Waffle Bytes

A common issue on many Moodle courses is the plethora of items that end up on the "home" page of the course.  When a person starts building a course, they don't have much so begin with a habit of adding every item on the main page.  Over time, this becomes a monstrous beast, that takes a LONG time to load and eons to scroll through.  There are several methods that can be used to eliminate the "scroll of death" - some take more work than others.  This week I'll show one way to help students focus in on the current topic, and away from an endless stream of content. Viewing a Course by One Section  First - a caveat - you need to be putting content into topical areas for this to work.  If you have everything in the top content box...this won't help. This takes only one step.  Go into your Course Settings, and under the course format change the Course Layout to "Show one section per page:" When in non-editing mode or viewing the course as a studen...

Did you miss one or more of the 2014 MACUL Conference keynotes because the room was full, you were in another area, or could not attend the conference at all?  MiStreamNet now has them posted for your viewing pleasure: Rushton Hurley  George Couros Adam Bellow If you don't have enough time for those, here are a few of the shorter Lightening Talks from the last day of the conference: Be My Big-Haired Mother by David Theune #Standardizethat by Michael Kaechele Hairline Crack by Trevor Muir (Thank you Brad Wilson @ dreambition  for producing some of these...) Enjoy!

Mark Coppin has put together a resource  for educators and parents as an iTunesU course to help identify both uses and a list of suggested apps for those working with autistic students.  A stated purpose of this course is to "assist in determining what app features to look for when selecting apps." I highly recommend reading/watching the provided material BEFORE looking at the app list. The resource is free, and the current price of the suggested apps listed are posted.  This being Autism Awareness Month, there are many that are currently on sale or temporarily free. https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/apps-for-students-autism-spectrum/id631357037

There are times where I really want to utilize a 2 column layout in a Google Document.  Unfortunately, columns are not a feature built in to Google Documents.  So I'm providing two work-arounds for creating that layout look without actually using columns over the next two newsletters.  This week, we will look at how to accomplish this with a table. Method #1 - Utilizing Tables One workaround is to use a two column table.  Create a 2 X 1 table: If you right click on the table, you get a choice in the menu of Table Properties: In the Table Properties window, you can change the border to "0": This will "hide" the border so the area looks similar to a two-column section in a document.  You can even adjust the widths of each "column" if you want.