Archive Page 2
Webpage Email with Graphics
by Stacey Plant
I do not want to depend on a third party to deliver my html emails so here is what I did. I went to the html stationary that Microsoft Outlook uses and added my custom webpage to that same directory. Now I can pull up my own “stationary”, newsletter or special announcement and hit send like any other email. There are a few tricks so pay close attention and don’t stop reading yet.
You will need a basic understanding of HTML code. A great place to start learning HTML is: http://www.w3schools.com/
Differences between webpage development for websites and email.
- All links including image links should be referenced through an absolute path containing the root directory and all other sub directories required. You cannot “attach” an image in an HTML email. They must be hosted on a web server somewhere like iWeb at TTU. Example: <img src=”http://www.tntech.edu/institute/images/banner.jpg width=”550″ height=”429″>
- Tables with minimal widths must be used to accommodate the average email client preview pane. 500-600 pixels is the maximum width you should use. Use a simple layout like two column with one row across the top and one row across the bottom. Spanning columns to merge cells for rows does not play nice in the Lotus Notes email client. No more than one or two please.
- Major tags like <HTML> and <BODY> cannot be styled with fonts, colors or background images. Web email clients like gmail and yahoo will strip out the major html tags so they do not interfere with their pages. You will need to create one large table with 100% width to wrap around all parts of your email and specify the background color there.
- CSS must be embedded inside the body tag, not the head tag for the same reason as above.
- Your email should also be mirrored on your own website as an alternative method to viewing it’s contents.
Where do I begin?…………………………………
We will use Dreamweaver for developing but you can use a simple text editor for pure HTML coding if you like.
- Download the email templates zip folder from MailChimp http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/templates/. Extract all files to a folder on your site. Example: My Documents/Websites/HtmlEmail/
- Open html_email_basic_template.html in the split pane view of Dreamweaver.
- Notice the CSS styles are nested inside the body tag. This is usually put within the <head> tag of most WebPages but must be placed with the <body> tag. Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, for example, will strip out <html>, <head> and <body> tags to insert their own. Everything must be defined after the <body> tag to insure proper display.
- Notice the green background color is defined in the outside table with a width of 100% as bgcolor=‘#99CC00’
- To change the background color replace the hexadecimal code in the code view pane. In Dreamweaver you can delete =‘#99CC00’ and begin retyping =‘ and a color chart will automatically pop up for you to choose a color.
Make sure you make the same change inside the <body> tag and the first <table> tag.- Create your own banner image making sure that it is exactly 550 pixels wide. It can be any height and must be in the format of .jpg or .gif. Replace the current Acme Bananas image by double-clicking on the image in the design view pane. You must add the absolute path to this image.
Example: http://iweb.tntech/facultyName/images/banner.jpg.- Headers and subtitles are formatted with <span> tags around the text. Font-size, font-weight, color, font-family and line-height can be changed to fit your scheme in the code view pane. Highlight and replace the text in either the design view pane or the code view pane.
- Make your email available to view in a web browser by linking to the identical page on your website attached to the phrase “View it in your browser” at the top.
Now for the work-around using Microsoft Outlook……..
- Locate the stationery folder for Microsoft Outlook. This is usually
located in the following file directory:- My Computer >> Local Disk C: >> Program Files >> Common Files >> Microsoft Shared >> Stationery
- Copy your html document to this folder.
- Open Microsoft Outlook and select the Actions Menu on the top toolbar
- Select New Mail Message Using and then select More Stationery
- Browse to locate your file by name and send yourself an email as a test. Test this email in as many email clients as you can find before sending a mass email to your audience.
- Make sure you have also uploaded the same page to an accessible website which is linked to in this document.
That’s it. To html email or not to html email, that is the question. The choice is yours.
Filed under: Email, Software, Workshops | 2 Comments
Tags: Graphic Design, HTML, HTML email, web
Student Engagement Roundtable
I am really late wi
th this “update” but better late than never!
A few weeks ago I attended the Student Engagement Roundtable that Dr. Alice Camuti put together. She invited students and faculty who were interested to come and discuss using things like text messaging, social networking, social bookmarking, blogs, wikis and other widely-used technologies by the latest generation of college students in a classroom. About a dozen people showed up from several different disciplines (Chemical Engineering, English, Art, Business, Biology and others) and discussed the use of of these technologies.
