Developing_ePortfolios_with_Elgg__Tosh_-_Werdmuller_

Developing ePortfolios with Elgg: a hands-on session Date: August 24th, 2006-08-22 Place: Klagenfurt, Austria Duration: 1 hour 45 minutes Contents: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) Logging in Populating your profile – using similar interests for the demonstration Introductory blog post Making some connections – the friends mechanism Creating access controls Ad-hoc communities Pulling in external content – flickr, delicious etc Advanced a. Podcasting b. Using third party clients to post to Elgg c. Mobile devices Things to do prior to the session: 1) Bring a digital picture 2) Sign up for a flickr account – anymore services? 3) A short MP3 file Site: http://elgg.uni-klu.ac.at 1. Logging in        Select the ‘Register’ link underneath the log on area (right-hand side) Fill in your name and a valid email address You will now be sent an invitation email – access your email and click on the registration link which will be located in the email message A new screen will open and prompt you to add a password (Note what your new username is – you can change the one the system created for you if you wish) Tick the box to indicate you are older than 13 – this is a US requirement Click ‘Join’ You are now ready to login to your new account using the username and password just created Once you have logged in things look a little bare – this will improve in future versions of Elgg where you would now be presented with a default dashboard containing content to get you started. For now, you need to make connections yourself. 2. Populate your profile    Select the Menu option ‘Your Profile’ then ‘Edit this profile’ from the sub-menu You will now be presented with a long profile form (Note: this will change in coming versions of Elgg to be categorised and easier to fill out. Users will also be able to define their own fields) I would recommend filling in the following field’s as a minimum: Who am I?, Brief description (keep this short as it will appear in your sidebar), country, interests (comma separted – can you include the following for this demo. Klagenfurt, ePortfolio, open source) You will see that there is an access level attached to each element, we will come back to this. Just leave it as the default for now. Scroll to the bottom and click ‘Save your profile’ The last thing to do is attach a picture to your account – this can greatly increase usability of the system as you will see later. Select the sub-menu option ‘Change site picture’ – browse for your ideal picture and click ‘Upload new icon’     You should now have some content in your profile and a nice picture of yourself! Now what? This first thing you will notice is that some of items you put into your interests field have become links (tags). Clicking on one of these tags will show you others who also put that particular item as an interest – it is a great way to find others with similar interests as yourself. 3. Introductory blog post     Select ‘Your Blog’ – then ‘Post a new entry’ The blog interface is fairly standard. Give the post a title, add some content, attach some keywords (tags), assign an access level (default for now) and select ‘Post’ If you could all do this now please. There are other functions like embedding files and controlling who can see the blog post but for now we just want to put up a quick post introducing each other. Now that we have filled in our profiles and put up an introductory blog post it is time to make some connections. 4. Making some connections     If you navigate back to your profile page – ‘Your Profile’ menu option – and go to your list of interests, click on one that is a link. You will now see others who have put that item as an interest – click on their icon to visit their profile. If, after reading their profile, you think they look interested you can decide to make them a ‘friend’ by clicking on the link titled ‘Click here to add this user as a friend’ located in the sidebar. This enables a couple of things – you will now be able to restrict content to this person and it will add them to the aggregated view of your friends, a handy way to view recent blog posts by those you are interested in Now we all have some friends, let create some access groups to share content with these ‘friends’. 5. Creating access controls           Select ‘Your Network’ from the menu options The first thing you will see is a list of people you have made a connection to – your ‘friends’ – very shortly these friend will be able to live on different installations, which opens up many interesting doors! You can also see who has made a connection to you by selecting the sub-menu option ‘Friend of’ To create an access group select the sub-menu option ‘Access controls’ Access is controlled through the creation of ‘Access groups’ Give your new Access group a name and press ‘create’ You will see a small widget appear, the left hand side (your friends) are all the people you have made a connection to and the right-hand side (members of this group) is blank for now. To add people to your new access group just highlight their name and click ‘Add selected to group’ Once you have put everyone you want into this new access group click ‘Save’ You can create as many of these access groups as you like – they cannot be shared as they are design for the individual to control access to their content. Now that you have created your first access group let’s see what you can do with it!     