(image by Axel Kristinsson via creative commons license)
Welcome to this week’s This Week! We’re going with the pretense that spring is on the way. At least for a few days. This week a tool, a course, and a plug-in. Enjoy!
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Featured Tool: Blogging Grading Rubric
From the department of simple yet very very useful, we bring you Jill Belli’s blogging grading rubric, which is clear, concise, and gives students (and probably the professor) a sense of what is required and valued when blogging. And as you know, students often aren’t sure exactly what is required in this somewhat unfamiliar, possibly less formal, still potentially thoughtful, short form. And often professors new to the OpenLab aren’t all that sure either. So do take some guidance from Jill, give her some credit, and say thanks and hi on the elevator.
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Featured Course: Vampires!
(image by Misiocytka via creative commons license)
There are courses that are of interest only to the people in the field, and there are courses that people all over are going to want to take a look at. Laura Westengard’s Vampires class falls into that latter category, and we’re thrilled that it’s open and available to the public here on the OL. With readings, assignments, and student reflection on the subject, it’s a fine growing repository of all things vampire.
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Featured Plug-In: WTI Like Post
Very few of our plug-ins are simpler than WTI Like Post. As it’s developers say, “WTI Like Post is a plugin for adding like (thumbs up) and unlike (thumbs down) functionality for wordpress posts/pages. On admin end along with configuration settings, it will show maximum of 10 most liked posts/pages. You can configure these settings to match with your requirements. It also has the option to reset the settings back to default if needed. It comes with a widget to display the most liked posts/pages which you can place in any widget area. It has live updation of like count on the widget if you like or unlike any post/page.”
Just activate the plug-in, and you’ll see the like appear at the bottom of your post. By default, however, there’s a ‘dislike’ option which you might want to remove, particularly from student work. The settings for this plug-in are found on the plug-in page of your site dashboard.
Hope you like it. And as always, contact us with any questions!