Andy Smith, an Instructor in English here at TTU, came with one of his previous students and presented on how he has embraced some of this technology in his class. Here is a summary about the presentation Andy Smith and his student Sarah presented to help jumpstart the discussion.
“OMG Prof”: YouTubing, Facebooking, and Blogging in the Writing Classroom
Today, most students enter college already fluent in various forms of new media. While the essay itself remains a vigorous venue for creative expression, this genre every day responds to the collapsing of boundaries between genres and mediums.
Life in the world of hypermedia involves immersion in interactive arts that invoke immediacy. How might we fashion the composition classroom as a site that engages with new media while still inspiring the integrity of the essay as a valid form?
This collaborative presentation emerges from tentative experiments with these ideas in a first year writing classroom. Over the course of one semester, an instructor and student investigated the practical (and often playful) incorporation of such web-based realities as YouTube, Facebook, Blogger, and LiveJournal into the classroom.
The student’s projects included composing an essay about a YouTube commercial and utilizing YouTube as a source for research, employing Facebook as an alternative to email or course web tools for planning and networking, and completing an anti-essay in blog form. Web realities can be interpreted and analyzed as texts (as with YouTube) or they can be utilized as tools for composing, publishing, and networking (as with Facebook or blogs).
Through a multi-modal presentation about their discoveries, the co-presenters (an instructor and student) will provide a theoretical framework for hypermedia practices in the classroom based on current studies of online networking, share online examples of their work, and offer practical suggestions for incorporating YouTube, Facebook, and blogs into our classroom practice at the university.
The people that were there really were interested in how they could get the students involved using some of the technology they already use now. We talked about different ideas and ways to implement using different technologies.
Clickers vs Cell Phones:
We have standardized on clickers here on campus, but another idea that was discussed was using software that allows students to use their cell phones to text answers for in class polls and things. Dr. Camuti used a USB drive that she bought from telecommunications that is from Verizon Wireless that allows you to collect the data. Another way is using www.polleverywhere.com. Try it out, you can use it for free for small classes. If you have larger classes you might have to get more creative and perhaps have questions that can be discussed and answered by small groups. Janet Coonce has used this in her large Chemistry class and has liked it. It gives you the ability to download a PowerPoint slide to just insert into your presentation if you would like to. There is a free version that has some limitations, but using that creativity we could figure something out.
Another faculty member, Ward Doubet, mentioned about a project he has his students do. They have to map out a road trip that has points of interest dealing with art. Some of the tools like blogs, wikis or other software that can be shared with others could be perfect for this. How fun and interesting that would be to read those! It would be even more fun to go on one!
Some other points of discussion were:
- Peer evaluations and peer reviews by using blogs that are public
- Supplementing face-to-face with new communication and technology
- Options for assignments like a written paper OR an mp3 audio presentation
- Including a better communication area on your syllabus that lets students know the best ways to communicate with you using different tools, specifying timeframes and such
- Facebook and whether faculty want to allow students to see their “real-self” vs their “digital-self”, personal vs professional.
Filed under: Social Media | Leave a Comment
Tags: Social Media, Student Engagement
Our last installment of the Afternoon Dessert series was just before Thanksgiving so I am trying to catch up now.
Nowadays students are not always living in the dorms or even in the same town when they are attending classes and with online classes, really they could be anywhere. We talked about several software programs that are available to faculty and students to bridge the communication gap and help with collaboration when email is not the answer.
Some of the tools we demonstrated and/or discussed were:
Instant Messaging (IM): There are lots of IM out there (Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo, MSN Messenger and more). These programs allow you to chat with others in a real-time text based environment. Some of these programs also give you the ability to send files or talk via video and voice chat but many of them are only two-way (for only two people). If you have multiple accounts with different IM systems and you don’t want to have to log into each of them separately you can use programs like Trillian and Pidgin for a Windows and Adium for Mac OS. Just setup the program to access the different IM accounts you have and access all of them from one program.
Elluminate Live (vClass): This software gives you the ability to have a video, chat, share applications, transfer files, two-way audio and an interactive whiteboard. The free vRoom can only have three people participate at a time and it cannot be recorded. This is a great way to have office hours or encourage small groups to use it when working on a project. To get a free vRoom go to http://www.elluminate.com.
TTU has purchased a license to use the full version of Elluminate Live for courses on campus also. This version allows you to record your class sessions and you can even poll the class on certain questions inside the software. We have a limited classroom size of 30 seats (this includes the instructor). You can find out more or reserve seats for a class by going to http://www.tntech.edu/institute/elluminate.asp.
