ANGEL Community Hub

Some of you who use both ANGEL and the Blogs at Penn State may be interested in having your blog headlines be fed into your course. The link below documents how to generate and embed JavaScript which will do that for you.

http://blogger.psu.edu/help/advanced/headlinetoangel

I've devised a solution for an "Angel challenge" I experienced for some time. This little process allows me to to better segment many different Angel resources (discussion forums, documents, dropboxes etc.), that are tied to a single lesson, but appear in a long list on the page.
Similar results can be achieved with a simple file and folder structure, but for a number of reasons (I won't take time describe), I needed to do it this way. I hope this helps someone, or at least spawns other ideas on flexibility within Angel.

Watch the Screencast (created w/Jing)

Disclaimer:

In a previous post I described how instructors can check their course file size to see if they were approaching the 1 GB ceiling. But did you know there are several media storage options available to instructors that can offset the amount of course storage space used? For example, within ANGEL instructors can apply for a Learning Object Repository or a Master Course. Additionally, services external to ANGEL, such as the Streaming Media Server and iTunes U are available to support audio and video files. Each is briefly described here.

Prior to the fall 2006 semester ANGEL course file space was capped at 1gigabyte (GB) for a course. The 1 GB allocation corresponds to the maximum size of a course that can be reliably imported and exported. Exceeding this allocation cap will prevent faculty and students from being able to upload additional files, such as course content or attachments. As we get further along in the semester it is advisable to check your course to see how much space is available, and to take any necessary action, before the limit is exceeded. To do this from your course:

Within the Gradebook instructors have the ability to reorder assignments within a category, move assignments to another category, and rearrange the category display order.

To reorder assignments within a category:

1. On the main Gradebook menu, select the Categories link beneath the Gradebook Management subheading.
2. Select the check box for the category, then click the Show Tasks.
3. Select the Reorder Assignments link to reorder assignments within the selected category.

Reorder assignments by using the Top, Up, Down, and Bottom buttons

The use of multi-media files as a teaching tool is increasing. Some instructors are using movie clips to illustrate a point while others are recording portions of their material for students to reference and use as often as needed. The use of multi media files (movie and sound clips) enhances distance learning, blended learning and traditional courses. However, multi media files can be rather large in size and therefore quickly use up a lot of the 1-GB ANGEL Course file size.

Google Reader is an RSS aggregator collecting content from other blog and news sites. Using RSS you can pull information from just about any site where content is frequently updated. In this regard Google Reader is unremarkable. You can do this with any RSS aggregator. But what I really liked about Google Reader was what you could do with the content after it was pulled in with a feature called Clips.

Clips enable you to take the postings collected from other blogs via RSS, and make links to them available from your site. Your readers can see what you are following and, by selecting the link, follow along. What is nice is when readers select the link they are taken to the site of origin thus avoiding giving the false impression that the work is somehow yours. Additionally you can choose to show the items point of origin directly under the link.

An example of Google Clips off my personal blog. Note this is an actual RSS feed and not a static image.