compose a response to an essay or prompt. They can just let ChatGPT do the writing. This dire scenario has led schools to block ChatGPT over fears of its impact on learning. Some have already capitulated to AI. An unconvincing New York Times article proclaims "Don’t Ban ChatGPT in Schools. Teach With It."

Education is not over. And you are not obsolete.
Here are three reasons not to panic about ChatGPT and similar AI services.

3 Reasons Educators Shouldn’t Panic About ChatGPT

1. We’ve Been Here Before

ChatGPT is merely the latest existential technological threat to education.
Other threats have included:

• Papyrus: Socrates was not a fan, fearing a diminishment of people’s capacity to remember.

• Calculators: numeracy was sure to suffer.

• Spell checkers: why study spelling when Microsoft Word will help you out?

• Wikipedia and Google: These services were going to render the educational system irrelevant. Then everyone realized Wikipedia and Google were, well, Wikipedia and Google, not the end of sentient thought.

• MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses): Remember those? Thought not.

• Cheat sites: these services have been selling solutions to textbook publisher test bank questions for years.

• Paper Mills: these sites enable individuals to pay random people on the internet to write  research papers or essays for them.

In other words, we’ve seen it all before. We made it through COVID. We’ll survive ChatGPT

2. Startups Will Mint Fortunes Inventing Solutions

Clever people who can code understand they can make money by creating solutions to problems. The education sector is huge. It sees ChatGPT (and similar technologies) as a problem. Startups will make millions providing solutions to problems posed by ChatGPT (and whatever comes next). For example, turnitin.com, famous for its plagiarism detection software, is working on a tool that detects prose composed by  ChatGPT

Edward Tian, a computer science senior at Princeton, has been working on a solution in his free time. He created a site that tries to detect if ChatGpT wrote an essay.

Socratic Digital had high hopes for these services. However, we’ve decided that neither of these alternatives should be relied upon. They are early attempts to detect AI generated text, but should not be used to determine that a student has, in fact, submitted AI generated prose.. Let’s see how this plays out. In the mean time, try some of the following suggestions.

3. Educators Have Agency

There is no way of getting around it. AI will be a big part of our future. However, it’s way too soon to start making declarations about it’s existential threat to education. Educators will learn to live with such services. Teachers may even co-opt them in pedagogically authentic ways. Here are some possibilities.

• Hello Papyrus: Broadly, this mindset will emphasize analog tools like pen and paper wherever instruction and assessment occur.

• Old School: In this scenario, education goes offline. Students receive instruction and submit assessments (including essays) in physical schools.

• Testing Centers: Schools might emulate the SAT or IT certification testing center model in which candidate knowledge is evaluated at a physical facility. In this hybrid arrangement, instruction occurs online and summative and/or formative assessments occur in physical schools.

• ChatGPT as TA: Some teachers may use ChatGPT to grade assignments, send emails to parents, construct lesson plans and other time-consuming administrative tasks. This would create a recursive loop in which students submit ChatGPT written work and educators provide feedback composed by ChatGPT. This one makes Socratic Digital’s brain hurt.

• Prompt Engineering: Educators may  construct prompts and assignments that exploit the weaknesses of artificial intelligence. For example, AI software like ChatGPT are often confounded by word problems  and fail to correctly calculate compound interest. Because much of the text it draws upon is scraped from the internet, it is frequently incorrect  about basic facts. particularly when responding to  complex or lengthy questions.

Encourage Cultural Competency With This Free Resource

Valuing different cultures is a good thing. Knowledge about them is even better. Translating that knowledge into cultural competency — actually knowing how to behave — is best. However, it’s not always easy to find quality resources about a broad spectrum of different cultures..

The Cultural Atlas can help. This wonderful resource provides cultural insights  about dozens of countries across the following regions:

• Africa

• Asia

• Europe

• Middle East

• Oceania

• The Americas.

The Cultural Atlas provides context for the following topics:

• Etiquette

• Greetings

• Naming

• Family

• Religion

• Do’s and don’ts

• Dates of significance

• Core cultural concepts

• And more!
  

