Stephen Hodge... the Geek side!

Take note people!

2010-11-16T06:22:00.000-08:00

Well those of you with the eager eye will have notice that my Blog's title has change from Learning Technologist to "Stephen Hodge... the Geek side", this isn't just a lame attempt at rebranding my blog it is in fact due to me leaving my role as a Learning Technologist (more on this later). But for the mean time I'm still employed as an LT so here's a Learning Technologist based blog post...

Taking Notes:
It's not a fact I like to publicise about myself but I actually suffer from dyslexia (apparently I have a reading age of a 12year old) you might have gathered from some of my awesome spelling mistakes! However I personally feel dyslexia is a made up condition it merely being a label people have given me to make me feel happier that I lack in certain skills... all its actually meant to me is that I have to try harder... but surly that means that other people have learning disabilities in their inability to do maths or to programme or have any form of logic so why aren't we all labelled in such ways.... OOOOR just accept your not going to be great at everything... anyway I digress!

As a result of my "label"... or should I say as a result of the fact my brain returns white noise sometimes when I write/listen/read I've found note taking to be an area I particularly struggle with.... hence technology has come to my aid! Note taking can kind of be split into two forms, the physical taking of notes and the retrieving of the said notes:

Input:
A Pen and Paper:
Lets not get bogged down with technology for writing notes when the simplest one is usually the best a Pen and Paper, no batteries required and the cheapest option... lacks a little bit in the security front, can easily be ignited... and can't be easily backed up. Not my prefered option since writing with a pen hurts my hands and you need the physical media with you at all times to view.

Optical Character Recognition:
Pretty much the same as above but the paper is scanned into your computer and transformed into computer text through a technology called optical character recognition. Not the tidiest of inputs since your hand writing will need to be on the neater side of things and then needs to be scanned in and processed... but not a technology to be forgotten.

Digital Memo Pad:
The above two technologies combined into a stand alone product... a supped up note pad if you like. The resulting file can be in the form of text or a jpg...

Dictaphone:
Defiantly the easiest note taking option you simply have to press record and replay it later, if your needing to take exact and accurate notes this is defiantly the best option. However from my time using a Dictaphone as a student I can safely say I didn't reply the recording once, and most defiantly didn't think ooooh I'll waste an hour of my life re-listening to the lecture to make notes.... sooo to summarise unless you genuinely going to invest your time in re-listening to the lectures and making notes from them in your spare time then go ahead, but I know from experience this doesn't work for me.

Laptop:
I remember the first time I saw a laptop used in a seminar to record notes and remember thinking two things.... that guy looks stupid carrying such an expensive bit of gear around just to take notes and also... that's a very good idea... from the looks of it he was defiantly onto something as laptops in lectures, seminars, meetings etc are now pritty much the norm. (however due to the scope of a laptop they can often be more of a distraction than a benefit!).

PDA/Mobile Phone:
The best option here in my opinion is the very item you have on you at all times, your mobile phone. Since not only is it always on you, its usually only able to do one thing at one time so the distraction a laptop might give (Facebook solitaire etc) is some what minimised... unless your using an advanced mobile operating system like Web OS of course ;-)

I've probably missed some off the list here but that'll do for now, feel free to add any I've missed out in the comments.

Accessing the notes later:
This section being the main part of this blog post... the bassline if you like... So you've written your notes, admittedly some times I just write notes so I can maintain my attention and stay awake etc. But very often I'll be needing to actually use the notes I've taken. This is all very well if you have the medium you used to take the notes on accessable. But what happens if you left your note pad at home when your needing to read the notes in work... this is where the cloud comes into play!

Microsoft Exchange (depends if your institute has access to it):
With osX and most mobiles supporting exchange out the box and windows offering it with Office and their being online access. Exchange is one of the most widely avaiable options when it comes to cloud storage... as a University of Plymouth member we all have access to Microsoft Exchange (this is what your Email/Calander system is built upon), if your not apart of Plymouth Uni then your works/uni email system will most probably be built upon Exchange... Exchange offers a number of different platforms for writing notes these can be its actual notes section (although not available on mobiles), tasks, and calender notes. Once saved these notes are saved and synced with your exchange account and will be available on any other device/site you have which syncs with your Exchange account.

Google Docs - http://docs.google.com:
One of my favourite on-line inventions is Google Docs... the fact that Google went "we like what Microsoft have done with Office... but we think it should be free and on-line.... BAM - Google Docs! The thing with Google docs being on-line is that they can obviously be accessed wherever there's a web browser and an internet connection, and with Google being pretty open with their API's there are a host of Applications (I hate the term "APP") which you can download for your mobile/desktop which hook into Google's docs... best of all Google Docs is free, and accessible via your Google login which you've probably got already.

Evernote http://evernote.com:
I was going to leave it at Google Docs and Exchange but then realised... what that's rubbish! Apparently evernote is the top dog when it comes to cloud note taking! With applications for all platforms both mobile and desktop for online and offline access they do seem to have all bases covered. You get two options of accounts the free version which allows 50mb upload per month (30days), or for $5month or $45year you can upload 500mb (as well as extra file sizes you do get other features). The thing I like about Evernote is that it integrates with all platforms really well allowing photo/audio upload and allows offline mode out the box (no third party application), so you could in theory, go to meeting/lecture write breath notes, then whilst travelling back on a bus or train (we're all green here remember), edit the said notes to make sure they make sense and if you dip out of signal no worries! Then when you get back to your office computer all your notes will have synced and you'll have the most up-to-date info to work on.

SharePoint - MySite (dependant upon institute):
Well I couldn't do a post like this and offer a institutional option, bulive it or not this is one of the things SharePoint was designed to do, although annoyingly they kind of forgot about mobile computing.... so if your only planning on writing your notes using your computer then SharePoint might be a valid option. You could use one per module you teach on, or use your MySite, create a document library specific for word files, and every time you work on a document open and edit it whilst on your SharePoint site. This way you can come back to it later on another computer and edit away at it within your favourite word processing program (I'm assuming Word IS your favourite word processing programme)....

There are many other solutions out there but I guess the point of this post was to show you that there are many options available out there if you don't like taking notes in a lecture/meetings... hope its of some use, please feel free to leave comments if there are any note taking practices I've missed out!

Editing/Viewing Excel documents in SharePoint2010

2010-10-26T02:45:00.000-07:00

Ok ok yes this sounds like a stupid blog post and really it is. Poor SharePoint2010 gets slightly confused, if you upload an excel document and try to open it, the system tries to open it within the browser but it doesn't seem to do anything other than error (this only seems to happen in a non Internet Explorer browser btw):

As stated above internet explorer doesn't bring up the error it makes you download it by default. We're needing to force it to download.

This'll allow you to save the file to your local machine which you'll then be able to view/edit/re-upload.

Standardisation + Paramedics instigated via SharePoints wiki/page edit facility..

2010-10-14T03:12:00.000-07:00

please note most of this is just waffle telling you about the product. skip directly to help (So how do I get to this Standardisation Log?)

Ok I realise I'm constantly harping on about Wiki's on SharePoint/Tulip, its not that I have a particular attachment to Wiki's its just that the page edit facility on SharePoint 2010 is based on Wiki's... which obviously makes it 100% ok... yeah... ok deal!

A long time ago I received a slightly confusing email from support desk asking me to help create something along the lines of a Standardisation tool for Paramedic students... for some reason Support Desk had been approached for an E-Learning question (yet I get inundated with support calls oooh the irony!), anyway the idea behind this project was that when conflicting statements get given from "external lecturers" if there was a way to log these issues, to be clarified by the course lectures. Now my first thought was oh Share Points forum facility will be perfect for this. However the student who originated this problem (incase your curious why I'm taking ideas from students now, his academics encouraged him to pursue this himself so basically I had the green light and backing from his academics) pointed out that this process should be a lot more organised and structured. In fact I believe he held a similar practice within the armed forces (although not digital).

So this lead me to think ah ha some sort of form which students can contribute to, this could indeed have been a simple Word document people can edit... but who wants to use word documents in this day and age... BRING ON THE CLOUD! (bring on the wall?)

So my plan was to create a editable page on SharePoint2010 (Tulip) which had a pre formatted Table for students to add to as and when the issue of standardisation arises. This has been housed on the Paramedics Main Program site so all years can add to this form.

So how do I get to this Standardisation Log?
Currently this Log is only on the Paramedic Practitioner (Community Emergency Health) program site, but I'm sure with time this idea might spread to other courses. You can access the log by clicking the link on the left hand menu titled "Standardisation Log".

Great so I'm at this Log... I need to raise a query
Well I've given all students on the site contribute rights to this page so all you need to do is bring up the edit panel that can be done by clicking on the little note book icon:

Then the whole page becomes editable to create a new line in the table simply go to the last box "complete" and press the TAB button, then type away completing your query. When your done, you need to make sure you click the "Save & Close" button otherwise your changes won't be saved. If your a student that's all you need to know.

So how do academics get to know about these changes?
For the moment no notifications have been set up... mostly because I've not been told who the academics to notify are yet! However using SharePoints Alert Me Tool I hope to keep academics and students in the loop about any modifications to this Standardisation Log.

Ladies and Gentle Men I bring you... UpMedia... how to upload and how to view...

2010-10-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

UpMedia has occurred from the universities not just Plymouth but universities in general's view to keep all their eggs in one basket! This isn't a bad thing since I'd much rather have social workers or Nursing students where confidentiality is key to create videos for their courseworks on our servers rather than somewhere else out there in the world! Having said that to compete with someone like YouTube or Vimeo is always going to be a uphill struggle.

Plymouth Universities answer to this is to implement UpMedia a system based on Helix with the idea that the videos can be uploaded via a Module/Programe separate to that sites file space, UpMedia does this job perfectly and it encodes the files into a universal standard under the RealMedia codec which VLC supports (quickly looks at the above picture). UpMedia has only just been opened up in the past 24hours so there are many bugs with the system so I'm sure with time we'll have a slick and easily to use system.

How to I get to UpMedia?

Currently UpMedia is only listed on your Modules/Programme pages (soon to be on your MySite), you first need to create a UpMedia library for that site then you can upload to it.

How Create your UpMedia library:

Go to your site and click on the bottom link on the left hand menu "Administration".
Under the tiny heading of "Create" you should see three links... no they are three links not just one long link (heard of lists?), click on "More". (as shown below)
Then BAM you should see a link titled "UpMedia" and their snazy logo (fair play whoever created that logo does look cool). Click on this link. (again as shown below)
You'll be asked to give it a name and if you would like emails upon changes and if you want it displayed in the left hand menu (tick as you so desire).
Click submit and your done!

How do I upload to this new UpMedia Library?

Go to the newly created library, if you ticked the box for it to appear in the quick menu it'll be listed under "Lists".
Then click on the "add new item" link:
This'll bring a pop up window where it'll ask you to browse for the file you wish to upload, browse for the said file and click ok. (I've found it doesn't like files over 2gb).
As soon as your click ok it'll start uploading:
Once the uploading process has done it'll put a little tick to the left of the name... I'm assuming it'll refresh over time but to give it a little prod click the greyed out "ok" button to get it to refresh (don't click your refresh button).
You'll then be asked to fill out some key information fill it out and click "Continue" take note as you go through the "tick boxes" as this is where you can list it on itunesU etc (more on this once the systems properly live).

(click to make it bigger)
Your final step is to select a screen grab to be used as a thumbnail (or you can upload your own custom one). and where you would like your file to be listed under etc click finish and your upload will be complete.
It'll finish by giving you a message of "You are logged in as: [username] Media file data saved successfully". Then close this box (it doesn't close automatically yet).
Refresh your page and BAM your newly uploaded file will display.

.RM What's that? How to I play my finished file?

Go to your UpMedia library with the newly uploaded file. Click on the thumbnail and it'll start downloading.
If you have VLC or RealPlayer on your computer it'll play fine....
If not download VLC for free PLEASE download VLC not RealPlayer... although use RealPlayer if you want just I'll sleep better at night knowing your using VLC instead of RealPlayer.

Well that's all I've got to say about UpMedia so far, its great that its here and I'm sure your all just as excited as me that we now have somewhere to store all our large video files rather than using external space (if its over 10min that is). Hats of to the team who created it, would not like the stress of creating such a large system as this to hold a rather large amount of users etc! So High Fives and Pancakes!

Forget my VLE I want to get mashed up....

2010-10-12T07:41:00.000-07:00

So you've been reading up on Steve Wheelers learning practices have you? Well although I don't fully agree with all of Steve's points I do see where he's coming from. I don't like feeding trolls so shall just leave my views in the safe middle ground (that's the A-Level Geographer inside me!). Anyway whether you agree with Steve's views on a the use of a VLE or not sooner or later the need to host a document of some sort externally may arise! This could be down to a number of reasons, your wanting to share a file with an unknown number of people and a direct easily shareable (tweetable even) link might be more suitable, or it could just be the file your trying to email is just to darn big!

So where can I put these files?!
There are a number of solutions here the most trusted option in my opinion comes from the big G - Google. In 2007 Google started its bold steps into the area of cloud computing, having your data stored externally and accessible anywhere in the world. Google Docs is in fact a truly magical thing to use first off all you need is a browser so goodbye Microsoft Office (for personal use all my word processing is done on my Google account), and best of all its all free! Google Docs allows you to invite sharer's so you can collaborate and edit the same document together take a look at this little video which explains this all in a bit more depth:

So how do I get started?
Well first log into your Google Docs account with your Google account.. you might already have a Google Account, if you've used Blogspot, Picasa, Youtube, Gmail that account will work... if your yet to have a Google Account then where have you been? Jump on in and become a part of one of the greatest things on the internet!

I'm going to give you steps on how to upload your document, but Google have got it going on when it comes to usablity to I'd imagine you won't need to check back here once you've get started.

Go to http://docs.google.com log in
Click on the Upload button:
Next Click on the link which says "Select files to upload", that'll bring up the browse to file window find the file you wish Google to host and click ok.
Your file should then be listed you can upload multiple files here if you so desire. Ensure the 'Convert documents, presentations, and spreadsheets to the corresponding Google Doc formats' box is checked. When your happy click "Start Upload":
It'll take a couple seconds or so to upload (depending upon your internet connection). Once done click on the file name to check its all ok:
This will open the document up in a new window on the far right side of the page you should see a button titled "Share" click on the little drop down arrow to the right of it. You'll get a couple of options such as 'sharing options', that allows you to select specific people to share your document with which is emailed to them via a specific link, however we want the whole world to see my amazing document so I'm going to click on "Publish to the Web":
You'll get a pop up box click the "Start Publishing" button right in the middle and magically your documents URL will be displayed:

You can view my document here.

Hope this was of some help you can stop sharing whenever you feel fit, Google's Policy is that if you delete something on their servers they won't keep it, so don't worry about them being sneaky with your files!

Our Survey says....

2010-10-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

So you've been tasked with creating some sort of Survey to capture your audiences views on specific points, using a unstructured set up such as a blog or wiki isn't enough you basically want to quiz them on some certain area's of interest to either figure out if they've actually learn't anything or just to get a general overview of your group... why not give them a survey?

Survey's are great... ok no they're not they're both a pain to create and a pain to fill out! So why not make this painful process as simple and easy as possible?! Let SharePoint (tulip) do the hard work! Incase you've not caught on by now SharePoint has a built in Survey tool and its pretty cool if I'm honest!

How do I get to this "Pretty cool" survey tool then?

This "Pretty Cool" can be found on your SharePoint site of choice under the left hand menu "Surveys" its the very top option you might very well have missed it I know it took me some time to find it! If you click on this link you'll be brought through to the page which lists all the surveys your SharePoint site has, I'm assuming that by looking at this tutorial this'll just have the dummy survey created by default!

So lets get on and create a survey, some advice if your yet to fully arrange the finer details of your survey asides from the fact you actually want to create one I suggest you create a couple dummy surveys first so you know what this tool is capable of doing first. Since it seams when it comes to creating a survey the technology is a tiny bit of a barrier, this is regardless of the platform your using in fact I've found SharePoints survey tool to be quite powerful!

