{"id":624,"date":"2010-09-08T12:09:30","date_gmt":"2010-09-08T20:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=624"},"modified":"2025-08-18T13:07:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T20:07:26","slug":"first-full-out-test-of-wp-in-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/first-full-out-test-of-wp-in-class\/","title":{"rendered":"First full-out test of WP in class"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was the first major \u201ctest of the system\u201d, using the WordPress blog for student activity.<\/p>\n

They have been posting their thesis just fine, but today it was time to use the site in class, as the place for groups to create presentations with images.<\/p>\n

I had to add two plug-ins to make the images happen in the first place — one is in Russian (no one seemed to notice) and provides a toolbar with an icon of a picture that lets you add the URL of an image on the internet, and one with a link that lets you add one from your desktop. Most of them used the first one, but they had to help each other figure out how to find the direct URL of an image (rather than the website it was on). I helped a few students with this, but most figured it out.<\/p>\n

In my second day survey, 33 of the 40 students (now 38) said they could bring a laptop to class for the days we would use them, but not all did so. I had gone ahead and ordered all six (now eight) laptops from Media Services just in case. These laptops all have dead batteries and have to be plugged in, requiring a series of power strips and students to have to move their groups, but they\u2019re better than no laptop. Last semester each group used only one, but I really needed one laptop per person. A few students tried using their smart phones — iPhones worked best.<\/p>\n

\"Persian-history-5\"<\/a>
\nThe task was to find three images of primary sources from before 500 BC and create a thesis about what they had in common. In Ning, each group had its own section. In WordPress, I made each group its own Category, then added a first post. Any member can then Comment to post something, and the image toolbar and link shows up.<\/p>\n

The students were somewhat uncertain at first, but I don\u2019t think that was the technology — each group had several people who were happy to experiment and use the machines to complete the task. It\u2019s more that we are new to each other, Labor Day meaning this is only the fifth class I\u2019ve had with them. Also, many did very poorly on the first quiz, so I started the activity after we discussed that and I gave them an additional quickie extra credit question. (If you\u2019re pedagogically curious, this was because I noticed on the test that they did better on questions from lecture than on reading, and I wanted to see if they retained something we talked about after almost two weeks.)<\/p>\n

Challenges: <\/em>
\n* Students made mistakes but could not edit or delete their own comments. I do not yet see a setting for that. I logged in on the class computer and went to the comments, so group members could come up and delete any mistakes, but of course that meant they could delete anything by mistake. Not a good solution, though it worked for today.
\n* Unlike Ning, WordPress\u2019 image plug-ins don\u2019t have an intuitive way to resize an image.
\n* The right side column impeded the main column, making it too narrow — I\u2019ll look into a fix for that.<\/p>\n

Cool Things:<\/em>
\n* I let groups choose how they wanted to work and present. Some chose having individuals add things; others chose to put it all in one comment.
\n* Once they got started, they were all working together and going exploring on the laptops. Looked like archaeology with laptops as the tool.
\n* I noticed during presentations that students used the mouse of the presentation computer in one hand (not on the desktop) so they could control things efficiently while talking — looked cool.<\/p>\n

OK, gotta take a look at those settings!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was the first major \u201ctest of the system\u201d, using the WordPress blog for student activity. They have been posting their thesis just fine, but today it was time to use the site in class, as the place for groups to create presentations with images. I had to add two plug-ins to make the images […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,10,13,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cmslms","category-online-teaching","category-pedagogy","category-wordpress"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10016,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions\/10016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}