Collaborative Classroom Named for National Award Finalist

A new approach to classroom design has been named a finalist in the AMX by HARMAN Innovation awards. The collaborative classroom in Percival Hall (room 335) is designed for students to access the technology with their own devices for collaborative work. It features moveable seating, a ceiling mounted projector, four large screen flat-panel displays around the room and many input panels for students to connect phones, tables or laptops. As part of the WVU Celebrate week of events, the campus is invited to experience this innovative classroom - designed by Academic Innovation and Facilities Management - at an open house on Thursday (May 14) from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The winners of the innovation award will be announced on June 15.

Google search tricks

Even if you think you're pretty adept at searching on Google or Bing, you'll want to check out this video from Macmost Now. It's good information for any operating system, really. (The math graphing alone makes the video worthwhile).

Safari Embedded mp3 Problems on OSX 10.6 and Newer

If you have been embedding mp3 files into your html pages in the past, you may notice some recent problems if you use the Safari web browser on a Mac. If you are using OSX 10.6 or newer, you will see a blank spot in the page where the mp3 should be. The short answer is to tell OSX users to use the Firefox web browser, and everything will continue to work normally. However, if you’re curious about what’s behind it, and the more sophisticated solution, read on.

Apple’s HTML 5 Determination

What has happened is that Apple has decided to push the world to move on to html5. The way new versions of OSX handles web media has been changed. A new version of Quicktime is now built into OSX. This new version has dropped all support for the old method of embedding mp3 audio. Safari does not have any other way to play media in web pages, except through OSX integrated means, so Safari now just ignores the old standard embed code.

The Old Way

This is the old tried and true code for putting an mp3 in a web page (and this still works everywhere except Safari on OSX 10.6 and newer):

<object>
<param name="autostart" value="true">
<param name="src" value="http://my.server.here/MyAudioFileHere.mp3">
<param name="autoplay" value="true">
<param name="controller" value="true">
<embed src=" http://my.server.here/MyAudioFileHere.mp3" width="703" height="32" type="mp3" controller="true" loop="false" autoplay="false" pluginspage="/quicktime/download/" /></embed>
</object>

Apple’s New Way

The new html5 way to do this is to have both an mp3 format file and an ogg format file (because some web browsers can play only one or the other through html5), and use this code:

<audio controls>
<source src="http://my.server.here/MyAudioFileHere.mp3" />
<source src="http://my.server.here/MyAudioFileHere.ogg" />
</audio>

What’s the Problem with this?

The problem is that many students use Internet Explorer, which cannot use many parts of html 5 yet. Even new versions of IE go into Quirks Mode if you are using an LMS, like Blackboard, and work like IE 5.5, which cannot display html5.

The New Solution

Happily, the web browsers that do not understand the new html5 embed code will ignore it, so we can create a new copy of our mp3 in ogg format, and then wrap our old code in the new code, and please most browsers:

<audio controls>
<source src=" http://my.server.here/MyAudioFileHere.mp3" />
<source src=" http://my.server.here/MyAudioFileHere.ogg" />
<object>
<param name="autostart" value="true">
<param name="src" value="http://my.server.here/MyAudioFileHere.mp3">
<param name="autoplay" value="true">
<param name="controller" value="true">
<embed src=" http://my.server.here/MyAudioFileHere.mp3" width="703" height="32" type="mp3" controller="true" loop="false" autoplay="false" pluginspage="/quicktime/download/" /></embed>
</object>
</audio>

Browser Testing

This new code worked when tested in the following web browsers:

• Firefox 20 (on Windows 7)
• IE 6 (on Windows XP)
• IE 9 (on Windows 7)
• IE 10 running in IE10 mode or IE8 mode/Quirks Mode (on Windows 7)
• Safari 5.1.9 (on OSX 10.6.8)
• Firefox 13.0.1 (on OSX 10.5.8)
• Safari 5.0.6 (on OSX 10.5.8)
• Safari 6.0.5 (on OSX 10.8.4)

Getty's Open Content Program: More Open Image Repositories!

Getty images has made the decision to open some of its works, both public domain and some to which Getty holds the rights, to be released "freely, for any use" - starting with works from the Getty Museum's collection.

So far they've released just shy of 5000 high quality public domain images, with an intent for this to grow. You can read more about this on the The Getty Iris, or you can jump right to the Getty search portal (I've taken the liberty of specifying the Open Content Images for your perusal). Links below.

Getty Iris posting: http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/open-content-an-idea-whose-time-has-come/

Getty Image Search (Open Content): http://search.getty.edu/gateway/search?q=&cat=highlight&f=%22Open+Content+Images%22&rows=10&srt=a&dir=s&pg=1

The LMS, IE, and Quirks Mode

For the more advanced user of WebCT Vista, Blackboard Learn 9, Angel, etc., who uses web technologies to design rich, visually striking, interactive learning content, there is a perpetual thorn in the side: quirks mode. What is quirks mode? In short, any time the doctype code on an html page header is not done properly (and the first thing the browser sees), most web browsers go into quirks mode to try to compensate for a web page that seems broken. Usually the web browser renders the page as an older version of that browser.

The problem? Even if your html pages are spot-on perfect and standards compliant, WebCT, Blackboard, etc., add a bunch of html and JavaScript to the top of your pages when they serve them up. This makes the browser think the pages are broken, and it goes into quirks mode to try to compensate.

If you use html to create course content to upload into your online course, you’ve probably seen some of the problems caused by this, even if you didn’t know the cause. Most of the problems are caused in Internet Explorer, which renders as IE 5.5 or 6. So any html page you create to upload into an LMS system must be designed to work in IE5.5 or 6, or it will break for your students, even if they are on IE 8 or 10.

For more information on what breaks in different browsers I quirks mode, have a look at quirksmode.org’s excellent guide. It could lead you to the cause of the persistent, mysterious, illogical html problem you’ve been having in your online course:

http://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html