Steps to creating your first Survey:

I'd like to note that I'm creating this dummy survey on a mac using safari with Silver Light not installed (so pretty much the most backwards way of using a Microsoft product)

Go to your SharePoint site, click on the "Surveys" link on the left hand menu.
Click "Create" from this new page.
Under "Tracking" select "Survey".
Give it a suitable name and if you feel you need to give it a description do so, you have the option to make it display in the "quick launch" menu, this is the left hand menu. The following two options are useful, of "Show User Names" and "Allow multiple responses", they've both quite self explanatory, you do however get the chance to change these later if needs be. When your happy here click next. Its sometimes worth allowing multiple responses start with as it allows you to test the survey a number of times once done!
You then get thrown right in the thick of it by constructing your questions. Its worth noting that although its useful to get this initial stage all done 100% correct its not vital since all information can be changed if so desired, i.e. question, type of answer and order can be altered and removed (if so desired). The creation of questions is a 4 part affair:

First you enter the question, I've found that its worth setting a consistent form to your questions, i.e. if you start of numbering them make sure you remember to continue this numbering throughout (including the format of numbering 1) or 1. or 1- etc) and likewise be consistent with how you end these questions I found I was constantly swopping between : and ?'s.
Next you have to enter what type of answer you require there's a long list to go through I'm no professional of what each section is but I'll try to explain to the best of my ability:

Single Line of Text - best used for single word answers or phrases, you get the added option of limiting how many characters the user can type in.
Multiple Lines of Text - if your asking for specific feedback about a question or asking for comments, you also get the option to limit the number of lines displayed in the box (i.e. the box's size) however if exceeded the box will start scrolling. (its wise to only use the Multiple line option if you know the user is going to type a lot in there the less used the better as it'll maintain a snappy survey for both the user and the computer).
Choice (menu to choose from) here you get to create your very own multiple choice question, similar to the choose your nationality question so many online application forms ask.
Number (you can set a max and min number if so desired).
Currency
Date & Time
Lookup (information already on this site) I don't quite get this type of answer, you get the option to select which area of the site you want to lookup and then the user can select that option, i.e. if you got it to look at modified site content you'd be given a list of modified site content to choose from the only way I could see that this might be useful is if you wanted students to choose their favourite document or something similar and equally as boring as that!
Yes/No (check box) - you don't get the choice between choosing yes or no you get the choice of choosing yes or leaving it blank (doesn't quite look right so I end up creating a Yes and No option in the Choice answer option.
Person or Group - your answer will be a person or a group on your site could be useful if you've doing per assessments... particularly if your doing online per assessments and have set groups into anonymous groups users could select the group which they think is best/worse etc.
External Data - I have no idea what this option is since its not fully functional due to the system not being set up to allow it. (just pretend it doesn't exist).
Page Separator - this tool is actually the most useful tool on this list as it allows you to group your questions the end result is a page approach to the survey so users don't feel initially bombarded with questions.
Managed Metadata... ok don't quite know what this does either.. shall add to these two when I've got some time to look into them some more!

The 3rd option... wow that's quite a long list up there! anyway the last option is you get to customise your chosen type of answer i.e. you can add the extra options if your using a multiple choice question or how many characters you want to use on a Single line answer etc.
Last but not least you also get to use the very powerful tool of "Branching Logic" this being "if answered yes to above skip to question x", but you can do this with all range of answers from yes or no to multiple choice etc.

So when you've gone through all your questions you'll probably want to check out an overview of them to check you've included them all and if you need to reorder or edit any of them etc. This can be done by going to the list of surveys you have for your site, click on the survey in question.
Within here you can participated in the survey by clicking on "Respond to this Survey" button or edit and change the settings of the survey:
Click settings - survey settings
Survey Settings - allow you to edit any of the questions by clicking on them, from this overview page your able to see how the layout of your survey looks, a system which I've done is that if you've implemented the "page separator' feature make sure that you explain what page your on in the next question (page 1 of 10 etc). At the bottom of the page you can click "Add a question" to get to the add question menu again, and change order of the questions does as it says on the tin. You're also able to save the survey as a template, which is particularly useful if you've made a generic survey for a range of modules/programmes.

I think that's all I'm going to say about this Survey tool this post has far to little amount of images for my liking and to small amount of comedy so I feel a little uncomfortable being so serious through such a large amount of typing!

Oooh one last thing viewing responses that can be found on the image above just after clicking on your survey of choice "Show Graphical Summary of Responses" and "Show all responses" that's all that gets displayed on a non internet explorer computer, if your using windows and have Excel installed you get the choice to download data to an Excel format for post analysis! FUN TIMES!

I might add to this post in time once I've had more of a play about, but hope its been of some use!

Setting Permissions on individual pages/sites in Tulip/SharePoint 2010

2010-09-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

Well I'm going to attempt to spice up this very very boring subject by adding lots of pictures of cats taken from icanhascheesburger...

well I did warn you!

So lets say you've split your students up into groups and have set up a number of sub sites/libraries for these students to use as their own. However what you don't want to happen is for other groups to view/edit/copy these groups works! Luckily the big M has our back on this one... no not Mc Donalds... Microsoft Dummy!

Getting to the Permissions for your Page

1) So go to the site or page your wanting to have unique permissions, and from the Ribbon Menu™ select "Page".
2) From the resulting contextual menu select "Page Permissions" roughly just below where you clicked "Page".

Your then get greeted with a really scary looking page... but don't worry here's a picture of a cat to make it look nicer!

Altering a groups Permissions

Ok I think I'll quit with the cat pictures now they're getting in the way! Anyway so back to this task the default setup for your SharePoint pages is that they'll inherit permissions directly from their parent. Which is quite self explanatory you change the main site's permissions it'll change the sub site's permissions. We want this to stop since we don't want to make it unique! So:

3) Click on the "Stop Inheriting Permissions" icon:

You'll get a warning saying bla bla bla click OK! Unless you genuinely accidentally clicked on the "stop inheriting permissions" button in which case why are you reading this tutorial... however if your just experimenting don't worry as you can re inherit permissions back again if you change your mind!

From here you can alter the different groups permissions, for this example if you wanted to edit the students group you tick the box next to students and in doing so will enable the "Edit User Permissions" icon in the "Ribbon Menu" click this icon and it'll bring up a menu you might recognise from SharePoint 2007:

I won't go into explaining all these different tick box's as they're quite self explanatory, you need to have at least one ticked so alter these to your hearts content... Once happy click "OK" and your done.

Removing a group from your Site/Page
If your not wanting your group to have any permissions on your site you can't just un-tick these items you have to actually remove the group from your site. So to do this go back to the "Permissions Tool" page by cancelling this pop up or repeating this tutorial up till step 2.

When your at the list of groups/users tick the little box next to the group your aiming to remove and click on the "Remove User Permissions" icon which'll be enabled, ok the warning and your done.

Adding changing an individuals permissions for your site
However if your wanting to enable individual students/staff to alter a document/page/library we need to go back to the "Permissions Tools" page (the page we got to from step 2 up above). When here click the "Grant Permissions" icon.

When you click this a pop up window will appear which might look a bit scary to start with but is actually quite simple. The top box is where you add the different staff/student names. If you know their full name as listed on the system type it in here separated by a semi colon ooor even easier search for their names using the address book as shown in my 5 steps to glory image:

If your unable to view that image it goes like this:

Click the address book icon
Type name into the search bar
Click on the right name
Click add
Click ok

Once you've clicked ok you'll go back to the original pop up menu but you should notice the "User/Groups" box has been filled out with the users names... much like in an email address...

We then need to change the permissions for the added staff/students for this example I'm wanting the to be able to edit the page, so I'm going to select "Full Control" I'm sure Contribute would be suffice but seeing as its just for one page I'm happy for students to have more permissions as the aim is to get them involved with this technology not constrain them! By default an email will be sent out to the people listed you can unstick the box to stop this from happening if so desired.... which is particularly helpful if your doing a covert operation! Once happy click OK!

And there we have it you've made your sites page custom... your sites' been pimped you just need Xzibit to give you a pinch.... pimp my ride... ok forget it... more pictures of cats!

Errm that's all hope this has been of some use!

Explorer View in SharePoint 2010?

2010-09-17T03:04:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about SharePoint is its ability to integrate nicely with all things Microsoft, in the older version of SharePoint one of the more prominent features of this was "Browse in Explorer", this would open your site in an Explorer window within Windows much like you do when Browsing your 'My Documents' on your local machine etc. So as you can imagine was a really easy method of creating backups and or copying files back and forth.

However the new version of SharePoint 2010 (updated Tulip) doesn't have this feature as prominent which is both a good and bad thing, bad because if your used to creating backups via this means then at first glance it seems to not be there. But good in the aspect that Microsoft are aiming their system at all users not just Microsoft Windows users, so all you Linux and that other fruit based operating system users can get a piece of the SharePoint love!

So How do I get to View my files in Explore View?
Simple! I'm going to make the assumption your using a Windows Based computer and are using Internet Explorer, if not then please do as this wont work otherwise. Go to the document library your wanting to view (for this example I'm using my SharePoint based E-Portfolio system for Midwifery Students):

You should see the magical ribbon listed along the top... you know the standard ribbon which Microsoft seem to think everyone's familiar with and love... obviously I'm very familiar with it and indeed do love it... in all fairness at least they've chosen an idea and gone with it.... much like this. Ok in this ribbon you should see "Library Tools" Select sub heading "Library" (as marked in the above image).

This will change the ribbon to the following image from it about in the middle of the page you shoudl see "Current View:" with a drop down menu underneath. From the drop down menu select "Explorer View".

You'll have to wait for a bit as it does its thing, I'd imagine there's a fair amount of authentication involved in this task hence the delay anyway as if by magic your documents will view in Explorer View:

I've not tested this at home yet (as my home laptop is run by fruit) but it works on my works computer which is running Windows 7 and is on the Uni network so it might not work if your on XP or Vista (please let me know if it does).

SharePoint 2010 - Alert ME!

2010-09-13T07:35:00.000-07:00

So you've followed my advice and set up a Splendid (and functional) Wiki for your students to collaborate and produce some magnificent pieces of work on. However.... you can't really be arsed to check the said Wiki every day to for updates! Not when there are far more interesting things to do with your life such as checking Facebook, checking Emails, checking Twitter, checking your phone for texts, checking Failblog oooor actually doing other work!

Well luckily the clever chaps at Microsoft (you might of heard of them) thought of this whilst they created SharePoint, a nifty little tool called "Alert Me". This tool can send you live updates about your super special/cool wiki's as they happen or send you daily/weekly summaries.

This tools not narrowed down for just wiki's it can be used on all pages located on Tulip/Sharepoint so Blogs, Forums document library or a site as a whole.... I might set this up for all my Tulip sites (all 712 of them) just to receive loads of emails to make me feel popular (don't worry I'm not that vain I've got a mirror for reassurance).

Errr Steve enough mumbling how do I turn on this Magical tool?
Well navigate to the page you wish to be alerted about. And bring up the edit pannel:

From the edit "ribbon" select "page" and then the sub option of "Alert Me":

This'll bring up the following page which if you read what it says is quite self explanatory:

Once your done click "OK" not sure if the "text message (SMS)" system works on our set up so test that but don't rely on it to work! And that's all you need to know watch your inbox flood with emails from Tulip stating how hard your students are working!

Wanna use Twitter in SharePoint 2010... sure thing!

2010-09-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

Ok so last week I had a golden email off a member of staff:

"Idea to Share:"
"I was thinking I might share my modules on Twitter this year! What do you think?"

I feel my face resembled something similar to this:

Ok maby not quite as excited as the above cat but it was quite close! Why did this excite me so much? Well it basically means I get to use my favourite technology in the WORLD. XML! If I'm honest I barely use xml however its a technology that I respect and realise the awesome power it can possess if used right, and I hoped I could tap into this by combining Twitter and SharePoint!

So here was my plan by using Twitters "Feed for this Query" feature embed the RSS feed into a Tulip page, so that way both staff and students could post information on the SharePoint page provided they use the set Query, this being the module name. BINGO! I also figured giving a link to the academics Twitter account was a suitable idea as well would be useful...

So here's how I did it:

1. Get the RSS feed from Twitter:
Go to Search.Twitter.com and type in the Query name I also added "include:retweets", quite self explanitory what that does.

Then on the search results page:

Click on the link which says "Feed for this query" and it'll bring of the feed (obviously):

However the feed is in ATOM format, which annoyingly isn't supported on our copy of SharePoint, luckily Twitter allows you to change where it says ATOM to RSS and it magically changes to an RSS format... I almost spat my coffee out when I thought "hmm I wonder if I change the URL it'll make it in RSS format". Once you've changed the URL to RSS then copy the whole address.

2. Add the 'RSSFeedForSharePoint' WebPart to your page:
Go to the SharePoint page you want to display your tweets on and click on the edit icon:

We then want to insert a web part this is under "Edit" and "Insert":

THEEEEN To get to the RSSREADER Web Part select "Miscellaneous" - and "RSSReader Web Part" then click "Add":

3. Bring the RSS feed and the reader together:
In your newly added web part go to the bit where it states "Enter the URL of RSS feed" and paste in your XML feed address which we got from step 1:

You can also edit different things in there like how many tweets to show (Enter number of items to display:) and the different sizes etc. Once your happy click "OK". And your tweets should magically appear:

This is all find and dandy but if someone was to visit your page they wouldn't have a clue what they're looking at so lets give it some context. Click on the "edit" button again. And select the area just above where your RSSReader thingy is and Enter some contextual text:

And your done!

This will obviously work for any RSS feed, most notably if you want to use the RSS feed from an individual account, remember to change the ATOM bit to RSS. However I'd advice against displaying your own account here as you might accidently tweet something distasteful to the Module or Program so it's probably best to use the Search Query method I've shown above.

Hope this has been of some use if any of the images are too small click on them to enlarge and please comment if you have any questions or likewise!

Getting Started With Wiki's on Tulip

2010-08-18T07:18:00.000-07:00

This post is primary aimed at NUR258 Tunton based students however I shall aim to make this as generic as possible...

I've heard the term 'wiki' before but what is one?
Well you've most probably already used one Wikipedia being the most prominent use of wiki technology...

The definition of a wiki taken directly from Wikipedia:

"A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and edition of a ny number interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative wiki websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems."
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

The bit were using from this definition is "collaborative wiki websites", a real world example would be you all sat around a white board firing ideas about, except with wiki technology you all can do this rather than designating a scribe. This results in contribution from all members of the group as opposed to standard group dynamics of only the loud confident views being projected.

Or this can be explained better here (however the creation of new pages isn't necessary needed for this module):

Well hope that clears up what a wiki is... possibly further information can be viewed on Wikipedia's site however for this example we'll be using Tulip's wiki function as opposed to Wikipedia's.

How do I get to my Wiki?
Simply go to your Module site and on the left hand menu you should see a Wiki named after your group number. You should hopefully know what group your in by now, however if in doubt the group lists should be listed somewhere on your module site (group names/lists are unknown to me).

How do I get this magical edit panel up?!
Well using Group 1's wiki as an example simply click on the little edit icon at the top of the page (just to the left of where it say's "Browse"):

Or for the long winded approach click on the option the right of that titled "Page" then from the resulting ribbon menu select "Edit"... doing so should bring up an edit page similar to as follows:

I won't go into explaining what each individual bit does here as it should be pritty much self explanatory, I advice you to stay awy from clicking the "check out" option and encourage you to save and close when your done... otherwise your work will be lost obviously!

How do I link?
Linking can be done via two methods, simply paste the address from the address bar directly into the wiki and Tulip will recognise its a link and create it accordingly. Or if you want to be clever and give contextual links you can make individual words links (like this one). Simply highlight the text in question, and select the "insert" option along the top of the ribbon (next to "Format Text"):

Within the Insert options menu, select "Link" button globe with a chain link underneath...

