Heidi Olson

Here is an interesting website that takes your URL, analyzes the html code and creates a visualization. You can see what makes up your page: links, tables, etc.

http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/

Here is a graphic for the CDE website front page: distance.uaf.edu

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Try this with your favorite website or with one that you are working on to see what it looks like.

A widget (or badge) is a small application that runs on your desktop, on your mobile unit or that gets embedded in a website. It often will display information that is pulled from a source or from many sources that gets regularly updated. Weather widgets are very popular to see what current conditions are like where you live or for where you like to vacation. Stock Market tickers, count-downs, news, games – someone has created a visual widget for just about everything out there. According to Widgetbox.com, the most popular downloaded widget on their site is Super Mario Game.

PBS has created some “Teachers Activity Packs which look like they feature ideas for activities as well as provide links to resources.

Here’s a short video about Adding Widgets to Blackboard.

I would caution you about getting too carried away with adding widgets to your site. They might take up a lot of screen real estate, they might slow down the speed in which the site is loaded, and they might not really be that useful for your students. You might consider including a pertinent widget for a weekly topic and then taking it down. If they student found it interesting they could always go out and get it for themselves and place it on their myUA page, their google home page or other social networking site.

When we began testing Bb v8 we noticed that the equation editor wasn’t working on some platforms. OIT worked with us in testing and came up with this:

Here are the platforms and browsers that we have tested and work with the equation editor:

Windows XP
IE 7 – works
Firefox 3.0.5 – works, but an equation cannot be edited once entered. It can only be deleted.

Windows Vista
IE 7 – works
Firefox 3.0.5 – works, but an equation cannot be edited once entered. It can only be deleted.

Mac 10.5.5
Safari 3.1.2 – works when the Visual Text box editor is set to unavailable. Make sure the window with the equation editor is maximized to see all available buttons. Inserting an equation is done with the “Add” button. Modifying an equation is done with the “Modify” button.

Mac 10.5.6
Safari 3.2.1 – works when the Visual Text box editor is set to unavailable. Make sure the window with the equation editor is maximized to see all available buttons. Inserting an equation is done with the “Add” button. Modifying an equation is done with the “Modify” button.

All of the above is in regard of adding an equation in the description of a content item. Viewing the equation works in all supported browsers: IE 7, Firefox 3.x, and Safari 3.x.

Mac Issues with Equation Editor and Visual Text Box Editor
Mac users have to make a choice to either use the visual text box editor or the equation editor. Currently there are no browsers that support both.

Use the equation editor
1.1 Open Safari
1.2 Log in to Bb
1.3 Go to My Blackboard tab
1.4 Click on Personal Information
1.5 Click Set Visual Text Box Editor Options
1.6 Make the Visual Text Box Editor unavailable.
1.7 Go into the course, add a content item and add an equation to the description

Use formating features of the Visual Text Box Editor
2.1 Switch to Firefox
2.2 Log in to Bb
2.3 Go back to My Blackboard tab
2.4 Click on Personal Information
2.5 Click Set Visual Text Box Editor Options
2.6 Make the Visual Text Box Editor available.
2.7 Go back to the course and format the text using the Visual Text box Editor.

This workaround does allow users to use all features of the Visual Text Box Editor, but they have to switch browsers and make the Visual text box editor available or unavailable depending on the browser they are using.

We’ve been told that some Grade item Categories may have changed when OIT upgraded Blackboard earlier this month. If you use weighted grades by category you might want to review the category descriptions to make sure they are correct.

Look here for a short list of the some new features found in the upgrade to Blackboard in Version 8. Highlights of the Discussion Board and GradeCenter, as well as features of new tools coming soon!

In keeping with the tradition of giving thanks for the upcoming holiday, I’ve been thinking about what makes my work-life easier and how thankful I am for having such a tool to help me manage the tremendous amount of information that is out there. This tool would be my RSS feed aggregator! There are many of these types of tools available Google Reader, Netvibes, Newsgator, Blogbridge, and many more, but I’ve chosen to use Bloglines as the one place I can go and see what’s new in topics that are of interest to me.

My feed reader takes the RSS feeds that I subscribe to and keeps track of when something new is posted to that blog, wiki, discussion forum or website. Instead of having to visit each of these sites, I rely on Bloglines to keep track of that for me. I can go to one place on the web, browse through my list of subscriptions and make a choice on whether or not I want to see what’s new. I almost never have time to review all the new items in one sitting. I can quickly run through my list, select the ones that are most important at that time and read the headlines. There are certain subscriptions that I look at every day, sometimes more than once. But sometimes the number of new items grows until it looks even too large for me to look at; its too overwhelming. Then I simply clear them out and let the aggregator start over at 1. If I missed something I can always go back to the inital website and look for it. For example: I subscribed to several blogs that aggregate posts from other blogs on a similar topic. This syndicated blog might post twenty new items every day. If I miss one day of looking at the new posts then the number quickly adds up. Most often, out of the twenty posts there might be only one post that is actually meaningful to me. When the number grows too big I know I will never look at all of them so its just easier to clear it out. Its almost like all those boxes that I have in storage. There are things that have been there for about two years. Most likely I could just give the box away. I probably wouldn’t miss anything. And what a feeling of freedom that would be! (not too save a $$ savings!)

