Following up on the general announcement and a personal post, one of the things we will be doing is getting back the focus on the individual user and the community as a central point for shared interests and topics. This brand new Eduspaces Central community has been created to discuss issues related to the eduspaces service, but more importantly about educational issues in general. All site members are automatically member of this community and are welcome to join in the discussion. If there is a community you maintain yourself, use this spaces to link back, if you'd like.
I know many would like to see the discussion forum reinstalled we had running for some time, but I look forward seeing how this will shape up!
Thanks for setting this up Misja. I think this will be a valuable and lively addition to Eduspaces. The fact that this can be viewed and operated as a discussion forum will compensate pretty well for the old Forums plugin being removed. It also has the advantage that we can embed images and share files here if we wish.
My feeling is that the discussion forums were so successful recently because of the issues that emerged (rather than the specific discussion board technology). The apparent closure and migration provoked a pretty passionate reaction. Some of this was rather sentimental (and I hold my hand up to this one) but also the fact that some had come to rely on Eduspaces for their teaching and student support. As several people here have said in the past, the network is the people, not the technology. We still have the people and we still have the network.
Terry, you are absolutely right, it is about the people, and I think the tool in this case will not matter that much. Plus, as you say, it has some benefits too ;)
Thanks Misja for adding the "Site Forum." I must be getting old. I did not see the new icon button at theh top of the screen.
I would like to ask a "practical" question. Is there some way that I can set the font size for input screens like this one?
I understand that I can click the "AA" icon at the top of the input screen and select the font size. However, this is a screen-by-screen decision that does not always seem to work the way I would like it to work. The default font size is incredibly small and very hard to read. It would be helpful if there were a "global option" that I could set that would change the default to a larger font size.
I don't know if this is possible to do. However, I would appreciate your considering my question/request.
Rick, glas you found the new community :) Have you tried using your browser to set the font size? Most if not all modern browsers have a an option to change the (text) zoom factor. E.g. I'm using firefox and it has this specific option.
Most of the time, I use the IE 6 browser. I have the font size set at "medium." This causes fonts on web pages to display just fine. Everything is easy to read.
The only place that I run into a problem is with the "Add a comment" screens in Eduspaces. When the "Your comment text" screen opens, the default font size is very small and difficult to read. I understand that I can click the "AA" icon at the top of input window to change the font size to a larger size. However, this feature is not easy to set. It seems as though you must type something first and then go back and change the font size. I do this, but it doesn't always work properly.
The global font size option in my IE 6 browser does not seem to control the font size in the "Add a comment" input window.
I am attempting to embed a video into a blog posting. I use SightSpeed to record the video clip. SightSpeed hosts the video and gives me a URL link to the video clip and the html embed code for the video clip.
I have tried to use the embed video option in Eduspaces to embed the video player. All it does is post a string of html code in the message screen. Is the code produced by SightSpeed not compatible with Eduspaces. Below is the code string produced by SightSpeed for a message that I wanted to embed in the Eduspaces Central posting that I added today.
Glad this is now up ... (and glad you liked the idea of a site wide community; though I'm sure I wasn't the only person to suggest it!)
Rick, I see what you mean by the font in here being smaller than the rest of the site. I know that the text in input boxes wasn't affected by "font size" in IE 6 - I seem to remember that Opera does increase everything; text boxes & all. I'm using Flock (Firefox derivative) - which doesn't increase text boxes (IE 7 does). However, I think that it's also the HTML editor that's in use here, as ifyou have a look in the "Your Name" box, the writing's bigger, and in the "TinyMCE" editor I've got on my WordPress blog, it's bigger.
By putting "Site Forum" at the top; will people think that the old forums have been revitalised? Do we need a different link to show that it's a Site wide community, that has a single blog (which, by default, is seen in forum view) ... or isn't that actually the case for community; I've not investigated, and right now I'm about to go and get a coffee!
Rick, about the font size, it got me curious and I had a look around - now the size should have increased. About embedding the video, this will need a closer look since eduspaces seems to create correct code but apparently not good enough :) Great to see you've started a brand new topic, it would be great to see this space flourish.
Emma, if you can come up with a catchy name for the the link at the top, you're welcome! 'SpacesCentral' perhaps?
Spaces Central is good. Not too longso fits nicely in the main menu. Being in the main menu and all eduspace users automatically enrolled in it (will this happen for new registrations?) will make it easy to find. The rss feed should make life easy too.
Thanks for the quick response to my questions. The "new type size" is great. It is easy to see and work with. Great improvement!
I use SightSpeed (www.sightspeed.com), a hosted video messaging service, to create streaming video messages. SightSpeed gives me a URL link and html embed code that I can use to access the message. I included the html code for a short video message in my earlier posting to you.
When I try to use the "Add Video" option for a blog posting, I pasted the code into the window and clicked the accept option. This results in the string of code being displayed in the message screen when the message is posted.
Before all of the disruption in December, I used to use the HTML option at the top of the input screen to input the html embed code. This worked. The SightSpeed player embedded OK and played the video properly in the blog posting.
Yesterday, I tried putting the embed code into the HTML screen. Things did not work. Somehow, I have forgotten what I did that made using the HTML input window work properly.
I must be getting old. Can't remember what I did. Bummer!
In follow-up to your earlier post, have you been able to determine why the html code strips out embed code when attempting to add a video to a posting? Can this issue be fixed soon?
Being new to this site I didn't realise it had disappeared! It certainly looks like an excellent educational resource and help site so I imagine I'll be here often. I'm looking to introduce an Elgg-powered system into my high-school in the near future.
