Tabbing with IntelliPoint mouse button

So I’m a lazy bum, but I need to use the Tab key quite a bit. (And why on God’s green Earth can’t manufacturers make a keypad with both a backspace and tab key on it? I can’t be the only one who does numeric data entry in Excel, can I?) I’m using a Microsoft Trackball Explorer (which I am very disappointed is off the market nowadays, because it fits my hand very well) and I decided to configure one of the buttons (specifically the “Top left button”) to pass a Tab keystroke.

There’s no IntelliPoint command on the list to pass a Tab, but there is one to pass a specific keystroke. Of course, that won’t allow me to tell it to pass a Tab command. Grr…

Maybe this is already obvious to you, but it felt like an inspiration to me: I set up the button to queue a Macro, created a macro (named “Tab” of course), and inserted the special action “Tab” into the macro. Save, OK, and an Apply later, and the button on my trackball passes the Tab command perfectly.

Hooray! (And this felt far better than the only results I could track down via Google, all of which involved hacking the registry.)

Parenting: School Misinformation

So, my oldest boy (now six) has started Kindergarten. Actually, I’m amazed at how many people have said “I wish my parents had kept me back a year.” He is attending class at Harvest Valley Elementary, which actually seems a good-sized school in the Romoland School District. (Frankly, I’m amazed there are enough kids in the area to support one school, let alone the four in the district.)

Getting him registered for Kindergarten was more tricky than I’d expected; in retrospect it makes perfect sense, but at no time does the district or school reach out to you first. They are totally ignorant of the existence of your child prior to initial school registration… so much for “Big Brother is Watching” or having your kid “forced” to go to school, I guess.

I was dismayed though, with the little information I had once the registration process was complete. I had located the school website on my own, which is where I found the registration paperwork in the first place. At no other time have I heard the school website mentioned. After getting the registration paperwork filed, I was given two single sheet letters, one telling me about the (apparently new) Principal, and the other indicating that school started the following Tuesday, and that Kindergarten orientation was Wednesday night.

Okay, orientation, that sounds good… except that orientation did not include any information on which teacher my child would have, the room he would be in, any of the specifics I had expected. I was informed of the detailed list of critical information my child would have to demonstrate competency over by the end of the year, including a 41 word vocabulary list and lengthy lists of vaguely worded objectives. As much as I appreciate details on what will be expected academically, this part of the process felt unsatisfactory to me.

Well, on Friday a postcard arrived, indicating who my boys teacher and room would be, and reminding that class started on Tuesday at 8. That was, predictably, an emotional morning; first kid off to school for the first time. At that time, there was no chance to see much of anything in the school or classroom, and no time to speak with the instructor. It was much too hectic an environment for thinking, let alone talking. Apparently it was also too hectic an environment to mention when class let out, as that was not mentioned, nor was it listed in the packet of papers from the school. One message to the school office resulted in two calls back, one saying that class ended at 10:30, the other at noon. (Turns out the latter was correct.)

That morning I was given a large packet of paperwork, with many fields to sign and date. I did not expect that, as a parent of a Kindergarten child, I would have to indicate the terms under which a 3rd through 5th grader might be expelled for sexual harassment. (Take a moment, and think about that last clause. Yeah.) The next day saw an even thicker packet of information, finally giving details like a map of the school and calendar. (Finally I had written confirmation that the day runs from 8 to 12.) I was surprised to note that virtually every Wednesday was a minimum day, at Harvest Valley. That doesn’t matter for the Kindergarten classes, but will sure matter for next year.

So, perusing the web site I saw that Back to School Night will be on a Thursday at 5:30. Okay, so I’ll have to arrange to get off work early, no problem… until dropping off the boy this morning I saw the sign outside the school office saying that Back to School Night starts at 5 PM.

I really don’t know which is worse: The school giving no information, or the school giving conflicting information. I also have to wonder if Palomar College (where I work in Academic Technology) gives their incoming students a similarly troubling first experience. I hope not, but I expect so.

Fire near Temecula, Twitter a mixed blessing

So the De Luz fire headed straight for Temecula; I can understand that, it’s a nice place to visit. My first touch on the existence of that fire was at work, when a co-worker’s wife called from Fallbrook about the smoke there.

Huh, fire near Temecula, which will likely impact my commute home. So I decided to find some information online about this fire; that was at around 4:30 PM. There was an hour old news article that came up on Google, and no real results from a Google blog search. Hmmm, I thought, what about Twitter?

