learning, teaching and research (archive)

ideas, notes, jottings

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Blending research and learning ecologies

March 19th, 2008 · Teaching & learning

This January I gave a presentation on ‘blending research and learning ecologies’ at the Leeds University 5th Learning and Teaching Conference . I only had 30 minutes and as usual tried to do way too much. The few questions I left time for were very good and, again as usual, I thought I performed better in the freestyle of Q&As than I did in the formal presentation. Trying to make sense of stuff in discussion with others seems to be more comfortable and natural somehow. Anyway, gratifyingly, the feedback collected on the session by the conference organisers turned out to be pretty good and I have been asked to write an 800 word version for the University’s Learning and Teaching Journal. Only 800 words! Clearly they don’t know me very well. I’ll do my best however. Just in case anyone is interested I’ll post it here too.

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Modifying the Cutline 2.1 theme

March 10th, 2008 · Wordpress

When installing this theme the About and Archive links in the header produced missing pages messages. To fix this I had to do the following.

Create a page each  for the about and archive sections. I gave theses the titles ‘About’ and ‘Archives’.

Set the post slug to ‘about’ and ‘archive’

In the Options section of the Dashboard change the permalink from default (which creates urls with post numbers) to ‘Date and name based’.

Copy the .htaccess code generated by this choice when the ‘Update permalink structure’ button is clicked directly into an open notepad++ window and save file as .htaccess. (Notepad++ must be used rather than Notepad or a normal text editor as the file must be saved without an End of File (EOF) code).

ftp in binary transfer mode the .htaccess file to the root of the WP folders on the server.

The reason for this palaver is that the default urls of posts and pages refer to the post or page numbers in the database by default, but the links to pages in the header assume urls will be post and page names (or more precisely, their ‘slugs’). The permalink structure can be changed in options but for some reason an .htaccess file is needed with appropriate code in it for browsers to understand these links and find and display the pages. On installing a WP theme there is not usually a .htaccess file so this has to be created and made writable.

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WordPress for Dummies

March 4th, 2008 · Wordpress

Just received WordPress for Dummies from Amazon (thanks Dan and Nicky!). It looks like some people make a good living out of providing WP hosting and/or themes design. There is a multi-user version of WP where everyone can customise their own blog. WP can also be used as a powerful web site content management system and the site doesn’t even have to have a blog if it is not needed. There is a lot of info in the book about customisation of themes, using and maintaining static pages and adding widgets and other components to extend a WP based environment.  Watch for dramatic changes here or possibly its total destruction. Must find out how to back this lot up.

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First new post in Terry's Blog (WordPress)

March 3rd, 2008 · Wordpress

I have imported all the post from Eduspaces from the beginning (August 2005 when I joined what was then elgg.net). I have had to spend a couple of hours editing the posts in code view as extraneous codes hid large blocks of text. I have also put all the posts in the Eduspaces category.

Still to do:

  • Go through all the posts to add additional categories and tags
  • Copy and past all the comments that have been lost in the export/import using rss. I may post multiple comments as just one comment with appropriate attributions (Now done 03/03/08 5.00pm)
  • Make a list of all my Eduspaces friends and track down their blogs to put in the blog roll

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Goodbye dear friends

February 27th, 2008 · Eduspaces

Hopefully all my ‘friends’ here will transfer to the new TIG system. I am (I hope). For those of you not coming along I hope we can recontact via the blogosphere, twitter or whatever. In the meantime, it’s been a great experience. My first post here, or to any blog or social network, was on August 20th 2005. I can still smell the excitement and the pioneering atmosphere around what was then elgg.net. It’ll never be like that again. Heartfelt thanks to Dave and Ben for starting this and providing what has been for me a transformative experience.

Cheers everyone.

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The future of Elgg

February 12th, 2008 · Eduspaces

Interesting posts from Ben Werdmuller and the News blog on Elgg.net: Elgg 1.0 FAQ

Elgg will continue to be developed and maintained in something like its current all singing and dancing guise as Elgg Classic but version 1.0 will be a sort of bare bones social network engine with no user functionality except what the installers decide they need for their specific purposes. Everything is a plug in. If you don’t want profiles for example, don’t bother to install that plugin. Same goes for file storage and even blogs I guess. Perhaps you only want community blogs for instance. With an easier process for creating plugins this flexibility sound really exciting and may be what will perhaps keep Elgg ahead of the crowd. The news about Elgg is excellent, particularly after the Eduspaces scare and the, now obviously unjustifiable, fears we had about the consequences for Elgg.

I have 2 concerns. Elgg 1.0 will be a totally new, redesigned and recoded application. How easy will it be to upgrade to it and import data from legacy versions? My other concern is how easy will it be for individuals like myself with minimal technical skills and knowledge, to install, construct, configure and maintain an Elgg 1.0 installation? This last might sound like an unreasonable request but I think the full power and potential of systems like Elgg will only be realised when the technical obstacles disappear and systems can be installed by almost anyone. It’s ok if you work in an institution with technical support but I’m thinking of the club secretaries, the patient associations, the family networks, the Yorkshire Vernacular Architecture Society, the Armley Allotments Association and so on. But then I guess there is Ning, Google groups, and so on. I have lamented the passing of ElggSpaces before.

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Relief!!

February 6th, 2008 · Eduspaces

Well, after the best part of 6 weeks I can again post to my Eduspaces blog. What a relief! I thought I might lose it forever afer the move to TIG but all is well. I have been posting here since August 2005. Things have moved on enormously since then in the blogging and web 2.0 world but I keep coming back here – my first.

My thanks to Misja for sorting this out for me. I’m really sorry the ‘old team’ won’t be involved with Eduspaces any more (although perhaps as members?).

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Happy Christmas and New Year

December 21st, 2007 · Eduspaces

To everyone here on Eduspaces, have a great break if you are having one and if not, when you do. We live in interesting times and they are getting even more interesting. I’m really looking forward to the new year. <!–DATA[To

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Community 'ownership' a la TIG

December 20th, 2007 · Eduspaces

http://ubershibs.tigblog.org/post/248681

Giving users ownership of the community is something that some organizations do well, and others… don’t do at all.

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/dmal.9780262524827.161 page 16 

There are two things that determine the value of social networking tools: (1) the functionality of the tools themselves, and what they allow people to do, and (2) the people who are using the service.”27 Having the most sophisticated and easy-to-use online community platform does not guarantee success, nor does having access to a large number of members. A site has to be relatively usable and have appealing technology so that people can easily accomplish their goals, just as it has to have a critical mass of the right kind of users. If the tools are frustrating, or there are very few members, a site is not likely to be used. As MySpace demonstrates, successful online communities do not necessarily have to be the best designed, but at least have the right people.

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Communities or Forums?

October 10th, 2007 · Eduspaces

The new version of Eduspaces looks great and the forthcoming developments sound really exciting.

Some Forums and Forum view observations/queries:

http://eduspaces.net/mod/forum/forum.php?weblog=impelgg displays the ‘Implementing Elgg in HE’ community blog in forum view. However the forum view seems to be the default for community blogs and there is no link to switch to blog view, i.e. http://eduspaces.net/impelgg/weblog/  which has to be entered manually. Once in blog view there is the option to go to forums view but not back again, as there was before the upgrade.

Also there is a new Forums tab in the main menu that looks like a more traditional message board area that and is independent of the community blog functionality. (http://eduspaces.net/mod/vanillaforum/vanilla/). There may be the possibility here for some terminological confusion between the new forums area and the forum view of community blogs.

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