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Archive for December, 2011

How to search this blog: Combining searching for tags and categories with feed display in Internet Explorer

2011/12/14 Leave a comment
  1. By adapting this mask in the address-bar: https://plagwitz.wordpress.com/tag/YOUR-1ST-TAG+YOUR-2ND-TAG+…+YOUR-NTH-TAG/feed/?category_name=YOUR-1ST-CATEGORY+YOUR-2ND-CATEGORY+…+YOUR-NTH-CATEGORY
  2. you can combine into an AND-Search
    1. a tag-search (e.g. for the posts tagged as “FAQs”. You can find other tags from the tag-cloud in the right column of the blog; note that it is not complete, but only the most frequent tags are displayed there. Tags are a metadata collection that can flexibly grow on demand)
    2. a category_search (e.g. for “audience-is-teachers”. You can find other tags from the category-hierarchy in the right column of the blog; note that this hierarchy is complete, all categories tags are displayed here, top categories alphabetically, sub-categories alphabetically under their respective parent. Categories are a more controlled metadata collection)
  3. and the display of only the “feed”
  1. which makes for a quicker overview of large search result sets than the complete articles that a search without “ /feed” would return)
  2. and allows for subscribing to (or saving stored) searches
  3. Internet Explorer’sfeed display is
    1. compact
    2. provides a (1) cumulative overview of all tags and categories (the “ tag cloud for search results”  that is missing on WordPress.com ) within the search results which is easy to browse and drill into, for searches within search results (click to “filter by category” and tag: Internet Explorer subsumes both tags and categories of WordPress.com’s blogs under the term “category”).
    3. (2) evidence of an AND-search across tags and categories (e.g. find only FAQs that are for meant for teachers: 15 matches for the former, 15 matches for the latter, 15 matches overall)
    4. Result:wordpress-search-tag category feed ie-subsearches-marked
  4. Limitations
    1. To browse categories by view (syntax /category/[CATEGORYNAME]), you would have to travel the full path of the category hierarchy. Using “&category_name=” seems easier, especially since the view does not allow for searching within the entire category sub-branch. Each node stands by itself.
    2. Remember that this is not full-text, but metadata (“human curated”) search technology. The quality of the search results hinges on the quality of the metadata originally added to the blog posts by the author (“To err is human”, or “Garbage in, garbage out”).
    3. Worse: There is no provision for collaborative tagging on WordPress.com.
  5. more hints:
    1. “/feed” works only before ?query-string-syntax, but only after /view-syntax, like in the following examples around “Arabic”.
    2. you do NOT need to give the whole branch of categories when using the view-syntax (and also not only for the 1st and 2nd level): https://plagwitz.wordpress.com/feed/?category_name=arabic works, but so does https://plagwitz.wordpress.com/category/arabic/feed and also https://plagwitz.wordpress.com/category/study-program-is-any/all-languages/arabic/feed.
Categories: audience-is-any, blog, documentation, e-learning Tags: , ,

Plagwitz– eLearning Workshops delivered

2011/12/13 Leave a comment

View full-screen.

Categories: Documents, e-learning, Personal Tags:

How to allow resubmitting of Moodle Kaltura video assignments

2011/12/12 Leave a comment
  1. Students may need a number of tries to complete a Kaltura video recording assignments, especially if they do not take advice to do it  in the LRC, with the provided support structure, but overly confident, prefer to try “relying on their own metal”.
  2. To allow them to learn from their mistakes, one is best advised to allow for resubmission of their assignment.
  3. If you have not enabled the assignment, click on the assignment on the Moodle course home page –  apparently no need to   “turn editing on” prior –, and in the upper right corner of the assignment page, click button: “update this assignment”, like so: kaltura=allow-resubmission0
  4. On the assignment settings page, make sure, “allow resubmitting” is set to “yes”, like highlighted below:kaltura-allow-resubmission
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-learning, lms Tags: ,

How to override a Projector control out of synch with the Classroom projector

2011/12/10 Leave a comment
  1. When the projector control system is “out of synch”with the projector.
  2. Symptom: “System off” does not turn the projector off, but also “System on”  does not turn.
  3. Workaround: From the control panel Home screen, access soft button “system tools”CIMG0002 
  4. Here you can manually turn the projector on/off  (and the close the screens)CIMG0001
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-teachers, Classroom-technology, e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors, hardware, Presenter-Computer, Projectors Tags:

What are best practices for recycling Moodle course teaching content? A running log

