Our Heads are in the Clouds

Cloud-based file storage is particularly helpful to students for several reasons. It allows you to remotely back up files and collaborate with other students. Most of you have used Google Drive and/or Dropbox, both great services that meet this need. But what if you need more space than Google Drive’s 15GB and don’t want to pay more to extend Dropbox’s free 2GB? Or if you want to host your own website? Well, Hopkins has got you covered.

Introducing: JShare

JShare is not a new application, but it is an obscure one. You can access it from your my.jhu.edu homepage after logging in. Hovering over the “Cloud” Quicklink brings up the “Cloud Apps” and “JShare” icons, as shown below:

Bonus Description Pop-up!

Clicking on JShare will open up a tab similar to the one shown here:

You say 'bland', I say 'functional layout'

As you can see, I’m using my JShare space to host my own websites. For all students, but especially those considering doing Web development after graduation, having a website with your resume information is a great way to show off your skills and put yourself on the job market. By default, there is a public_html folder designated for html files, but you can add, remove, and rename folders to your heart’s content by right-clicking. In addition, JShare gives you a fair amount of control over who else can see what is on your space. Right-click on a folder and then select Manage from the drop-down menu. This brings up the settings for that particular folder. On the left is the tab navigator, and after pressing “Permissions” your screen should look something like this:

So much power!

Users are listed under "Name" and their permissions can be set to Viewer or Contributor mode. If you want to remove privileges from a user (or Public), first select the user with the checkbox, and then press the "Remove Access" button. The Add User/Group button allows you to add anyone in the Hopkins network (from what I can tell) to your permitted user list; if the email is not recognized by JShare, it will automatically create a “ticket” for that user that allows them to be given viewing or contributing privileges until it expires. The default lifetime of a ticket is 30 days, but this can be changed or even set to unlimited. You can also assign a password for the ticket, but a password won’t improve security. In order to send the ticket link through JShare, you must first choose to use Mircrosoft Outlook or some other mail client. All ticket-related activities can be done from the “Tickets” tab on the left.

You can also copy/paste the ticket link into any e-mail or FB message.

You’ll also notice Logging and Versioning tabs, but I’ll discuss how to use those in a future post about Online Collaboration. Feel free to leave comments below!

Coursera and You

You may remember reading some Newsletter articles last year about a service called Coursera that had recently joined forces with Hopkins. The article went on to describe how Coursera would open learning up for thousands of people with the click of a mouse button. Johns Hopkins was now part of elite institutions who were making strides to share knowledge with everyone via the internet, and everyone seemed happy.

Yet no one talks about it anymore. Until now.

When arriving at the page of Coursera, thumbnails of available courses jump out at you, and suddenly a Duke course on neuroscience is sharing a space with a statistics class at the University of Nanjing. You can search for classes by topic or by school name. The complete list of participating universities and colleges is under the top tab "Universities" (where else?), and by clicking on any name, the website takes you to the complete list of courses offered by that school.

What isn't readily apparent is the information about what Coursera is. This is a system that partners with universities to offer short courses over a period of a few weeks intended to supplement courses taken for credit at a school. While most schools don't give credit for Coursera classes, a student will receive a certificate of accomplishment upon satisfactory completion of a class. Different standards apply to different classes, of course, but the one thing common to them all is that no class costs any money. That's right: completely free. Plus it looks good on resumes because it shows you pursue independent learning (or so I hope).

The sign up page on the Coursera website.

Signing up for any class is as easy as creating a Coursera account. By doing so you give the usual information about email and such, but you also sign the honor code and general website policy. One of the first policies is each person gets one account, so be careful! After you sign up for an account, you'll be able to register for any or all of the courses. Most require you to watch a short (less than 20 minutes) lecture on the skills you'll need for the next project or the next step in the curriculum, and then you'll be told an assignment for the week. Some of these assignments are graded by the instructor, but most are going to be peer-reviewed. This means that someone from Brazil could be grading a Kenyan's work, which is awesome for global teamwork. So long as you have internet, you can take a Coursera class. It's that easy.

After you create an account, you'll sign in here.

The author has already signed up for a few courses, one of which is on making small games using the Python computing language, but she hasn't yet completed one. When it happens I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. As for the actual technology behind the lectures, it is probably like the virtual classroom environment seen before with Elluminate Live. Nevertheless it is sure to be quite the learning experience for all involved.

The courses that I'm currently enrolled in. Sounds like fun!

What are you waiting for? There are Hopkins (and Princeton and UCSD and...) classes to take! Free, interactive, collaborative, and useful--it doesn't get better than that. 

Distance Learning at Hopkins

Despite the snow that graced Baltimore on Monday, summer is most definitely on its way. Hopkins has already sent our brochures advertising its plethora of Summer 2013 term courses, broken down into intense sessions either on campus or online.

Online? How can I take a Hopkins math course online? How does my homework get graded? What's going on?

All of these are good questions. Yes, it's really online. Yes, it is really a Hopkins math class, and you will get credit for it. If you are a Hopkins student, you have a Blackboard account that you can log into with your JHED. The course is structured through that interface, but also through a distance learning software that allows your instructor to write on a screen and have that information display on yours. Your homework is uploaded through Blackboard, just like lab reports and other homework assignments. In fact, it is very clean and very reliable (especially when you can go back and re-watch entire lectures before a test!).

http://www.elluminate.com/Services/Training/Elluminate_Live!/?id=418

The Elluminate Live icon. Cute, right?

The software used for distance learning courses is Elluminate Live, a service that "rents out" conference rooms and classrooms in virtual space (vSpace). It started out independent, but soon was acquired by Blackboard, Inc., which Hopkins uses. This is a very clean, easy system that allows for collaboration between large groups of people at the same time. To use Elluminate, you must be able to access the room, which is why the Blackboard site comes in handy. The instructor will post a link to the course calendar, and when a student clicks on it, it will go to the vSpace. If the instructor wants to record the lecture, the link will later become a link to the recording. Since this is all done within Blackboard, there is no confusing change from site to video, and it's easier for students to access.

What the basic screen of Elluminate Live looks like when first logging in. The instructor's notes will show up on the main screen on the right.

The mechanism of learning comes through the virtual classroom environment, which allows students to "raise" their hands, ask questions directly to the class, answer poll questions, etc. It's still a Hopkins class; the only difference is it's on your computer in your room or in the library. The instructor can speak into a microphone on his end, and so long as your audio is fixed correctly, you can hear him and respond with your own microphone. The notes for the class appear in the main screen, and it's basically like a chalkboard where the notes can be saved in a PDF format. Instructors can upload documents directly to the site, as can you (the student) when you need to submit homework. Simply scan your homework in and submit it as a PDF through the site.

The participant window shows the commands you are in control of, such as the ability to raise your hand, answer a poll, or use the microphone to ask a question. If you need to step away for a bit, just let the classroom know so they don't call on you.

As the students, you of course have to know how to participate in the class. That's why there are widgets for you to use in case you have a question, want to answer a poll, or need to step away for a minute. You can also use the chat feature privately to send messages to one or a selected few users.

This is not to be confused with the virtual classroom experience that some universities, Johns Hopkins included, are now using to offer their classes to more students. That is the next blog article. Until then, in case you were thinking of taking a math or science course online over the summer through Hopkins, this is what it would look like.

Cheers!