Archive
Archive for August, 2014
Windows Live Spaces url forwarding still working
2014/08/28
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- It is a long time ago that I migrated my blog from Windows Live Spaces to WordPress.
- It appeared to me recently that the URL forwarding from the original web pages to WordPress which was part of the migration package that Microsoft offered, had stopped working – regrettably, since I still have old documents pointing to the original pages, and the cryptic URL naming scheme seems to make it difficult to find out where the original ULR pointed to.
- However, it seems that only some forwarding stopped working. If I reformat URL format 1 (which redirects to the WordPress homepage) to format 2, the forward still works:
Categories: blog, e-infrastructure
blogging, redirecting, windows-live-spaces, wordpress
Logging learning center attendance using MS-Exchange Calendars
2014/08/27
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- Over the years, I had to find a number of solutions for monitoring student attendance in the learning center, by repurposing existing infrastructure (there are dedicated solutions which, however, are often too costly for a departmental center, or not shared well). Here is another idea:
- We’ve used the existing campus-wide MS-Exchange infrastructure’s resource mailboxes for room booking and equipment circulation.
- We have creatively repurposed this infrastructure for managing the staffing of “offices” (center help desk and tutors). Here we needed to allow conflicts:
- multiple students staff the help desk.
- 1 tutor staffs the “office”- 1 additional student can book the tutor.
- Additionally, we set up a time clock system, based on an Excel Macro, to prevent cheating:
- Only the person logging in can sign up to the resource;
- while only the help desk can provide the time clock value.
- It looks like that a similar setup could be extended to support the common requirement that students, while taking a certain course, spend a certain amount of time per week working in the learning center:
- which has been traditionally handled using paper-based sign-in-sheets or, at best, spreadsheets.
- With digital input, the data could be basis for analytics and visualizations, taking advantage of existing tools like MS-Calendaranalytics.
- Such a system would, however, require creation of resource calendar per course section that need to monitor learning center attendance. However, this needs to be done only once and would be reusable, since data can be filtered by input time, as long as no entirely new courses/sections come online.
- But hasn’t mandatory weekly learning center attendance been made obsolete by ubiquitous computing and the web?
- Definitely in some of its more antiquated forms: I have worked at institutions where the computer-savvy students attended the learning center once at the beginning of the term to copy all the learning materials on the network share onto a thumb drive, and I would not want to force somebody to come to the learning center continuously for such a trivial purpose as accessing files on a not-web-accessible network share.
- However, there seems to be a lot of unmined pedagogical value in learning center group work and blended instruction (under tutor supervision), like in a homework emporium (provided your program is big enough to have continuous tutor support and sufficient learner overlap).
Beep – beep – boop?! Cannot get classic mode to stick for editing my existing WordPress.com pages
2014/08/26
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Looks like I can get classic mode to stick by clicking on “classic mode” in the upper right of edit mode, for creating new posts.
Looks like I cannot for editing existing posts – what gives?
Best advice seems currently to edit through the “dashboard” – unacceptable to me, I often need to revise/refine posts when I browse them.
UPDATE: Well, the test-“Edit” to refine after publishing this post gave me the classic mode of editing – does it remember something? Currently, the behavior seems more like hit or miss…
UPDATE2: The edit for an old post still gets me “Beep – beep – boop” edit mode. Is it possible that the choice of “classic mode” affects only new posts after choosing?!
Update3: OK, looks like my choice of the old-style editor is being remembered now. Not sure that I did something to achieve that.
Categories: blog, e-infrastructure
wordpress
Arachne, online database for archaeology
2014/08/22
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“ARACHNE is the free [account creation required] object database of DAI and the Institut of Classical Archaeology in Cologne. It provides more than 1 Million images of finds, architecture and excavations with meta information as well as digitised historical literature” (http://www.ariadne-infrastructure.eu/Services/Online-Services: Find more information and help on this page). Example of Advanced Search start choice page: 
Continue with Einzelmotive (singular motifs) (gets you back into an English interface also – the field-specific explanation on the right certainly helps): 
There is auto-search completion/suggestion, however, it seems to work only for German, and very eclectic: 
Beats having to plaster your surroundings with photos for making your own panoramas. 
Categories: digital-humanities, erepository, Greek (ancient), Latin, learning-materials, websites
archeology, links, uni-koeln.de
How to add control of student sound/recording volume, sidetone, restart, and more to a Sanako Study 1200 environment, using the Launch Program feature and AutoIt
2014/08/22
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- UPDATE: A Windows7 (and Vista) version – which also uses a simplified deployment mechanism – is in the works, check back for a new post here.
- In refining our Sanako classroom setup, we improved the control, that the Sanako Study 1200 affords the teacher over the student clients in the computerized classroom,
- by extending the built-in Launch Program feature
- with custom-made executables (realized in AutoIt V3) that can control the volume (here on Windows XP SP3).
- This it how it works: Launch any of the programs (what each does is in its name) to any individual/group of students or the entire class in order to do any of these things on the student computers that the Sanako out of the box does not allow you to control, and that I often wish I could do when teaching language classes in a Sanako (or other computerized classroom management system) environment, like
- controlling the volume of what the students
- hears
- records
- turning the student sidetone (= echoing back the student microphone into the student headset) on and off
- starting/pausing Windows Media Player
- launching/closing quiz files in MS-Word
- restarting an entire (misbehaving) student applications
- controlling the volume of what the students
- Here is what we have:
- Here is how using what we have looks like:
- You can now request the download of these language lab enhancing programs, including source code, here.
Windows XP user profiles copy to greyed out ?
2014/08/22
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- Problem:
- For all profiles, not only for the logged in profile… Not likely a permissions problem? I can delete
- Solution:
- “if you’ve ever been logged into a profile without rebooting you won’t be able to copy that profile either. So you might have to restart before you can copy the profile.”
- or use shutdown /r when connecting via MSTSC.
Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, e-infrastructure
imaging, mstsc, profiles, shutdown
Request to download the digital audio lab classroom audio configuration on the fly, program and source for Windows XP
2014/08/22
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UPDATE: A Windows7 (and Vista) version is in the works, check back for a new post here.
Back to description of reset of classroom audio configuration on the fly program
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