2011/12/08 Leave a comment
  1. Guiding Questions:
  2. I am in the process of creating Moodle assignments with instructors. I am inclined to tell them that this is best done now, before the term starts. I have met several instructors who seem to redo all their Moodle assignments and other content, for each term and each section, and who change Moodle courses on the fly, in the middle of the term, adding identical assignments to multiple sections. When I taught with the LMS (in Blackboard environments), the entire course (content) was “rolled over” between terms (and copied into sections), after subtracting student data. What are best practices in Moodle for reusing/recycling such course content, across terms, sections, and instructors? 
  3. Is it possible to get entire course+instructor combinations recycled centrally and automatically, whenever an instructor teaches a course again, from the archive of the last version of the course, sans student data?
  4. Or does each instructor, any time she reteaches a course, have to manually reimport all materials she wants to reuse from her old courses? So far, I have followed this page: http://teaching.uncc.edu/Moodle/how-to/importing-Moodle-course (here is an example of using the import feature when adding assignments into multiple sections in the middle of the term: https://plagwitz.wordpress.com/tag/importing+moodle/). Can this be done before term start at least into one section, from which the other section is created by copying? What would be the cut-off date for that?
  5. Would instructors use the last live version of the course to go forward, like I did with Blackboard, or are instructors advised to develop all content in separate development courses, and selectively import content from there into live courses? Does each instructor have a development course by default? Is it possible/advisable for an instructor to have one development course per actual course she teaches (repeatedly)? Does access of instructors to past courses expire when they get archived, and when would that be?
  6. Finally, how could assignments be exchanged between instructors who teach the same courses? 
  7. Courses seem to be complex packages. Repackaging individual assignments from one generic development course into course packs while importing seems administrative overhead, unless there is a in-built support for packaging that allows to add course tags to content. On the other hand, courses need to be easily updateable: student data needs to be added and removed easily. Teacher content needs to be refined, possibly updated with some current materials each term.
  8. Exploration:
    1. files planning:
      1. When publishing files, I have been trying to restrict all information that needs regular updating (dates, fine tuning of assignments and grading) to the syllabus files which I upload every term. So that I can “roll over” the rest of the course, including its files. 
      2. observe the (max 64mb) file size limit in your Moodle courses
      3. You cannot use this procedure to share Kaltura videos, not even the ones a teacher made
    2. importing
      1. importing steps see here.
      2. To be seamless, source and target course need to have the same format (settings / topical, weekly or other). Otherwise, your exports from a weekly formatted course into a topically formatted course will get put into the topic number corresponding to the week # (which, if you have set to fewer topics than you had weeks, may effectively hide them. Not to worry, you can still retrieve them by adding topics to your course, then moving the assignments where you want them).
      3. backing up/restoring
        1. backing up see here 
        2. restoring see here
        3. more on backup/restore from the Moodle docs FAQ
        4. primary instructor can use assign roles to add other teachers to give them access to importing; better create an intermediate, not student-accessible Moodle course for sharing instead
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, e-learning, lms, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: , , ,

Logging off fails on teacher station?

2011/12/08 Leave a comment
  1. Symptoms: Cannot log off.
  2. Diagnostics:
    1. Not even after taskkilling so far (got to around “S” in process name initials)). CIMG0003 - Copy
    2. When did this behavior first manifest itself? This week? MS-Office 2010 upgrade? Novell upgrade?
  3. Workaround: Current best workaround is power-cycling the computer.
  4. Solution: Problem seems to have disappeared. Cause and resolution unclear, though.
Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors, Presenter-Computer Tags:

Screencasts for Fall 2011 Workshop: Computer classroom management in the LRC using Sanako Study 1200

2011/12/08 Leave a comment
  1. The workshop stayed  “this side of the digital audio lab”, i.e. focused on those generic teaching tasks that the Sanako Study 1200 can facilitate which have the widest teaching application (including in, but also beyond language-skill-courses):
    1. remote controlling student computers,
    2. screen sharing, collaborating with students,
    3. launching applications on students computers,
    4. sending students to webpages,
    5. launching handout files to students and collecting their input back
    6. locking their computers, screens or keyboards,
    7. “clicker” classroom polls, for which I have written a PowerPoint Template you can base your own clicker-like face-to-face class exercises on.
    8. and more…
    9. Here are two screencasts of my presentation:
      1. one for the right screen/participant screen (using the Study1200 teacher to student screen casting). Requires Windows Media Player on PC, like in the LRC: download from MS-SkyDrive.
      2. one for the left screen/projector, where I displayed mostly a PowerPoint. You can watch this in parallel using another player, e.g. the VLC player, like in the LRC. However, it can also stream from MS-SkyDrive.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-learning, LRCRoomCoed434, Presenter-Computer, Screencasts, software, Student-Computers, training, workshops Tags: , ,

A PowerPoint Template to base your clicker-like face-to-face class exercises on

2011/12/08 2 comments
  1. Enables easy exercise creation: slide0567_image532
  2. Resides on S:\coas\lcs\labs\lrctest\templates\Teacher.pot;
  3. Requires MS-PowerPoint 2010, as installed on the teacher computer in LRCRoomCoed434.
  4. Training videos are available for download here (requires Windows Media Player on Windows, as installed in the LRCRoomCoed434).
    1. powerpoint_template_overview_default_slide.wmv
    2. powerpoint_template_sequential_slides.wmv
    3. powerpoint_template_interactive_slides.wmv
  5. Usage samples available on request from
    1. German Beginners, teacher_pot_dual_screen_bundeslaender_with_response_analyzer
    2. Intermediate  cc-teacher-pot-interactive-drink-listening-comprehension
    3. and Advanced Classes. cc-teacher.pot-100-deutsche-jahre-example
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-learning, learning-materials, Presenter-Computer, presenter-computer, Screencasts, software Tags: , ,