How To « Lisa's (Online) Teaching Blog

Moving from Posterous to self-hosted WordPress

By Lisa, on April 1st, 2012%

Posterous has refused to convert my video for the last time. It was bad enough that they started “Spaces” (adding extra clicks and not working in Firefox anymore), then they got bought by Twitter. But the whole point of my ds106 blog is posting my own audio and video creations, so this is the last straw.

I read at Lifehacker that the self-hosted WordPress plugin Posterous Importer didn’t work , but they’ve fixed it and it does, very well.

So to do this, I created a database on my hosted server and installed (another) WP blog from WordPress.org. Then I followed the 5 minute install instructions. Then I made a mistake.

At this point, what I needed to do was create a plain text file called php.ini that had the settings I want so I can upload big media:

[PHP]
 max_execution_time = 300
 max_input_time = 600
 memory_limit = 60M
 upload_max_filesize = 200M
 post_max_size = 32M

Then I needed to upload this into the wp-admin folder before I imported my Posterous.

Next step was to get the plugin Posterous Importer and activate it, then give it the information to download my blog. It worked very well (except that it linked back to Posterous for the files that were too big because I didn’t do the php.ini file first!).

Because I’m using Quicktime files, I also needed to get the QuickTime Embed plugin and use its shortcode to create a player for the files I uploaded, so I did have to clean up a few posts, but overall this is going great.

Making a FAQ

By Lisa, on February 26th, 2012%

Our assignment for this week at Pedagogy First! is to make a short FAQ. Mine is huge.

But the question that’s come up a couple of times now, at least for those who aren’t experienced at HTML, is how to get that cool effect where a student clicks on a linked Q at the top, and the cursor bounces to the corresponding A at the bottom. This is called an internal link or an anchored link.

Here’s how to create those links in a FAQ using OpenOffice. This can then be copied and pasted into a blog post or Dreamweaver.

Embedding in WordPress.com and Edublogs

By Lisa, on February 16th, 2012%

When the Program for Online Teaching Certificate Class began over at Pedagogy First!, we asked everyone to start a blog for posting their weekly assignments. Not wanting to cost anyone anything, we recommended Edublogs and WordPress.com. We got together a big syllabus of assignments, and thought we were off and running.

Oooops. Some of the things we were asking people to do wouldn’t work, even though we tried to be helpful with the how-to. These were things that were second nature to those of us running our own blogs on our own servers, like embedding video, audio and slideshows. We’re used to full access to a myriad of plug-ins for doing fun things. But these just aren’t available on the free services, and we didn’t know.

It’s audio, video and screencast time, and some people can’t embed to show us their stuff.

So I’m researching workarounds.

For WordPress.com

Here’s one for using Vodpod to embed Flickr, by Gavin Wray. I tried it and here’s the result. It worked, but I did it differently.

So I went to all this trouble, only to find that Flickr slideshows (and YouTube and Vimeo) embed just fine anyway, just by putting their URL on a separate line in a post!

Vodpod as workaround

So I tried things that can’t be embedded that simple way. Vodpod was the answer to two issues:

1) Slideshare, a slidecast with music. Vodpod said it wouldn’t accept the embed code from that site. So I just put in the URL. And it worked.

2) Jing. I used the URL http://www.screencast.com/t/gL1VF7SS2 and no problem. (It wouldn’t work with a Quicktime upload I put in Screencast, but it worked fine with a standard Jing in the Flash format.)

(Vodpod kept saying it was uploading to Facebook instead. But I told it WordPress, and it can’t load to Facebook because it doesn’t have my account.)

For Edublogs

In Edublogs, this Vodpod trick doesn’t work. You get an error code in Vodpod saying you need XML-RPC services, which you can’t enable without Edublogs Pro. That makes Slideshare and Jing a problem for Edublogs. Know any workarounds?