The Cultural Atlas is a  collaboration between Australia’s Special Broadcast Service (SBS), International Education Services (IES), and Multicultural NSW. The content is co-authored by cultural experts and members of the cultures represented in the resource.

Socratic Digital Recommends

Want a sense of what Cultural Atlas has to offer? Check out these pages:

• Japanese Naming Conventions

• Do’s and Don’ts in Peru

Socratic Digital Suggestions

You can use the Cultural Atlas for all sorts of learning experiences. Ask students to:

• Create a “do’s and don’ts” guide for specific cultures

• Create a “do’s and don’ts” guide to their own culture

• Compare naming conventions  (e.g., family name first or given name first) across cultures

• Compare family dynamics in their own culture and another culture of interest

Use These Free High Quality Educational Videos in Your Courses (Awesome OER)

Let's be honest, creating quality educational content is difficult and time consuming. Making sure that your content conforms to accessibility best practices is also labor intensive but urgent work that benefits every learner.

Simplify your workflow by using these free high quality, pedagogically sound, accessible, informative and entertaining video lessons from Crash Course.

Crash Course provides 45 courses (and counting) in the behavioral and social sciences, humanities, natural sciences and many other topics. The content is produced and pitched at a university level that is also suitable for more advanced high school courses.

Crash Course's YouTube videos have been viewed hundreds of millions of times because they feature charming presenters, engaging topics, thoughtfully designed lectures and human authored closed captions.

Crash Course is the perfect compliment to the content you already use or create. Best of all, it's a free, open educational resource (OER) as well.

Pro Tip: Avoid ads by using the YouTube embed code to add the video to your learning management system (LMS).

Our Favorite Crash Course Classes

Crash Course offers dozens of courses. Each course consists of individual topic lessons. Here are some of Socratic Digital’s favorites courses:

• Psychology

• Sociology

• Physics

• Astronomy

• US Government and Politics

Find dozens of other free, fun and high quality offerings at the Crash Course page on YouTube.

Socratic Digital Recommends:
Crash Course Business Soft Skills

Socratic Digital loves episode 4, How to Speak with Confidence for a variety of courses or modules. This particular video would be great for a speech class, a module on Dramaturgy or a unit on interpersonal communication.

Socratic Digital Recommends:
Crash Course World History

Increase YouTube Closed Caption Font Size With This Surprisingly Easy Accessibility Hack

Closed captions are popping up everywhere. Captions on large screens at sports bars and airport lounges allow viewers to follow events when the sound is drowned out by ambient chatter.

Interestingly, Gen Z is more likely than their elders to consume video with closed captions enabled.

But depending on the circumstance (like room size or screen size), not all viewers may be able to easily read the caption text. Did you know that you can change the font size on YouTube closed captions?

You can easily make your presentations accessible by increasing the font size of closed captions on Youtube videos.

Unfortunately, YouTube does not advertise this functionality. That’s too bad, because the legibility of closed caption text makes a good thing (closed captions) even better.

Why Use Closed Captions?

You probably know that it’s a best practice to only show videos with closed captions.

• Closed captions provide learners with hearing impairments and audio processing differences with access to spoken content, and, if done correctly, information about the non-spoken aural environment as well. (For example: “rain falls outside” or other helpful context.)

• Language learners also benefit from seeing a textual representation of spoken words.

• Closed captions improve retention as they provide multimodal (audio and text) representation of the material.

Follow these steps to increase the font size of closed captions on YouTube.

Step 1: Enable Closed Captions

Make sure the YouTube video has closed captions by selecting the “CC” closed caption option along the bottom of the YouTube video player.

Take a minute to check that the closed captions are accurate. You’ll be able to tell the difference between the error-ridden automated (software) transcriptions and the far more accurate human authored captions.

Pro Tip: You can also enable captions by pressing the “c” key on your computer keyboard.

Step 2: Select the Settings option

After you have confirmed that the video’s closed captions are correct, select the Settings option.

(Hint: The Settings option is shaped like a cog and it’s located to the right of the closed caption CC option in the YouTube video player.)

Step 3: Select the Subtitles/CC option

Now that you’re in the Settings dialog, select Subtitles/CC.

