Online Platform Support

On these pages and posts we are recording our platform evolution. Here you can link to :

• Elluminate: http://elluminate.jisc-ssbr.net
• Google Docs team admin site http://docs.jisc-ssbr.net
• View the SSBR database (alpha) http://inin.jisc-ssbr.net.ssbrdb

The SSBR database can be accessed through the main Institutional Innovation SSBR site at http://inin.jisc-ssbr.net under the ‘Database‘ link.

The database holds information on Projects, People and Institutions oriented towards Outputs. The concept is to navigate through lists within lists of data table relationships. The main purposes is to create a matrix of information for Projects and Outputs using a set of Rubrics and Keys enhancing ‘discoverability’. On the landing page there is the list of Programme Phases. Clicking on ‘Projects’ will show the list of projects participating in that phase, then in each project record clicking on ‘People’ will bring the lists of people related to that project. Clicking on the ‘Institutions’ menu will show the list of all the projects or people in an institution, and so on…

Some Reports have been developed and lists of ‘URL links’. Every page offers the possibility of exporting the data for Print , Word , Excel , XML , and GraphML for visualisations.

At the bottom of each list page there are option to navigate through pages of records, or to select how many records to display on eacj page (20, 50 or All records).

Below is the database sub-menu in a tree format to see at a glance the options currently available:

• Matrix
  • The Matrix
  • – Cells
  • – Keys
  • – Rubrics
• Projects
  • Projects
  • Projects (summaries)
  • Funding Phases
  • Programmes
  • Strategic Themes
• Outputs
  • Outputs
• People
  • People
  • Participating in
    • –> Projects
    • –> Programmes
    • –> Institutions
• Institutions
  • Institutions
  • Projects in Institutions
• URLs links
  • URLs
  • URLs (all)
  • – URLs of
    • –> Projects
    • –> Programmes
    • –> Strategic Themes
    • –> Institutions
• Reports
  • – The Matrix
    • per Projects
    • per Rubrics
    • per Keys
  • – Projects
    • Projects :: Institutions
    • per Funding Phase
    • per Institution
  • – URLs grouped by
    • –> Funding Phases (All)
    • –> Funding Phase I
    • –> Funding Phase II
    • –> Funding Phase III
    • –> Funding Phase BR
  • Projects in Institutions

Any suggestions and/or corrections please email support@jisc-ssbr.net

We have been developing a database structure to hold the information related to the Projects with the main objective of adding categorized information using a Matrix, as well as, to hold links and summaries to Outputs and Artefacts produced during the Institution Innovation programme to enhance ‘discoverability’.

Here is the link to the database schema (ssbrdb_schema) and its last page has a draw of the main relationships. There are some innovative concepts on the architecture of this Database with the implemntation of relations n(fields)-to-n(tables). Using a key table that reference other tables, the system creates the relationship ‘on-the-fly’

We are in a alpha phase creating different forms of visualising the data:

• Folded Structure
• Network Visualisation
• Interactive Carousel

A blogpost as any HTML page can only contain text, so how to make a file available?

Well, we create a ‘URL link‘ to that file. However, we need that file available somewhere on the Internet to be able to create that URL link, so we need to upload the file that we want to link to and then link to the file – simple.

In WordPress jargon a file that we link to is a ‘Media file‘, that includes pictures, video, music and everything else. On top of the blogpost editor there are four buttons to ‘Add media‘ and the fourth button is the ‘everything else‘ option.

Clicking on it, a ‘Media manager’ will popup to handle the upload of a file, and the linking to a file.

Click on ‘Select Files’ and upload a file like we do when attaching a file to an email, and we’ll get this:

Note the ‘Link URL’ field, it is the Universal Resource Locator (URL) for that file in the World Wide Web (WWW) – amazing isn’t it…

Click on ‘Insert into Post’ and voila, there is an URL link in your blogpost that links to a media file. Job done.

Here there is the Elluminate_Live!_Participant_Quick_Reference_Guide_v95.