Some interesting places to meet in real time

By Lisa, on December 8th, 2011%

We’ve been working at finding places for synchronous meetings of various kinds for the POT Certificate Class. Sure, we can do the usual things, like meet up in Collaborate/Elluminate (we have installations at several of our jobs), but we kinda like free and we kinda like different so lately we’ve been looking at:

Web conferencing or video/audio conversation

Google Plus hangouts

The advantage is that many people already are in Google for something, and it’s pretty easy to find Plus now, and everyone can now access it since it’s out of alpha stage. Great video and audio quality, and the camera can automatically shift to whoever is speaking, putting them in the main frame. But the maximum is 10 for talking – anyone after 10 can only watch. We liked it especially for quick meetings, kind of like Google Talk with video. One interesting thing is that if it’s public, anyone may drop by. The “with extras” option slows down the system, but lets you add viewing a YouTube together (this didn’t always work) or embedding a collaborative Google Doc, which would make presentations possible.

Big Marker

Kind of like Collaborate Lite, this one let us be on camera with microphones, but we had to have headsets upon entering the room or we got awful audio feedback. We only had four cameras on at once, but quality was good. All panels (participants, individual cameras, whiteboard) were in separate frames that could be resized. A presentation ppt could be loaded, and the presenter could zoom in or mark on it with simple drawing tools (line, box). Only one person could present at a time, and a newly uploaded presentation replaced the old one. Sessions cannot be archived with a free account.

Facebook HOOT

We began with just Facebook group chat, which is only text chat, but then decided to try this. Hoot is an FB application that you add, and the idea is to allow students to meet up together with video and audio. We tried it with five or six people, and as we were talking the creator of the app came in and spoke with us. Spooky but cool. Created by students for students.

Second Life

Here you need a “place” in SL to meet, so it’s like Collaborate only in that sense, and there are colleges and various organizations that will let you use their space. Audio is kind of new, and the application is pretty heavy (Cris Crissman pointed me to a different viewer, called Phoenix, that worked better than the new SL viewer). Learning curve is high, but the learning experience is rich because of the simulation of an actual meeting in a simulated space. Hard to explain unless you’ve done it.

Skype group video calling

For this, one person in the group must have a Pro account.

Alternate formats for “talking” while working together

Slideshare (Zipcast)

The idea here is that the presenter schedule a session where s/he can show him/herself on video and audio while touring through a slideshare slideshow, and you can see who is attending with their icons, and they can text chat during the session. Looks like you need a Pro account to do audio conferencing.

Inside a Google Doc

We meet inside a Google Doc just by putting some text in a Doc, then making it public and letting everyone know the URL. No audio, but real time edits and chat once you open the side window, plus you can annotate. If you were logged in to Google, sometimes it would still show you in the room as Anonymous, which was annoying. The other problem is that the synchronous chat isn’t saved. But it was a great way to create a document in real time.

I’ve heard Etherpad is good for this too, but it’s been bought by Google anyway; Crocodoc is also good for annotating together.

Hall.com

We recently also tried hall.com, which sets up a room where you can do polls, to do lists, and instant message chat — it seemed to work very well.

MindMeister Brainstorming

Lets you text chat while you create a mind map together.

Qikpad

Like Google docs, but better in a way because you can change your name from anonymous instantly, and everyone’s contributions are instantly highlighted in a different color.

Shut up and collaborate

You don’t always need to be able to see and/or hear and/or text chat with each other — sometimes you just need to work at the same time. The collaborative documents can do this, and so can:

Stroome

Video collaboration, but we haven’t tried it in real time, though it says it can. 500 MB free. Lets you add clips, transitions, do cuts, etc. A little slow in rendering. Another recent option is wevideo, which we’ll try also, although it only lets 5 people work on one project in its free version.

Prezi Meeting

We haven’t yet tried it, but you can meet in Prezi to collaborate on making a presentation. Icons represent each participant, and move around showing who’s editing what.

