Best Practice -How to post assignment deadlines the easy way
March 12th, 2010
Hi there!
Now that you’re adding buttons and making changes willy-nilly in your online courses, let’s consider THIS change!
You’re familiar with google calendars now; you’ve used them to track a few of your goals and appointments. Now it’s time to take it to the next level. If you’re a course lead, create a new calendar in your ncvps account. In the calendar, add the assignments that are due in the next two weeks.
You’ve got your calendar ready now; it’s time to spread the love! Hit the upside down triangle beside your calendar’s name, and select ‘calendar settings.’ Toward the bottom of the screen, you’ll see an embed code (ta-daaaa!).
There is a number beside the height and width. It looks like this:
width=”800″ height=”600″
You’ll multiply those numbers by 1.5, changing the numbers to 1200 and 900, respectively. This will make the calendar bigger and easier to read for students.
Next, add a button in your course and add a single item within that button. Using firefox, insert the code into the item you’ve added. Now, your course should have a button that has the due dates. You’ll updated this every couple of weeks. That’s actually more work than just posting a .doc with a bunch of dates… but check THIS out.
Your next step is to email this code to everyone teaching the course. If they’ll also create a button and drop the calendar into their courses, then you’ll have a cool web 2.0 calendar in your course -aren’t YOU fancy!
So, now everyone has a cool calendar, and your revision teams don’t have to waste time creating that pain in the butt .doc -remember, snow happens.
shu
April 30th, 2010 at 2:00 am
Coolness! I already had a “This Week” tab and I was updating it my hand every week. Yuck! I just did this and entered in the assignments for the rest of the semester. Beautiful
April 30th, 2010 at 2:02 am
*by hand…lol
April 30th, 2010 at 8:14 am
Now that you’ve done all the work, it’s time to share the love by giving others teacher the same course the embed code for the calendar and teaching them how to post it in their course menu. You can use the same calendar as many times as you like!
shu
May 10th, 2010 at 1:09 am
Do you need to set the calendar to public? Some students have said they are prompted to a log in screen when they click on the tab to view the calendar. I’ve seen it, too, it’s my NCVPS gmail log in screen.
May 10th, 2010 at 7:14 am
yes the calendar should definitely be made public so anyone can see it. Thanks for the reminder!
shu