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Calendaring can improve instruction
2014/02/25
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It’s coming: “An Interactive On-line Course Calendar for Multi-Section Courses, by María Paredes Fernández (University of Pennsylvania): The interactive online course calendar was project that received funding from the Penn Language Center at the University of Pennsylvania in early 2012 to streamline class preparation for fellow colleagues, promote transparency for the students, and ensure continuity and quality instruction of the Accelerated Elementary Spanish Course, Spanish 121. The day’s lesson plans organized and uploaded on an interactive webpage on the course management systems Blackboard and Canvas. The lesson plans were comprehensive, as it featured the links, PDF documents and PowerPoint presentations of the day in one convenient location, and were easily shared with students to aid in their preparation. This talk will focus on how the interactive syllabus shaped this course and how it could work for other programs.”
Moodle can ICS exporting, which students and teaches can subscribe to in their NINERMAIL.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, conferences, lms
2014, calendaring, neallt
Audio player error message involving “pluginfile.php” in Moodle quiz
2014/02/24
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- LRC assistants may get called by students with this error regarding pluginfile.php in a Moodle quiz, it appears in the audio player interface itself and looks like this:
- The error messages flashes only briefly, and afterwards the audio simply will not play.
- In a Respondus lockdown browser quiz, you can bring up the error message again by clicking “next” and then resuming the attempt. When the quiz page reloads, the error message will briefly flash again.
- LRC assistants cannot work around this error, they need to alert permanent staff. Usually it is related to a quiz author needing to update the audio file link, like so:
- Go into the quiz, on the left, click “edit the quiz”):
- Find the audio file link, edit the link:
- Can you actually load the link? If it says “file not found”, you have the root cause:
- Does it say “draft” in there? Not good. Copy the unique identifier from the path:
- Go to in Moodle course / Files section, locate the offending file (you can use the unique id you put in the clip board to search), i.e. make sure it actually exists:
- Get the correct URL for the file, puit it int the clipboard:
- Go back to editing the quiz, update the wrong URL with the correct one.
- Save the updated quiz.
- Go into the quiz, on the left, click “edit the quiz”):
- Now the student can reload the quiz, if in Respondus lockdown browser, like above by clicking “next”and back.
German Frame Semantic Online Lexicon
2014/02/21
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“The German Frame-based Dictionary is an attempt to apply the linguistic theory of Frame Semantics to the language classroom”, and is “based on the German FrameNet at the University of Texas at Austin, a digital archive of how German words are used in real life contexts”. How to Use the German Frame-based Dictionary.
Example Frame pagE:
The Frames available are limited, but instructive samples which can help the naïve user with dictionary use: 
There are also some Arbeitsblätter, but only a few: 
(On the occasion of Charles Fillmore’s death).
Categories: Dictionaries, e-languages, English, German, websites
framenet, linguistics, semantics
Here is how the LRC could use an engraver to deter theft of equipment
2014/02/20
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Categories: audience-is-administration, e-infrastructure, service-is-library
security
If MS-Exchange room mailbox does not auto-decline, but forwards conflicting requests
2014/02/20
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- This room should auto-decline conflicting requests, but forwards them:
- If you log in as the room and look under Options / See more options / Settings / Resource:
- You see that 433d has it wrong here:
- 434 has it set correctly:
Categories: e-infrastructure, office-software
calendaring, live@edu, ms-exchange, office365, outlook, outlook-live, resources, scheduling
Change onedrive to skydrive to embed your MS-Office online files in WordPress
2014/02/19
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- A while ago, Microsoft was successfully sued by Sky to change the name of SkyDrive. Recently MS did that, but it looks like somebody has not gotten the memo yet, again:
- Originally suggested embed code from SkyDrive: https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=0025C841818181C2&resid=25C841818181C2%21666&authkey=ANeXAUnGHDfEqTQ&em=2
- Fail on WordPress.com:
- Change to:
- Sort of works on WordPress.com (but width and hieght parameters are being ignored):
Categories: blog, e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors
embedding, MS-OneDrive, wordpress
FAQs for issues with Respondus Lockdown Browser
2014/02/18
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- New to Respondus Quizzes? Read the CTL’s write-up.
- No Photo ID (Niner ID or other state-issued)? Use the reception desk camera to take a photo with sheet, like below, we will forward it to the teacher for verification.
- Issues with starting:
- Respondus won’t open: How to bypass a Moodle Popup Window when using Respondus lockdown browser
- Test won’t open and you get a warning
- in Moodle that this test must be run in Respondus Lockdown Browser? Close your regular web browser and double click on the desktop on the Moodle Lockdown Browser Icon:
, then go to Moodle2 from in there. - in Respondus that “No more attempts are allowed”, but the student has not made any attempts yet and the quiz closing date is long in the past: contact the teacher to check whether the quiz needs updating.
- in Moodle that this test must be run in Respondus Lockdown Browser? Close your regular web browser and double click on the desktop on the Moodle Lockdown Browser Icon:
- Issues with Audio:
- Students are advised to test the headsets before entering Respondus Lockdown browser assessments:
- Start Audacity from the desktop, click record: if you say something, you must see something;
- Play back to test the speakers. Hear nothing? Try the volume knob:
- (More detail here).
- Rewind-audio may get you stuck – to fix, next-page, then back (reloads page). More info: How to workaround Moodle quiz audio not playing to the end in Respondus Lockdown Browser
- How to bypass a Moodle Popup Window when using Respondus lockdown browser
If no audio and error “pluginfile” flashes when clicking “Next”and back: notify permanent staff.
- Students are advised to test the headsets before entering Respondus Lockdown browser assessments:
- Issues with Writing:
- Lost the
?
- Clicking around nearby where it was may bring it back.
- Or
, quickly cancel (gets you out of lockdown browser), new attempt from desktop shortcut. - Learn to use the installed US-international keyboard shortcuts.
. - more info: Problems with accented characters in Respondus Lockdown Browser
- If your keyboard stops typing in English in a Respondus lockdown browser quiz…
- Lost the
- Issues with finishing
- If the test won’t submit, start Respondus lockdown browser on a different computer to see whether you can resume your attempt there.
- More issues? Let us know in the comments here.
.Firefox Java AddOn settings on learning lab PCs
2014/02/17
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- FireFox should not be allowed to update automatically:
- teacher
- student:
after restart: 
- change in:
- or:
- or in prefs.js and user.js
- change in:
- v. 26 disables Java by default which we need for online textbook components
- what dos v27 do which is now being automatically downloaded and installed
- teacher
- Java within Firefox
- should not be allowed to update automatically
- especially not for Java (7.51 breaks our online textbook components)
- but it has not updated to 7.51
- is this b/o the Deployment Toolkit also being deactivated? Not sure: “By blocking the Java DT plug-in, the Java version detection mechanism is disabled. Therefore, when a user tries to launch a Java applet or application, that requires a specific Java version other than the active Java version on a user’s system, it will fail.”
- Manually checking for updates leads to this:
- how to prevent automatic update of java?
- Manually checking for updates leads to this:
- should not be set to “ask” every time (on frozen computers), plus: users miss the notification that asks them to enable it
- teacher
- student:
- to just freeze java temporarily on a version known working , setting about:config/
- extensions.blocklist.enabled / false seems to radical
- teacher
- should not be allowed to update automatically
Categories: e-infrastructure, textbooks
image2014spring, java, mozilla-firefox
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