BP4_Schoology

Saludos!!!!
In the last couple of weeks I've been listening to a couple of professors complaining about not accessing Facebook at the University, I asked myself "If this professors are so much into Facebook, why they can have the same attitude toward Blackboard?".  I found the answer in "Schoology".  Schoology is an online learning management system that I found while looking for Web 2.0 Tools.  The only requirement is register your name, email, course(s), and school/college/university that you are teaching at.  Yes, it's free!!!.  When you are in your main page, you'll see that it looks almost like Facebook.

You can add a photo to your profile and organize your course material in the folders available on Schoology, like assignments, tests, files/links and have a discussion board.  In the "test" category, professors can specify if the test is midterm or final.  Quizzes and tests can be a mix of categories like "true or false", "matching", multiple choice", "fill the blanks" and they can program how many minutes or hours the test will be available to the student, if the questions will appear in a random order, etc.    Other features are a gradebook, attendance list and a analytic feature that shows the teacher how many times the student enter the page, post on the discussion board, work on the assignments, etc.

Like Facebook, teachers can write updates on their webpage like announcements on holidays, quizzes, etc.  Teachers can use Schoology to have a complete online course or as a addition to their face-to-face class.

BP6_Cyndee's Communication Center

Follow this link of my comments on Cyndee's Blog.

BP_3 Soundation

Hi there!!!
I will dedicate this post to my students at the Center of Cinematography and Television Sciences (CCAT in spanish).  Most of them are itching to work in a recording studio or to have their own, so they can begin producing their own music.  One of the tools that I found on the internet is the Web 2.0 tool called "Soundation".  This tool is an online version of Mac's "Garage Band", where the student or music aficionado can create their own tracks, by using a collection of loops that goes from different styles of music and instrument, to background noise for people who want "ambient sounds"(street sounds, alarm clocks, people chatting, etc.), for video productions. In the free version, is not possible to save the project online, but they can do a mixdown to the user's desktop.  If your student can't afford Garage Band or Frutti Loops, Soundation is a good solution.

To show you how cool is the application, I decided to create a small musical sample.  Once I open the application, I saw at my right hand of the screen the channels where I can control the volume and effects of the instruments/sounds, at the center is the main work area or "timeline; and at the left is the collection of loops/sounds that I will use for my musical sample.

I chose Indian tabla and other Indian instruments that I found in the loop collection. I drag the ones that I liked to the "timeline" and adjust the volume and level to my liking.  Since I didn't found any Sitar loops to go to the rhythm section I already created, I chose a blues sounding Dobro slide guitar and drag it to the timeline.

You will ask yourself "How this guy can mix a blues guitar with a Indian rhythm section?".  Soundation will notify that the track doesn't fit the tempo of the song and gives you the option to stretch the tracks' tempo or pitch.  I decided to stretch the pitch and viola!!! a sitar sounding guitar. For effect, I balance the frequencies of the guitar using the program's eq. and to add a little effect, I put a phaser sound.

Since I can't saved my musical track on the program, I chose to do a mixdown and save it as a .wav sound file on my computer's desktop.