Step 4: Select Options

You’re presently in the Subtitles dialog. (Don’t worry, it’s also the place where you can adjust closed captions.)

Click on Options

Step 5: Click the Font Size link

Selecting the Font Size option will pop up several alternative font sizes.

Step 6: Choose a Font Size

You’ll be presented with a variety of size options from 50% to 400%. Consider the room size, needs of your learners and how the captions interact with other visual elements in the videos.

Enjoy the Results

Celebrate the fact that you just made the educational content you use more accessible to more people.

Download Beautiful Royalty Free Images at Pexels

Images add pop to an online module or face-to-face lecture. Carefully curated pictures illustrate key ideas and constitute a refreshing mode switch from textual or auditory modalities. Sometimes, they just look cool. However, finding images is not as easy as one might think. Google Images is an obvious solution, but it’s not always clear what you are allowed to use and what might be subject to copyright or permissions claims.

You’re in luck. Royalty free images are the solution. Services like Pexels.com provide free royalty free images for you to use. The “free” bit means you don’t have to pay to download and use the images and the “royalty free” part means you don’t have to pay royalties either. Here’s how to use Pexels.com’s excellent service.

Step 1: Consider Your Needs

Think about your topic and what you want to convey with your imagery. Do you want to inspire with aesthetics, illustrate with something more schematic or provide an object example of your subject?

Step 2: Search Pexels

Visit Pexels.com.

Then enter a search topic in the search box. You’ll get plenty of image results for most queries.

Need inspiration? Use the Explore link along the top right of the page. The “Discover Photos” and “Popular Searches” options will give you ideas.

Socratic Digital loves the “Healthy Food” and “Seascape” collections. Pexels also has wonderful color collections. Their Red collection features stunning images suffused in red. Pexel’s Green and Blue themed collections are equally gorgeous.

Step 3: Download Image

Select the “Free Download” button in the upper right to save to your computer.

Pro Tip: Consider renaming the file to something meaningful to you.

Step 4: Use Your Images Freely

You won’t get into trouble for using Pexels images. The “License” page at Pexels explains that images are free to use, that no permissions are necessary and that attribution – while appreciated – is not required.

How to Save Microsoft Office 365 Documents to Your Local Computer

The Cloud

Composing documents in Office 365 is a breeze. And thanks to OneDrive you can access, edit and share your documents anywhere. Microsoft’s default autosave feature stores your documents to Microsoft’s OneDrive servers, so there is no need to carry documents around on storage devices. This is also called “cloud” storage. It is super convenient and works just fine for many people.

Go Local

However, you may not want to store all of your files in the cloud. Some documents may be personal or contain private information. Perhaps you are concerned about who has access to the server on which your documents reside. Networking issues have prevented many a lecturer or conference goer from accessing presentation files or important documents at the time they were needed most. For these reasons you may prefer your files live on your computer or backup drive. Microsoft does not make it obvious that you can do this, but it is easy to set up. Let’s go local!

How to Save Microsoft Office 365 Documents to Your Local Computer by Default

A “local” computer is the one you are using, rather than a net connected device in some random data center. Here is how to save Office 365 documents locally:

1. Open Word.

2. Select Files

3. Choose More

4. Select Options

5. Click Save.

6. Check the Save to Computer by default box.

7. Click OK to save the changes you just made.

Now, your Microsoft Word documents will automatically save to your computer. Please note that other Microsoft Office 365 apps will now also save to your local computer by default.

Is My LMS Down or Having Issues?

You would like to be sure that your LMS is working before  you post an online test or other time-sensitive content. After all, Blackboard, D2L and Canvas are not physical classrooms you manage. Instead, they are cloud-based platforms that occasionally go down.

Avoid the frustration of extra work and anxious students by using the resources below to check the status of  Blackboard, D2L and Canvas.

3 Ways to Check if Blackboard, D2L or Canvas are having issues

We’ve provided you with links to three types of tools that enable you to see if your LMS is down:

• The DownDetector service

• The IsItDownRightNow service

• Status Pages maintained by Blackboard, D2L and Canvas

Downdetector and IsItDownRightNow are websites that use automated monitoring and user feedback to determine if a website is down or if users are reporting problems.

