The Open Road

This Week in the OpenLab–Back to School Edition!

(image by the Work Projects Administration Poster Collection via Creative Commons License)

WELCOME BACK!

On behalf of the OpenLab, City Tech’s open-source digital platform where students, faculty, and staff can meet to learn, work, and share their ideas, we’d like to welcome you back (or welcome you) to the school year. And welcome to The Open Road, our resource for all things OpenLab. If you haven’t been here since the beginning of summer, you’ll find that we’ve started an overhaul of this site, simplifying our menu and the things you can find here and, we hope, creating an even more useful resource.

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WORKSHOPS!

The OpenRoad is the place to sign up for workshops! We have workshops throughout the fall for students, faculty and staff, on a variety of subjects. You can sign up here, and be sure to check back here in January and in the Spring term for more updates.

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HELP!

(image by Johnathan Nightingale via Creative Commons License)

Another change to the Open Road is actually not an addition: We’ve moved our overview of plug-ins and widgets to the help section of the OpenLab, and you can find that here: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/blog/help/help-category/plugins-and-widgets/. While you’re there, have a look around the revised, expanded help section, which now includes troublesooting, FAQs, and Best Practices entries.

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MORE TO COME!

The summer has been a busy one here at the OpenLab, with a host of new features and resources. We’ll be highlighting them all in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned and, as always, contact us with any questions!

OpenLab Statistics: To June 30, 2014

Number of users broken down by students, faculty, staff:

Students: 9046
Faculty: 493
Staff: 100

Number of courses, projects, clubs, portfolios:

Courses: 675
Projects: 1326
Clubs: 58
Portfolios: 2025

Pageviews (for past quarter):

508,317

Average visit duration (for past quarter):

4:34

Google Docs Shortcode

Google Docs Shortcode is a small plugin for WordPress that allows you to use a shortcode to easily embed a Google Doc into your blog posts or pages.

The shortcode supports the following Google Doc formats:

Documents
Presentations
Spreadsheets
Forms

This plugin was developed for the CUNY Academic Commons. Licensed under the GPLv2 or later.

The following can also be found here:

How to Use

Embedding a document, presentation or spreadsheet

First, you’ll need to find the public URL of your Google Doc. Let’s start by logging in to your Google Docs. Next, find the item you want to embed.
You should now have your Google Doc open. Next, navigate to File > Publish to the Web. A dialogue box should appear, similar to the one below:
Make sure that the Automatically republish when changes are made checkbox is checked. This will allow you to make changes to your Google Docs and have these changes automatically reflected on your WordPress site.
Copy the Document Link highlighted in red above. If you don’t see the “Document Link” field, click on theStart publishing button and you should be able to view the field.
Now navigate to your WordPress dashboard and open up the post or page where you want to embed your document. On a new line, type the following shortcode and paste in the link you copied, above:
```
[gdoc link="THE LINK YOU COPIED" height="800"]
```

You can customize the shortcode by using some custom parameters mentioned below.

Embedding a form

Follow step 1 above.
Next, navigate to View > Live form. (If you don’t see this entry, this means you’re using an older version of Forms. You will also need to follow steps 2-3 above. Next, navigate to Form > Go to live form.) This should take you to the public version of the form. Copy the URL from your browser’s address bar.
Follow step 5 above.

Other shortcode parameters

Here are some other custom parameters you can use with the shortcode:

“width” – By default, this tries to use your theme’s content width. If this doesn’t exist, the width is “100%”. Fill in this value to enter a custom width.
“height” – Enter in a custom height for your Google Doc if desired. Defaults to “300”. Avoid percentages.
“seamless” – This parameter is only applicable to Documents. If you enter “0”, this will show the Google Docs header and footer. Default value is “1”, which means that no Google Docs header or footer will be shown.
“size” – This parameter is only applicable to Presentations. You can enter in “small”, “medium” or “large” to use the presentation preset sizes. Dimensions for these presets are: small (480×389), medium (960×749), large (1440×1109). To set a custom width and height, use the “width” and “height” parameters listed above instead.

Thanks

Scott Voth – for testing and writing a version of this documentation on the CUNY Academic Commons codex.
Christopher Stein – for noting a bug about using older presentations with the plugin.

In the Spotlight: Our Places: How We Commemorate

Our Places: How We Commemorate

This project is associated with Mary Sue Donsky’s LAW 2301 course, Estates, Trusts, and Wills. Students researched a commemoration for someone who had died, and posted photos and descriptions of the commemoration sites, which were located in neighborhoods all over the city. The types of commemorations were diverse, ranging from buildings, sculptures, photographs, street signs, and murals. The work provides a deeper look at sites we might normally just pass by each day without taking much notice.

In the Spotlight: Skateboard Filming

Skateboard Filming – Muhammad Floyd

Another site from Jennifer Sears’s Advanced Career Writing course, Muhammad Floyd’s blog is about his passion for making skating videos. He writes helpful reviews and provides advice about equipment and software. We especially like how he includes video reviews he has created himself. Also be sure to check out the link included on the About page to one of his skating videos. While the blog is focused on skateboarding, the information Muhammad provides would be helpful for anyone with an interest in video, especially related to shooting sports or other kinds of action.

