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English 11 Wiki Page

webmaster — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 03:44:30 -0600

This wiki page will certainly get things rolling.

Ariel is editing this.

Edit by hank

Hank's edit post very soon upgrade

This is wiki-rific!

English 11

Getting more from courses and groups

webmaster — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 08:07:53 -0600

One limitation of the current install is that if you have say six year groups and each group has ten courses eg Maths (year2), French (year2) etc, that is 60 groups. With (say) 20 pupils in each year group there is a real need for some automation of the process so...

Download and install http://drupal.org/project/og_multiple_mandatory_groups_by_role .

Then go to /admin/user/roles and add the following roles (yours will vary):

Now go to /node/add/course and add something like

Maths Y1
Spanish Y1
English Y1
Maths Y2
Spanish Y2
English Y2 ... etc

You can now go to /admin/user/user/create and fill in a form for EACH pupil, in the [Roles:] section, remember to tick [Student] AND the year group they are part of.

PHEW! that is the hardest part but you only have to do it once and when the pupils move up at the end of the year you can simply move their UserRole to the next year. You now deserve a break for a well earned coffee!

Then go to /admin/og/og_multiple_mandatory_groups_by_role/groups [Available Groups] tab and add in all the Courses (and Groups) you wish to be automatically assigned to your Year roles.

Now click the [Overview] tab and from the dropdown add all the Year roles

Now click on the [Assign Groups] tab and the Year you wish to work on > then tick the courses that relate to that year group - see below. Repeat this for each Year then press [Save Assignments] at the bottom

Thats it - all the setup is now done.

So if you are a teacher and you want to set Maths assignment/homework for Year One, go to create assignment in the usual way, give it a Title, Keywords, Due Date, Details, then in the [Groups] tick Maths Y1.

Hey Presto! all Year One pupils will now automatically received email details of the assignment. Also when they log on to the website (from School or home) it will be listed in their calendar and group details.

Site Users

webmaster — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 05:55:45 -0600

The site comes with the following test users in the following roles:

With the exception of the admin user, all usernames and passwords are identical.

Site Roles

webmaster — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 06:34:36 -0600

The following roles have been created to give an overview of how roles can be used to create different levels of access, and a different look and feel to the site.

anonymous user -- this role refers to people who visit the site, but are not site members (people who have not signed up for an account)
audio -- users in this role can create podcasts
authenticated user -- the default role for all site members. Users in this role have a blog, and can store bookmarks, create groups, create image galleries, and portfolio artifacts.
instructor -- instructors have all the rights of students, but can create courses and assignments.
maintainer -- site maintainers have full rights over editing all site content.
siteadmin -- the siteadmin has full administrative rights over the entire site. This role should be used sparingly.
student -- this is a placeholder role. For added security, all rights can be removed from the authenticated user role and assigned to the student role. For an organization who is limiting site membership, this configuration means that even if someone managed to create an account on the site, they would have no rights until an admin assigned them into a role.
wiki -- users in this role can create wiki pages, and can revert revisions.

It's also worth noting that this site uses a generic school paradigm -- it contains a student and instructor role, and instructors create assignments within courses. However, if those roles aren't used, the hierarchy is effectively flattened.

Logging In

webmaster — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 06:34:20 -0600

When a user logs in, they are taken to the "My Work" section of the site. This site gives a snapshot of a user's work.

The initial "My Work" view includes all of the content a user has posted. If a user is a member of any groups, they are presented with a list of their groups. Clicking on a group's name allows them to filter on the content from that specific group.

Tab Overview

My Files -- this tab is each user's personal file repository. As users attach files to posts, or create image galleries, they show up in this area. The file repository is created automatically as a user works in the site.
My Comments -- this tab shows all of a user's comments on other people's posts.
My Bookmarks -- this tab displays all of the bookmarks stored by a user.
My Podcasts -- all podcasts created by a particular user
My Wiki Pages -- all wiki pages created by a particular user
My Portfolio Artifacts -- all portfolio artifacts created by a particular user
My Groups -- this tab shows all activity within a user's groups.Using this view, a user can see all the new posts within their different groups. They can also filter content on a group by group basis

It's also worth noting that the ability to create different types of content can be controlled on a user by user basis, so a site admin can limit the ability to podcast, or create wiki pages, or bookmarks, etc, to specific users within the site.

View Content By User

webmaster — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 06:04:23 -0600

To view content from individual users -- and to get an RSS feed of a specific user's content -- you have a couple options.

For a user's blog posts: append "blog/username" to the end of the site's url.

For all of a user's content: append "allfrom/username" to the end of the site's url.

Creating Courses

webmaster — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 15:07:52 -0600

If you are creating a course, you can add specific content to your course home page.

You do this by selecting the correct view in the "Highlighted Content" section:

Select one, or several, of the highlighted views. You can select as many or as few as you like. At the risk of stating the obvious, the "group_assignments" view will show all assignments for a specific group; "group_wiki" will show all the wiki pages for a different group, etc. The one view that bears a little further explanation is the "group_blog_question" view; we set this up to show some of the potential for different uses here. If any user in the group creates a blog post that they tag with the term question, it will appear in "Highlighted Content" section. To see an example of this, go to the English 11 course and look at the "Questions" section.

We have prefaced all the names of the group-specific views with the word "group"; however, we recognize that this is no substitute for a UI that only presents the relevant choices. We're working on it, but, obviously, it's not done yet.

And there's one last step. Just below highlighted content, you will see a field named "arguments."

To make this work, first click the link below the argument field to disable the rich-text editor. Then, enter in the text %nid --

This final step ensures that only group-specific content will appear on the home page.

Obviously, these instructions are daunting/offputting to non-technical users, or people new to Drupal. Ideally, this type of course creation screen will only be seen by users who have been trained in how to use it, or who are willing to experiment. As people experiment with a site, and become more familiar with the functionality, they will (hopefully) start to experiment with different types of functionality.

Getting Started

webmaster — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:16:15 -0600

What a user sees when they log in

Creating Content

Creating Groups and specifically some documentation on embedding views into the group home page

What else?

Main Page

webmaster — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 15:32:08 -0700

This is the main page of the site wiki.

New content added.

Added alias.

edit by hank -- will this show in revisions?