Dimdim: Free web conferencing that allows you to share you desktop, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and use video with no download for the attendee. The free version allows you to have a room with up to 20 people participating. This program also gives you a phone number to call in case someone doesn’t have the ability to join in using a microphone on a computer. (www.dimdim.com)
Skype: Allows you to make calls from your computer to someone else’s computer for free. You can send files, have two-way video and multiple people talking as well as a chat window. It allows you to have two people with video feeds, but once more than two people are involved in the call the video feed will turn off. You can pay a small fee to call a landline or cell phone anywhere in the world. (www.skype.com)
OoVoo: Similar to skype in that you can call other computers or phone numbers but it also allows you to have multiple video feeds and you can record the call. (www.oovoo.com)
Scriblink: A free digital whiteboard that can be shared with others with no registration required. You can have private whiteboards, save the whiteboard, upload images, in-screen chat, VOIP conferencing and file transfer. (www.scriblink.com)
Zoho Meeting: A free version is only for one-on-one and includes web conferencing, remote assistance and online meetings. (www.zoho.com)
Any of these tools can be useful for students and faculty who are working on projects, research and anything else that requires collaboration of any kind. These are even helpful for a quick one-on-one meeting with a student or faculty member or just holding a help session online. The software that you will want to use depends on what you want to accomplish though. If you want multiple people to participate with video you will want to choose something that can support that like OoVoo. If you want to just share a PowerPoint presentation and you are not worried about video, then something like Elluminate or Dimdim would work just fine. If you use Gmail chat already, just download the newest plug-in for the google chat tool to allow voice and video.
If you find another program that we should let people know about, please comment on this post.
Filed under: Collaboration, Software | 1 Comment
Tags: Collaboration, Communication, Software
While there are a lot of tools that faculty can use outside of D2L (iLearn), we also want to give you more information about how you can use groups in the D2L system to release information, setup discussions and assignment dropboxes, filter students and email within the Classlist, assign a grade to a group and even chat with them online. Believe it or not, the tools in D2L are pretty good for these things.
Groups, Discussions & Dropbox: You can setup groups using the Groups tool under Edit Course. It allows you to setup a group category and then generate groups for that category. If you have multiple projects where you might like to have different groups for each project you can setup different categories. When you setup the groups you can also have it generate a discussion topic that is only accessible by the members of the specific groups as well as a dropbox (assignment) folder that allows the students in a specific group to drop one file for the group rather than each sending you the file individually.
Classlist: Some other options you have with using groups is in the Classlist and Grades tools. You can search for the students that are enrolled in a specific group in the Classlist by selecting the View By drop-down box and choosing Groups. To the right, select the specific group you wan to view and click the Apply button. You can then email the students by choosing “Email everyone this tab” or just select the checkbox next to their name and choose the email icon.
Grades: In the Grades tool you can view by groups also by following the same process. You can also assign a grade to the group as a whole. Once you are viewing that grade item select the correct group. Select the checkbox to the left of all the names, click on the grade icon above the names, enter a single grade to be applied to all the students selected and click Save. It will enter the same grade for all the students you chose.
Chat: To chat with the students (first you will need to add the tool to your navigation bar) you can setup a private chat and just invite the people in the group by selecting Add Members, searching on groups and selecting the people in the group. Students can also setup chats themselves, but if they do this and you are wanting to be involved you will need to be invited.
For more information about Groups and other tools go to the iLearn Resource Site. We are working on getting it completely up to date, but we have linked the most up-to-date tutorials at the top of the page.
Filed under: iLearn | Leave a Comment
Tags: D2L, iLearn
To keep my posts a little shorter I decided to split up the information from the second session of the Afternoon Dessert series. I covered Google Docs and Zoho in the previous post and in this one I would like to talk about Wikis and Xythos. We briefly talked about Wikis during the session and I was made aware of the what all Xythos could do after the session.
Xythos:
We have had our campus U: drive for a while now and this is the new way of using that drive. In the past you could only get to the U: drive on campus from a lab. Now with Xythos you can access your U: drive from anywhere through the internet. You can share files with students or faculty and give permissions as Viewer (read-only), Contributor (read, write, delete) or Full Access (read, write, delete, administer). Through the Manage tool you can enable Versioning so that you can see what changes have been made to the document by the different users.