In the Spotlight: Robots in Space

Robots in Space – Husaan Iqbal

Husaan Iqbal created this blog as a project in Jennifer Sears’s Advanced Career Writing course, which we’ve written about elsewhere. A mechanical engineering major and aircraft maintenance engineer, Husaan writes enthusiastically about air and space travel, and the rapidly advancing field of robotics. His site is also well-organized, with categories and tags that visitors can use to find posts on different topics.

This Week in the OpenLab: End of Term Edition

(image by Estrategy via Creative Commons License)

As the 2013-2014 school year comes to an end, we thought we’d take a moment to remind everyone about a few options for the end of the term. These include how to export any site on the OL, how to archive a course, project or site, and how to transfer administration of a course, club or project to a new administrator, in case the original is graduating or leaving for other reasons. Either way, have a great summer!

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TRANSFERRING ADMINISTRATION

Basically transferring administration from one user to another involves the steps you can find here. Once a person is a member of a course, project or club, they can be promoted to admin and, if they like, remove the old administrator.

The only other step to remember is you might have to change the email associated with the site, because your site may still be affiliated with the old admin’s email address, and thus alerts will go to them, not the new admin. You can do that under Settings>General on the dashboard of your site.

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ARCHIVING A COURSE

While we promise your work will be here for as long as you like, occasionally you might want to “save” a copy of a site on a particular day. Maybe at the end of the term, or just as you’re graduating, or if for some reason you want to “freeze” your portfolio for something like an application or tenure file. The OpenLab has a special plug-in for this, called StaticPress. You can activate it on the plug-ins page of your dashboard, and then follow the instructions you find here.

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IMPORTING/EXPORTING

If for some reason you want to move a copy of your site to another WordPress installation, you can easily do that on the OpenLab. We’ve covered this a few times, but thought it’s always good to remind people at the end of the term. To import or export a site, follow these instructions.

And that’s it for the year! Have a wonderful summer and, as always, contact us with any questions!

In the Spotlight: Writing Across the Curriculum

The Writing Across the Curriculum program has developed an excellent site on the OpenLab, full of helpful resources and great information about writing pedagogy. The site is well-structured to make information easy to find, and they’ve made great use of their right-hand sidebar. You can find advice from writing fellows, resources for faculty, information about workshops, and even materials from past workshops in case you’ve missed one.

Read through the Fellows Corner and WAC in Practice sections for discussions about pedagogy and examples of writing intensive courses and assignments on the OpenLab.

In the Spotlight Archive: Spring 2014

Since we’ve recently begun regular posts for each site we feature in the Spotlight, we want to be sure to give fair exposure to all the other great work we’ve featured over the years. Below you’ll find all the sites we’ve featured during spring 2014.

April 14: Wine & Beverage Management

Students in Karen Goodlad’s wine course have written great reviews of wine shops all over the city. Wine enthusiasts should take a look!

April 7: Crowdsourcing Cornelius Eady

Cornelius Eady is coming to the City Tech Literary Arts Festival on Apr. 10! Help crowdsource samples of his writing before the event.

March 31: Digital Photography 2

Robin Michals’s students are writing thoughtful reflections on a recent trip to MOMA. Earlier posts feature photos from home studios they built.

March 24: ENT4410 Technical Direction

John McCullough’s course site is full of activity! Students are posting images, video, and writing about what they’re busy creating in class.

March 17: Printmaking Club

The Printmaking Club is new, but their OpenLab site is already looking great! If you’re interested, their first meeting is March 19.

March 10: ENG1101 Composition 1101

Students in Sean Scanlan’s courses are posting their own photos, together with a written description. Check out their work on both sites!

February 24: Utopias & Dystopias

Jill Belli’s ENG 2000 students are imagining what their utopia would look like, and writing posts describing that ideal world.

February 17: Type and Media

We’re featuring some more typography this week, with Mary Brown’s course. Students have been posting on typography in different NYC neighborhoods.

February 10: New York Type

Graphic design student Andie Lessa’s blog looks at typography in NYC. Curious about the evolution of type in the NYC subway? Take a look!

January 27: Remembering Charles Hirsch

Read Sandra Cheng’s lovely post remembering Charles Hirsch, a valued member of the OpenLab, Living Lab, and City Tech communities.

January 20: OpenLab Update

You’ve probably noticed some changes around the OpenLab. Read more about what the update to version 1.4 means to you on the Open Road.

In the Spotlight: Graphic Design Principles

ADV1100, Graphic Design Principles (Sp 14) – Prof. Jenna Spevack

We chose Jenna Spevack’s course to feature this week for many reasons. For one, the site is well-designed and organized. It’s easy to find relevant information, of which there is plenty! There are tons of resources for students in the course, but anyone interested in the topic would also find a wealth of useful information.

Students don’t post to the course site; instead they’re using their ePortfolios for all their work. A list of links to all student portfolios appears in both the sidebar of the site, as well as the course profile. Jenna also pulls out examples from students’ ePortfolios and links to them in her posts.

The course site uses a unique feature, which allows members to link an OpenLab profile to an external site. In this case, Jenna hosts her course site on her own server, and links it to a course profile on the OpenLab, ensuring that the site appears in the OpenLab directory and on the home page whenever there’s site activity.

Take a look!