From this pop up menu its quite self explanatory what to do simply paste in the address url into the address:

Well hope that makes sense... just have a play about with this you can't really break anything and is the best way to learn!

Stuff Links I want some Pictures!
Pictures for wiki's are easy as pie... again go to the "insert" option:

And select "picture" from the resulting ribbon menu. This will bring up a pop up menu where you browse for the image on your computer click ok and it'll upload and give you a option to change the name of it although its not needed but if you've uploaded an image which is just a number might be worth changing its name to something relivant. Click "Save" and the image is uploaded and will automatically be embedded in your wiki.

AAH The image I've just uploaded is HUGE!
This can be solved via two methods, the best being to re-size the image using a separate program on your computer such as Adobe Fireworks, Photoshop, Windows Live Photo Gallery or iPhoto and re-uploading said image although completely understand that this might be above your technical skills... (trying not to sound to patronizing).

The Second method is to use the wiki tools to re-size the said image. If you select the image in your edit panel, so it gets highlighted much like when you highlight text. This'll bring up a new contextual option "Picture Tool" select "Design":

(click above image to make it bigger)

Hopefully that all makes sense.. I've kinda forgotten where I was heading with this picture section but think I've covered everything, please email me or leave a comment if you feel I've missed anything out!

I made an epic post but someone accidentally deleted all my hard work and replaced it with pictures of cats... entertaining cat's none the less but not very helpful... how do I get back to my original work?!
Well the beauty with Wiki's is that every update is documented and prior versions are kept (this is the same for all wiki's). To get to the history posts on your wiki go to your wiki page, and instead of selecting the edit icon, select the page option along the top of the ribbon...

You'll then be shown a list of all the prior edits, on the new left hand menu you can cycle through them and restore to a prior copy should you desire:

Best practice?
Please be aware your editing/contributing to fellow students work, so much like in the real world you wouldn't rip up someone's notebook, don't just delete someone's work on the wiki. Sure edit it if inaccurate or if you do make any major changes leave a note as to why. Please bear in mind your working a team with this. Please remember such things as copyright if your using someone elses photo get permisson first and make sure you never claim its your own. Link any quotes or extracts back to the original sites you obtained them from etc.

CHICKA CHICKA CHECK OUT!
Don't you just hate it when you go to the toilet and find the seat up? This is the same with your Wiki's if you check your item out, check it back in again. You don't need to check the wiki out to edit it, although I don't discourage the use of checking the item in and out I wouldn't say its something vital to do.

If you do come to your Wiki and find that it's giving you an error similar to this:

Then don't panic or curse the person who left it checked out simply sort it our yourself! Click on page icon, then over-right checkout:

Then you can continue with it checkout to yourself ooor check it back in to get rid of that annoying bar:

It'll ask you to comment on the check-in but you can leave the field blank and it'll proceed to be checked in.

And that's a wrap!
Hope this was of some use, please email/comment if you'd like me to make any alterations or if something just doesn't make sense!

EDIT: I've eventually got around to creating the video I promised ages ago!

Microsoft Communicator + Live Meeting

2010-08-16T07:17:00.000-07:00

Well with the rest of the university shutting up shop for summer (I hasten to add this is most certainly not the case for the faculty of Health), it's time for ILS's annual roll out of up to date software.

What the dickens is Microsoft Communicator?
Microsoft Communicator is a corporate communication tool which pretty much ties in every form of electronic communication into a nice little package, in its simplest form this it can be instant messaging, right up to web chat and collaboration via desktop sharing.

So like MSN or Skype?
Yes and no, initially I wasn't convinced there was a need for communicator when almost everyone and his nan uses MSN messenger, however the key point there was almost, with Communicator everyone who has a UOP login has an account, and every lease based computer will have the Communicator client installed on their computer (more on this later). Unlike Skype with Communicator being Microsoft it allows a greater degree of integration with your Microsoft operating system and programs. For example allowing you to connect to a fellow persons computer and view what they're working on (with their permission obviously), this could be used for you both work on that computer as though your side by side working on a piece of work.

So what else does Communicator do?
With Communicator being Microsoft based its best mates with all your common programs and websites, these most notably being Outlook and Tulip... have you ever noticed the little coloured icons next to people's names whilst using these packages?

These indicate if that person is online and signed into Communicator, so say for example seeing that person's name prompts you to ask them something, by seeing if their online you can decide upon your best method of attack, such as if their offline there more than likely not going to be at their desk so a quick web/text chat would be out the window and similarly so would a phone call (if their not at their desk), thus leaving an email to be your best option. And likewise if their online you get the full range of options, something informal why not start up a quick text chat (these can be saved for reading later unlike a phone call), or wanting something a little bit more personal (if what you have to say is of potential conflict to their views etc) then why not start a web chat.

Other things communicator does:

Web Chat (video, audio and text)
Text Chat
Voice Chat (if you don't have a webcam but do have a mic you can use this)
Desktop Sharing
Meeting Requests
Saves chats to your hard drive

Why should I use Communicator?

There's no reason why you should be forced to used Communicator, however the aim of technology is to make our lives easier, by using Communicator you can achieve tasks which would normally require you to meet face to face. Such as a standard meeting with another member of staff/student can be conducted via web chat at your own computer, which will mean your 20min meeting will only take 20mins of your time as opposed to 10min travel 5min to find a room/cafe/get your coffee (mines a black no sugar) 20min to have your meeting then another 10min to get back to your office. Obviously this can all be done previously via the telephone but with web chat your able to judge body language and the wellbeing of the person your talking to, imagine a student on placement who claims they're ok but from the video you can tell they've not been sleeping and you will be able focus in on the students wellbeing.

As discussed earlier Communicator isn't all about web chat your also able to share your desktop with the person your talking to... not only can this be useful from a support perspective (i.e. 'Steve can you quickly show me how to do this?'), it could also be used to collaborate on any documents your working together on.

Great how do I start using it?

Like MSN or Skype Communicator consists of a small programme on your computer. All University of Plymouth computers have this installed by default (if not then its under "run advertised programs") so if your using one then you just need to sign in.

Mac users just need to download and install Messenger for Mac this package handles both personal messaging via MSN, and Corporate via Communicator.

Once Signed in you'll be greated with a list simular to the following:

Windows

Mac

As you can see this lists your contacts if you've not used Communicator before the list will be blank to get started simply type a name in at the top where it lists "Type a Name", find the said person (much like writing an email).

To use Communicator on a Mac you need to download MSN for Mac and sign into the corporate account (using your University Credentials).

If your using a none leased PC you can request access for Communicator client via support desk, or if your a Student you can access communicator via the web access which can be found here (ensure your using Internet Explorer for full functionality): https://cwa.plymouth.ac.uk/ this however doesn't allow use of webcam's.

Live Meeting?
Live meeting is essentially all of the above but for groups (but not exclusively). It identical to DimDim except its Microsoft based, you can upload and view presentations, collaborate on a white board view the presenters webcam or any elected participants (at their will) and most importantly you don't have to create a login.

The most obvious thing with LiveMeeting is that its very similar to the Web Studio's this is a tough one on which tool is best for the job, Ray Jones set up the Web Studio's as a place which is easy for those of more technophobic tendencies to feel less intimidated. They were also set up as there was no other alternative at the time. The their set up allows for students to go into break out groups (something which communicator doesn't directly allow). However they do require you to leave your house where's Live Meeting can all be done from the comfort of your house, and they're also created by Microsoft which is a good thing as there's going to be LOADS of support out there if your confused!

I feel I've not dived deep enough into Live Meeting to do it justice however and worried this post is going on a bit. If you would like to have a go at Live Meeting feel free to just dive on in there or if you would like to demo it I'll be happy to oblige and give you a quick walk through etc! Its worth noting that Live Meeting, Meetings can indeed be recorded!

MySite Updates

2010-08-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

So a quick follow up to my post about the updates to Tulip, felt it would be suitable to mention the knock on effect to MySites... Also you might notice an abundance of updates today on this blog and none on any other day! no I haven't suddenly become amazingly fast at typing, in fact I've had a couple of these posts saved up on my to-do list and have only just got around to posting them! As part of my post holiday get rid of as many things from my "to do list" as possible!

~~Facebook~~ MySite's...
When MySites first graced the uni's system it was like giving someone a tin of beans but without a can opener! The idea of MySites was for staff to have a personal site which they could claim was their own could upload and store data and access their emails, basically a desktop away from home. However like I say they did lack the small but significant tool i.e. the can opener or in MySites case some good underlying social media tools.

With Microsoft buying into Facebook (only a little bit but still significantly enough) it is obvious that they know a thing or two about social networking, and with Microsoft's main consumer base being corporate its only a matter of time before the two were to meet... (obviously they've never been mutually exclusive).

MySites overhaul reeks of influences from Facebook lets have a look at my home page:

Notice both a status update, and a wall to post on! Although you can't see it in the image but people can also post on this wall, obviously when to write on someone's wall and when to email is going to be up to the users discretion but I'd imagine things which could benefit other people aside from the recipient, such as "hey Steve I saw this interesting blog you should totally check it out www.stephenhodge.blogspot.com ". However please remember that although this is an informal means of communication it is still technically the work place, if you wouldn't mention it in the office don't mention it on the users wall, save that for facebook or down the pub!

You might also notice the means use of "status update" what better way for your line manager to keep track of your actions (again in an informal way), than to give updates... I know this sounds lame but it could come in useful.. possibly!

You have the standard optional information to fill out such as your roles within the university and your skills, I suggest you take some time out to fill this out as best as you can, as filling this out correctly could be quite benificial for future internal jobs and or research purposes etc and fits perfectly into this whole "enterprise" thing....

You get to do the whole friends thing:

Except its called "Collegues"... don't get to carried away with this, remember its not a popularity contest, however selecting and grouping your friends in correct groups, i.e. I've made a group of people with similar roles to myself etc, think how powerful this could be for when you have to either quickly find some colleagues of a set knowledge group, or likewise someone's browsing your profile and thinks ahh researchers, I'll contact one of them about this etc...

MySites most POWERFUL tool!
You get to comment and like things... ok yeah doesn't sound like much but this is AMAZING! ok you have 30 students all with their own profiles, they go through a list of documents on your module site, and your thinking was it really worth uploading those documents I think some of them might be useful but one or two might be a bit lame... you have your flock of students going through the documents if a student likes a file they can give it a like button and or leave a comment... after a term of students rating all your documents etc, you'll get a pritty accurate picture of which files are useful or not and hopefully some reasons as to why! And what with the same site being used year in year out think how accurate this can get with more and more students rating your files/work... please don't think of this as a negative thing if your getting bad comments from your students about your work then prehaps they have a point... however as owner of the said module/programme site you can remove any comments if needs be!

So basically it is Facebook why should I use anything else?
Good point... however do I have you as a friend on Facebook? To give a typical Ladish/British example if you were down the pub and a member of staff walked in would you ask them to sit next to you here have a drink etc... Well you might but you get the point, that this enables you to separate your personal lives and work lives. It also means you can add your fellow students without fear of being swamped, and or keep personal things personal etc. And one final thing every member of staff has a mysite (they might not use it but it still exists).

SharePoint 2010... what the?!

2010-08-16T06:02:00.000-07:00

Hello all, well what an interesting month, I've had you might have noticed tulip has had a little bit of a refresh this is due to it being updated to SharePoint 2010 (for those techy's interested). Groan more change I hear you say, well yes this is progress (otherwise we'd still be driving about in Roman Chariots). Well this update has brought with it a number of frustrated emails/calls directed to myself and support desk, which is completely understandable, the aim of this post is to hopefully clear up some of the common issues...

What's changed?
Well where do we start... the most obvious thing which hits you with this update is the different layout and design of the SharePoint pages, most notably this ribbon along the top of the page.

This is consistent regardless of the page your on within Tulip and gives contextual information depending upon which page your on. Such as a document library displays this:

Each site has greater flexibility for customising your site design (which is out of the scope of this overview however please email me if you would like further information).

The update also has technology/ideas "borrowed" from social networks such as "I like it" and "Tags and Notes", the idea behind this being students (or staff), can add these to documents of importance etc which will hopefully help other students in their studies.

One major change the university has done with this update is scrap the constant renewing of sites. i.e. your Stage 1 site for 2010 students will be the same site for Stage 1 students in 2011... This will hopefully mean less work migrating your sites come September. I encourage you to really think about the content you upload or add to your sites as a little extra effort and planning to start with will hopefully mean you won't have to update much extra information every year.

Right that's all fine and well but I'm still teaching 09 students how do I get back to my old sites?!

https://oldtulip.plymouth.ac.uk/sites/ltsitedirectory/Pages/MyModules.aspx

All I want to do is upload my course material but I can't see the upload button:
Well as mentioned this top band is contextual depending upon which page your on, if your within a document library such as "Shared Documents":

From the Shared Documents page click on the Documents option at the top. This will bring up some options for your Documents library, very similar to the drop down menu under the "new" button on the old system:

If your using Internet explorer you have the option to upload single files or multiple files (if your using anything else you can only upload single files).

One thing I like about the multiple documents upload option is you can simply drag and drop multiple files (and folders) into that blue box.

Anything else I should know?!
Well yes, however I shall leave it at that for now, please email me if there's anything extra you'd like to know. I've heard a couple of reports about My Sites being blank, if this has happened to you please simply email support desk.

How to I get permissions on these new sites?
All you need to know is in the following image:

Well hope this was of some use, prior to writing this post I had loads of ideas of what to write about but during the process of the said writing these ideas evaporated! Please comment/email me if you have any further queries! Training sessions can also be arranged!

KTP - Short Programme - Helping Children at Risk

2010-08-16T03:51:00.000-07:00

Work for this project finished a month or so ago, however I've only just got around to sorting out the video. This project (excuse my ignorance I'm a Technologist not a Social Worker) was essentially aimed to use technology to break down the personality barriers social workers have when discussing in groups about cases.

The project consisted of 4 groups of pairs in a room, however no-one knew who they were paired with, simple text chat protocol was used to hopefully level out the playing field of group dynamics, i.e. a quiet and a loud social worker discussing points will result in the louder social worker's opinion being projected to a greater extent than the opinion of the quieter social worker so by using a computer to shield these aspects and hopefully not be a barrier in itself the test social workers discussed a number of scenarios and how they'd rank them in importance etc... and the other crazy things social workers get up to!

They were then instructed to write their own reports using the discussed information, this was achieved by using some on-line forms I created which mirrored the forms they would use in real life (yeah simulation to the max!) a screen grab of these said forms:

Then the next bit which I think is quite special is each submitted report, is then passed onto the next group, so a group was able to view another groups report and then re-assess the report. Again due to the fact no-one knew who they were speaking to within the room meant the information could be peer assessed/criticised without the usual worry about standing on people's toes or feeling like they're being a suck up etc... then these re-assesset reports can be edited and resubmitted.

All data form the reports to the chats was logged via a MySQL database which allowed for flexible analysis pre experiment. All coding was done from scratch with a fair amount of inspiration from this:

http://www.ajaxprojects.com/ajax/tutorialdetails.php?itemid=9

How to upload files in the new version of Tulip/MySites/SharePoint2010?

2010-07-19T03:08:00.000-07:00

Well hopefully by now you've all seen the new set up of the Tulip/MySites this is down to uni updating its systems with SharePoint 2010 which is actually a really good upgrade for a quick overview of the updates (if your interested in such things) have a look here (or skip to find out how to upload files):

Right so how do I upload?

