All posts created by giottoffoli

donatella.cesareni
discutiamo le linee guida covid

Ciao Donatella,
come puoi vedere, i forum tematici sono aperti a tutti.
Tu ne hai potuto creare uno perché sei Amministratrice di una Comunità.
Io me ne sono reso conto perché ho visto un numerello rosso accanto all'icona
Forum
(una nuvoletta) nella barra d'utente, che mi segnalava un post non letto; come qui
A parte questo, vuoi veramente discutere di Covid o si trattava solo di una prova?
stefano.lariccia@uniroma1.it
Credo sarebbe utile poi categorizzare in due tipi le risorse software, in accordo con il lavooro che si sta svolgendo in Up2U

Which are the two types of software resources that you propose to distinguish in categorizing OERs according to the material type?
Call for action "Register now" in the Homepage

In response to the suggestions put forward during the last meeting of the Editorial Board, mainly by Christophe and Inés, Mariarosaria has implemented a new (tentative ?) layout of the Homepage, with different versions for anonymous and authenticated users.

The version for anonymous users keeps the upper green band, with a slightly modified text and a call for action "Register now".
In the version for authenticated users
- the upper green band has been removed
- the section including Featured items and a selection of Recent/Popular contents has moved up.
Press releases and Featured items

I've just updated the Help page Editorial tools, documenting:
- the current solution for the publishing of the Press releases
- a slightly improved UI for creating/editing the Featured items, on which is based the composition of the left column of the dynamic part of the Homepage.
Language selection

In the menubar, we added a widget showing the current language setting and allowing to change the language setting for the UI of the CommonS Platform; this holds for the current user session and doesn't impact the language setting of the browser.
Homepage and analytics

In developing a new version of the homepage, we started with some platform analytics. I've just updated the Help page on Analytics.
Learning Paths of type DAG

A first implementation is now available of the Learning Paths having the structure of a Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG). This structure can be edited by visual manipulation, as described in the Help page on Learning paths. Currently, DAGs are "played" much like the LPs of type Collection: the nodes are sequenced in an automatic way, insensible to the context.
Support projects

We revised a little the functionality of the projects of type "support", that is of projects not directly related to learning activities. They can be created only as direct children of a community.

For the support projects, we introduced the possibility of adding new members on the initiative of the Supervisors, bypassing the normal application-acceptation workflow.

Inside the "CommonS Consortium" community, I created a support project reserved to the members of the Editorial Staff. They will be enabled to edit, through the "admin UI" of the Django framework, contents such as blog entries and "flat pages"; these are hand-made HTML pages like those in the Help section.
User dashboard and User profile

Mariarosaria has done some refurbishing of the User dashboard (a kind of personal homepage) and of the User profile. Among other things, the uploading of the user avatar has been improved.
Javascript libraries integrated in the Platform

As I wrote in another forum, I started to develop a visual interface for the editing of LPs of type DAG (directed acyclic graph).

I started with the evaluation of available Javascript libraries that could match, on the client side, the data model for DAG-shaped LPs on the server side.

I just integrated in the CommonS Platform the following JS libraries: jointjs, dagre and graphlib, besides backbone, which is a kind of framework.

Currently, the only LP on which I'm experimenting the development is Web mapping e georeferenziazione, which in fact is just a sequence.
Members of the project Translations and Testing can already view some editing hooks in the view of said LP: please, do not execute editing commands, since they are not working properly!
Is possible to change the order of messages?
At first have the most recent?
Hi Inês,
I tried to patch the forum app that is integrated inside the Platform, to reverse the order of the messages; but I see a drawback: the form to submit a new post, at the end of the page, no more would follow the last post.
I propose a compromise: 1) change the setting defining the number of posts per page, possibly from 10 to 20; 2) avoid topics lasting too long: for giving news on Platform development, I could start a new topic each month.
Project analytics

Now a link to a Recent activity page is available in the right column of the Project home if project-related actions have been recorded for the last week.

Also, I added a page on Analytics to the Help menu.
Back-references from OERs to LPs

The view of an OER now includes, in the right column, links to Learning Paths, if any, incorporating it through one or mode LP nodes.

Just an example: A wikiguide of OpenStreetMap.

By the way, we started designing the view and edit interface of LPs of type DAG (direct acyclic graph). I'm experimenting with a hybrid: giving a graph-style view, by forcing the DAG type, to a LP that in fact is a sequence.
Tracking user activty

We are continuing to extend the recording of user actions of potential interest in performing analytics on user activity.

Provisionally, raw data on recent activity are accessible

• to the logged-in user, from the link "Tools -> Recent activity" in the User dashboard (currently, the personal activity of last 7 days is shown)

• to all Community Administrators, from the menu item "Analytics -> Activity Stream" (currently, the overall activity in CommonSpaces of last 24 hours is shown)
Google Analytics is active

We just put in the pages the code being required by Google Analytics to track page accesses.
Full-text search of projects, people and resources

It is now possible to search projects, people and resources using a term matching the content of some text fields; this can be combined with other search criteria.
New generation of the UI strings

Yesterday, May 26, I've extracted from the "page templates" and from other platform code new and/or updated localizable UI strings (English source). Then I've put inline the Italian translation of them.
New forum posts and forum analytics

We did some work on forum analytics: while information on the authorship of posts was already available, on May 25 we started tracking topic views by individual users; we refer to topics, since all posts in a topic are presented to the user in the same page (leaving out paging).

Here are the main news:

tracking topic views by users; this could be used also for some overall analytic function
• in forum and topic lists, a new column showing the number of posts not viewed by the user
• a red alert in the user menubar: a forum icon with the total number of posts not viewed by the user
• a new page (reachable by clicking on the icon above) showing a summary of the unviewed posts
• in the homepage of a project or a community, only for members, a red flag with the number of unviewed posts in the associated forum.

Please note that the number of unviewed posts will approach truth only with use, since topic views by individuals weren't recorded before the tracking functionality was activated (you could appear not having viewed posts written by yourself!)
New address of CommonSpaces

Since yesterday, the official address of CommonSpaces is www.commonspaces.eu

The old address, commons.commonspaces.eu is being automatically redirected to the new one.

This change could temporarily confuse Google and the other search engines but, as was already remarked, waiting would have been even worse.
Simpler data model and simpler edit form for OERs

The value of the field OER type is now computed by the platform, based on evidence.

The field Source type has been dropped:
- some of the information is already implicit in the values of the fields Derived from and Source repository
- other information is now conveyed by the new fields Translated and Adapted/Remixed

The search form for the OERs ("Search open resources") has been improved and aligned to the updated data model.