## WP LaTeX

The WP LaTeX developers created this plugin to “combine the power of LaTeX and the simplicity of WordPress to give you the ultimate in math blogging platforms” which, they admit really “sounds nerdy.”

The plug-in presumes you know LaTeX, but just in case you’d like to know more, or if you’re looking for a refresher, or if you’re just one of the curious, there is a useful tutorial here.  In addition, Jonas Reitz has kindly allowed us to link to an assignment in his Calc II class which includes some basics, like fractions, radicals, and integrals.  You can find that here.  And if you’re trying to write LaTeX code, you’ll find that a tester is an invaluable too.  You can find a good one here.   Thanks to Jonas for all these resources!

What follows, then, are guides and tips for how to use the WP LaTeX plug-in, written by the plug-in creators.  More information about them can be found here.  As always, contact us with any questions.

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#### How do I add LaTeX to my posts?

This plugin uses the WordPress Shortcode Syntax. Enter your LaTeX code inside of a$...$ shortcode.

$e^{\i \pi} + 1 = 0$

You may alternatively use the following equivalent syntax reminiscent of LaTeX’s inline math mode syntax.

$latex e^{\i \pi} + 1 = 0$

That is, if you would have written $some-code$ in a LaTeX document, just write $latex some-code$ in your WordPress post.

For the curious, the shortcode syntax is slightly faster for WordPress to process, but the inline syntax is a little easier for us humans to read. Pick your poison.

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#### Can I change the color of the images produced?

Yes. You can set the default text color and background color of the images in the Plugins -> WP LaTeX admin page.

You can also change the colors on an image by image basis by specifying color andbackground attributes inside the LaTeX shortcode. For example:

[latex color="ff0000" background="00ff00"]e^{\i \pi} + 1 = 0[/latex]

will produce an image with a bright green background and a bright red foreground color. Colors are specified in RGB with the standard 6 digit hex notation.

The equivalent “inline” syntax uses fg and bg parameters after the LaTeX code.

$latex e^{\i \pi} + 1 = 0&bg=00ff00&fg=ff0000$

#### Can I change the size of the image?

You can specify a size attribute in the LaTeX shortcode:

[latex size="4"]e^{\i \pi} + 1 = 0[/latex]

or, equivalently, an s parameter after the LaTeX inline syntax:

$latex e^{\i \pi} + 1 = 0&s=4$

The size can be any integer from -4 to 4 (0 is the default). These numbers correspond to the following LaTeX size commands.

size = LaTeX size -4 \tiny -3 \scriptsize -2 \footnotesize -1 \small 0 \normalsize (12pt) 1 \large 2 \Large 3 \LARGE 4 \huge

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#### The LaTeX images work, but they don’t really fit in with my blog’s theme

You can adjust the CSS used for the LaTeX images to suit your theme better. Go to Settings -> WP LaTeX and edit the Custom CSS.

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#### I want to break out of math mode and do some really wild stuff. How do I do that?

You can’t with this plugin. WP LaTeX forces you to stay in math mode. Formatting and styling for your posts should be done with markup and CSS, not LaTeX.

If you really want hardcore LaTeX formatting (or any other cool LaTeX features), you should probably just use LaTeX.

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#### Instead of images, I get error messages. What’s up?

• Formula does not parse: Your LaTeX is invalid; there must be a syntax error or something in your code (WP LaTeX doesn’t provide any debugging).
• Formula Invalid: Your LaTeX code attempts to use LaTeX commands that this plugin does not allow for security reasons.
• You must stay in inline math mode: Fairly self explanitory, don’t you think? See above.
• The forumula is too long: Break your LaTeX up into multiple images. WP LaTeX limits you to 2000 characters per image.
• Could not open TEX file for writing or Could not write to TEX file: You have some file permissions problems. See Intallation instructions.

## This Week in Openlab! February 13th Edition

Maybe there’s no mail, maybe the school is closed, but we here at This Week in OpenLab are working away to bring you this week’s highlights!  And here they are, in no particular order:

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CityTech Club Fair!

(video from 2011 CityTech Club Fair, posted by The New Tech Times)

On Thursday February 16th, The CityTech Club Fair 2012 will be here–this is a great place to find fellow students who share your interests and check out all that the CityTech student body has to offer.  Events like this remind us that our school is the place where we can make lifelong connections that will enrich our CityTech life both inside and outside the classroom.  The event will be held in the Atrium Building  from 12:45 to 2.  See you there.