IsItDownRightNow displays the webpage title, URL (web address),  whether it is “UP” (operating normally) or “DOWN” (having issues). IsItDownRightNow also includes other technical metrics like response time and a notice about recent outages. This is more information than many readers may need, however the “UP” or “DOWN” designation is a simple way of communicating the most important  information.

Socratic Digital prefers DownDetector’s cleaner visual presentation. DownDetector prominently displays the LMS site name and a straightforward statement such as “User reports indicate no current problems at [site name]”

We’ve also provided links to status pages maintained by Blackboard, D2L and Canvas. These status pages provide information about current and past issues

How to Check the Status of Blackboard

If students find that Blackboard is not loading they can become frustrated. You’ll want to know if Blackboard is not working before posting an exam. Use the following resources to determine if anything is wrong with Blackboard:

• Use DownDetector to check the status of Blackboard

• Use IsItDownRightNow to check the status of Blackboard

  Consult the  Blacckboard Service Status Page  

How to Check the Status of D2L

If you’re at all concerned that D2L is down or not working, you can use the following resources:

• Use DownDetector to check the status of D2L

• Use IsItDownRightNow to check the status of D2L

• Check the D2L Status page to make sure D2L is working

How to check the status of Canvas

Having problems with the Canvas app or Canvas LMS?  Does it seem like Canvas is not loading? You can check if there is a problem with Canvas today by using the following resources.

• Use DownDetector to check the status of Canvas

• Use IsItDownRightNow to check the status of Canvas

• Use the Instructure Status page to see if Canvas is working:

Now, you can post that important content confident that your LMS is working.

Here are Lists of All the Mondays, Tuesdays (and so on) for Your Syllabus

Educators love this calendar resource. Determining all the Mondays, Tuesdays or Fridays in a term can be a pain. Here is a convenient solution

You are working on your syllabus or agenda for the new year. You’ve got big ideas and plans. Lots and lots of plans. But before you can get started you have to answer pressing questions:

• What date are all the Mondays in 2022?

• What date is the third Thursday in November?

Answers to these and other vexing chronological inquiries can be found at ResearchManiacs. Here is their list of Mondays in 2022.

Mondays-In-2022.

You’ll get a list that looks like the excerpt below that covers the entire calendar year:

Monday, January 3, 2022
Monday, January 10, 2022
Monday, January 17, 2022
Monday, January 24, 2022
and so on…

You can find other days of the week in 2022 here. Simply select the day of the week you want from the first drop-down, then select the year you need from the second. Press “Find Dates” to produce your list of dates.

2 Free Language Resources Bring Culture to Your Courses

Have you ever tried to learn a new language? As you know, it’s not easy. That’s why we all appreciate well thought out materials. You may have heard about Duolingo, but have you tried it? Integrate the vocabulary you learn from Duolingo into your lessons. As an educator, you’ll want to pay particular attention to how information is presented. Dulingo uses a gamified metaphor and presents content in small chunks, a great exemplar of a multi-modal and engaging pedagogy. Alternatively, try an “old school” option. The folks at LiveLingua have repackaged FSI (Foreign Service Institue) language courses in dozens of languages. Some of the content is a bit dated, but the systematic, modular and progressive presentation of information functions as both an effective pedagogical practice and example of methodical, results oriented instruction.

Robograder: Can Computers Grade Papers?

Too much thinking around educational technology reflects a lack of familiarity with how education actually works and what technology can and can’t do. A wide-eyed NY Times article marvels at a university level computer programming course in which student assignments are graded by artificially intelligent software. The article explains that the AI grader shows students where they made mistakes in their code and that students are satisfied with the automatic feedback. However, the integrated development environments (IDEs) computer programmers use have offered a roughly similar feature for years - a “type safe” function that flags possible errors and offers resolutions. Moreover, insufficient distinction is made between assessment types suitable for automated grading (multiple choice, formative) and assessment types well beyond the reach of AI (essays, summative and creative). After you read the NY Times piece, check out this more realistic explanation of how students easily trick AI into awarding “A” grades on written submissions. (Hint: keyword salad.) Also: this Motherboard piece explains that implicit bias is embedded in the patterns that automated essay graders scan for when assigning scores to written work.