Log into the portal like you would normally
Go to the site your wanting to upload a file to (for this example I'm using a subsite of my MySite).
Within said site go to a document library all Teaching and Learning sites have a "Shared Documents" folder by default so go to there. For my example I'm going to use the "Case-Loading" folder in my Eportfolio subsite.
Within your document library you should see something similar to this:
As noted select the "Documents" link at the top which should change the "Ribbon" to have contextual information which will hopefully be quite self explanatory:
From this select "Upload Document" and the following should pop up:
It should be quite self explanatory what to do next particularity if you've ever uploaded anything on the internet before, in case your mind fails you select "browse" and find the file your aiming to upload.
It'll take a couple seconds to upload (depending upon your internet connection). You will then be greeted with a quick edit panel (I'm assuming this'll get removed in the not to distant future)
you'll need to fill out all fields marked with an *, once done select "Save" and your done.

Hope this is of some help to you, please comment or email me if you need any points explained etc.

Incase you've missed it my Video tutorial can be found here:

Refreshing your Midwifery E-Portfolio

2010-07-13T03:47:00.000-07:00

Hi all, your E-Portfolio's were desinged on an older version of SharePoint which has since been upgraded (which should hopefully solve the dreaded Vista issue). However as a result of any upgrade thee are initiall teething issues. These should be ironed out automatically over time, however if your a tad impatient you can follow this tutorial:

Log into your E-Portfolio like usual and you should be greeted with this hideous looking thing (click the image to make it bigger):

As you can see from the image, select the "Site Actions" link, (its a tiny bit tedious clicking this as, you might be able to tell the sites not behaving properly).

This should bring up the following options again apologise for the viewing difficulty (click the image to make it bigger):

Try and select the "visual upgrade" option, it'll quite annoyingly disappear if you roll you mouse over certain areas etc (its although its trying it hardest to annoy you!), my best method was to click where it says "previous one").

You'll then be greeted with this page (click the image to make it bigger):

Like it says in the image ignore all the initial options and focus where it says "Visual Upgrade" select the "update the user interface" option (it'll initially be on the "use the previous user interface" option).

Then select OK, and hopefully all should be ok!

Please get back to me if there are any new issues, hopefully this upgrade that the university has done will solve some of the more known issues with your e-Portfolio... which will be nice!

Work And Wellbeing MSc/PgDip/PgCert

2010-06-08T01:17:00.000-07:00

I've been asked to give examples and tutorials on how, web technologies can be used to help enhance our new programme: Work And Wellbeing MSc/PgDip/PgCert

More Specifically:

Customised Share Point/Tulip Pages
Blogs
Podcasting/iTunes U

First off some background about Work And Wellbeing for those not in the know.

"This pioneering programme has been developed for those individuals/organisations who maintain people in or return people to work. This is a contemporary programme that takes a biopsychosocial approach to addressing lifestyle balance, health and well-being in the workplace."

Custom:
Customised SharePoint sites can come in a wide range of forms, simple ones which require little technical know how to utilise such as custom links:

Every SharePoint/Tulip page has a links section filled with default links, however it can be really useful for students to place contextual links here such as government initiatives relevant to the course/module or blogs from people with areas of expertise in that area etc. For example if this was an E-Learning Module linking to Steve Wheelers Blog would be a useful for the students.

To create/update the links list users simply have to click on the "Add new link" option (this option isn't viewable for students FYI).

Adding links is all very well and good, but what if you want to create a site people link to not from? Well SharePoint/Tulip being the flexible resource it is can be folded in any manner you want, it just needs a little bit of persistence and perhaps some help from your local Learning Technologist... this is something I've created recently along with Adele Kane:

Now obviously this might be out of the scope of this course, but hopefully you'll be able to see some aspects which could be used, this particular site has been published publicly so, anyone in the world can view it without having to log in, likewise you could create something of academic excellence (or something like that) and show it off to the world.

Blogs
Blogs seem to be big business within this faculty all I seem to blog about on this blog is about how to blog! So I won't go into any blog examples or how to blog specifically in this blog post. However with a course like Work and Wellbeing with students from a wide range of backgrounds I can imagine blogs could be a key aspect of the some of the modules.

Blogs essentially give your students a voice, which can be shared amongst the class, I imagine this could be useful particularly with students coming from a variety of professional backgrounds, they might be able to give contextual reflections about what they've learned and as a result help their peers and future potential students etc.

Podcasts/iTunes U
The most misused term in E-Learning and here all I really mean is audio recoding's or video/PowerPoint slides with Audio over the top. Basically all I'm referring to is an audio recording or a video which will be of benefit to the students learning. These can be simple uploaded audio recordings taken directly from lectures, or slightly more complex could have slides overlaid onto the audio recordings. Or most effectively short audio/video/slideshow snippets highlighting key aspects of programmes/modules/lectures for students to review at later stages (e.g. before exams), whilst on the way to their next lecture to refresh their memories etc. I hope you can see how amazingly powerful these could potentially be, however annoyingly due to the effort put in is quite often skimped over in favour of more traditional techniques. However there is nothing stopping you from getting your students to do all the hard work for you and to create such resources themselves to benifit the rest of the class etc?

Above I've mentioned iTunes U, iTunes U is a key initiative the TEL (Technology Enhance Learning) team at the university are aiming to push. iTunes U is a tool created by the guys at Apple (think iPods, iPhones, Macs etc).

"iTunes U — a powerful distribution system for everything from lectures to language lessons, films to labs, audiobooks to tours — is an innovative way to get educational content into the hands of students."
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u

The difference between this and podcasts on Tulip, is that these podcasts are free for the whole world, i.e. do you really want to be shoving all your lectures on there free for anyone in the world to view. In an ideal world this would be fine as all your really paying for with a degree is a piece of paper with University of Plymouth Logo on, but obviously there's more to it than that! The way's I'd see people using iTunes U, is to create these high quality snippets of each lecture/module/programme for anyone in the world to view. This comes into its own when the areas your covering are pioneering in their field, such as this course. Since why would people want to view your particular resource when they could be looking at a university better suited in that area. For example it wouldn't be worth listening to a technology lecture from an unheard of university when you could be listening to the pioneering technology guys over in MIT.

Blogging with Pebble Pad

2010-04-22T03:58:00.000-07:00

Yet another blog post about how to blog! This tutorial is to show you how to blog using Pebble Pad. I shall try to keep this post as generic as possible however the reason for this tutorial has come about due to people having difficulties with the SCW538 module non generic information shall be coloured in red.

Hopefully once you’ve finished reading this post you will be able to do the following:

Know what a blog is
Find your blog
Post to your blog
Add Photos to your blog
Editing/Deleting your posts
Add/Remove Comments

Blogs seem to be one of the key words in circulation today, firmed from the web 2.0 explosion of the start of the 21st century, used as a medium for individuals to voice their opinions/experiences/knowledge etc online. I could give my understanding of a blog but feel this little video might be clearer:

If your on the SCW538 module or otherwise we’re going to show you how to use Pebble Pad’s blogging technology. The reason this is the case as opposed to you creating your own blog through BlogSpot or Wordpress is mostly due to security and confidentiality issues, your blog has been set up so only yourself and fellow course mates are able to view your blog posts, although this does have a certain level of damage prevention should you accidentally expose a patients confidentiality all attempts to prevent a slip up should be adhered to.

Getting to your blog
As discussed your blog is situated on Pebble Pad to logo into Pebble Pad go to the following address:

http://e-portfolio.plymouth.ac.uk

At the login screen enter your standard university username and password, the same one you use to access your Emails, Tulip or Emily. Once logged in feel free to have a little play around with all the features that pebble pad has after all, all we're using it for in this example is blogging but PebblePad is much much more than just a blog tool! If you wanna just get to your pre-set up blog then just click through to your assets store as shown below:

Once in your assets store you might find a large number of documents or none at all it all obviously depends upon how much you have used your pebble pad account! Along the top of the list of your assets you should see a tab called "received". Click this tab:

Once within the "received" tab scroll till you see your name listed there. Once found click on it:

This will open up a new box/window thing on the right click the option with the magnify glass "view and post to blog". Likewise you can view your fellow students blogs doing the same method, however you don't have permission to post to them.

Now we are in your actual blog
You should hopefully see something along the lines of this:

Don't worry if you have no posts listed, this will probably be because you haven't created any yet!

Post to your blog
From the page above you might be able to see the button which says "Post New", this is quite self explanatory so go ahead and click it already! Once clicked a pop up window like below will appear:

This is your blog post tool, as you can see it's far from complicated! So just go ahead and type your thoughts and experiences etc! Once happy press submit and your blog post will be posted!

Adding a Photo to your Post
As the saying goes 'a picture is worth a thousand words', you might want to save some time and just show a photo of what your trying to explain. Try to maintain confidentiality (unless prior consent has been given) and avoid copyright infringements etc, further information on copyright can be found here:

http://www.web2rights.org.uk/

Anyway, adding photos is as easy as pie with PebblePad, see the above image where it says "File" and then "Choose File" button, press this said button. This will bring up the browse to file window, select your image and press open: (the image below is dependant upon your operating system however you will be greeted with something of a similar nature)

Once you have done this submit your blog post and the image should automatically upload at the same time. Hopefully that's all you need to know about authoring your own blog posts.

Editing/Deleting posts

If we go back to your PebblePad home page, you should notice that after creating some blog posts you'll notice some newly created assets in your store. Visit your said assets store:

As explained in the image, any asset with a thought cloud icon is a blog post, it's title will match your blog posts title (obviously). If you wish to edit or delete the post, simply select the said thought, click edit this asset to edit it, or click more options, this brings up a pop up box from this select "remove".

Commenting
Part of the nice thing about blogs is that you can get a nice community going and due to the usually faceless nature of blogs means its less intimidating to comment on people's views than it would be than say in a classroom type environment. To comment on your own of other people's blogs go the assets store and like earlier select the "received" tab, from here you can see your own blog and hopefully your fellow students blogs, select any blog you want to comment on. Click the same button you used earlier "View and post to blog".

At the bottom of each blog post you should see a little speech bubble icon, followed by how many comments there are listed:

Click the "Post Comment" link to go directly to posting a link or click the number of Comments link to view other people's comments.

If someone has posted something on your blogpost and you feel its impact is of a destructive nature then you can remove the comment, to do this go to the said blog post, at the bottom of which it should list comments, click through this link, then it should display comments along with a "Remove" link, likewise if its a comment you've posted you can remove and edit it:

Hopefully that's all you need to know about blogging with Pebble Pad, please feel free to email myself or comment on this post if there's anything incorrect or missing or if you just want to say hello!

Mentorship Resource - Almost complete

2010-03-30T03:19:00.000-07:00

Hello all I'm sure you'll all share my excitement that the Mentorship resource has finally been completed... well I'm waiting for some feedback before its all officially live... which is where I'm hoping you guys will come in useful!

So please have a look through it, anything which looks a bit hmmm I'm not sure if that's working right or any spelling mistakes... ANYTHING please comment this post or drop me an email!

http://public.tulip.plymouth.ac.uk/Module/HEAB370%20AYAU%2009/Mentorship2010/default.aspx

Some things I'm soon to change are the quiz is in need of yet more work (the timing between solutions being displayed and taken away), but this time it should hopefully be quite simple to rectify. Other fun things are to check every link is working. Hopefully you guy's will be able to point out if any links are dead etc?!

That's all for now!

Oh yeah Mentorship Updates!

2010-03-02T00:29:00.000-08:00

Well I figured I would have done more updates about this over the time, but sadly most of my time has been pre-occupied making this work! Well to plan has been to update the previous version I created of this mentorship resource which was originally designed for CD, this new version is to be housed on Tulip.

Original resource - UOP login required.

And my current work in progress - UOP login required.

One of the exciting things about this project is that this project is to be aired to the whole world using Tulips newest feature of external access. So I'll be able to show my finished product on this very blog! I can tell your as excited as me!

Flaky webcasts?!

2010-02-03T05:13:00.000-08:00

Sadly since Cito has moved on from working with the faculty a portion of web cast support has been passed onto yours truly. This is no biggy as luckily the web cast suite is a very intuitive set up so support issues are quite low my main task is helping the lectures to stay calm!

However it does seem that a number of students are having issues when using internet explorer that they keep on getting an error message and kicking them from the broadcast. This is an issue our end but in the mean time please follow this guide to bypass the problem.

The Steve Hodge 5 steps to happiness whilst viewing a web cast:
The cause of these issues are apparently down to issues with chat room feature, so the best solution is to simply bypass using the chat room and view the web cast directly in a media player.

If your on a windows based computer open "Windows Media Player" look for an icon similar to this:
If this is the first time you've opened Windows Media Player it'll take you through a load of setting up steps, do as they say or cancel it (doesn't make any difference to viewing the webcast). Once its all loaded up fully go to the file menu at the top, if this isn't viewable press the "alt" button on your keyboard.
From the file menu select open url:
This should bring up a pop up box like this:

in this box the address you paste in is different depending upon where the broadcast is origin from:
- Plymouth - Main campus: http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/webcast2
- Plymouth - PAHC: http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/webcast1
- Taunton: http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/webcast4
- Truro: http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/webcast3
Click ok and it should start streaming your desired web cast.

If its about time your webcast is set to start and all your seeing is a screen simular to this:

Then try one of the other links as you might well be on the wrong channel. Its worth noting that you can try this out any time prior to your web cast being aired as the system will still return something, so worth checking to make sure it still works etc!

Using your SharePoint/Tulip blog like you wish you could... or can do on Blogspot...

2009-11-27T08:38:00.000-08:00

The aim of this tutorial is to give you a brief overview of how to use Tulips blogging tool and how to make it at least behave like a real blog should.

Hopefully once you’ve completed this tutorial you’ll be able to:

Find your blog
Create a Blog Post
Edit your post
Delete a blog post
Re-finding your deleted blog post
Create category’s
Save as Draft and other such delights

When Microsoft created SharePoint they’d heard of the concept of Blogs but hadn’t actually used one! This is a tad frustrating for those of us who have used alternatives and for subjects of a non confidential nature I’d suggest using Blogspot or similar, however things where confidentiality is a high priority I’d suggest keeping them within the warm walls of a VLE. This way if you were to accidently say, I saw [insert name here] in the surgery today the damage is going to be limited. It also means you get to read my amazing tutorials!

This tutorial is aimed at University of Plymouth students on the Integrated Practice SCW539 module however it can be applied to anyone using the blog tool on SharePoint.

Let’s find your blog!

Having looked at all your blogs it’s obvious the majority of you have managed to find your correct blog however for those of you who haven’t looked yet are looking so hard you’ve magically made it disappear your blogs can be found on your “Integrated Practice II” module site.

Within this page I’ve created a list of all your blogs so not only can you find your own but you can also spy on your fellow comrades blogs. This list can be found on the left hand menu under sub heading “Lists” and titled “Blogs”.

This’ll bring up a list of names one of which should be your own....

Create a Blog Post

Let’s go to the main page of your blog, for this example I shall be using Tara Alexander’s blog, (I haven’t asked for Tara’s permission so shhh!!). On the right of the main page you should see a title of “Admin Links” one of the bullet points underneath should say “Create a post”, click this.

We are then taken through to the Post: New Item page, this will display in two different ways depending upon which browser you are using. If you are using Internet explorer it should display like this:

Or if you’re using any other browser like this:

Here we see the Microsoft Monopoly in full force, i.e. if your using internet explorer you get better functionality than if you use its competition bah! So I’d suggest using Internet Explorer for your blog if you can. Since this enables you access to the format pallet. However if you’re using a Mac, Linux or are just plan stubborn I shall give you some help on simple formatting.

Anyway for simple tasks this page should be quite self explanatory, so go ahead and type anything in there. Before you submit, take some time to appreciate the “Category” and “Published” sections. This can be quite useful if you want to spoof when your posts are made or if your posting about something in the past. The Category section is a useful thing to get into using since it’ll allow you to organise your posts and filter them via Category, for example if you were blogging about animals and created a separate Category for Cats and one for Dogs you could filter by Dogs and just list all your Dog posts....

Once your happy with what you’ve done here press the “Publish” button, you can press the “Save as Draft” button but we will cover this in another section.

