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)

_________________________

 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!

____________________

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.

______________________

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.

2. Log in to your SlideShare account or create a new one for free.

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!