A VLE Course #vmvdlt

Using Google Sites and open software to create a virtual learning environment

https://sites.google.com/a/thevleisdead.com/www/home

Using Open Education Resources (OERs) in Blended Teaching: Is it worth it?

For the CITRENZ Conference in Rotorua, New Zealand ( http://www.citrenz.ac.nz) I prepared a paper "Using Open Education Resources (OERs) in Blended Teaching: Is it worth it?" using wiki researcher ( http://wikiresearcher.org/User:Mverhaart/CITRENZ/2011OER ).  While developing the paper I asked readers to help build the paper by either editing the paper or adding comments. Interestingly apart from two colleagues there was no feedback -there were many views however. One possible issue is the difficulty in adding ad-hoc comments (as a password/userid etc is required before you can edit/add a comment, a need to know wiki-code, etc..), so to provide another way to allow readers to make comments I have created this blog entry. So if you want to comment on the paper and feel more comfortable with adding to a blog entry, do so here.

 

virtualMV - blog on the move

As of today April 14, I have moved my main blog from edublogs to wordpress. Main reason is the edu - advertisements that have appeared of late plus the inability to post a blog from email. With performance issues trying to post using web forms was simply too slow to allow me to easily and quickly add a new blog post.

Have copied all the blog entries from http://virtualmv.edublogs.org to the new http://virtualmv.wordpress.com will try to sort out any images later.

Will move over links to Facebook etc over the next few weeks.

Michael.

Information revolution

Worth a look how old information management compares with current

Wesch, M. (2007) Information Revolution, YouTube. Retrieved February 12, 2009 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM

Floptical shows how to wrap text round an image

By default the text starts at the bottom right of an image (like this), so how do you make text wrap.

The simplest way is to

1. insert the image using the upload below the editor, then


2. insert into the Post 


3. change the tab from visual to code


4. find the img tag with the picture and inside the tag add align="left"

Another way (a little tricky) is to use the picture icon on the Post editor (there is a wee bug!).

1. Insert the picture into the editor.


2. Click on the image then click on the picture icon, this will bring up a dialog box


3. Change the alignment to what you want, but.. before you save
   Note that the dimensions are blank **this is the bug** if you save at this point the image will vanish (actually it becomes an image 1 pixel wide by 1 pixel high!)


4. So here's a trick..
   
   
   
   1. highlight the Image URL (click in the Image URL text box and go Ctrl+A).
   
   
   2. Cut it out (Ctrl+X)
   
   
   3. Click in another of the text boxes (like image description)
   
   
   4. Then click in the inage URL one and paste the URL back! then..
   
   
   5. Click in the Image description one and the dimensions will magically appear!
   
   
   6. .. so you click Update and the image will appear as you wanted it to.
   
   
   
   

Floptical Bunnies – “How to add Google Analytics to your eduBlog site !”

What is Google Analytics?

Allows you to track how busy your blog really is. And its free!

How do I do it?

1. Surf to http://www.google.com/analytics/


2. Sign in (if you are already have a gmail account this is real easy!)


3. Analytics: New Account Signup
   Enter the URL (in my case this was virtualmv.edublogs.org, and the account name was automatically created). Fill in the other stuff.


4. Analytics: Tracking instructions
   Read if you want to but take note of the number that starts with “UA-######-#” that’s the number you need to type in later.

And that’s all for google … now eduBlog

1. Login to your EduBlog account as administrator (duh!)


2. On the dashboard choose Plugins and scroll down (unless you have a large screen), and click Activate on Google Analytics


3. A new tab appears next to Plugins (near the top of the screen) called Google Analytics, so click on it!


4. In the Analytics User Account box type in the number you wrote down in set 4. (UA-######-#) and click Update UA String

.. and that’s it… Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/ and login to get the statistics…(There is a checker here to make sure it is actually working)