Well-done you have made your first blog post! The internet can occasionally be quite flaky sometimes bad things happen to blog posts when you press the send button I suggest prior to posting you save all what you’ve written into a Word document, just to be on the save side, it’ll also spell check it for you!

Edit your Post

Right so I have posted a next to useless post onto Tara’s blog, let’s make it say something a little bit more useful! First lets go back to the home page of your blog. Under the Admin Links (where we found create post) there should be a link titled “Manage Posts”:

Click this. You should then see a list of your blog posts. If you hover your mouse over the blog post your wishing to edit a orange highlighting box should appear around the title followed with a small box to the right with an arrow left click this arrow and a sub menu should appear:

From this sub menu select “Edit Item”.

You will then be brought back to the Post edit screen we saw from the earlier step... magic!

Adding Images to your Post

Adding images to your posts... well this is the money post. The two warm up acts have exited the stage left and the crowed is cheering for the headliners to come on stage... adding images on to your Tulip blog is a simple dance move... the “Two Step”.

upload your image
attach said image to your post

Step1 – Uploading your image

If you go to your blog you should see a link on the left of the page titled “Photos” click on this.
Once in this page along the top bar there should be a link titled “Upload”, click this.

It should bring up a simple upload screen (much like on facebook, Flickr etc). Click on browse and find the image you wish to upload, once you’ve found it click “Open”.
The once empty box next to the Browse button should now be full of text as shown below. Before we click on, you should note the “Overwrite Existing files” tick box, this simply means it’ll overwrite any images with the same file name... this can be both useful (if making alterations) or very annoying if something is simply shares the same name! Once your done click “ok”.
It’ll take some time to upload the image, depending upon your internet connection. Once done you’ll then be taken to the properties page, here you have to fill out all the feilds maked with an *, so Title, Name, Subject, and Keywords... sorry this is a bit of a hassle but otherwise it won’t work properly! Once these have been filled out scroll to the bottom and click “Check In”.
Once this is done you’ll be taken back to the page we started with in step 2, you should hopefully have successfully uploaded your image, now we want its address so we can link to it in our blog...
Click this said image’s name and it should bring up your image.
Right click your image and select properties.
This’ll bring up a nice list of information we want the one which says Address (URL): it should start with HTTP, select it all it should start with HTTP and end with JPG. (note you can do this with any image on the internet so you don’t necessarily have to have uploaded it first!), once you have selected it right click and copy.
You now have your image’s url copied into your clip board.

Step2 – Attach said image to your post

This step will hopefully be a little bit simpler! There are two methods to do this depending upon which web browser you use if you haven’t got a clue what web browser your using then you’re probably using Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer Method

Go to a post you want to edit or create a new post.
From the edit pallet select the Insert Image button (square icon with mountain and sun).
This will bring up a pop up box where you fill out the “Alternative Text”, this text gives the image some context if images can’t be shown or for visually impaired readers of your blog. In the Address section paste your image url. Finish by clicking ok.
This’ll then magically import a image into your post, sometimes your image might be waaaay to big, so use the image resize tabs to drag the image smaller.
And your done!

Non Internet Explorer Method (Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc)

Go to a post you want to edit or create a new post.
In the body section, you are going to add some HTML code which embeds an image; this is much like adding images etc like in the days of MySpace! Simply paste the following in the body replacing the words yourimageurl with the url you got from the first step.

<img src="URL" width="400" />
Note. You can change the value in the width section to change the width, although 400 is about ideal.
Once you have added this press “publish” and you are done!

Delete a blog post

Sometimes you might have just written utter rubbish on your Blog or you want to delete all your “Test posts”. Well this is actually quite an easy task to do.

Go to your blogs main page, and select “Manage Posts” from the “Admin Links” section on the right of the page.
This will bring up all your blog posts, move your mouse over to the post your wanting to delete. It should highlight the post with a yellow box, to the right of which is an arrow:
Clicking this arrow brings up a menu, from this menu select delete, it’ll then ask you if your sure... are you? If you are then click ok!
And we’re done!

Re-finding your deleted blog post

So you’ve successfully deleted... the wrong post DOH! Don’t worry provided you’ve realised this fact within 30 days you should be able to retrieve it from the recycle bin!

Go to your blogs main page (or any page of your blog).
Left hand menu last link you should see in green writing “Recycle Bin” click this.
Tick the box to the left of the post you want to restore then click the “Restore Selection” button it’ll typically ask you if your sure... because you’d defiantly accidently go to your recycle bin tick a box and then press restore selection. And your done!

Create category’s

Category’s are quite useful things, they allow you to give some context to your blog posts, your are initially given 3 well thought out category’s of Category 1, 2 and 3 I’d suggest you create you own! To do this:

Go to your blogs home page
On the left hand menu you should see a heading of “Categories” under which listed you should see a link titled “Add new Category”
Fill out the title field and click ok and your done.

Some final notes

If you save for drafts you can go to your “Manage Posts” link from the home page. Bring up its sub menu and select “Approve/Reject”. This will then bring you to Approve/Reject/Pending screen select one of these and click ok.

For those of you not using Internet Explorer you can enter some simple html code into your blog posts the simplest ones are as follows:

<strong>Bold</strong> BOLD
<br /> Line break
<p>a paragraph</p> put the <p> at the start and the </p> at the end of a paragraph
<h1></h1>
<h2></h2>
<h3></h3>
<a href="http://bbc.co.uk">Link></a> Link

Well hope this hasn’t been to complicated for you all please leave comments or email me if you need anything cleared up?!

Discussion Board User

2009-10-20T01:31:00.000-07:00

It's a well known fact that children inherit characteristics from their parents i.e. my farther and mother like pasties as do I, it's a feature we were created with! When Microsoft created SharePoint they decided that every sub part of a SharePoint site should inherit permissions from its Parents. A sub part for example could be a sub site, a Blog, a Survey or in this case a Discussion Board. To be honest this is wise thinking on Microsoft's behalf since it does mean that in about 80% of cases these permissions are as we desire! However in those 20% the usual issue is that students can't reply on a discussion board... (this is because by default all students are allowed to do is read not add) not to fear since after this 10step tutorial you should (hopefully) be able to allow students to reply to your discussions!

Before we start, this tutorial as with most of my tutorials about SharePoint all presume you have Ownership rights over your Module/Programme...

1. Go to the Module/Programme site in question, and select the discussion board your wanting to let your students use:

2. Once in the correct Discussion area press the "Setting" button, this brings up a sub menu (as pictured), from this menu select "Discussion Board Settings".

3. You are then greeted by a scary looking page full of settings, don't worry take some time in reading each section if you want there are some useful settings you might want to come back to at a later date to change. However for this example we just want to change the permissions so select the link called "Permissions for this discussion board". (as shown below).

4. Tulip then shows you all the different permissions associated with that particular discussion board (I bet you wern't aware there was so many). There's not much else you can do on this page apart from select "Actions" from the Menu and then "Edit Permissions". Tulip will then warn you that you are going to change the permissions of this section and not the whole site.. or something along those lines, don't worry about what it says just click ok and move onto the next step!

If you or a colleague has already changed the permissions on your module site then this whole step will need not apply (it'll be obvious if so since this step wont make sense! Just skip this step and move onto step 5.

5. You will then be greeted with the same list only this time each user group has a little tick box to the left of it. We are wanting to change the Students group so tick the little box next to them (as shown below). Once you have ticked the right box select "Actions" from the top menu and "Edit User Permissions"

6. This brings up a list of all the permission levels you can possibly give a user, we could give the students "Full Control" but this might have repercussions as they'd be able to delete fellow students replies or edit them etc, luckily the nice chaps in Babbage (I think) have created a specific permissions group for discussion boards titled "Discussion Board User", tick the little tick box and press ok. (As shown in the image below)

7. And your done, if done correctly you should see your students group with "Read, Discussion Board User" next to it, as shown below.

Well that wasn't quite 10 steps... but I guess in this case less is better! Enjoy!

Uploading the latest version of the Midwifery E-Portfolio

2009-10-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

Aim's/Objectives
The aim of this tutorial is to give you the latest (and greatest) E-Portfolio.

Hopefully by the time you close this window or move onto Facebook or if you're really cool Twitter, you'll have completed the following:

Made a back up of your old E-Portfolio.
Uploaded and Implemented the latest copy of your E-Portfolio.
Given all the correct members of staff access to your E-Portfolio.
Deleted your old E-Portfolio (to avoid confusion).
Emailed you module leads your new E-Portfolio's URL.
Be chuffed you have the coolest Midwifery E-Portfolio in town.*

*for a limited period only

It must be noted however that although this new E-Portfolio is the best thing since sliced bread, I still haven't managed to get around the whole "Vista" issue! It also won't magically do all your work for you, nor will it tell you what happens in the next episode of Lost of Hero's.

Backing up your Old E-Portfolio
This is strongly advised since we don't want anyone crying over spilt milk, if you've not yet got an E-Portfolio then feel free to skip this section. Please note that this section is only achievable on a Windows computer using Internet Explorer whilst on the University Campus... sorry! Before you start please prepare somewhere you want to store your backed up files, this could be on the very computer your using at this moment or on a USB drive or if your old school a CD-Rom.

Open Microsoft Internet Explorer (if you don't know what this is open your web browser).
Go to your current E-Portfolio, any page will do but the main page is probably the best.
On the left hand menu click the first link at the top titled, "View All Site Content".
Then you will be greeted with an interesting page with a sub heading titled "Document Libraries", this is the start of the back end of your E-Portfolio, think popping the bonnet on your car to expose its Engine... anyway I digress! Click the link under "Document Libraries", titled "E-Portfolio".
You will then be shown a lovely list of all the files which build up your E-Portfolio, the two folders we want to make a copy of are "Documents" and "Resources" the rest can fend for themselves! The easiest way to copy these folders is to click the button titled, "Actions". This should bring up a sub-menu as shown:
From this menu click "Open with Windows Explorer".
This should then bring up a document folder window, much like when you look at "My Documents" on your computer or when you put in a USB Pen. From this window please select the two folders titled "Documents" and "Resources"
- To select two separate items in a list click the first one, then press and hold "ctrl" on your keyboard and select the second item.
Once you have selected the two items, copy them and paste them into your pre-prepared back up destination. Copy and paste can be done in a number of ways:
- The easiest method is by pressing "CTRL + C" for copy and "CTRL + V" for paste.
- Right click and select "copy" from the menu, and in your destination right click and select "paste"
- Or once you have selected the items select "edit" from the window's menu, then copy, and in the destination's window "edit" and "paste".
You should have successfuly copied and pasted your documents and resources from your E-Portfolio and they should now be stored on your local machine or USB pen. I suggest you quickly look through them all to double check.
Before you move on pat yourself on your back and have a cup of tea.

Setting up the New E-Portfolio
Right let's get onto the main part of the show, the opening act has exited stage left, and the crowed is ready for the headliners to come on stage. This section can be done on any operating system and any browser...

First things first you need to download the template file. Click this link, and it should ask you to download or open, please just download it to somwhere on your computer where you're going to remember its location. I recommend to your desktop. You can't actually do anything with this file just yet so don't worry if when you click to open it your computer doesn't know what to do with it.
Now go to the student Portal: http://student.plymouth.ac.uk/
On this page you should see on the far right hand side a box with the words "My Site" in the middle. Please click on this.
You will then hopefully be taken to your "MySite" if you've not used your "MySite" before it might take some time for the system to create it. Be patient it'll magically appear before your eyes. Once loaded click on the blue box titled "Site Actions".
This will bring down a sub menu as shown below, from this select "Site Settings".
Site Settings is a nasty looking page with lots and lots of links, we're looking for "Site Templates", this can be found under "Galleries", pretty much slap bang in the middle. Once you've found it click through.
Once "Site Template Gallery" has loaded up we want to upload the template we downloaded from from that link earlier (remember you saved it to a destination you'd remember up in step 1, once you've re-downloaded it and saved it to somewhere you'll remember this time). Click on the upload button from the top bar, as shown below:
Now click on the "Browse" button and find where the Template file "Eportfolio-Sept09.stp" is located and click open. (This action is very similar to uploading a image in Facebook).
Once you have clicked on "open", the Name box will be filled in, in a similar manner as shown below, the words won't match exactly since this is all based on where you saved the file to. Once you are happy with this click on ok.
This will take some time to upload depending on how fast your internet is, just let it do its thing. You will then be asked to give "Title" and "Name" these should already be filled in (if not name them both "Eportfolio09", click ok.
You will be brought back to where we started in the "Site Template Gallery". What have just done is give your MySite instructions on how to create your E-Portfolio, now all we need to do is tell your MySite to go ahead and create it already! To do this click on the blue box with the words "Site Actions" in.
This time select "Create", as shown below.
Now we're greeted with another page similar to what we saw earlier when trying to find the Site Templates however this time it's slightly different. We want "Sites and Workspaces", this is under the "Web Pages" heading.
This step has some SubSteps
- Title: Fill out Title with somethign suitable I recommend "E-Portfolio Sept 09".
- Description: again fill out as you please, I recommend "The September 20009 update of your E-Portfolio".
- URL name: please use "EportfolioSept09".
- Select a Template: choose the "Custom" tab, then select "Eportfolio-090909" as shown below (yours will have fewer options than mine):
- User Permissions: change the dot so it selects "use unique permissions".
- The last 3 options leave as they are and click create.
It'll take about 5 min for the system to create your E-Portfolio once it's done it t hing you'll hopefully be greeted with "Set up Groups for this site", as shown below. First I want you to put a semi colon (;) after your name in the last two boxes.
The paste the following (minus the quote marks) into all the boxes including the last two after your name:
- “Margaret Fisher; Alison Thoburn; Stephen Hodge; Faye Doris; Alison James; Lee Wright; Lynn Nicholls; Tina Wells; Dee Llywelyn; Rachel Redwood; Elizabeth Stenhouse; Sarah Lewis; Andrea Stebbings;”.
Once you are happy with this and have something which resembles the next image press "ok"
Once you have clicked ok you will then be greeted with your new E-Portfolio, this brining you to the end of the Headliner act.

Deleting your Old E-Portfolio
So next on stage is that experimental act which the headliners feel obliged to let play at their gigs but don't really want them there, and I’m sure by now your legs are hurting and you probably just want to go home. And feel free to go this isn’t essential its just a good idea so you don’t get your new shiny E-Portfolio mixed up with your old one... no-one likes drinking cold tea when a hot one's sitting right next to it!

First off go to the E-Portfolio which you are wanting to delete.
- Student Portal
- MySite link.
- View All Site content
- And select your "My E-Portfolio"
Now click the Site Actions button... by now you should know where it is, top right blue box...
Select "Site Settings" from the sub menu.
Under the 4th Column "Site Administration" select the suitably named link of "Delete this site".
It'll tell you a warning I'd double check you have a back up of it as mentioned right at the start... double check your back up still works and you haven't deleted it by accident. Once your 100% sure you have it backed up click the "Delete" button.

Other Tasks...
To get to your E-Portfolio simply go to your MySite and on the left hand menu under sites you should see listed your new E-Portoflio named whatever you decided to name it.

Earlier you added a list of your Academics and myself as owners on your sites so we can check up on your work and give you any help should the need arise, however at the present we don’t know how to get to your E-Portfolio’s so could you email your Tutors the direct link to your E-Portfolio. This is quite simple:

Go to your MySite
Right click on the link to your new E-Portfolio and select "copy link" or "copy shortcut".
Open whatever email client you use to send emails and paste that link to an email to your academics....

Right well its been a long time coming but I think we’re done! Hope you manage to get on with this one a little bit better than my previous offerings, feel free to comment or email myself if any sections are a little bit confusing or if any of the help sections in your E-Portfolio aren’t clear etc!

Demo/Tutorials - Some cool things Tulip can do: Blogs, RSS feeds, Custom Sites & Web Based Learning

2009-08-20T08:16:00.000-07:00

Aim's/Objectives

The aim of this tutorial is to show you that Tulip/SharePoint in a VLE environment can be used for some slightly more exciting things than just as a glorified network drive.