As a matter of fact, the information I found with a search on Twitter for “temecula fire” was fairly helpful; so much so that I saved the search term since I just knew it would be useful later.

Now, if you’re looking for news on the fire itself and somehow got to this post, I would suggest you check the info now up on The Californian. Although, I couldn’t help but be struck by how well this fire was handled, especially in light of the recent “minimizing” of the local firefighters due to budget constraints, as reported by The Press-Enterprise.

My big gripe in this is about how puerile folks got on Twitter. When I later went back, and looked for results on “temecula fire” on Twitter, a bunch of fools had decided it would be great fun to post links to, well, adult content under the guise of info links. I realize that wanting responsibility in Twitter use is as futile as expecting good spelling from YouTube comments… but it ticked me off.

So, bottom line, good job points to slimly budgeted firefighters, and shame points to tweeting twits.

Twitter and Windows Mobile

I recently bought a new cell phone, the HTC Touch Pro. Yeah, yeah, I know the Touch Pro 2 is out soon… but I care more about “now” than “soon.” Plus, my old PPC 6700 was having issues.

Anyway, I do like the phone. My sister-in-law mentioned she was surprised that I didn’t hold out for the Palm Pre, but I am partial to Windows Mobile. The Touch Pro will be my fourth Windows Mobile (or Pocket PC, same difference really) device, so I just don’t feel like learning something totally new.

Anyway, I’ve also recently been getting into using Twitter. (http://twitter.com/DavidTheGray if you’re interested.) So I found myself wanting a good app for tweeting, and almost everyone said good things about Twikini. I like the app quite a bit, although I am having issues with the GPS location feature. (Likely this is just issues with the Touch Pro, and not Twikini at all.)

If you’re using Windows Mobile, and haven’t seen Twikini…

…it looks something like that. Actually, that is the color theme I use… it looks fairly good even in full sunlight on the Touch Pro screen. (Well, as good as anything can on a reflective screen in sunlight.)

Since I’m not always tweeting via the phone, on my Windows Vista computers I’ve also been using the Twadget sidebar gadget. It’s not great, but has worked out better than every other sidebar gadget I’ve tried. Oh, and for anyone with a Kindle… just use the “Experimental” web browser and you can tweet just fine. However, I’m finding that if I’m not just sitting in front of a computer, Twikini works best.

Grade Center’s Grade History and tech support glee

The Blackboard 8 Grade Center’s history has actually smoothed the path for handling a technical support issue. Amazing, but true.

Okay, so it’s probably an exaggeration to call that issue a “technical support” one, since the student had started a test attempt (for a test comprised of a single essay question) and either navigated away or otherwise killed the test attempt. Ordinarily the resolution would have been to tell the student “contact your instructor to see if they’ll clear your test attempt”, but when looking in the Grade Center to get details on exactly which test had the locked attempt I noticed a funny thing: There was not a locked attempt, and the test I was fairly sure the student was referring to had no attempt listed.

Huh. Well, then it hit me; what if the instructor had already been contacted, and already cleared it. Dang, this could turn into a whole exchange of emails on this topic, what a drag… oh, yeah, such a thing would show up in the Grade History list… sure enough, there it is, test attempt cleared by the instructor a good hour and three quarters BEFORE the student emailed for help from tech support.

So, the moral of this story? Grade History: good; assuming a student actually has a problem when they call for help: not so good.

Bb Learn app for iPhone

Well, it’s out. Rather than repeat myself here, let me just refer to my write-up and podcast segment over at the Palomar Academic Technology podcast site: http://www.palomar.edu/atrc/Pod/pod09101.htm#BbFeature .

I do have two problems with the iPhone app already though:

  • There is no way to force a refresh of the data (which automatically updates no more frequently than once an hour).
  • The View buttons that try to take you in Mobile Safari right to the piece of content in a Blackboard course don’t always work correctly. If you already have a session in Safari open and logged in to Blackboard, then the links work fine. If you don’t, the links take you to a log in prompt, then to the default course entry point instead of to the actual piece of content.

Hopefully these issues can be addressed in the near future. Hopefully.

Bb and IE 8

Okay, it’s release day for Internet Explorer 8; I’ve installed it on a couple computers and noticed crisper page loads than I’d come to expect from either IE7 or IE8beta. However, it’s still not (and likely never will be) on the Blackboard 8 user compatibility matrix. But…

Someone mentioned to me today that Google Chrome (which also does not appear on the compatibility matrix) loads the Grade Center very quickly compared to IE7, and that spurred me to test the Grade Center in IE8.