And if you are a club hosting a table at the Club Fair, be sure to mention it on your OpenLab page!

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This Week in the Digital Humanities

It’s no secret that many of those behind and in front of the OpenLab are dedicated and prominent Digital Humanists, and at the forefront of thinking about how technology like the OpenLab can affect learning.  And if you’re wondering what all that means, you’ve come to the right place:  Our very own Charlie Edwards, Project Coordinator of the Living Lab Title V grant, and a graduate student in the English PhD and IT & Pedagogy Certificate programs at CUNY Grad Center, will join one of the OpenLab founders, Matt Gold, at the CUNY Graduate Center to discuss Matt’s new book, Debates in the Digital Humanities.  The event is on Friday February, 17th, and it’s free and open to the public.  You can find more information here.

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Weekly Tutorial

This week we’re featuring the new Calendar Plug-in.  ‘Calendar,’ the not-so-creatively-named but very-nicely-designed plug-in, allows you to create a customizable, searchable calendar for your course, club, or project.  And that calendar can be hosted in a post or on a page, and ‘today’s events’ and ‘upcoming events’ drawn from the Calendar to appear in your site’s home sidebar!  You can learn more about it here.

As always, contact your Community Team with any questions!

## Calendar, The Plug-In

‘Calendar,’ the not-so-creatively-named but very-nicely-designed plug-in, is now available on the OpenLab.  As you might expect, it creates a customizable, searchable calendar for your course, club, or project, and that calendar can be hosted in a post or on a page.  And the Calendar comes with two widgets which allow ‘today’s events’ and ‘upcoming events’ drawn from the Calendar to appear in your site’s home sidebar!

To get started:

1) Visit your plug-ins page, search for ‘Calendar’ and then click ‘activate.’

2) Create a new page or post (I’d name it ‘Calendar’) and type just what you see in the screen-shot below (because the plug-in is activated here on The Open Road, I can’t type it here!).  Be sure to remember the {} brackets:

3) To show ‘Today’s Events’ and ‘Upcoming Events’ in your sidebar, you’ll want to drag those widgets (found under APPEARANCE>WIDGETS) into the sidebar where you’d like them to appear.

4) Once activated and placed, you’ll find the settings for the Calendar at the lower left of your screen, near the bottom of your left menu bar.

From there you can Manage the Calendar…

Manage the Categories…

And Change Calendar Options…

Do note that on the Calendar Options page you can allow members to add their own events, and you can change appearance and even edit the code itself.  Here you can change colors, sizes, etc.  And if you’re not that comfortable with code, there’s a handy reset button just below to undo anything you don’t like.

And you’re done!   Remember, if you’d like the Calendar to be a sort of ‘home’ page for your site, you can set the Calendar into a post, then make that post sticky.

A Couple of Final Notes:

On Usage:  Why a calendar?  A calendar is a great way for a club or group to tell its users about upcoming events, deadlines, etc.

But a Calendar can also be a useful course management tool, as a useful visual ‘catch-all’ way to organize an entire course.  Sometimes students (and instructors) find it a clearer overall view of the course as opposed to separate assignment/reading/activity pages, or long drop down lists of dates and readings/assignments.  The information here can all be repeated on other pages, and readings can be directly linked to (you can link from here to a readings page within your own site, and keep that readings page password protected).  When we talk about using the OpenLab to manage courses, we’re often trying to bring the various elements of a course to a single hub for a student, who can sometimes be overwhelmed when they feel course elements scattering across a site.

On support:  Here you can find forums started by and/or moderated by the developer of this wonderful plug-in.  Do remember that a lot of this support (like much wp support) is for people running their own sites, and so don’t be overwhelmed by installation questions, and remember we’re always glad to help.  As always, contact your Community Team with any questions!

## SlideShare

The SlideShare plugin allows you to embed presentations or documents you’ve uploaded to SlideShare into your posts or pages. Since there are only a few steps involved, I’m including instructions below. But if you’d like help using the plugin — or using SlideShare itself — just let us know.

1. Go to Dashboard > Plugins, and activate the SlideShare plugin.

3. Find or upload the presentation you want to include on your site. Click on the “Embed” button that appears above the presentation, and then click on “Customize.” You’ll see some code labeled “Shortcode for WordPress.com blogs”: copy that code.