Watch a video together

Not quite ready for prime time, or at least not any better than putting a link in a chat and telling people to go watch.

We tried YouTube itself, which now has a link in the Share options that sets up a Google hangout for watching — we have tried to watch videos together in Google Hangout and it doesn’t usually work. We often all get bounced to a generic YouTube page instead of whatever the participant is trying to load in.

We also tried Chill.com (you have to use Facebook for this), and Synchtube, which didn’t really. We were all able to watch the same video, but speed varied widely. One of our members called it “Asynchtube”. Watchittoo.com made you pay.

Your question: where and when are you guys testing all this? more in the next post!

My question: What else should we check out?

Class design: is One Blog the middle ground?

By Lisa, on October 27th, 2011%

I have now been a student in three separate classes where I ran my own blog to do the class assignments (CCK08, EC&I831 and ds106). My classes for students are all designed with an LMS-based forum, within which outcomes have been achieved well thus far (I implemented the basic format in 2009).

So now, as I consider departing from an LMS for at least one of my classes for spring, the question is: should I have each student create his/her own blog, then aggregate them, and have them comment on each others’ blogs for discussion? That’s been the model in all three classes I’ve taken, and is the model for Pedagogy First!, where we’ve been using 90 individual blogs for the POT Certificate Class, aggregated to one central website.

But is this the best way for my own classes?

In a more typical online class, discussion takes place in a forum. This keeps things focused and in one place. People are used to forums. All the classes I’ve seen with distributed activities instead of forums have students begging for a forum, whether it’s a threaded forum in an LMS, a Google group, or a Ning. People want a central place to talk, and an aggregated blog made of up all their disparate posts can become just an information center, not a coffee house.

My brilliant colleague Jim Sullivan teaches English composition using a class blog. Students are all authors on it, and they blog there, not on their own blogs. We’ve discussed this many times, and I’ve rejected it because students don’t control their own space. I think they should, but I’m aware that the idea of helping hundreds of students with their technical problems has been a major hurdle to moving ahead. Now it occurs to me that Jim’s approach may be the pedagogically middle ground rather than just easier and more convenient for me (I like pedagogical middle grounds).

A traditional forum in an LMS is set in its pattern and closed in its format (once the class is over, you usually can’t access it). Having everyone create their own blog lets students have their own permanent space, but really doesn’t encourage discussion (as I’ve discovered running Pedagogy First!). Is the One Blog approach the middle ground?

Is it open and available?

It can be open and as loose as I want, and since I run my own WordPress I can promise it will stay open (Jim runs his own Typepad).

Is there a sense of student ownership?

While students don’t run their own space, students may feel that the One Blog is their space collectively, rather than individually (a classroom they can help create). This could subconsciously create a feeling of community.

Does it provide a good place for discussion?

Yes — not as much as a traditional forum, but more than individual blogs, because it is in one place and everyone is signed in just once, rather than being a guest on other people’s blogs. Plus, WordPress comments are nested. I have searched long and hard and have been unable to find forum software that is free, nests the comments so you can see which comments reply to which, and will tolerate multimedia.

Isn’t Ning a middle ground?

Ning is a social networking platform, a damned good one (nested! multimedia!), but to use it for free you have to advertise for Pearson. That isn’t middle ground — if there’s any advertising in my class at all (and I think there shouldn’t be) it should be incidental, not deliberate and appearing as if I am a spokesperson sponsoring a product (in many ways, this includes Blackboard and Moodle). And I don’t have time right now to figure out how to use an open source social networking platform (such as Oxwall) on my own service.

Although until now I’ve only used blogging for class as a student, I do use the blog platforms for my History 103 and History 104 at San Elijo. They’re not actually blogging on these (in terms of reflection or graded items), but rather posting theses for papers they turn in, and working together to create collections for class presentations. I could start by expanding this set-up into the One Blog format.

Sooooo…..

what am I not thinking of here as I make this decision?