Using a training course on our system with 2082 students in it, I’ve timed the Grade Center’s grade grid load time in the past. For such a massive roster, the grid needed somewhere between 24 and 27 seconds to load in IE7. In IE8, it takes between 5 and 8 seconds to load.

Does this mean that instructors using IE7 should upgrade to IE8? Not necessarily, as it’s always a safer idea to stay with a browser/operating system combo that appears on the user compatibility matrix. Does this mean that I will be using IE8 whenever I go into the Grade Center from here on out? Unless I find some truly unexpected bugs (and I have used IE8beta with Bb8 for several months now without finding such), the answer is not only yes, but hell yes.

OMG! Bb WYSIWYG XML FTL!!1!

Heh, yeah it’s a sad commentary that the subject line of this post is actually what came to mind when troubleshooting a problem with a Blackboard test this morning. For anyone who can’t comprehend such acronymic drek, let me expand that: “Oh My God! Blackboard ‘What You See Is What You Get’ eXtensible Markup Language For The Lose!”

Okay, so that’s still not much more understandable; let me explain. (No, is too much. Let me sum up.)

The problem reported was that students trying to take a final exam in Blackboard while using Internet Explorer were being “routed into a loop” and therefore unable to take the test. (In fact they were being treated to one of those useless Blackboard error code pages.) My first guess was correct; extra code on the test page was executing in IE while not in other browsers. The test consisted of True/False questions, and when I went to modify a question (using Firefox, as IE would obviously not allow me in) I was astounded. There was the equivalent of over a printed page of XML code prefacing the single line of displayed question text.

Judging from the code, it was copy/pasted into Blackboard from Microsoft Word. Word, in its perpetual attempts to be helpful, tried its best to include code that would preserve all the meta-information about this text in the form of XML code… with some unfortunate results. (Actually from what I can tell, this code would have been fine in a standard page, but the interaction with the Blackboard test layout in a Blackboard frameset was sad.)

I can’t claim this is a Word problem, really; I can’t claim this is a Blackboard problem (although it sure would be nice if their Visual Text Box Editor had some automated way to strip out code); in fairness I can’t even claim this is an IE problem (the program is unable to execute the invalid code included on a convoluted page). But it causes quite a problem, that’s for sure.

So, what’s the fix? Tell the faculty to go in and manually strip out all the XML code. (Yeah, that’s going to happen right away.) Otherwise… have the students for this term’s exam NOT use Internet Explorer.

D&D Tiny Adventures – What’s Special About That?

So, I pretty much made a Facebook account just so I could try out the application “Dungeons & Dragons Tiny Adventures”… and it really is quite fun. You get some very minimal choices, and there is a bit of story element to each adventure, which (as advertised) is tiny. You dump your character after level 10, and get to start on a new “Generation” of character.

Okay, all well and good. At generation 6 you unlock a new class/race thing, the Genasi Swordmage. Doubtless this has some implications for those who are using D&D 4th edition; I’m not. (Heck, I never did pick up the 3.5 ed books; I don’t play at the moment. *sigh*) The Genasi Swordmage has an ability you can trigger whenever you like on an adventure… on his next encounter that requires a d20 roll, he can force it to be a ten.

Gee, that’s SOME special ability there. Just what I’d want to have if I’m worried about my next roll… “hey, GM, can I please be average?” “What? No, I don’t know what my next roll will be for, but… I want to be average!”

The whole concept behind D&D is that you’re playing heroic adventurers… but your special skill is to be average. How overwhelming.

Bb8 Test Evaluation

Sometimes faculty ask me how to evaluate their tests in Blackboard. I don’t mean “how to grade students”, since that’s pretty automatic (saving essay questions). I mean they’re looking for help with “how well is my test being answered” issues, typically with a segway into “what needs improving in my test”.

There actually is a component in Blackboard that makes this relatively simple. Once students have taken a test, and you’ve dealt with all the grades, and you’re ready to start evaluating the effectiveness of your test questions… go into the Grade Center.

Then go get a sandwich, since it takes so long for the Grade Center grid to load. Sheesh…

Okay, next click the “double chevron” button next to the column header for that test column. (Up in the teal header bar, that is.) Pick “Attempts Statistics”, and… voila. You should see all the questions from your test, with breakdowns of how students answered them. Now all you have to do is figure out what to do about the 78% of students put “C” for that question, when the correct answer was “A”.

Musings of an Academic Tech SysAdmin