Remember: Ed tech is for humans.

Tutorial: Add Students to D2L in 7 Steps

Educational institutions usually add students to D2L shells (D2L course instances) automatically in classes that request or are assigned a D2L shell. However, you may need to add a student manually. For instance, if you need to add a student late, before they complete an administrative process, or when adding an observer, TA or guest. 

Add a User in 7 Steps

1. Select Classlist from navigation bar.

2. Click Add Participants link near the top of Classlist page that loads

3. Click the Add existing users option

4. Enter student’s first and last name or I.d. Number in Search For field and click Search **Icon**

5. Examine search results and check the box to the left of the desired user name

6. Select role for the new user and assign selected user to a section if applicable.

7. Click Enroll Selected Users.

Your student is now enrolled.

Cheat Sheet: Master Tool Names After Switching Between D2L and Canvas

Is it an “Announcement” or “News?” Canvas and D2L don’t always speak the same language. This Cheat Sheet translates tool names for you..

Your organization just transitioned between D2L and Canvas. Both are great learning management systems. Content created on one platform almost always imports perfectly into the other. However, Canvas and D2L sometimes use different names for tools with identical functions. Use this Cheat Sheet to navigate the differences.

Same Tool, Same Name

Luckily, Canvas and Brightspace D2L use the same name for several equivalent tools.

• Attendance (D2L) = Attendance (Canvas)

• Quizzes (D2L) = Quzzes (Canvas)

• Discussions (D2L) = Discussions (Canvas)

• Groups (D2L) = Groups (Canvas)

• Grades (D2L) = Grades (Canvas)

• Calendar (D2L) = Calendar (Canvas)

• Chat (D2L) = Chat (Canvas)

• Rubric (D2L) = Rubric (Canvas)

Same Tool, Different Name

D2L and Canvas sometimes use different vocabulary to designate equivalent tools:

• News (D2L) = Announcements (Canvas)

• My Home (D2L) = Dashboard (Canvas)

• Course Home (D2L) = Home (Canvas)

• Content (D2L) = Modules (Canvas)

• HTML Editor (D2L) = Rich Content Editor (Canvas)

• Classlist (D2L) = People (Canvas)

• Dropbox (D2L) = Assignments (Canvas) •

Sometimes, A Single Tool Becomes Multiple Tools

D2L and Canvas handle some tasks differently:

• Manage Files (D2L) is broken into two separate tools, Files and Pages (Canvas).

Tutorial: How to find and use royalty free images from Unsplash

You need images for your face-to-face class, online course or workshop. You would also like resources that are free and legal to use. You’re in luck. Unsplash is your resource for free high quality images.

Step 1: Visit Unsplash & Browse Categories

Unsplash logo

• Take a minute to consider your needs. Do you want the image to be a literal representation of something or do you prefer the image evoke a particular vibe?

• Check out the image categories arranged along the top of the page. We love the architecture and nature categories.

Step 2: Search & Select

• Now that you’re inspired. Use the search box located at the top of the page.

• Expand your results by searching for related concepts: “outdoors” in addition to “nature” for example.

• A search for “earth” produces this stunner.

Earth, courtesy of Unsplash.com

Step 3: Download Image

• Select the “Download Free” button in the upper right hand corner and save to your computer.

• Rename the file to something descriptive.

Is it really free?

Yes. You won’t get into trouble for using Unsplash images Unsplash is free as in price and free as in free from legal entanglements and copyright claims. The Unsplash license explains that its “photos are made to be used freely.” According to Unsplash this means that .

• All photos can be downloaded and used for free

• No permission needed (though attribution is appreciated!.

Enjoy.

Google Workspace for Educators to revise storage plans, caps.

Google has announced that in July 2022, a “baseline” 100 terabyte pooled storage cap will be instituted for schools and universities. Google will upgrade based on institutional needs.