You can also share the files with someone that is not a TTU faculty or student by setting up a Ticket. This Ticket allows you to give permissions as either a Viewer or Contributor, set a time limit that the file is available (from minutes to years) and setup a password that the person would use to access the file. Once you setup a ticket you can email it to anyone that you wish to have access to the file.
Xythos is only available as a tool to current faculty and students at TTU, but it can be shared with others. To find out more go to the ITS tutorial – http://www.tntech.edu/its/labs/UDrive/index.htm.
Wikis:
What is a wiki? It is essentially a web site that can be collaboratively built by anyone or just those who are given access.
Now, how can these wikis be used in a classroom? Perhaps by students working on a project together. They can develop their project online using a wiki that the faculty member has access to see and comment on the content and/or process. A great article that was shared in a class about Social Media in the classroom is about “The Power of Wikis in Higher Ed” (http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/08/the-power-of-wikis-in-higher-ed.aspx).
What else can you use a wiki for? Perhaps the faculty in an area could use it to work build an area for their students, or keep it private and have it available only for those who are approved. Maybe you want to build a wiki for a course and you want students to help keep it up to date. There are many ideas for wikis, but we just need to explore and think about the goals.
You can sign up for a free wiki at the following sites:
- pbwiki – http://www.pbwiki.com
- wetpaint – http://www.wetpaint.com
What ideas do you have for wikis in higher education?
Filed under: Collaboration, Software | 5 Comments
Tags: Collaboration, Software
In the Afternoon Dessert series we discussed the topic of free web applications that are available and how they can be used for collaboration in the classroom (online or onground).
Depending on what the goal is and what end product is necessary there are different tools available. If a final paper needs to be turned in with the proper formatting then using tools like Google Docs or Zoho are for you.
Each of the web applications listed give you the ability to share the files with other people by giving them access to read and/or edit the document. Each time a person updates the file, a copy is saved in the history so that you have a record of each revision that was made. You can also publish these files to the web and then send the URL to people or link to it from a web site or blog.
Google Docs:
Google Docs is a web application where you can create, upload and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. There are other tools that can be used in conjunction with the basic Google Docs for chatting, discussions and sites with wikis also. A couple nice features are the ability to be able to compare two revisions to see what changes were made and you can create online forms for people to fill out using the spreadsheet for surveys or just getting information about people.
- The documents can be exported as DOC, RTF, TXT, OpenOffice, PDF and HTML.
- The spreadsheets can be exported as CSV, HTML and TXT (sheet only) and XLS, ODS and PDF.
- The presentations can be exported as PPT, PDT and TXT.
Google Docs In Plain English Tutorial:
If you do not want to get a Google account you can go to the Google Apps area and login to the tntech.edu area with your campus username after setting it up. You will have access to the Google Docs there too.
Zoho.com
Zoho is another web application that allows you to create, upload and share documents online, as well as organize and plan projects. If you already have a Google account you can even login with that. Zoho has a little more powerful toolset, especially and it has more business related tools also. It is very easy to use and switch between the different tools you want to use within each tool. It also currently supports the latest Microsoft Office documents. In the spreadsheet
- The documents can be exported as DOC, DOCX, LaTex, SXW, RTF, TXT, ODF (ODT), PDF and HTML.
- The spreadsheets can be exported as XLS, ODS, SXC, GNUMERIC, CSV, TSV, XML, XHTML, HTML and PDF.
- The presentations can be exported as PPT, PPS, ODP, HTML and PDF.
Recommend It! For anyone who is looking for free alternative options for their home computer for creating and editing documents, either of these choices would be a great option. Each of them include an offline mode to allow you to download the files to your computer. Since it is online though, anywhere you have a working internet connection and a supported browser you can access your documents.
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Tags: Collaboration, Software
Sharing files can be a hassle when you have multiple files that are too large to email, so what options do you have? We looked at a few tools that are free and online that allow you and your students or student groups to share files with each other.
How can you use this service?
Have you ever wanted to send a document through email to your students or someone you are doing a research project with but the file was too large? What did you end up doing? Did you send it to them on a disk instead? Perhaps you have an assignment file that is more than the allowed 3 MB that your campus email will allow your students to receive? Maybe you are working with a person at another university on a research project? On a personal level suppose you just want to send a picture of the kids to your parents but in a format decent enough to have printed. Today we have more options and some are even free. You can share files (in many cases up to 100MB or more) with others through these online sharing programs.