I would like to bring attention to the Audio side of it:

A good or bad experience in an AudioGraphic environment (aka WebConference) relies heavily on the participants Audio setup, audio feedback is the most common issue, and external speakers are the killer.

Audio feedback happens when a sound loop exists between an audio input (e.g. microphone) and an audio output (e.g. loudspeaker). When it happens in a short distance, strong resonance effects result in the ‘high pitch’, squealing, screeching noise that burns our brains, but in the AudioGraphic communication platforms due to signal delays it results in ‘echos’ (most of the times).

A ‘good’ laptop comes with eliminators that do a good job cutting that loop, but not all…
Desktops normally come with a basic Audio interface, with an external speakers/MIC setup that makes ‘The ECHO’.

So, going in safe mode –> Headphones. The echoing loop issue is resolved.

Of course, the quality of the Headphone, plus the quality of the Audio interface, plus the quality of Internet connection results on the quality of our AudioGraphic experience, but at least we will not give a bad experience to other participants … lets call this ‘WebConference etiquette’.

Not saying that headphones is the recommended way, I’m saying that is the safest way. And is always a good backup to have them nearby in case things go wrong…

1. Any presentation needs to be short – 10 minutes – focused with clear points for consideration set up at the beginning so that you are listening with a purpose.
2. If you want to present for longer then there needs to be gaps between major talking points.
3. Twitter type text needs to be set up so that it is about the presentation and not whether it is sunny.
4. If there are breaks between key points then when the new point begins the text messaging is relevant to the new point.
5. There should be a facilitator who can summarise points and act as a conduit between the presenter and listeners.
6. Animation does not translate to the conference therefore powerpoint slides need to take this into consideration.
7. Slides should not be too text based and should enhance the presentation not provide subtitles to it.
8. The conference should have a ‘master of ceremonies’ who calls the conference to order, introduces the speaker and makes sure that communication is as effective as possible.
9. Each presenter could have a blog set up for further discussion – the posts being the key points in their presentation.
10. With large audiences keep the conference for transmission with online follow up rather than expecting large numbers to contribute.
11. When taking part in a conference, either as organiser or participant, enlist a colleague to maintain a check on twitter-type chat and conversations to note key points of use and/or interest.

Alison Felce
Co-ordinator of Work-based Learning;
Project Leader, ePPSME
Developing an e-Portfolio based Pedagogy for SMEs

Institute for Learning Enhancement
University of Wolverhampton

The latest update from Apple, Java SE 6 Update 4, has modified the association between JNLP files and Java Web Start, the usual JNLP icon on your desktop is blank and the program used to open the file cannot be found.

Solution:

Start an Elluminate session (Sandpit Meeting Space – no need for a password)

If the JNLP file opens in anything other than an Elluminate session, or doesn’t have an attached Run program:

1. Save the file to your desktop with the jnlp file extension – meeting.jnlp
2. Right click or Control click on the .JNLP file and select Open With -> Other
3. In the “Choose Application” window, in the left panel, select the appropriate boot device.
4. Browse to /System/Library/CoreServices/Java Web Start.app
5. Check the box for “Always Open With” and then click the “Open” button.
6. If the Java Web Start.app file is greyed out/not selectable, make sure to enable “All Applications”.

All Mac systems have a CoreServices folder in the filepath above. Please make sure you perform a thorough search if you cannot locate it.

This does the job, however the good advice is to make a manual fresh installation of Java – that will resolve any other side effect issues on the Java environment. Go to http://support.apple.com/downloads/ download and install the latest Java for your OS. This always does the miracle.

