Category: Educational Technology Applications

Perplexity and Twine

I’m experimenting with using Perplexity to help author a Twine. I have a successful proof of concept.

  1. Browse to Twine
  2. In the main Twine interface, click on “Library” then “Import”
  3. Choose the .twee file that you want to import

There are numerous plot issues to address, but I can use Perplexity to author and code a Twine story! I wonder if we might ever have the opportunity to help faculty develop a text-based simulation and how Perplexity or other GenAI tools might help. I wonder if there’s a better way to build these stories/simulations?

I think back on the original prompt I used from the Mollicks that showed me how effective a complex prompt can be to handle a simulation. The benefit of a Twine is that the simulation is much more controlled but that is also its weakness.

Python and Canvas

Overview

Our office has been using Python to handle certain production-related Canvas tasks since Brian Daigle took over as lead for our Production Team. He had expertise with Python and used it to bulk adjust dates and retrieve information in Canvas among other tasks. I’m now investigating how Python could be used from a Design perspective.

Screencast of how I run a Python script and an example of the canvas_module_items_simple.py listed below.

Continue reading “Python and Canvas”

ChatGPT Prompt for Tutoring

by Kent Matsueda and Erica Fleming

Are you looking for a tutor to help with a course, topic, or class activity? Use this prompt to help you get started.

Instructions

  1. Copy the entire text of the prompt below. You don’t need to read the prompt.
  2. Paste it into a new conversation in ChatGPT.
  3. ChatGPT will ask for information and then guide you from there.

Continue reading “ChatGPT Prompt for Tutoring”

Index of ChatGPT Prompts

This is a list of posts with complex prompts that I’ve developed to address various teaching & learning and learning design needs. They were inspired by the Prompt Library created by the Mollicks and use a CREATE framework presented by David Birss.

Why complex prompts as opposed to custom GPTs? Primarily because of access. I didn’t want my experiments to be available to paying customers only. On a related note, I wanted everyone to be able to see what they were using. You cannot see how a custom GPT was trained. Unfortunately, training isn’t possible with complex prompts so there are limitations. That said, if the prompt isn’t working for you, you can edit it even train it by adding your own resources. I just ask that you leave a comment on any of the posts with prompts so that others can benefit.

Dev/Rev Planning

Dev/Rev Planning Process

Dev/Rev = New Course Development and Course Revision Projects

For the past four to five years, I’ve been assisting with developing processes for our College to improve our Dev/Rev Process. While I am an Assistant Director, that title is rather misleading as I am relatively low in the organizational hierarchy of the College. This is relevant because I wouldn’t have been able to make the progress I have to improve things for the designers, which includes myself, and the faculty if I didn’t have the support of my Directors and the Faculty and Administrative leadership of the College. We still have a lot of work to do together but I am happy for the progress we have made.

The presentation above is a distillation of a more detailed process flowchart.

https://app.diagrams.net/ was a huge find as it is a powerful, open-source option for creating diagrams. I really enjoyed working with this software.

iPad Only?!

Updates: see the comments below this post…

Two days ago, I took my work laptop into the shop for warrantee work on the keyboard. Since then, I’ve been doing almost all of my work on my iPad. I have a personal iMac that I could use, but mostly as an experiment I wanted to see if I could use my iPad for work. It’s generally been a success.

Not surprisingly, there are a few things I cannot do.

  • I logged in with my personal iMac to view a course assignment that featured the WC Peer Eval tool. It is an antiquated tool and would not run in Chrome or Safari on my iPad.
  • I’m limited by what I can do in the Smartsheet app, so I have to make sure I’m using it in Safari.
  • A number of the hot-keys do not work the way I expect, so I’m not as fast performing a number of functions I’m used to.
  • I use my iPhone for Zoom, mounted on a stand above my iPad because the built-in camera on my iPad has me “looking down” at everyone. My camera also cuts out whenever I switch to a different app during a meeting to do things like update or view the meeting notes.
  • I’ve lost the ability to keep a large array of items in my clipboard. Having an app to do that on my laptop saves me a lot of time on certain tasks. Thankfully, the MacOS ecosystem allows me to copy something on my iPhone and paste it immediately onto my iPad without having to do anything.

I am surprised that the smaller screen really isn’t a big problem, but I’m used to working around that. Unlike many of my peers, I haven’t used an external monitor once since we switched to remote work back in the spring.

Using the College’s virtual machine also helps because it allows me to access a “full desktop” right from my iPad.

What’s the purpose or benefit? Well, I have a lot more confidence and knowledge of being able to work remotely with very little while not having to sacrifice any productivity.

Photoshop… still the best for GIFs

Tutorial: Create an animated GIF from a series of photos

I’ve tried some so-called, purpose-built GIF apps like GIF Brewery 3 and Photoshop is still the best for creating compact, quality GIFs. It gives me the most control, but there are a lot of additional steps and things to confuse those new to Photoshop.

I still have to consider the pedagogical application of when to best use a GIF. You have to consider your audience. The size, quality, and timing all play into whether the work I am creating will be effective. I made the GIF below for the director of my office, but chose to send static images because I had to get the information to her quickly and didn’t want to confuse her with how I formatted the information.

Walk through of viewing the Revision History on a WordPress page

Related:

  1. Using GIFs of Screencasts, 10/24/19
  2. MOV to GIF, 2/23/16

Additional: to make a screen capture of a specific window on a Mac, click the space bar after pressing command-shift-4 and then position the camera icon over the window you would like to capture and then click the mouse

Just-in-Time Videos

There are a variety of ways to capture and publish just-in-time videos for use in class. Some factors when considering different options are: ease of use, PSU support, time to deploy, editing options, storage options, etc.

Related

Google Tasks to the Rescue!

I’ve switched all of my tasks over to Google Tasks and everything is already better. Things are starting to get really busy preparing for FA20 and I was feeling stressed out and behind. Having all my tasks somewhere I can manage them definitely helps with my stress levels.

Now I can access/edit my tasks from my laptop, mobile devices, etc. Before, I was using MS Outlook Tasks and that was horrible. I would continually having syncing errors and lost a lot of content after a recent sync. Office365 has been a real disappointment in general. Before that, I was very happy with Apple Reminders, but was very disappointed that when they updated Reminders with Catalina, I lost the ability to access/edit my tasks via online iCloud and non-Catalina machines (not including mobile devices).

I was going to move all my tasks to Smartsheet, but looking through a spreadsheet for your tasks is a horrible experience and while it can handle this kind of data, it’s definitely not the best tool for task management for me.

Google Tasks isn’t as detailed as Outlook and that’s better for me actually. I’m going to keep track of how well it helps me, but so far so good!

Looks like I can even export my tasks using Google Tasks Desktop. I hope that works because that wasn’t something I could do with Outlook or Apple Reminders.

How to Make a Perfect Screencast

I have a hard time making concise and direct screencasts while being as time efficient as possible.

I have recorded a screencast on how I make screencasts.

Basically, I make a screen recording without audio first, then I record the audio, and finally I edit them together into a final cut that plays back smoothly and much better than if I just hit record and do everything at once. All I use is iMovie and Quicktime Player on the Mac. Both are available for free.

While this takes a little longer, it is much less frustrating and higher quality than trying to record both my audio and the screen at the same time.