4. Paste the code into the post or page where you would like the SlideShare presentation to display. Click publish, and you’re done!

## This Week In OpenLab! February 6th Edition

Welcome to the second installment of “This Week In OpenLab!”–a weekly post sharing what’s new around our community, as well as ways to make the most of your OpenLab experience.  Be sure to join this project in order to get “This Week in OpenLab” updates via email!

More!  New!  Members!

Nearly 400 people joined the OpenLab this week!   As of this writing, we have 1,416 total members and more than 250 courses, clubs and projects.  Not bad for a project that’s been officially live for just a few weeks.  That’s exciting enough for TWO exclamation points!!

(image by elias via Creative Commons)

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Johannah Rodgers:  Second Year Fellow

We’re going to be featuring various members of our community here on This Week In OpenLab, and this week we’d like to introduce you to Johannah Rodgers, one of the tremendous group of Second Year Fellows.  In addition to her work there and teaching writing here at City Tech, she is also currently developing a digital novel on our very own OpenLab.  When this project is ready for release we’ll feature Johannah more fully (particularly around what it’s like to combine this technology with creative writing), but for now you can read a previously published excerpt from Johannah’s DNA:  A Digital Novel here.  And be sure to check out her lovely drawings on her own site!

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Definitions of Poetry

If, like me, you’re always looking for definitions of poetry, Professor Matt Gold’s Introduction to Poetry class has done a lot of the work for you.  If you’re a teacher using the OpenLab, particularly, for the first time, Matt’s courses can provide some of the best models you’ll find.  It’s particularly great to see how the comments aren’t just one way–by commenting and then responding and then commenting again, Matt and his students are continuing key conversations, even when they aren’t in the same room.

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This Week’s Tutorial:  Embedding SlideShare

The SlideShare plugin allows you to embed presentations or documents you’ve uploaded to SlideShare into your posts or pages. Since there are only a few steps involved, I’m including instructions below. But if you’d like help using the plugin — or using SlideShare itself — just let us know.

1. Go to Dashboard > Plugins, and activate the SlideShare plugin.

3. Find or upload the presentation you want to include on your site. Click on the “Embed” button that appears above the presentation, and then click on “Customize.” You’ll see some code labeled “Shortcode for WordPress.com blogs”: copy that code.

4. Paste the code into the post or page where you would like the SlideShare presentation to appear.  Click publish, and you’re done!

And as always, please join The Open Road to get “This Week in OpenLab” updates via email!

The best tutorial I’ve found on the KB Gradebook is the video you find at the bottom of this post, by Kyle Jones, alias “The Corkboard.”  Because the KB Gradebook is already installed on our system, you can skip past the first minute of the video.  There are a couple of key points, though, that I want to emphasize because they can cause a bit of trouble.  The only thing that I’ve found a bit confusing about KB Gradebook is that it sometimes will produce an error message that doesn’t give much or gives improper information.  So if you’re getting ‘Your spreadsheet has too few columns,’ or something like this, look for these issues.  But I would watch the video first, then look for these problems.

1. The single most important thing about the Gradebook is setting up the spreadsheet properly.  He emphasizes this in the video, but the key elements are the email addresses and the headings, which is what the plug-in uses to recognize the proper fields.
2. The second most important thing to note, though it will affect fewer people, is that it seems that Excel for Mac will not save the spreadsheet properly in the CSV format.  If you have a mac, you should use Numbers (the mac alternative to Excel).
3. Lastly, there can be issues with apostrophes, so leave them out of any column on the spreadsheet.  Joe Ugoretz wrote about this on his own blog, if you’re interested in these issues.  If not, just remember to leave out all apostrophes, and you should be fine.

And here’s the video (this will take you to Vimeo):

## This Week in OpenLab! January 30th Edition

Welcome to the first installment of This Week In OpenLab!  Here you’ll find updates on what’s new around our community, as well as ways to make the most of your OpenLab experience.

New Year, New Members, New Courses!

As the term begins, our OpenLab community is growing at a tremendous pace. We’ve gained more than 50 new members this week alone!  If you’re keeping score at home, this means we now have 1,050 members and more than 210 courses, clubs and projects.

Second Year Fellows Seminar Begins

We’d especially like to welcome the Living Lab Second Year Fellows, a group of City Tech faculty who will spend the semester working in The General Education Seminar, part of the College’s Title V grant-funded initiative A Living Laboratory.