Also available is something called RSS-narrator, like TalkingNews which takes your text-only feeds and converts them to podcasts so you can listen to the articles on your ipod or other mp3 player. I haven’t tried this out but it seems like a pretty handy thing to have especially if you had a long commute to make each day.

For more information on RSS and Aggregators check out commoncraft.com for an easy to understand explantion on RSS.

List of Aggregators on Wikipedia

Comparision of Aggregators on Wikipedia

What’s your favorite digital tool that you give thanks for?

Ever wonder who is reading your blog? I ran across this widget that you can load into your blog’s sidebar that shows where your readers are coming from and how they got there. Often your blog might be linked from another blog or website. Its always interesting to see how people got to your site.

This widget is called Feedjit. With Feedjit you can see:

• Which city and country your visitors are in
• Which website they arrived from, if any
• Which page they visited on your website
• Which external link they clicked to leave your site, if any

It gives you to option of using a live traffic feed or a live traffic map. If you use blogger or typepad you can quickly add it to your sidebar. If you are using another platform, Feedjit says:

If you use a different platform or if you’re installing Feedjit in a website, then simply cut and paste the script we provide into your blog template or website HTML. Feedjit will appear in the position you paste the script.

They also say that if you’re using a free account from wordpress.com then you won’t be able to use feedjit. If you have your own installation of wordpress you can modify your template with their code and add it to your site.

If your visitors don’t want to be seen there is an option link that they can click and remove themselves from your list.

Here’s what it looks like on my personal blog:

I’ve become a big fan of “toread+“. I have it in my toolbar in my Firefox 3 browser.

When I’m researching a topic I usually start with a search in a search engine and begin to gather websites that contain interesting and relevant content. I open links as I find them in new tabs in my browser. At some point I get overwhelmed by the number of tabs or I find a sufficient amount of information that I’m looking for and then I start to sift through it. Most often I find myself spending way too much time on it and decide to move on to another task before completing my research. I don’t really want to muddle up my bookmarks with links to these open tabs since I probably won’t need them more than once or twice. I could move them to my delicious.com social bookmarking account but once, again, they aren’t necessarily topics that I want to keep and the links may not have relevance to others who are following my newly added delicious feeds. I may not have had time to determine if they are really good resources and want to be reminded to look back at them. I also don’t want to spend too much time finding these links again as I probably want to get back to the topic within a day or two.

This is where” toread+” comes in. Like I mentioned before, I have it showing as a link on my toolbar so while I’m on a web page that I want to be reminded of I can click the link and I can send myself an email that has the web address listed in it. I also have the capability to add a short comment about the link so I can customize the email’s subject line.

This also works well for me when I’m in a meeting/conference/class/presentation and someone mentions a web address that I want to get back to when I have more time to spend on it. I can send myself an email reminder and then determine how important it is to me to keep at a later time. I normally don’t keep one of these emails in my inbox more than a day or so. I find time to determine the webpage’s importance and then move on and delete it or give it permanent home in one of my other social tools.

For me, using email to manage things like this has been working well. I know that some people prefer not to fill up their inbox with a lot of messages so this tool might not appeal to them. I’m able to keep a pretty clean inbox and archive (or trash) most of my incoming mail, move tasks to a todo list (I use todoist), send bookmarks to delicious, or categorize my messages.

For more information look at: http://toread.cc/howtouse.php

There’s also a tool called Read it Later – I haven’t tried it yet but I’m thinking about installing it and seeing if it has more features that work with my work style. In fact, I found several references to it yesterday and used my toread+ tool to send myself a couple of links as email reminders!

You might find yourself wanting to limit searchs to specfic sites, ones that you deam reliable and accurate. You can create a custom search engine that you can use for your use or to distrubute to students through google. Whether it is one website, multiple websites, or individual web pages, you designate which places should be included. Examples include a teacher who wanted to limit her students to finding resources within specific websites that she had pre-approved, an institution creating a custom search for student-related issues, a tech-related custom search composed of trusted resources, and more.

Included in most of the test, survey, and content areas of Blackboard is the option to use an equation editor to enter math and scientific equations without having to use html coding. Finding the right combination of browsers and operating system that works with the equationeditor has been an issue but a bit of testing different combinations has produced some successful results.

Windows Vista

• Firefox 3 – works
• IE7 – works but other features in blackboard don’t work so we suggest you use Firefox.

Windows XP

• IE6 – works
• Firefox3 – works

Mac 10.5 and 10.4

• Safari 3 – works!
• Firefox 3 – doesn’t work

News is that UAf is moving to Blackboard 8 in January – hopefully some of the issues with the equation editor will be resolved – we’ll keep you posted!