TOOLS project - Things to do

Dear Caoimhín

I am preparing a sequence of 14 units with exercises for my students (I have to teach in two weeks time from now) during my testing Clilstore I prepared the following wish list:

1. Linking to next exercises or other websites has to be possible from the first step. Many users may not experience that linking becomes possible in the edit mode. Done

2. When linking I would like an option of opening the page in a new window (not Tab) this makes it possible for students to search for answers in the text or listen to the audio/video while answering questions
It should be possible to add this as an option, even though I personally don’t like this behaviour at all (See my diatribe against it.) However, I don’t think it is technical possible for the author to select between new tab and new window. Currently Safari interprets ‘target="_top"’ as new window; all the other main browsers interpret it as new tab. Better to educate the students to use right-click and then choose “open in new tab” or “open in new window”.

3. There should be a frame where the "author" can write comments like "Video and Text used with permission from Friendly Robotics www.friendlyrobotics.com"

4. We need radio buttons to indicate language level of proposed users (not the language as such). Done

5. We all need to compile a list of target areas that the author can use to indicate content like: General, Service Trades, Electrical engineering, healthcare, politics, energy, vacation, on the job, songs, travelling, transport etc. We may need such categories so we can filter the units.

Venlig hilsen
Kent Andersen

Some of my own top priorities at the moment are:

• A field with description of content (we could suggest the authors to make the description in both English and the target language, but it should be optional) Done - Summary field
• A tickbox that indicates if the unit is followed by exercises (tasks or Hot Potatoes)
• A tickbox with indication of needed language level for the learners. Done
• A filter system for the students based on drop-down menus where they select language and level. Done
• A welcome screen where the users (authors and their students) select language and level and are then presented the list of units with descriptions. Done (same as previous request?) And the choice is now remembered via a persistent cookie.
• A "Report abuse" link/button at the end of each unit Done

Venlig hilsen
Kent Andersen

Would it be possible to set the title “<title>Wordlink</title>” of a unit to the “TITLE” that a user wrote while authoring the unit? This will have two advantages: The Title can be searched and found by eg Google and the title becomes visible in the Browser top bar.
This is already done for the unwordlinked units (not what Kent is asking for), but to do it for the wordlinked units would unfortunately require a technical rethink, because Wordlink (which is in charge and is handling the title) is dumb and is merely creating frames and getting other programs to fill them. It might be technically possible if I change Wordlink to use iframes instead of frames, something I am thinking of doing anyway.

I have played around with Clilstore and I think we need to consider if it should not automatically place an "Enter" (i.e. In html a <br>) at the end of each line. There may be unfortunate results coming from this, but let's have some opinions. Done. Added as an option in the new page form.

A facility for authors to write a couple of lines for a brief (and searchable) summary. Done

A facility for authors to easily embed sounds and videos from general purpose stores such as Dropbox which do not provide an embed code, as opposed to the likes of Youtube and Ipadio which do.

I am not so sure about the registration part, but it could be nice to “learn” more about the authors, perhaps even the option of photos. Yes, it would be good to have an author “profile” page. This could have a facility to change passwords (a big defficiency at present), and to upload a photo. Perhaps also a facility for an author to change his/her userid. It would perhaps be good to allow authors to “offer” ownership of a module to another author, and then the profile page would allow an author to accept modules which were on offer.

I think the "Include test units" field should act like a button, for the inexperienced end users it may not appear logical first to tick Include test units and then click “Filter”. Done

I wonder if we can plug-in to Facebook (and Blog, and Linkedin etc.) with a share option in each exercise??

The evaluation form for training workshops should be available as an online form, and the results should be stored online.

We need to use language names, not just codes, in the forms for authoring and filtering Clilstore units.
 The kind of square box used for language selection in Google Translate would be great (especially with the memory of recently used languages). (But it requires more programming (perhaps in Javascript) than the current system.)
 Native names for languages are fine, but it would be good if the list also included a Latin script translation in alphabetic order, as well as the current local script (Arabic, Greek Cyrillic or whatever) version as at present.
 This should continue to be possible to compose and store units with any valid language code. i.e. It should not be restricted to languages for which Multidict currently has dictionaries.

In the form for authoring a new unit, where it currently says "Embed code", this should be changed to a dropdown with "Embed code" as the default, but listing other possibilities: Youtube URL; Flickr URL; TED URL, Ipadio URL, etc. The program would then attempt to make sense of these URLs, extract the relevant information, and turn this into the appropriate embed code.

User management:
 E-mail address verification should be compulsory before registration is confirmed.
 If a user forgets his or her password, it should be possible to request an e-mail containing a link valid for an hour which will allow the password to be reset. (But a password hints facility is not needed.)
 There should be a "profile" page for each user. The user's "real name" should be visible to everyone, but the e-mail address should only be visible to Admin (except perhaps if the user themselves asks for it to be made visible).
 It would be nice to allow the user to upload a profile picture, and specify a university or college affiliation, and perhaps homepage and Facebook links.
 Registered users would have the facility to specify the additional fields to be included when the "Include optional columns" box is ticked. Some of the possible optional fields would be: number of hits; length of text in words (or characters); length of vidio; whether the unit includes exercises.

A red "Report abuse" button is required. This should be at the end of unit, and the user should be required to fill in a form with a capcha, giving details of the problem. This would e-mail Kent and Caoimhín (Skye) directly. Done

It would be nice to possibly add a new bar at the top of the page where the links to "Clilstore", "Unit info", "Email the author" would reside, leaving room for possibly more author-generated link buttons on the existing bar. However, this might move the video and scrolling text area too far down the screen, especially if the user was on a device with a small screen.

The possibility of automatically resizing the video to suit the screen width should be investigated.

It is important to get Google Translate working again with Multidict. (And efforts should continue to improve the repertoire of dictionaries in general.)

Wysiwyg editing of the text should be implemented, if reasonably possible.

A student interface, beginning with Kent's suggested design, should be implemented and discussed and improved as a separate page at first, with the idea of possibly making it the Clilstore "top" page.

There should be a facility for authors to create menu page of Clilstore units on a particular topic or for a particular class. These would be simple, with just a title, summary, author, and list of units which the author would specify by inputing their numbers. The address of the menu would be something like "../menu/42".

The team could also create some fancier webpages showcasing units on particular topics, but these would be produced as separate "one-offs".

Clilstore should have an "About" page and a `"Help" page in the title bar (as Multidict and Wordlink already have). The Help page would have help for students and (a lot more) help for authors. The help for authors would include links to good sites for videos (e.g. Youtube) and especially to good sites for videos with transcripts (e.g. TED).

We decided there was no urgency and possibily no need for keywords and subject classification of units, but this should be kept under review.

We decided that an acknowledgements frame at the bottom might be an unnecessary complication, as acknowledgements could be included if need be in small print at the bottom of the text, but this should be kept under review.