CogBlogged Tagged ‘MLX’

cc licensed flickr photo shared by The Rocketeer Who ever thought the word “repository” was a good idea? C’mon, nearly every one’s connotations go elsewhere and sure, I’m going to be encouraged to go add something (or fond something) I created to something that sounds like something that goes up your butt? But I digress. I always hated that term. Last month Stephen Downes wrote in response to some discussions about JISC Repositories a post about his reasoning for running as much of his online resources on his own servers (Not the Institutional Web Server)- in one bullet point he said: my online work has also outlived most every initiative that has been created to provide a ‘permanent’ home for such work; projects in Canada like CAREO and eduSource are now history. I’m sure people in Britain can create their own list of shuttered initiatives. I’m rather proud that the [...]

A few posts back I asked for some help to Convince Curmudgeons with Comments — this is in reference to a few vocal critics of our online report tool for a faculty summer project professional growth program who did not want copies of their projects to be cross listed in our Maricopa Learning eXchange. As is the reports themselves are about 4 clicks in from the main professional growth site to the Examples of Summer projects where likely few web explorers might venture; also the value that the MLX adds over just a response to a handful of questions is the ability to attach relevant web sites and upload supplementary media files which can be attached. For example, Donna Gaudet’s project on Online Community and Retention Research has a static report on the FPG web site (response to the report form questions) while her MLX package has the same responses [...]

Hey, want to do me and the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) a favor? Would you like to see something positive actually come out of comments? Read on. The set up might be long, but bear with me. I’d like to convince some of our faculty the worth of sharing their work, their efforts online, rather than locking reports up in a file cabinet. Our office coordinates a faculty professional growth program for Maricopa- the funds and programs are managed by our faculty and reps from the campuses, and MCLI (that’s us) provides logistical support. One of the ways we have done so is to put all the program information online (it used to be in a thick wad of paper for some reason referred to as “The Green Book”. We introduced some new consistency in program applications by converting variously formatted Word documents and even carbon forms to MS Word [...]

So it was time to put my money where my snout was… After waffling about screencasting, I decided to give it a go. Downloading the Windows Media Encoder was not too bad. I played a bit, not really sure of the various settings for the encoding. Anyhow, I recorded an 11 minute quick attempt at showing wide range of RSS feeds we provide in the Maricopa Learning eXchange, and then how you can copy them over to our Feed2JS site, create a cut and paste JavaScript, and then put them into a site. I sketched out my topics, figured out which URLs to have open in Firefox (you have to love tabbed browsing, apparently that has not boarded the cluetrain in the MSIE shop), and gave it a go. I am not nearly as smooth as Jn Udell, and one of my demo links was kafloooey (bad), but oh well. [...]

He’s baaaaaaaaaaack. That Biff Cantrell dude who chalked up a March 2004 hour long Breezed tour of the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX). He chopped out a lot of stuff, updated some images and links, and created a mini tour of the different kinds of RSS feeds in the MLX as a demo for the May 17 Ocotillo retreat called RSS for Syndicating Maricopa Learning eXchange Content to Other Web Sites: Over the last few years, we have done much publicity to solicit new content for the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX). We have built in a number of features to the MLX that deploy RSS, or Really Simple Syndication (and XML published format of information) that allows other Maricopa web sites to create a dynamic window, displayed in their own web site, to a particular subset of MLX content. The ahem, mighty wind can be heard via http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/show/ocotillo05/

I have been habitually behind in getting our open Source Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) into shape for others to use. As some have chided me, there is not much up at SourceForge but a place holder. We have an open demo version that will fold in the new changes as they continue to develop; but you can create accounts, create packages, and use all the features from our first generation Maricopa Learning eXchange in the open demo site: http://zircon.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx247/ It is fairly alpha if that right now. Last year, there was a lofty plan to have it ready for the June New Media Consortium, but I ended up waving my arms at the possibilities. I am rather intent in getting at least a beta available for this year’s NMC conference. I did have an internal project that has asked for an MLX site- The National Association of Community College Teacher [...]

One of my colleagues has gotten bit severely by the weblog / RSS fever— this is a good thing. Shelley teaches English at Mesa Community College and is experimenting this semester with having her student review resources via Bloglines, and she is crafting an extra credit assignment for them to post entries in the Bloglines weblog (not the greatest blog tool, but good enough for a start). Today she sent me an e-mail describing what she had created, with an attachment of her assignment. Since she has a good sense of humor, and I am just so tired of people in our system only sharing via e-mail (the syndrome I refer to as “e-mail attachment disorder”), I relied with this message: WARNING WARNING This email program has returned the message to you as the owner of the account prefers that all such items be sent as URL links to content [...]

It’s been a while since the spam roaches attached the Trackbacks on the Maricopa Learning eXchange, but I guess they had some extra time after recess to splat their PPC (porn, pills, casino) links into the MLX Sharebacks. I am still resisting closing it down completely, but likely will, as no one really sends non-spam trackbacks. It took about 75 seconds in phpMyAdmin to clean out the spambacks, but I decided as a fun task to build my own web tool to do it even easier. Presenting the Spam Trackback Annihilator: All I need to do is to fill in the easy to guess typical spam words, and select to wipe out from the Source, URL, Title, or Body fields (or all at once to lower the big boot). In one click I can kill thousands or roachies. You will not find this URL on our server, as I can [...]

CDB readers may know of the struggles written here to solicit Maricopa people to share their instructional materials and teaching ideas in our Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) which is at almost 1100 items. Our efforts have included bribery and competition, but have yet to embrace physical threats. If I had a buck for every time someone told me “I am going to take some time next month to get you some MLX items” I’d be retired on my own private island. Out of those 1100, probably 200 are there as direct result of online reports to other electronic systems, maybe 60 are things we have entered in other people’s names so we could populate web sites with content (see how the winners of the Innovation of the Year program are pumped from the MLX to its own site). The same goes for an ePortfolio platform, developed at one of our [...]

I recently wrote some criticism of views that RSS feeds are “only for new stuff”, and given that I had a request today for a randomized Maricopa Learning eXchange feed, it was time to put my feeds where my mouth is/was. Before today, the feeds we generate as fixed static files (updated every hours as a cron script) on the MLX where the 10 newest items over all, the newest items and random items per Maricopa College, newest items in a set of subject areas (Biology, Humanities, …)– and available as both RSS 1.0 links and JavaScript include files (unlike FeedtoJS, these are static files that just echo the output created from the hourly updates, cheap caching). I just updated that set of “fixed” feeds to include ones that are random selected items in the discipline areas. That was an easy update, and something that just fell off the radar. [...]