Hopefully once you've finished reading this post (if I manage to maintain your attention for that long) you shall be able to appreciate some of the needs for:

Blogs
RSS feeds (both from and to your programme/module site)
Customized Programme/Module pages.
Web Based Learning material.

I'm also going to show you:

How to set up a blog on your Tulip/SharePoint site and publish your first post.
How to set your blogs Permissions.
How to find your SharePoint sites RSS feeds.
How to embed RSS feeds into your site.
Change/Add other web parts.

Blogs
I'm sure you've heard about blogs.... well you are reading one... it does seem weird writing about what a blog is on a blog.... anyway, a blog is an area or space for you to express yourself. This could be talking about the letter R, or giving a tutorial about how to use SharePoint (your reading it). As an academic your blog would be an obvious place to talk about your area's of expertise, taking Steve Wheelers blog as an example. From a LT's point of view I often find Steve's site useful but if I was one of Steve's students it would be amazing to be able to see what my tutors researching or looking at or thinking about.

RSS
RSS stands for Real simple syndicate... yeah that clears that one up... RSS is essentially a type of information different programmes can interpret... think of it as a way the internet gets informed something has been updated. So say this blog gets a new post, its RSS feed gets updated, anything which reads that feed will then be informed it's been updated. Ways you can use it, is to have a RSS reader the web browser you currently have will have one built in, so say you follow Medical News Today's RSS feed when they update you will know.

Great I hear you saying "what's this to do with SharePoint?" there are two ways you can use RSS feeds in SharePoint, every update-able part of a SharePoint/Tulip site has its own RSS feed and every time you change anything on the said site its RSS feed will get updated. So tech savy students can follow their modules RSS feeds and be alerted every time a module/programme gets updated (this will be used by about 3 students in the entire university). The second more useful way of using RSS feeds in SharePoint is that you can embed different feeds into your SharePoint site.

Above I've rather cheekily for examples sake embedded Medical News Today's Neurology RSS feed into a Neurology module page. Just think your students can go to their module sites and get the most up to date news about key subjects.

Customised Programme/Module Pages - Web Based Learning
Above you witnessed that your module page doesn't have to just be of the plane standard format, we can add RSS feeds into pages, you can also add Picture libraries and many other things. Once going down the customised SharePoint page you really are opening a can of worms. However one of the better ways of customising your Tulip/SharePoint pages is being able to create some sort of Web Based Learning material. I've shown you this in previous posts but possibly most notable is Anne Roberts "Applying Evidence to Practice-Study material":

Why constantly link students to others on-line study material which kinda hits the point when you could simply create your own?!

Great so how do I go about doing any of this?

Blogs
Probably the most complicated task is how do create a blog. But if you follow these steps you should be able to get your blog on in under 10min!

Blogs can be created on any SharePoint site this being Tulip or your MySite, as generally blogs are used for personal reflections it makes sense to create a blog on your MySite. (if you are a none UOP user and want to know how to create a blog on your SharePoint site simply skip the first step and go to a SharePoint page)

Go to http://intranet.plymouth.ac.uk and click on the "My Site" button. (if you've never been on your MySite before it shall take a couple minutes for SharePoint to create one for you).
To the top right of your screen you should see a link which says "Site Actions" click this then select "Create":
You'll then be greeted with a 5 columns of bullet points, in the 5th column titled "Web Pages" there should be a bullet point titled "Sites and WorkSpaces" click this.
You will then be greated with a page like below please fill out as described in the image (click image to enlarge it):Once you have filled it out scroll down the page and select "create".
Once the next page has loaded you will be greeted with your newly created blog:Now all you need to do is publish your first post, on the right hand menu "Admin Links" you should see a bullet point titled "Create a post" click this.
Fill out your Post's title, the body should consist of what your wishing to write about! And that's all there is to it.

Setting your blogs permissions
Your blog is set by default that all users can view your blog and only you can add to it. You might want to change this to add a colleague or a group of students to also contribute to it. This is done by doing the following.

Clicking the "Site Actions" button (top right hand of the page) and selecting the last option from the pop up menu "Site Settings".
We are again greeted with the 5 columns of bullet points. We want to select "Advanced Permissions" which is under the first column of "Users and Permissions".
Your then shown a table of all users, take a time to read this it should make sense in a round about way, ("NT AUTHORITY\authenticated users" is a group for anyone who has a UOP login). We want to add a new contributor, so select "NEW" from the top left of the table area.
You should then be greeted with a similar screen to as shown below, please do as instructed in the image (click the image for it to expand).
Once this is done you will be brought back to the original list of permissions and your newly added users should be listed.

RSS
As mentioned SharePoint/Tulip sites have their own RSS feeds I say feeds as infact every part of a tulip site which can be updated has its own feed so you can really knuckle down to the exact news you want to know (thanks Nick), usually your browser will alert you if the site you are on has any linked feeds. Two examples are shown below:

Internet Explorer:
FireFox:
You will notice the RSS feed logo whenever you see this there is usually a RSS feed linked. Once you've clicked this link the address in the top bar is the RSS feed URL, you will need to copy this to give it to any RSS readers.

How do you get these Feeds into your Tulip page?
To embed a RSS feed into your Tulip page you have to add the RSS viewer web part. So go to a Tulip/SharePoint site which you have ownership permission on and would like to embed some RSS into.

For this Example I'm using OCT518 (Anne Roberts module page) you then need to follow the next couple of steps:

Top Right hand corner of the page select "Site Actions" and from the sub menu select "Edit Page".
This will highlight all the different web parts on the page:
Select "Add a Web Part" from whichever section you want to add your RSS feed to...
You will then be greated with a rather nasty looking list of different web parts you can add... scroll down the list and under "All Web Parts" and "Default" you should see "RSS Viewer", select the tick box next to this and then choose add from the bottom.
You will then be back to your original page showing you all the different web parts, hopefully you will have your newly added "RSS Viewer" web part. On it will say "Web part is not bound to a feed. Open the tool pane to set the feed Url." click on this link.
This will bring up the RSS viewer's menu: From this past in your RSS feed (how to find you RSS feed was shown above) and click ok.
Welldone! You've added an RSS feed to your home page, and in doing so have also customised your SharePoint site! Highfives all round!

Jacob Gibbins - Photography

2009-07-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

Jacob Gibbins is arguably one of the South Wests most up and coming cycling photograher (his style's not just restricted to cycling but it is the main field he excels in). However what Jacob makes up in photography skills he slightly lacked in website design. So I decided to put my skills to use in helping a fellow Photographer/Cyclist out.

Now I'm not saying at all that I have good web design skills or coding skills but I do like to think I'm not terrible at either so here's what I made for Jacob:

His full site can be viewed: http://www.jacobgibbins.co.uk/

As always wherever I've tried where I can to make my work under creative commons act so feel free to nab the HTML and CSS (obviously all images are copyright to Jacob Gibbins so don't nab them!)

I've also uploaded the FLV file so feel free to use this also under creative commons. I tried to comment wherever I felt people might get confused. My plans are to make a proper loader bar between images and to tidy the code up some what. But I am getting married in less than 3 weeks so this website has slipped a tad in priorities!

The idea of this FLV file was to have an easily accessed and mostly protected set of Jacobs top 33 images. Sadly it really only works for landscape images but two portraits side by side also works! I wanted to create a flash file which meant Jacob wouldn't have to constantly edit some flash file to alter his top 33 images. I got around this by getting the flash file to search the folder "MainPhotos" on his server and grab the pre numbered images from there. So simply changing these images is all he needs to do to change his portfolio images. Making sure they have the same names and it should be simple as!

Googles OS - why I didn't bet!

2009-07-08T06:07:00.001-07:00

It's everywhere I feel I should write something about this here... Google have annoucned their making an Operating system to contest with Linux, Windows and OSx: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8139711.stm

The reason I'm writing about it is that I want to say what I think their plan will be so when it happens I can refer back to this post and go I predicted this much like me and my brother predicted them eventually making a OS after releasing Chrome, if only we'd laid a bet on it happening!

My predictions, Chrome OS, will be a very slim lined OS think Iphone style, based fully around a online content, with everything being stored online and not on your computers memory with small apps accessing this data as requested. I feel googles aim here is that you could log into anyone's computer running chrome and have your desktop with you, true cloud computing style. Much like it is within any buisness hot desking etc. This will mean google will own everything.. a scary thought but with Googles track record I'm happy for this to happen!

What this will mean for E-Learning... with the lack of need for a resource hungry computer we can have very cheep and small netbooks running Chrome OS perfectly fine. Which will hopefully mean E-learning will be accessible to far many more people (not that there are an abundance of people without computers in the UK). From an Learning Technologists Point of view, I'm going to have to learn how to code for Chromes apps, and will have to create more online resources, (which is what I mostly do now).

Errm that's all I have for now, feel like a pleb for saying all this but just don't want it to emerge later and for me to have been right but with no evidence that I thought all this. I might be totaly off here but still that's my say.

And lastly... It's already made! The Chome browser was just released no hype no nothing because, google sent a publicity person the wrong link, I rekon they've already made Chome OS...

Some START progress

2009-07-03T01:26:00.000-07:00

Well it seems I've finished the majority of the back end work for this project, successfully integrating Twitter, Picassa and Blogger into one page using, PHP & XML... Which I'm quite happy with seeing as prior to this project I've not coded anything in php! As part of me trying to maintain the whole creative commons thing and trying to share and share alike thingy here's the code I've used:

Blogness.php - Grabs the xml from the rss feed and displays all posts:
Adapted from: http://www.hiash.com/blogger.php

<?php
define('MAGPIE_DIR', '../../magpierss/');
require_once(MAGPIE_DIR.'rss_fetch.inc');

//RSS feed has to be of ATOM format
$rss = fetch_rss( 'http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8911594570691911602/posts/default' );

//display latest blog content:
foreach ($rss->items as $item) {
$title = $item['title'];
$content = $item['atom_content'];
echo "<h1>$title</h1><p>$content</p>";
}
?>

Twitterness.php - grabs the rss from your public twitter feed and displays the last 5 posts...
Adapted from http://workbench.cadenhead.org/twitter-rss-to-html/

<?php

define('MAGPIE_DIR', '../../magpierss/');
require_once(MAGPIE_DIR.'rss_fetch.inc');

$tweets_to_display = 5;
// the page where the tweet(s) will be displayed
$page = "";
// the user's Twitter username
$username = "StartPlymouth";

$rss = fetch_rss( 'http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/49595711.rss' );

// start buffering output
ob_start();

$count = 1;
$now = time();

foreach ($rss->items as $item) {
// limit the number of tweets displayed
if ($tweets_to_display > 0) {
if ($count > $tweets_to_display) {
continue;
}
}
$tweet = $item['description'];
// ignore tweets linking back to page (if it is defined)
if ($page != "") {
if (!strpos($tweet, $page) === false) {
continue;
}
}
// figure out how recently the tweet was posted
$when = ($now - strtotime($item['pubdate']));
$posted = "";
if ($when < 60) {
$posted = $when . " seconds ago";
}
if (($posted == "") & ($when < 3600)) {
$posted = "about " . (floor($when / 60)) . " minutes ago";
}
if (($posted == "") & ($when < 7200)) {
$posted = "about 1 hour ago";
}
if (($posted == "") & ($when < 86400)) {
$posted = "about " . (floor($when / 3600)) . " hours ago";
}
if (($posted == "") & ($when < 172800)) {
$posted = "about 1 day ago";
}
if ($posted == "") {
$posted = (floor($when / 86400)) . " days ago";
}
// filter the user's username out of tweets
$tweet = str_replace($username . ": ", "", $tweet);
// turn URLs into hyperlinks
$tweet = preg_replace("/(http:\/\/)(.*?)\/([\w\.\/\&\=\?\-\,\:\;\#\_\~\%\+]*)/", "<a href=\"\\0\">Link</a>", $tweet);
// link to users in replies
$tweet = preg_replace("(@([a-zA-Z0-9\_]+))", "<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/\\1\">\\0</a>", $tweet);
echo '<p class="Tweets"> <strong>'.$username.':</strong> '.$tweet.'</p><p class="TweetInfo">'.$posted.'</p>';
$count++;

}

// display output
ob_end_flush();
?>

Picassaness.php - This one is the most complex but doesn't require Magpierss which is cool, does the same grabs public xml, I've got it to store all the images in an array and select a random 5 and display them. (to change on each refresh):
(I adapted from - http://code.lawpower.net/2008/01/21/picasa-gallery-googles-cruel-rss-feed/)

<?php
$DisplayNumberofPhotos = 5;

function AddXMLtoItems($xmlurl){
//get the xml from the feed provided in $xmlurl
$session = curl_init($xmlurl);
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$response = curl_exec($session);
curl_close($session);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($response);
$items = $xml->channel;

//now we have each item from the XML file into $items we now need to split them up so their more useful to us
foreach($items->item as $item){
$title = $item->title;
$content = $item->description;

//pull the images from the *descripotion* section
$quotes = array('"', "'", "\n");
$imgContents = str_replace($quotes, '', $content); #Strip " and ' as well as \n from input string
$imgContents = stristr($imgContents, 'src='); #Drop everything before the 'src'
$endTagPosition = stripos($imgContents, 'alt'); #Position of the end tag '>'
$img = substr($imgContents, 4, $endTagPosition - 4); #Get everything from src to end tag --> 'src="path" something>'

//Change the dimentions of the images, Picasa sets images sizes at specific sizes within the url
$ImageURL = str_replace('/s288', '/s220', $img);
$ImageURLs[] = $ImageURL;
}
return $ImageURLs;
}

//Grab the images from the array and merge them all into one big array...
$ImageURLs = AddXMLtoItems("http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/StartPlymouth/albumid/5354140273775432289?alt=rss&kind=photo&authkey=Gv1sRgCOGggY2Y8baMLw&hl=en_US");
//$ImageURLs2 = AddXMLtoItems("");
//$ImageURLs3 = AddXMLtoItems("");
//$ImageURLs4 = AddXMLtoItems("");
//$ImageURLs = array_merge((array)$ImageURLs1, (array)$ImageURLs2, (array)$ImageURLs3, (array)$ImageURLs4);

//Now we need to grab random images from this array to be displayed on the home page
for ( $counter = 0; $counter <= ($DisplayNumberofPhotos - 1); $counter += 1) {
//get ImageToDisplay to be a exact image number
$ImageToDisplay = sizeof($ImageURLs);
$ImageToDisplay = rand(0, $ImageToDisplay);
$ImageToDisplay = round($ImageToDisplay);
$ArrayofImagesBeenDisplayed[] = $ImageToDisplay;
}
//add image displayed to an array to ensure we don't get duplications
$ArrayofImagesBeenDisplayed = array_unique($ArrayofImagesBeenDisplayed);

//Display these random images and link them to a larger image
for ($counter2 = 0; $counter2 < sizeof($ArrayofImagesBeenDisplayed); $counter2 += 1) {
$ImageDisplayURL = $ImageURLs[$ArrayofImagesBeenDisplayed[$counter2]];
$ImageLinkURL = str_replace('/s220', '/s1024', $ImageURLs[$ArrayofImagesBeenDisplayed[$counter2]]);
echo "<a href='" . $ImageLinkURL . "'><img src='" . $ImageDisplayURL . "' /></a>";
}
?>

Obviously I'm no coder and I'm sure this will make some of you spit your coffee out at your computer screen, but I'm sure some of you will find it useful! Any feedback would be good. I've made these seporate files to be called into the main page by using Include('file.php'); so should hopefully work with you, for the picassa one you have to declare how many images you want displayed: $DisplayNumberofPhotos = 5; include('Picassaness.php') In the picassa one I would quite like it to find all rss feeds related to that piccassa user rather than having to list each individual album manually so if anyone knows how to do that, that would be great. Otherwise shall try and work it out myself and post it here.