This seminar will concentrate on the second year of the student experience at our college, a critical year for students that focuses on collaborative assignments and projects, and associate degree capstones.

Last Friday, the Fellows had their first meeting, where they shared ideas, discussed teaching and reading, and had a (very wet) scavenger hunt. Though their project is for Second Year Fellow use only, you can follow their adventures here!

Associate Fellows

We would also like to welcome the more than thirty full-time and part-time faculty members who are joining the Living Lab as First Year Associate Fellows. The Associate Fellows will be participating in a series of workshops led by our wonderful First Year Fellows, who have spent the last year working on the first year student experience. You can follow their progress here.

The New Term:  A Great Time to Update Your Club!

If you’re a club or project administrator, remember that the beginning of the term means a host of new OpenLab users and thus potential new members.   We’ll have a more in-depth post on community-building soon, but in the meantime, please try these simple ways to get and keep members of any project:

• create new comments and posts on your site and discussion forum–nothing indicates activity like new content! Aim to post at least once a week, as we’re doing here at This Week in OpenLab.
• make sure that your club or project profile page shows the name of and a way to contact the administrator of your club or project.
• contact OpenLab members to invite them to join. You can do that on the club or project profile page, and then ‘send invites’ using the right hand navigation.

And as always, please join The Open Road to get “This Week in OpenLab” updates via email!

## Welcome to OpenLab v.1.0!

We’re tremendously excited to welcome you to version 1.0 of the City Tech OpenLab, our unique online virtual campus.  Here, our community members learn and work together, sharing ideas and resources. Welcome back if you’re already a member. And, if you’ve never been here before, we hope you’ll join our adventure.

New members will find this version of the OpenLab responsive and easy to use, and more familiar hands will notice the changes we’ve brought to this update, which include both improvement of previously existing elements and a host of new features. In this post we’ll take you through the most critical changes and new elements.

And here (drumroll please!) are some key features for this version:

Redesigned, Easy-To-Use Homepage

The center of our OpenLab universe, the homepage is the gateway to our community, and it also offers a glance across all of OpenLab. From here you can see what’s really going on. Some of its new features include:

• a redesigned slider-menu: check it for news and updates.  Let us know if there are events or activities you’d like to see us highlight there.
• a new “In The Spotlight” area, highlighting one course, project or club on a rotating basis. And here too, if you have something you’d like to share, email us at OpenLab[at]citytech.cuny.edu.
• a ‘new OpenLab members’ rotating slider.
• redesigned at-a-glance course, club and project activity sections: see all the very latest activity across the OpenLab, as it’s happening.

We’ve streamlined the navigation throughout the site, and added new filtering, sorting, and searching features to help you find things more easily. The “My OpenLab” section now provides easy access to all the tools you need to manage your profile, courses, projects, and clubs, and communicate with your friends on the site.

Also note, if you’ve used the OpenLab before you’ll notice that a previously existing section (called ‘Sites’) has been folded into other areas for simplicity. If you’ve already created a site, however, don’t worry — it’s still there! You’ll find it under “My OpenLab”.

ePortfolios

The CityTech ePortfolios system is now hosted on the OpenLab! It is now easy to find in the top navigation menu of the OpenLab home page, and the site features a new template designed specifically for CityTech ePortfolio users. Find out more here.

New Functionality

The OpenLab is chock-full of new functions and tools.

For example, each course, club and project now has a ‘Files’ function which will allow for the easy upload and distribution of all sorts of files: images, readings, spreadsheets, powerpoints, and more! This is in addition to the ‘Docs’ function which allow class and group members to create and collaborate on documents right on the OpenLab.

We’ve also implemented a whole suite of plug-ins. Some of these are primarily aimed at improving teaching and learning, but almost all of them will benefit clubs and projects too. We’re especially excited about the ways in which professors and students (and all members of other clubs and projects) will be able to interact. To highlight a few:

• A gradebook which allows easy excel sheet posting for teachers and lets students to access their own grades electronically and securely.
• A calendar to organize any course, club or project.
• Rotating galleries which will show an overall sense of the course, club or project.
• A way to feature specific post/page/member from your course, club or project.

Help!

One of the largest additions to this version of the site (thanks to Renee McGarry!) is an expansive help section, covering topics from “getting started” to specific questions about changing aspects of your accounts, course sites, and almost everything else. You can find that here. And as always, you can contact us with questions any time.