Some of the programs that we discussed in the Afternoon Dessert session were:
Drop.io – Simple private sharing. You can drop files using the web, phone, email, widget or fax. It’s free, no account required, 100MB per file limit, can setup a password, remains available for up to one year, multiple file upload, ability to send to cell phones and email, you can download the Firefox add-on, drag and drop files using the bookmarklet and you can embed media, you can setup your drop.io folder to send you alerts through twitter, text messaging or email about added files, it even has a Facebook application. (http://drop.io/)
4shared – Free file sharing and online storage. Once you sign up you can upload, access and share your files. Easy graphic interface, 100MB per file limit, 5GB of storage space, can setup a password for folders, files remain as long as you do not go without logging in for more than 30 days, multiple file upload, files are not in the public search with the free version. (http://www.4shared.com)
YouSendIt – Digital delivery. You can send a file quickly without creating an account. Sign up for the free Lite version, 100MB per file limit, file is available for 7 days, 100 max downloads per file, you can install an Outlook plug-in and setup a rule for sending large files, a desktop Express version (Windows only) you can use for quick uploading, other software plug-ins available for upgraded versions. (http://www.yousendit.com)
We want to hear from you!
If you have used a different program and would like to tell us about it, please comment on this blog post by selecting the title of the post or the Comments link at the bottom of the post.
Filed under: File Sharing, Software, Workshops | 1 Comment
Tags: sharing, Software, Workshops
We are starting a new series called Afternoon Dessert. Come and join us as we discuss a series on the following topic.
“Equipping Your Student Groups”
Help your students successfully work together on group projects.
The sessions will begin on Monday, November 3rd from 2:00pm-3:00pm in Clement Hall 215. Come join us for a one-hour demonstration and discussion about the different tools available and how you can use them in your classroom. While you are here, enjoy a little something sweet to eat.
Nov. 3 – What tools are available for students to share files?
Nov. 10 – How can the students work on projects collaboratively without being in the same room?
Nov. 17 – What tools are available in iLearn to help with group management and collaboration?
Nov. 24 – What are some easy (and free) tools students can use to communicate about their project?
For more information, visit the Technology Institute site.
Filed under: Workshops | Leave a Comment
Tags: Workshops
MS Office 2007 is quickly becoming the version of Microsoft Office that students are using in the labs and on their own machines. Office 2007 appends an “x” to the end of the existing office filetypes (Ex: .docx, .pptx, .xlsx)
If you do not have MS Office 2007 in your office or on your home computer and you need to view the files being submitted to you, get the download necessary for the version you need by visiting the ITS web site (http://www.tntech.edu/its/news/MSCompPack/).
If you would like to purchase a copy of MS Office 2007 for home use you can go to the Purchases page on the ITS site and select the appropriate link (Microsoft products) under the Student, Faculty, and Staff Pricing for home use heading. You will need to enter your PC Lab account password (this is the account used to access the PC Labs and iLearn). If you have never used your PC Lab account, you will need to initialize it first by going to the Change Password page and resetting it. Once you reset it you will be able to login and select the software you would like to purchase at a discounted rate. When viewing the Faculty/Staff selections, make sure to note that the ones that say “Work at Home” must be used only for work-related purposes. The other versions do not have this restriction.
Filed under: Software | Leave a Comment
Tags: Software
Jing! It’s a wonderful thing!
Jing is a really great program that allows you to quickly capture your screen or a part of your screen as an image or a video.
The program can be setup to run on startup and constantly run (on both Mac and Windows) so that when you need to capture something on your screen you just select Capture and then choose the window or region of the screen you want to capture.
You choose whether you want to create an image or a video. It is truly that simple. And Free! We love free when it works this well.
Jing Capture Image
1 - Annotate your image using arrows, text, boxes and highlighting.
2 - Enter a filename for the image (or video)
3 - Share, Embed, Save, Copy or Cancel an image
What can you use this for? Well… perhaps you are using a software program in class and you want to show an example of a process with multiple steps, you can make a short video of the process. You can take a screen image and annotate it to put into PowerPoint presentations and other resources. Maybe you are having some trouble with Dreamweaver and you are not sure about the settings, take a quick picture of your screen and email it to support. Check it out and see what you can do with it and comment back to let us know.
Go to http://www.jingproject.com to download the software and start jinging!
Filed under: Screencapture, Software | Leave a Comment
Tags: Screencapture, Software
