chapter 6 collaborate
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
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Chapter 6:
Collaborate
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Chapter 6: Collaborate
Contents
Chapter 6: Collaborate .............................................................................................................. 1
What is a Discussion Forum? ................................................................................................ 2
Creating a Discussion Forum ................................................................................................ 2
Adding a Discussion Forum to a Site .................................................................................... 4
The Message Wall ................................................................................................................. 6
Adding a Message Wall to a Site .......................................................................................... 7
Adding a New Post to the Wall ............................................................................................. 9
Adding a Comment to an Existing Post .............................................................................. 10
Sharing a Site with other Schools ......................................................................................... 11
How to Send your Site to the MoE Repository .................................................................... 12
How to get Sites from the MoE Repository ......................................................................... 15
Copying Sites to My Sites ..................................................................................................... 18
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Chapter 6: Collaborate
The Frog VLE helps you and your students by making it simple for everyone to collaborate
easily across departments, classes and locations. Being able to collaborate seamlessly is
one of the major benefits of using a VLE. Frog provides multiple areas and tools to
enhance and promote collaboration across the whole of your school. Storage areas such
as Lesson Resources offer teachers a collaborative area where files can be accessed or
edited by multiple users. No more emailing files endlessly back and forth. Simply upload
your resource into the Lesson Resource area for other teachers to access or edit.
Using the Calendar sharing settings, details of your calendar can be shared with others in
your school. Sharing can be restricted by specifying individuals who can view your
calendar and individuals who have access to make changes to your calendar.
When added to a Site, tools such as the Forum and Wall Widgets allow real time
discussion while the File Drop allows users to upload and download files directly to and
from a shared Site.
The Frog Community provides a link to over 10,000 Malaysian Frog schools allowing cross
platform collaboration with other teachers. Groups can be created for others to join and
made either public or private. This on-line community of Frog users can share teaching
tips, best practice or offer support, advice and guidance to other teachers across
Malaysia.
The Ideas section of the Frog Community is where all teachers can view tips on how to
use their VLE based on past success stories from other users. All schools are asked to
submit their tips and tricks for others to use.
So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get together and collaborate!
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What is a Discussion Forum?
A discussion forum is an online discussion page where people can hold conversations in
the form of posted messages. The user creating the forum can ask a question (known as
a Topic) for others to respond to (known as a Post). The creator can also allocate a period
of time a response can be edited or deleted after it has been posted.
Instead of creating questionnaires try creating a forum topic instead. As well as being
more dynamic and engaging it is also a great way of saving paper and cutting down
expensive printing costs. Having pupils contribute their opinions on a forum is quicker and
more efficient than distributing and collecting a paper based questionnaire.
Creating a Discussion Forum
Click on the Quick Launch option in the Frog Bar and click Forums.
To post a new topic click on the Create Topic button.
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Enter the title for the topic in the Title box and a further description in the content area.
If you think your topic is important and you would like it stay at the top of the forum list,
check the Sticky topic box.
Click Submit to create your forum.
Your Forum topic is now posted.
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Adding a Discussion Forum to a Site
Begin by opening your Site in Edit mode. Create a new tab for your Forum. This allows the
forum to fill the page and makes it easier to read.
Now drag the Forum Widget onto the page.
Double clicking on the forum area displays the settings for the Forum Widget.
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You now have a number of choices on how the user can delete a post they make in your
forum.
Users can delete and edit their own posts:
● Never (default): Only the Site creator will be able to edit or delete a post.
● Temporarily: For 2 mins, 5 mins, 15 mins – once the user has posted their
message, they will only have a limited period of time to change or delete that post.
● Always: The user will always be able to change or delete their posts.
Note: The administrator is always able to delete a post should the Site creator not be
available.
To give the forum a title, add a Text Widget above.
Double click on the sample text display on the layout box.
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Enter the title for the Forum into the Text Widget content panel.
Click the Save Changes button to save your page.
To close the content panel click on the X button.
Note: You must set the sharing option on your Site as Can Contribute. This will allow users
to contribute to the forum.
The Message Wall
The Wall Widget creates a message wall on your site. Adding a message wall makes it
more interesting as it allows people to interact with each other through the Site. It is
similar to a discussion forum but unlike a forum does not have the ability to host multiple
topics.
A good use of a message wall is when lots of people may want to leave messages on a
Site. For example, the school badminton team may be about to compete in an important
match and pupils may want to leave a list of good luck messages to motivate the team.
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Adding a Message Wall to a Site
Begin by opening your site in Edit mode. Create a new tab for your Message Wall. This
allows the Wall to fill the page and makes it easier to read.
Now drag the Wall Widget onto the page.
To give the Message Wall a title, add a Text Widget above.
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Double click on the sample text displayed on the layout box.
Enter the title for the message wall into the Text Widget content panel.
Click the Save Changes button to save your page.
To close your site click on the X button.
