The Case for Video Games

 Posted on July 11, 2020  |  1 minutes  |  162 words

I’ve been working on my thesis proposal, preparing for candidacy this summer. This explains why I’ve been pretty much silent here on the blog, and why I’ve been trying to reduce my social media time1. Much of my research will be on using the lens of video games as a way of describing classroom teaching - in fancy-talk, developing a framework that adapts research methods developed for the formal analysis of video games to the description and analysis of teaching and classroom activities. Read More
general 
video games  video  art 

Self Hosted Searching in Hugo

 Posted on June 9, 2020  |  3 minutes  |  611 words

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo’s site-specific search as a way to make this site searchable, after moving from WordPress to Hugo. Since static websites don’t have a database, searching is more difficult so I’d let that go and had just used an embedded search form that fired off a DuckDuckGo query. Which worked. Mostly. But it also got results from other subdomains at *.darcynorman.net, and didn’t sort them too well. So it was not as useful as the WordPress Relevanssi search plugin had been. Read More
general 
hugo  search 

Cheating and Online Exam Proctoring

 Posted on May 5, 2020  |  3 minutes  |  574 words

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and learning about online exam proctoring, to prepare to act as the “business lead” for an online exam proctoring project that ramps up this week, aiming to have a pilot in the summer and a tool available for use (as a last resort) in the fall. It’s a complicated solution to a complicated problem. Not all courses are able to adjust assessment away from high stakes exams, and those don’t translate online in all contexts without some form of proctoring. Read More
work 
online exams 

Automating Creating New Content in Hugo

 Posted on May 5, 2020  |  4 minutes  |  682 words

I’ve been using Hugo for about 6 months now, and it’s been working really really well for me. But the one thing that’s been bugging me is how clumsy it is to create new posts. For example, here’s the command line stuff that would have created this post: cd ~/Documents/Blog/blog hugo new posts/2020/2020-05-05-Automating-Creating-New-Content-in-Hugo.md All posts are plaintext markdown files, organized in folders within a content directory. The Hugo application has a command line tool to create content - but, almost every single time, I need to look up the syntax so I don’t goof it up. Read More
hugo 

Projects and Squiggles

 Posted on May 1, 2020  |  2 minutes  |  302 words

When we talk about processes, there’s a balance between traditional Project™ “waterfall” approaches - dependencies, critical paths, charters, etc. and what happens in practice - rapid prototypes, DIY experimentation, communities and networks, and emergent designs to support practice. LMS Upgrade Plan Gantt a traditional project management overview of the steps involved in implementing a learning management system compared with Damian Newman: The Design Squiggle The Process of Design Squiggle by Damien Newman, thedesignsquiggle. Read More
work 
design  process  project management 

COVID Online Pivot Learning Technologies Stats

 Posted on April 22, 2020  |  5 minutes  |  905 words

Now that the Winter 2020 semester is wrapping up, I took a look at the stats for our various online learning technologies to see what effects the whole COVID-19 Online Pivot had on our technology stack. Each platform has their own sets of data to describe activity within the software, and they’re not directly comparable. A simple “logins” comparison wouldn’t capture activity in some platforms where only instructors login and students are anonymous (like YuJa). Read More
work 
d2l  brightspace  top hat  yuja  zoom  covid  online pivot 

Zooming

 Posted on April 10, 2020  |  3 minutes  |  485 words

Since we launched Zoom as a campus platform on March 13, 2020, there have been 36,439 meetings conducted by our community. And 3 reports of ZoomBombing (so far). There may have been others, but we have only 3 reported cases at this time1. We have spent much time and effort adjusting the configuration of our campus Zoom account to address security and privacy concerns. Default settings for meetings have been modified, making it more difficult (if not impossible) for intruders to barge into a meeting/class and ZoomBomb it. Read More
work 
zoom  security  privacy  platforms 

Online Exam Proctoring

 Posted on March 31, 2020  |  5 minutes  |  942 words

I drafted this as a briefing doc to help with decision making related to how we handle online exams for courses that are now being conducted remotely as a result COVID-19. It was circulated for feedback, so it may be useful to have a copy for reference here. I wrote it based on information gathered from the various vendors’ websites, and from conversations with colleagues. The doc was intended to give a high level overview of online exam proctoring software without delving into technical aspects. Read More
work 
online exams  online proctoring  briefing 

Zoom Online Exam Proctoring Demo

 Posted on March 23, 2020  |  1 minutes  |  161 words

We’ve been getting questions from instructors who would like to use Zoom to conduct online exam proctoring, for up to 800 students. I mean. Golly. That’s just not a great idea. Aside from the philosophical issues involved with using a videoconferencing tool to surveil students during an exam, there are technical issues. How would 800 streams of video be recorded? How would that be viewed? Also. The video feed isn’t necessary trustworthy. Read More
work 
zoom  video 

How to Turn Off Attention Tracking in Zoom Campus Accounts

 Posted on March 23, 2020  |  1 minutes  |  120 words

An article by Mehreen Kasana on Input Magazine made the rounds, talking about the “attention tracking” feature in Zoom, and how creepy and invasive it is. It is. But it can also be disabled for any account - and if disabled for a campus account, it can also be locked out for all users. — "Whether you have Zoom account or not," the company's privacy page states, "we may collect Personal Data from or about you when you use or otherwise interact with our Products. Read More
work 
zoom  privacy  video  demo