If you go back to your blog area – ‘Your Blog’ menu option Let’s make a new blog post – select the submenu option ‘Post a new entry’ Do the same as before; give the post a title, some content and a couple of keywords. This time, before we ‘Post’ the blog entry, look at the Access restriction drop down options – in there you will see your newly created access group. If you  select this, only the ‘friends’ you included in your access group will be able to read the blog post. This access group will now be an option on all your profile items and the files you upload. 6. Ad-hoc communities       Each user in Elgg has the ability to create communities and let others participate in them. To create a community select ‘Your Network’ then the submenu ‘Owned Communities’ Now you need to create one – give the community a name (this can change later) and a username (this goes on the url and cannot be changed) Once done press ‘Create’ – you now have a community Click on the community icon (it will be the default system icon just now) – this will take you to the community site. You now have a range of choices; you can edit the profile (this is the same process as your own profile, you can upload a community picture and edit the community details include setting up join restrictions What can people do in a community?     Within Elgg, the community function is essentially a wrapper around some shared content. Users in a community can all post to the collaborative blog, upload files to the community file repository, restrict access to members of the community or make things public Each community has its own URL and RSS feeds making it easy to follow developments. Communities can also subscribe to external content, creating an excellent resource How do you find communities on an Elgg install?   At the moment this is not very easy – you need to search by tag and hope the community owner has filled in the community profile or you can search for people who share interests with you and see what communities they participate in. Future versions of Elgg are going to include a community finder which will allow users to find relevant communities. 7. Pulling in external content ● ● You might already be creating content elsewhere but want your Elgg eportfolio to aggregate everything you do in one place. If your external content has an RSS feed, you can subscribe to it and optionally post it to your blog. ● ● Click on 'Your Resources' and enter the RSS feed of your external resource. Elgg will subscribe to it. You can click on 'View aggregator' to see an aggregated view of all external content you have subscribed to. If you want external content you own to automatically appear in your blog as it is created: ● ● ● ● ● Ensure you have subscribed to it as described above. Click on 'Your Resources' and then 'Publish to blog'. Find the content you want in the list that appears, check the 'publish to blog' box and agree to the copyright notice that appears. Click 'Update'. When new content is created, it will show up in your Elgg blog. 8. Advanced features a. Podcasting:        Elgg is an effective podcasting platform Firstly, let’s upload an MP3 into the file repository Select ‘Your Files’ – for now will we just put the file into the root folder although there is no reason you could not create a specific folder for your podcasts Make sure you select the access restrictions to ‘public’ and give the file some keywords (tags – comma separated) Check the checkbox to say you have permission to upload this file and click ‘Upload’ That is it. Now if you subscribe to your RSS feed in something like iTunes it will pick up your podcast Embedding into your blog     You can embed podcasts into your blog with some reflective commentary. Go to ‘Your Blog’ and create a new post – make the access level public – once you have given the post a title, some content and keywords, scroll down to the ‘Embed a file…’ dropdown. Select your newly uploaded MP3 file and select ‘Add’ Now post the blog entry and you will notice that a podcast widget appears in your post allowing people to play the content right in the page Podcast by content  You can subscribe to all podcasts filtered by subject (tag), this is great way to follow all podcasts about ePortfolios that are uploaded to an Elgg environment b. Using third party blogging clients Use the tool that suits you best. ● ● ● ● Elgg uses something called the MetaWeblog API over XML-RPC to let a wide variety of blogging clients – as well as sites like Flickr – post to it. Download a tool – for example Windows Live Writer or w.Bloggar – or sign up to Flickr or Writely. Set up the system of your choice so that it posts using the MetaWeblog API using the gateway http://your-elgg-server/_rpc/RPC2.php and your standard Elgg username and password. That's it! Now when you click 'post to blog', content will automatically appear in your Elgg blog. You no longer need to load Elgg to post to your Elgg account. c. Mobile Devices ● ● ● Mobile devices that support XML-RPC can be configured as above. Elgg works well on Opera Mini, found on many embedded devices. Gateways are being developed to allow content to be emailed to an Elgg blog, allowing for text and photogbraphs to be published to Elgg from mobile phones.