START - Progress and Windows 7!

2009-06-26T06:39:00.001-07:00

As you can hopefully see I've progressed with the sites design, some what and am rather happy with how it looks:

My next major task is to arrogate all the random feeds I've suggested Start to sign up to, i.e. Twitter, Blogspot and Picasssa. I initially aimed to use Twitter and Googles API to do this but was just running into constant problems. Which was a shame but being a slight novise to PHP I couldn't afford to waste to much time.

What I did manage to do was use MagpieRSS which with some coding grabs Twitters and Blogspots RSS feeds and displaying them in your PHP. Magic! Some of the usefull links I've been using:

http://workbench.cadenhead.org/twitter-rss-to-html/
http://www.hiash.com/blogger.php
http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/

Due to the none pleasant working conditions of Center Court when its warm weather, lack of air flow and bad sewage smells, and thanks to the lame guttering I've chosen to work from home for a couple days. Which has been far more productive than in the office this is down to a few key points:

Windows 7 - Microsoft really have got it going on here kicking dust in OSX's eyes due to a number of reasons, mostly their Task bar (admittedly they've just copied Linux and OSx here but if it works why complain!), I also like their snap windows to edges system which I've been using heavily on this project.
1000watt sound system, keeps me going
27inch screen also helps!

Train the Trainer - Photography Basics - Beyond the Snapshot

2009-06-12T01:02:00.000-07:00

Aim of this Session:

To help you improve upon your current photography skills, and to alert you of standard techniques and to apply them in practice.

By the end of this session you should:

Be aware of some of the key photography rules
Be able to apply these rules to your own photos
Hopefully take nicer photographs.

What makes these following images stand out:

The thing which makes images stand out from others is that they have a good composition, a photo's composition can be broken down to rules:

Focus
Rule of Thirds
Lines
Headroom

Focus
Might seem obvious, but keeping prominent parts of the image in focus:

Rule of Thirds:
The golden rule of thirds, keep areas of interest at every third of the image.

Lines:
Another technique to gain interest in key areas of a photo. Use lines to guide the viewers eyes to key areas of the image. (below the path attracts the viewers eyes to the rider)

Headroom:
Leaving too little or too much space around an object. (below the object is to small compared to its surroundings, doesn't attract your eye's attention)

Further reading:

Top 10 Photography Composition rules:
http://www.amateursnapper.com/photography/10-top-photography-composition-rules
Rules of photo composition:
http://www.colorpilot.com/comp_rules.html

Please feel free to leave comments if you require any further information in certain areas.

START - Website

2009-05-27T03:38:00.000-07:00

I've been given this delightful project via Avril Butler, START stands for Students and Refugees Together, their a charity started by Avril which works with many Social Work students (hence my involvement) .

After my first meeting with them it's become apparent that this is going to be a fun project. Particularly that I'm not to restrained with technologies i.e. not tied down to SharePoint (not that there's anything wrong with SharePoint). But it does mean I get to do some coding etc. The Aim's of this project are to freshen up their current website:

And make it more Web2.0 well intially they indicated they wanted it to look nice and have areas to update. I felt that having some structured formal areas i.e. about us, history etc which arn't going to change to keep them straight html i.e. I'll make them and they'll stay that way but have image galleries, and blogs which are driven by themselves.

Which this is where the exciting bits come in, the photo galleries, shall be driven by flikr, and the blogs by blogger and obviously have a twitter feed etc. It should be a true mash up!

Annoyingly they currently have some lame hosting with Mr Site, which is shocking and very restricting so I'm hopeing we can change this or use their own servers. So whilst I wait for this to be finalised I've been researching how to import all these 2.0 technologies into one page:

Twitter was quite easy.
Blogger is a little bit more complicated and requires me to use something called MagpieRss, which essentially embeds the RSS feeds from your blog into a html page.
Picassa (googles version of Flickr), requires you to install Googles API to access full functionality, however it does enable it to be hugely flexible and will hopefully result in seamless transitions between site and Picassa.

The majority of the software and technologies I'm going to be using on this project will be based around OpenSource or Free Software, and I'm hoping to maintain Creative Commons throughout this project which fits with my own views and hopefully suits the fact that I'm working with a Charity.

Clinical Skills Online Resource - Update

2009-05-12T04:07:00.000-07:00

Right well I've finished transfering the old resource onto SharePoint, now comes the interesting part of seeing what a Web2.0(ish) interface of SharePoint can do to the current quite static resource.

Some initial ideas are (not just restricted to Web2.0):

Discussion boards for users to talk about certain procedures hints and tips.
Integrate the Diary/Calendars for each clinical skills area into the SharePoint pages, so people can quickly look on-line to see if the rooms are being used.
Collaboration between all staff involved in the Clinical skills laps to be able to update alter add to the resource as it goes along.
Flash training packages, my predecessor created an interesting package training people how to empty a Catheter Bag this was part video part flash based and feel it worked very well. Would be good to add similar training packages to this resource.

That's all I can think of for now.

Clinical Skills Online Resource

2009-05-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

Right well basically sprucing the old site up a little bit (0ld):

Going to go with my standard Tulip design:

Hopefully looking to incorporate the custom Calendars etc into this site overall so people can view what's going on in the Clinical skills and when etc. Should hopefully work quite well. Discussion boards and information booklets, overall to give the old version slightly more presence. This is to hopefully co-inside with the roll out of Share Point on the staff/student community sites, but in the mean time this site shall lay on a Tulip site and shall simply pack and go when the new system is rolled out. Shall as always give any updates on this project.

The live updated project can be viewed here: http://study.plymouth.ac.uk/module/heaa101e%20ayau%2008/online%20resource/default.aspx (uop login required)

Cool E-Learning possibility....

2009-05-06T04:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.modernista.com/7/

Imagine this menu used to guide students through a research package and able to attach information to this side bar, as they go along etc. A similar package could link into a Wiki and allow groups of students to research together see where other people have gone make notes and add new links etc... although might be treading on Delicious's turf slightly?

Mentorship 2009 - Part 2

2009-05-06T04:02:00.000-07:00

After a recent meeting it's become apparent that there will be a need for some form of Flash interactivity in the site to allow the video's and similar to integrate nicely with the pages, as the resource is designed around a journey I felt the navigation would have to be key to the project.

Luckily the Webbies have just been finalised so with a category dedicated to 'BEST NAVIGATION/STRUCTURE' I felt it fitting to indulge in some research. Two sites who's navigation really stood out for me were:

NIke ACG - http://www.nike.com/nikeacg/#dispatch

KeithySon - http://www.keithtyson.com/#/intro/

I really like the Nike's spider diagram style navigation.

I've tried to reflect this in my sites design, this is early days yet, but I'm quite happy with the results... obviously the menu is a little bit more interactive than just a load of blobs with lines on them!:

We shall see how it ends up, but I'm quite happy with it, hopefully the other people I'm involved with on this project will also be happy!

Mentorship 2009

2009-04-30T05:21:00.000-07:00

Right well it's been inevitable, like the fact that sooner or later your once full can of coke is eventually going to finish. Mentorship Update 2009, the previous years update was the first project I undertook in my current job. So am slightly ever so slightly nostalgic (spelling) about this task.

The plan this year was to start the task a lot earlier, (initial talks started early April) compared to last years start of June/July for a deadline in Mid September. Happily this year the project is being transferred into the familiar grounds of html and is aimed to be accessed online. Which is nice so if there is something wrong with it it can be changed in a matter of minutes and at no extra cost compared to weeks and £500 for the CD version... you live and learn!

The final platform is yet to be decided, but I'm hoping and pushing for it to be placed onto a Tulip site and with the hopefully (fingers crossed and all that jazz) that it'll be able to be viewed by non UOP staff via the new External view of Tulip due to be initiated in September 2009. I really hope this works out well as this should hopefully be one of the projects I go check this out I made it. Rather than yeah sorry about that one! Another possibility is to have it to lay on the new ARC system which is essentially a tool designed specifically for Placements, and seeing as this is an update for the Placement Development Teams it could fit on there, but it is also a learning resource so it could go onto SharePoint ooh the possibilities.

Well either way I shall keep this updated as and when anything interesting happens. The direct link can be found here: http://study.plymouth.ac.uk/Module/HEAB370%20AYAU%2007/MentoshipResource/default.aspx (UOP login required).

Initial designs are following my standard background swirls design, however as this is such a big project I'm going to try to tweak this design a bit here are some initial tweaking:

Plymouth E-Learning conference...

2009-04-27T03:54:00.000-07:00

Last week was Plymouth E-Learning conference which I quite enjoyed well done Steve and everyone else evolved in putting on the event..

First thing's first I went there to present my E-Portfolio project which sadly I felt I missed the point of presenting at such a conference, I'd prepared a presentation which would have been fitting had it been in a room full of people within Plymouth University wanting to know more about how flexible Share Point can be (with a little bit of hacking). And to know some of my struggles with both Share Point and Pebble Pad to be able to learn from these issues in their own work... However this conference was more about how this tool was effective not how we made it. So I had to slightly adapt my presentation on the fly and feel as a result I missed both points completely. Obviously managed to get some points across but had I done some ground work before it could have gone down a little bit better. Still least I can put it on my CV that I've presented at such an event! If you would like to know more about this E-Portfolio project please see a prior post.

Publish Post

Next thing with the conference was to check out what other people have been up to and developed.

Turning Point
Both Bath University and our own Medical/Dentistry school own a load of these Audience Response hardware. Basically its Who Wants to be a Millionaire... or a unique ability to allow your lecture hall/class to flock together.

Our Medical School has used them to see how the ability of the class as a whole has progressed or if they know certain areas of the subject already they can move on or learn more about that area if the classes knowledge is low. I thought it was an amazing tool as it means you get a response of the whole class a joint body not just individual marks and was interested if James Surowiecki theory that the joint body will get the complex answers correct or not. This was the case on simple questions but on more complex questions it seemed they as a whole wouldn't get it right. However this doesn't disprove James's theory it actually proves it... slightly since the crowd has to be of a mixed ability and knowledge, a crowed in a specific lecture asking questions about that said specific lecture means the crowed is of equal knowledge and interests therefor not fulfilling James's theory. However it is still interesting!

This technology seems really exciting as lectures can teach their mob exactly what they want to know not what the lecturer has planned but what the mob needs to know to bump up their areas of less knowledge simply by asking them a couple of questions. BONUS!

Rumour has it that EDALT might be purchasing a simular setup so might be able to implement simular things with my Faculty... SCORE!

CSS in any SharePoint sites? (Tulip & Mysites)

2009-04-08T05:01:00.001-07:00

One of the things which frustrates me about SharePoint is that you have these potentially very powerful sites which are just used as notice boards to contain Word Documents or PowerPoint’s. However if an Academic is wanting to produce something a little bit more like a standard website (web 1.0) they have to create HTML pages which lay in a document library, a student clicks on the documents and is escorted away from the SharePoint interface, (same can be said for Videos and Flash).

Since taking up my role and working with SharePoint, it’s been my constant mission to integrate all these cool learning resources within the pages of the Tulip sites (as in to maintain the left hand menu). This task has been helped with certain web parts which can handle WMV files or Flash files. However these are usually just stand alone web parts and lack any context for the information, and you can very easily end up with a messy page full of random web parts:

However one very handy web part is the MOSS editor, which is probably my favourite web part… if I had to rank it it would get an 8.4 (on a scale of 1-10, 10 being high)...

The MOSS editor is simply a html editor which allows you to use hyperlinks and objects etc without stripping them out, so you can embed a video into your Tulip or MySite and have some explanation text to give it context. This seemed all fine and dandy till it occurred to me… these sites are lacking any styles (which is obviously the most important thing with anything in E-Learning it has to look nice). A quick play with the editor it appeared there was no way to attach your own style sheets and any CSS added inline with the html would be stripped (obviously as it wouldn’t be W3C compliant but if the hack worked I wouldn’t be complaining). I initially gave up and figured I’d just have to kick it old school and use Tables, which as we all know are both a pain and are highly un-accessible.

I then discovered this nifty programme called SharePoint designer, (don’t be put off by the huge made by Microsoft stickers on it). Within SharePoint designer you can open any programme, module or Mysite as shown in the following images (click images to enlarge):

Once your site is open you should be greeted with something similar to what's attached below (I’ve switched to design mode), for this example all we really need to be concerned about is the “Attach Style Sheet” button as highlighted. You might want to look through this page and look at the code as I’m sure many other nifty hacks can be done.

Attach your desired Style Sheet which you’ve pre uploaded. Once you’ve done this you can then go back to your Moss editor web part and include class and id tags which call the CSS… bingo.

My general method of doing this is to create a folder or a document library called HTML making sure not to include it in the left hand menu and within it have all images and CSS used for the design... well hope this is of some use, feel free to comment/email if you need anything a bit clearer.

Webcast fluster!

2009-04-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

Quite randomly last week had to edit together and upload a number of Webcasts to Tulip. I did this by my classic method of CSS styles HTML web parts, but it could equally have been done by using the Windows Media Video web part (however would have lacked my custom background shapes).

Pages can be viewed (UOP login required)

Using Web casts as part of your general teaching can enhance your teaching on many levels. I shall attempt to offer some reasoning behind this but fear Ray Jones might be reading and don't want to embarrass myself here! Right well here we go:

One of the main benifits of any form of Electronic learning is that users are able to access it where ever and whenever in the world. Students can log into your Teaching and Learning sites (Tulip or Emily) and access the resources you've put on-line and learn from these resources in a comfortable and unintimidating environment, at any time during the day. However normally they are then forced to come onto campus (sometimes travelling a far distance) to see an hours worth of lecturing only to return home again and read up on what was said in the lecutre.

What if students could witness these Lectures wherever they are in the world. This is the barrier Web casts break down. Students can take part in these lectures (watch or contribute) in their own spaces. Although this doesn't eradicate the time based problem it does mean for an hour lecture only an hour of the student (and lecturers) time is taken up since it only takes a couple of seconds to log in as opposed the time it takes to get ready to leave the house, then to travel to the lecture and back again.

Another benifit of using the Webcasts are the ability to have faceless discussions, students can log in as their own names or an Avatar (made up name or their online name) and take part in the discussions, these discussions work far better than in real life since, when all poeple are talking the discussion gets shown on the screen in a linear format, where's when people are talking in the real world all at once its just a mess of sound!

The last benefit of using Web casts is that they can be recorded, and the whole thing can be used as a resource on your Teaching and Learning site, so it then unlocks all the time benefits of students being able to watch a full length lecture where ever and whenever... just like the bbc Iplayer!

Jing - Marvellous

2009-03-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

A while ago I asked my fellow LT's on any suitable screen recording software (both Video and Stills), Dominic Martignetti from Faculty of Education suggested Jing.

And what a suggestion, it works amazingly is very intuative to use and speeds up tasks such as creating tutorials and with a direct upload feature it means no large emails being sent can't think of anything else to say about it apart from download it, try it and smile...

I've set mine up so if I press "CTR + J" it brings up a crop box as sown below:

Once you have selected your area of interest (btw your not limited to just these boxes, Jing will also recognise areas of interest such as the content area of your web browser etc). You then have the option to capture image or video:

Amazingly once your finished capturing you then get the option to save to your local machine or to upload to their servers. If you go pro you can upload right to youtube, or save as mp4's. None pro users are free, and you can still capture photos and vidoes just you can't save as mp4 which would be nice but its no biggy.

Serious thumbs up for this...

M-Learning just some playing

2009-03-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

I have future possible projects with the possibilities of having a M-Learning add-on/aspect to them, and have been looking at the different possibilities of developing for them. The biggest hurdle as with all E-Learning projects I find is keeping the project generic and open to as many people as possible.