Note: You must set the sharing option on your site as Can Contribute. This will allow users
to contribute to the forum.
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Adding a New Post to the Wall
To add a new Post to the wall, type your text in the box and then click the Post button.
The Post will now appear underneath the text box.
Notice that each Post is date stamped with the day and time of creation.
Any new messages written to the wall will always be added to the top of the list.
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The creator of the site will receive a notification in the Notifications panel each time a user
creates a new post.
Adding a Comment to an Existing Post
Users can comment on existing posts by clicking on the blue Comment link.
Enter your comment into the text box.
Click the Comment button to leave your comment. Your comment will appear underneath
the original Post.
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The creator of the original Post will receive a notification
in their Notifications panel each time a user comments
on their post.
The creator of the site will also receive a notification in the
Notifications panel that a user has left a comment on the
message wall. This is to keep them informed of all
messages have been left on the wall that they have
created.
Sharing a Site with other Schools
Your Frog VLE has the functionality to share your best sites with other schools so that they
can use them too. You can also search for sites that other schools have submitted and
use them within your own school.
As your VLE is hosted in the cloud, it is a simple process for all schools in Malaysia to
share their sites with each other. To ensure that only sites of good quality and accuracy
are shared, sites are uploaded into a holding area for approval by the MoE. This area is
called the ‘MoE Repository’.
Overview of the site sharing process between schools.
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Once a site has been approved by the MoE it will then be made available to find in the
FrogStore. The process for sharing a site is shown above.
How to Send your Site to the MoE Repository
If you have a great site that you have been using in your school then why keep it to
yourself? Other schools in Malaysia could benefit enormously from using the site as well.
Sharing a site only takes a minute of your time but can make a huge difference to other
schools and their students.
Note: Please ensure that all the content within your site is up-to-date and accurate.
Remember that content (text and images) that have been used may be subject to
copyright restrictions. Please include the correct credits and sources where appropriate
before uploading the site.
Click on the Quick launch icon in the Frog Bar and select Sites.
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Ensure that the My Sites area is selected in the left hand column. Only sites listed in this
area can be sent to the MoE Repository.
Click on the site to select it.
Click on the Actions drop down menu and select Send Site to MoE Repository.
You will now be prompted to add tags before sending your site to the MoE Repository.
Adding Tags is compulsory in this section.
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In the Push to MoE Repository area, there are three
steps to complete; Category (1), Form Group (2) and
Keywords (3).
In the Category drop down menu there are two
options available: Subject and Co-curricular. Select a
category and click on the Add button. The chosen
option will appear underneath.
In the Subjects/Co-curricular drop down menu, select
a category and click on the Add button. The chosen
option will appear underneath.
Select the Form Group for your Site. Select a Form
Group from the list and click on the Add button. The
chosen option will appear underneath.
Next, you have the option of adding Keywords associated with the site. This is useful
when someone is searching for a site but doesn’t know the name. Try and add words
here that are relevant to what a user might type when searching. For example, for a
science site we could add ‘liquid’ ‘gas’ ‘solid’ ‘melt’ ‘freeze’ ‘ice’ ‘molecules’ and
‘evaporate’. When a user uses any of these words in their search, this site will be included
in the search results.
Enter your keywords into the Keywords box. Then,
click the Add button.
Note: You can add multiple selections when tagging. Simply, select another item from the
list and click the Add button again.
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Click on the blue OK button. Your site will now
be uploaded to the MoE Repository where it
will await approval.
Note: Once a site has been sent to the repository, it may take some time before it is
approved. Sites are not made visible in search results until they are approved.
How to get Sites from the MoE Repository
Any sites that have been approved by the MoE can be downloaded from the FrogStore
and used by your school. It is important to remember that sites downloaded from the
FrogStore are stored and managed in the My Library area of the FrogStore.
Select Quick Launch in the Frog Bar and click on FrogStore.
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In the FrogStore click Sites in the FrogStore menu.
In the Sites section locate the site you want to add to your VLE.
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Click the Add button under a site to add it to your Library.
After clicking the Add button a confirmation box will inform you that the site has been
added to My Library. Click OK to continue.
You can check that the site have been added to My Library by clicking on Sites in My
Library. The sites should now be displayed.
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Click the X button in the left hand corner of the FrogStore window. This will return you to
the VLE.
Your site is now ready to be copied into the VLE.
Copying Sites to My Sites
To access the sites in My Library click on the Quick launch icon in the Frog Bar and select
Sites.
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Click My Library in the Sites Menu. The downloaded site will be displayed.
Double click on the site to be copied.
A confirmation box will ask you to confirm that you want to copy the site to My Sites. Click
Copy to continue.
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The window will refresh to display the site in My Sites. It can now be edited, duplicated or
deleted.
Note: Downloaded sites are managed from the My Library area of the FrogStore. Sites
downloaded from the FrogStore must be copied into My Sites before use.
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Notes:
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