If still having problems email support@jisc-ssbr.net

This just in from Mike Hay on an OU Mac users maillist

It appears that the latest update automatically installs Safari 10.4 without advising the user. This means that if you install this update, you won’t be able to run Elluminate 8.5. The update to 9.5 (which solves the problem) appears to have been delayed.
If you have a recent Mac (64 bit) then you can install Java 6 and prioritise that in the Java preferences (in the Utilities folder). Otherwise the only solution seems to be a complete system reinstall.
So if you want or need to use Elluminate (and many tutorials are now being given in this way) DON’T INSTALL 10.5.8. (Sorry to shout!)
Mike

We’ll advise as soon as we can

A ‘Trend Analysis’ can be an effective way of gathering information, taking Google’s search engine behaviour of indexing and ranking information: they don’t use the ‘MetaTags’ and/or TAGs set by authors, instead they use Content-Based ranking. A score based on the query and the contents of the page using some metrics: Word frequency, Document location and Word distance together with the number and quality of incoming links. I mean no artificial clustering, based on possibilities but on tendencies inferred.

They don’t consider how an Author wants to be classified (or ranked) but on the contents itself together with external interest on that content (links to the site) crawling websites, clustering/grouping a referential dataset. Last week I’ve been dwelling on processes used by search engines on trend analysis and some mathematical formulae to process the dataset:

• Euclidean distance – graphing two points, it determines how close they are
• Pearson Correlation coefficient – a measure of how higly correlated two variables are
• Weighted Mean – to make numerical predictions based on similarity
• Tanimoto coefficient – measure of similarity of two sets
• Conditional probability – way of measuring how likely something is to occur
• Gini impurity – tells the probability that we would be wrong
• Entropy – to see how mixed a set is
• Variance – how much a list varies from the mean average value
• Gaussian function – weighting function for weighted k-nearest neighbours
• Dot-Products – to calculate vector angles from classifying items

(This a reference list)

In practical terms the process has 3 stages:

1. Creation of the dataset through crawling sites, RSS feeds, feedback forms, reports, etc and maybe some generated complementary data in a database.
2. Clustering, ranking, filtering the dataset/database.
3. Presenting the ’searched’ information in visual/graphic format

Nothing is knew on this flow but the realisation of it can be innovative, using established technologies and metrics used by search engines with ‘on the fly’ visualisation through the web (eventually iterative)

Seems that all my efforts move on that direction:

1. the creation of the database example for the BR projects together with the rearrangement of our Projects Directory using Python frameworks,
2. the list of mathematical formulae above are not oriented for analysis but for clustering, ranking and filtering the information,
3. and the presentation layer without a doubt is to use Flash/Flex SWF files (Adobe Flex is a Flash type of application capable of handling/interacting with big sets of data on the fly – Flash for corporate environments).

For the presentation layer it is worth mention ‘Hans Rosling’. He was a keynote speaker for the ALT C 2008 (here) – (the conference video) or in our servers (Elluminate). He developed a software (Trendalyzer) that he uses to put data together in some innovative ways in his website http://www.gapminder.org/world Google acquired the rights, and partly incorporated it in the Google Visualisation API that I’m considering using for the presentation layer.
Thoughts appreciated…

A Google Docs form is inherently public (but not searchable, and the spreadsheet keeps private), however because the ‘key’ appended to the URL, it will require login. But in our case the best solution is to embed the form on our blogsite enironment.

It works like this:

1. While editing the spreadsheet in the toolbar there is a menu ‘Form(1)’ click on the sub-menu ‘Embed form…’. That will expose the code to paste in the site.
2. To put that HTML code in a WordPress blog:
   1. There is a plugin installed to embed HTML code using the ‘Custom fields’ labelled ‘HTML1′, ‘HTML2′, … , ‘HTML9′
   2. Underneath the WYSIWYG editor there is the form for ‘Custom fields’ so create a field labeled ‘HTML5′ and paste the code from SSBR Docs in the content field.
   3. In the body of a ‘blog’ or a ‘page’ insert: ‘‘ (without the single quotes)
   4. and voila

Have a look in a page ‘form’ as an example on how to – it needs to tweak the form text, to match what you want to appear.

If you still need some support, please don’t hesitate email support@jisc-ssbr.net