With M-Learning the problem is catering for the mass amounts of different types of Mobile devices people possess. Which leaves 3 possible platforms to develop a application/learning resource in:

Flash
Java
HTML

Flash: With mobile flash growing in popularity and Adobe now offering it free for mobile phone operators to offer it with their phones this is defiantly an platform to watch flash has obvious advantages to offer such as easy application development and even simple patching over from current Flash projects. Flash is my preferred option to use in any development, however it lacks popularity within phones which is on the change but could still be too early to use.

Java: Has been available on phones since before phones existed... probably, is a harder platform to develop in, is very versatile, supports 3d, bluetooth the possibilities of Java seem endless. However its biggest flaw is Microsoft hates Java, with it being a major rival to its own platform, Microsoft as a result doesn't directly support its use on Windows Mobile devises (PDAs/Mobiles). However there are a number of 3rd party applications which apparently allow you to run Java on a windows mobile device... I've not had any success doing this and as a result I'm not happy supporting this as a method for students.

HTML: Simply creating a load of offline websites could be a very simple yet effective method as it will be free! Which is the important thing, and will be highly adaptable to work on all manor of devices of all shapes and sizes. However it is a tad boring!

To summarise... I think if these upcoming projects are to have an M-Learning spin and its to a mass of students with unknown devices then I think a simple HTML interface is needed which can be down/upsized to the devices.

However if the types of devices the students are using is known then this could open up the possibilities of creating a more interesting resource, say for example the masses of Cepple PDA's where made available to the students then flash could be installed on these devices and as a result some interesting resources could be developed... Flash + Touch Screen = SCORE!

May I introduce to you – Pebble Pad TAADAAA!

2009-02-19T05:38:00.001-08:00

Pebble Pad is an E-Portfolio software package but with added extras. It draws together a range of tools into one package, and allows you to use them privately, share them with other users and even publish them onto the extranet for the whole world to see!

Essentially Pebble Pad is a place for students to create a profile (like Facebook) aimed at showing their own learning and skills. This information can be built up by a number of different methods, such as them creating their own CV’s or by filling out pre-made forms to show their learning such as SWOT analysis forms etc. These forms can be stored privately within their Assets stores or shared between students or academics and be allowed to collaborate on the file, or if they are applying for jobs can be published live to the internet allowing anyone to view them.

Academics can come into play on a number of levels, by simply informing students of this resource and showing them how to use it (the resource in itself is very intuitive so students should pick it up rather quickly), and leaving the rest to the students on how they’d like to use it. Academics can also create custom forms for students to fill out so these forms could be tailored to their course/placement etc. Or a full blown Portfolio structure could be created which would be a number of areas which they are required to fill out and show knowledge of their learning which could draw in forms etc. An Example Portfolio shown below:

The Software is currently in its Pilot stage however it is fully usable and anyone with a UOP username and password is able to use it:

http://eportfolio.plymouth.ac.uk

You can also download a preview Portfolio which I created for Midwifery students on the HSW gateway:

http://eportfolio.plymouth.ac.uk/pebblepad/gateway/gateway.aspx?gatewayoid=1161

So try the above link if you would like a closer look to see what all the hype is about. Further information about Pebble Pad can be seen on their website and their Wiki.

Midwifery E-Portfolio

2009-02-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

The idea behind this project is to create an Electronic version of Midwifery students paper portfolio. To bring this practice into the 21st century and to hopefully make the process of students showing their progress a simpler task.

Just to go over some of the ground work, which people had already been done before I took up this project:

Emily – The Emily team had put a lot of ground work into this project and had done a good job of straight converting the project from paper into digital. Leaving me a good outline to copy.

SharePoint (and I mean SharePoint as we’re talking about the software not a specific area of SharePoint) – One of my main initial challenges with this project was figuring out where to start with SharePoint luckily prior to me catching this project, Margret had met with Mandy Goss (Web Services Manager), who had quickly knocked up a series of Document libraries holding each section of the E-Portfolio.

Wiki Based:

So with the knowledge of what the previous two teams had done I set out and tried my own version, this consisted of a series of preformatted Wikis, I know the Wiki tool is designed as a tool for Mass and Rapid Collaboration, however due to its friendly user interface and HTML editor etc, I felt it could have been an easy interface for students to use and add to their E-Portfolios. This method did actually succeed quite well in being an easy interface to contribute to areas of the portfolio. However it was let down majorly in a couple of areas:

Each form was pre formatted if students were to accidently delete this formatting the Portfolio would have been useless… to a certain extent.
One of the main specifications of the E-Portfolio is for students to be able to hyperlink between areas of their E-Portfolio to demonstrate learning, however at the hyperlink tool wasn’t working as desired, and the quick link feature wiki’s have built in wasn’t suitable.
The way these E-Portfolio were to be given to students was to save a to a site template and push this template to student’s MySites, however Wiki content wouldn’t save in a site template, so had all of the above been ok, it wouldn’t have been possible to give to all the students after all.

SharePoint - Document Based:

The way I discovered the issue of the Wiki content not being included with the site template was by going through this project with Sarah Barnes (Senior IT Training Officer). She highlighted this issue and suggested using Word documents instead of Wiki for areas which students are to edit. Which made a lot of sense as Word is probably the most used programme in the world, so it was more or less guaranteed that the majority of users would be familiar with the Word Environment and would also most probably own something which would open a word file on their home machines and if not Open Office could be used. Another benefit of using a Word document meant that hyperlinks could be easily created between documents (simple right click highlighted word select hyperlink and enter address or even browse to the file you request). After a little bit of convincing with Margret this proved to be suitable enough to use for the E-Portfolio. So the light was set Green proceed with this method.

Two of the areas of using the Document Based approach which I really liked were:

One of the huge benefits of the uni using a Microsoft Based VLE is that it integrates with other Microsoft Products very well, in the case of this project if a student was to use a university computer and select one of the word documents on their E-Portfolio they’d be able to open the document via their E-Portfolio edit and save it right back to their E-Portfolio, as though they were opening a file on their local machine. This was also an advantage in the creation of Hyperlinks as the hyperlink editor in Word would allow students to browse through the files on their E-Portfolio instead of copy and pasting a hyperlink.

You may have notice this project uses html text within standard SharePoint pages, this was initially done by using the web part tool (i.e. frames) which as we all know are far from accessible and generally frowned upon in web development circles, so after some tinkering with SharePoint designer I realised it was possible to embed a CSS sheet into a SharePoint page, which meant that I had freedom to use CSS with the Moss HTML editor. Although it sounds very sad to say so this excited me somewhat as it meant I was able to produce some simple styled pages which all rest within the standard SharePoint page, i.e. the left hand menu stays there like on every Tulip or MySite (so consistency was kept) yet the main content could be edited and styled how I desired and remained accessible.

So it would seem mission complete, I’d finished the project and met the brief… that was until I had a meeting with David Croot & Shane Sutherland….

Pebble Pad: I was aware of developments within the university of it purchasing some sort of E-Portfolio software however to me it seemed quite a long distance away, however this meeting showed that in fact the system was in place and fully functional! This meeting occurred 2 weeks before this projects Deadline...

1.5weeks later I had transferred everything from the SharePoint copy of the Midwifery E-Portfolio into PebblePad. The system actually worked surprisingly well and was very simple to use, with what started out as a friendly interface to use (however this interface became annoyingly overly friendly after much use). The Portfolio was set up by using a number of custom designed forms, the gateway and some web folios. What I really liked about using PebblePad was the fact I was doing all this within my FireFox browser, which made a change from being forced to use Microsoft to achieve full potential (obviously it would have worked fine in Internet Explorer). What this meant from an end users point of view was that, students would be able to use this version on any platform, Linux, Osx or Windows. With any browser, Safari, Firefox, Opera or even Internet Explorer.

The idea was to work on this project till the Thursday before the deadline (the following Monday), if I could get it to work perfectly then we’d go ahead and use it, otherwise we’d carry on and use the SharePoint version. Well the Thursday came and I met with Margret, we went through both methods, and both had their ups and downs, their plus points have already been mentioned where they were let down were as follows:

SharePoint:

Dependency upon using all Microsoft products to achieve full functionality (not ideal for Mac or Linux users), still functional using alternatives but an area of weakness.

Although SharePoint is a stable platform, there were some occasional bugs in the system, some of which might not have even been related to SharePoint but things like Word documents default language being set to US instead of UK or, documents not opening first time etc.

Pebble Pad:

I couldn’t work out a method for students to submit forms, and for it to be added to their E-Portfolios, so for things such as filling out a SWOT form they would have to go through a long winded way of adding it to their Eportfolio’s and it didn’t have much guidance.
One of the main things needed with this Eportfolio was the ability for students to hyperlink between sections to show evidence of their learning, however this tool during the demo kept on messing up.

From all these bad points the most prominent one was the inability to create easy links to evidence learning. So sadly for this reason Pebble Pad wasn’t used.

Implementation:

Sarah Barnes and Mark Horrocks continued their help with me on this project by helping me push it out to all students MySites, as briefly explained earlier; the desired method was to create a site template with the demo version. And push this Template out to all students ‘MySites’. This worked a treat and the majority of students happily had their own Midwifery E-Portfolios.

User issues:

I'd like to say there hasn't been any issues at all for this project since its implementation... however that would be a lie.

The E-Portfolio was designed around a student being on-site using Office 2007 and IE7 of which the system has mostly worked fine. However as it's online the majority of students prefer to access their E-Portfolio's at home, this has brought some issues, the most prominent being Vista users are unable to view and access their documents due to known security issues, which is annoying.

It seems the majority of issues are due to a combination of Students Computer Knowledge and Technology issues. Luckily the majority of which have been fixed by extensive use of the FAQ & Help Systems.

The Future:

Software designed for the Portfolio (Tulip) or Portfolio designed for the software (Pebble Pad).

Another thing to note is that obviously Hyper links didn't exist in the paper version of this Portfolio yet they are now a prominent feature in it, which brings to question will a revised version on SharePoint or Pebble Pad enable new features to simplify students learning?

Future proof

electronic signatures
mixture of prescriptive & flexible data
security

Research Methods - Tulip subsite

2008-12-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

I've been working with Allegra Cattani and a research student called Halina Kalaga in producing a Research Methods site. The aim is to have a central resource for students to get advice upon research and to be able to discuss and give feedback about the resource to Halina or Allegra.

Snapshot:

The resource can be found:
http://mysite.plymouth.ac.uk/personal/acattani/RMY2/
http://mysite.plymouth.ac.uk/personal/acattani/RMY3/

Dictaphones

2008-12-03T07:57:00.000-08:00

I've eventually received a number of Digital Dictaphones, meaning I now posses 5. To keep track of where all these devices are, I decided to create a subsite to my 'my site'.

http://mysite.plymouth.ac.uk/personal/shodge/Dictaphones

The idea is that people can view the availability of their devices and then email the administrator of the devices for their campus to request use of it.

Virtual Learning

2008-11-04T01:49:00.001-08:00

Simulated learning is something very key to Health and Social work since you can't put a fresher into a real life mental health situation or in the delivery ward of a hospital and just hope they find their feet. However what we can do is create a simulated environment for them to learn in. This can be done with the aid of dummies or role play etc. Or more specifically for me at least Virtually.

Two links which I've come across on the BBC's website have gotten me rather excited:

Virtual Paramedic training with the aid of second life:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7686595.stm

And a Virtual Pregnancy within a flash based - document style platform:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7206222.stm

The both of these are hopefully something I'll be able to do however its the Virtual Pregnancy which has got me rather excited since this is something which can be integrated with both Flash and tulip (SharePoint) two major tools available for me to use.

To finish this post I feel I should share this amazing animation I made last night:

Mentorship update - Online

2008-10-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

After a week of tying up loose ends I've finally got around to putting the Mentorship update online. Not much else to say about it really can only be viewed if you have a UOP Login. I tried to embed it into this page however Blogspot doesn't seem to like this so this direct link seems to work a tad better.

As its my first major project any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Graduation & Diamonds

2008-09-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

Graduation:
Last week I graduated, it was on the hoe... it was sunny bonus... I made my parents proud... the end. (actually I really enjoyed it thanks for asking)

HTC Touch Diamond:

For over a month now I've had the pleasure of owning one of these, having previously attempted to get on with a Windows Mobile phone I was slightly reluctant to start using another one. However after the odd Youtube video here and there, some online reviews and the sales people in Phones 4 U I decided to once again attempt to get on with this type of phone. So I bet your reading this and thinking great thanks for this great insight into your personal life! Well the reason I write this is because of eventually finishing the Mentorship Project (see previous post) I've now had a chance to have a play with this device. With the Aid of XDA developers I've managed to unlock the potential of this phone and more importantly of how to use this device from an E-Learning perspective.

Phone review:
The actual phone is very thin and because of this it fits in your pocket well without you actually noticing its there at all! The phone supports a huge screen (for mobile phone standards) which displays at a whopping 640x480 resolution (higher than the Iphone) that's just two stops down from the resolution on the Ibook I'm writing this post on the phone has built in G-Sensors like what you would find in a Wii remote, it a has GPS and a light sensor (to control screen brightness) other than these specs everything else on the phone is like all other smartphones, 3G, Wifi, bluetooth, touchscreen etc. I'm really getting on well with this phone it works as well as I'd imagine a microsoft based product to work and looks good while its doing this. Two area's it falls down slightly is that to cram all its features into such a small package the phone can only really last 24hours without being plugged into the wall which is fine during the week with leaving it plugged into the USB on my comupter whilst sat at my desk however on the weekends i'm quite often left with a dead phone. However this can be rectified by purchasing a larger (in size and capacity) battery. The second small issue I have with this phone is lack of keyboard however I'm slowley getting used to texting and emailing using its onscreen keyboard.

Anyway this handy YouTube video should be a little bit more usefull at showing you the phone and its features....

Hacking & ELearning
This phone out the box could be used as a quality E-Learning resource (much like all smart phoens), with its high res screen and ability to view full html websites, open all office documents, PDF's and flash lite applications. However one of the things which has made me jump out my seat and go I should write a post about this on my Blog is this:

By using the G-Sensors within the phone you can figure out what the angle of the phone is and from this create a fake 3D object which by tilting the phone you can navigate around it. Imagine a programme which uses this feature but to navigate around a human organ or likewise.

I'm just waiting for the friendly guys on the XDA forum to patch the tilt/g-sensors into flash lite so i can start developing using the sensors, otherwise I'm going to have to get on learning C# or whatever language you use when programming for windows mobile.

Well this has been quite a long post all to say that my phone has G-Sensors which could be used for elearning, well watch this space I might have an application to share in the not so distant future which uses these sensors.......... YEAH RIGHT. But seriously if you think you might have a project which could use this idea then please get in touch I'd love to at least attempt such a project.

Mentorship CD

2008-09-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

For the past couple of months all my time has been spent working on an interactive CD for updating mentors associated with NHS South West this project was initiated by the Strategic Health Authority which basically mean its a priority job hence why I've been living under a stone the last couple of month working on this project!

Anyway last week it got sent off to the document production center to have 500 cd's pressed so phew its over! For now at least, rumors have it that the new update will be web based so a lot more accessible and easier to produce etc bla bla bla.Anyway here are some screen shots of my first lproject in use:

My thinking behind the design was to keep it simple and stylish.... sure that's the thinking behind all designs... anyway I think I managed to keep it relatively straight forward enough with the two buttons with drop down menu's to navigate through sections and sub sections and the page control. The people I designed it for for some reason wanted the orange/yellow/gold colour as an underlying theme which I didn't like but with it as the background pattern I feel it works quite well. You will notice that all of my projects will have this odd design as the background image it'll be like my signature move or something along those lines Bubba Scrub has his... Bubba Scrub I have my odd background... awesome.

Anyway its been requested that I put this project on the portal so shall be doing that within the next few days once done I shall update this blog telling you about it

New blog

2008-09-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

Yes another blog, much the same as all the other blogs I've ever created, however people might possibly read this one!

My thoughts behind this blog are to show what work I've been doing and to discuss anything I think might be useful to E-Learning, my job or my just blub... (new word).