Jess’ E-Learning Blog

I did it! A few things went wrong which threw me off track. Firstly, I had to edit the settings of my presentation on slideshare.net so that I could access the code to embed the PowerPoint into the wiki. Then I made the silly mistake of not looking at all of the icons on the wiki’s formatting toolbar. While I was trying to put the slides in through ‘import files’ I missed the icon which says along the lines of ‘embed things’ oops… : )

After that, it was a matter of finding the code on flickr, the link to which they hide away in the top corner of the screen in grey text … and then I was all good!

I’m not sure it’s a case of me having to learn exactly what to do, because each site is going to have its own variation of how to embed images, etc. I think that I have to learn what types of things to look for which may help me embed something. Like how RSS links are not all the same, but have commonalities by which you can identify them.

I think I need to practice embedding images, videos, etc into websites. I am putting PowerPoint slides from a presentation for group work into a wiki page for the same group work, and I have no idea what I am doing. I know enough to guess at what I have to do, but every time I’ve tried it, I can’t seem to get the slides themselves to show up … I’ve managed to link to the website, to the particular slides I’ve put up on SlideShare and put up a fair few boxes with red crosses in them. I think I have it this time though, we shall wait and see.

After having this same problem embedding images into this blog (see here and here and here for proof ^_^) I think that this has reinforced that I need to learn the different ways of doing this, so I don’t end up fumbling around aimlessly. 

On a side note, I just realised that I didn’t have my ‘Pages’ widget on the widget bar and that therefore, no one could see some parts of my blog. Sorry about that, it’s all fixed up now. 

I just put a post up replying to a  comment that Suemin made on my blog, but I was stuck with a problem. I know that on other blogging tools, like LiveJournal, that the author can respond to comments left and they appear as indented text after the comment being replied to. A similar thing occurs at Elfwood, a fantasy and sci-fi art website, where people comment on artwork posted by users. In this case though, the text occurs in the same box as the original comment with the words ‘Comment from the artist’ preceeding his/her text. But I haven’t ever seen anything here which could be similar to this. Does it exist?

Well, that didn’t work. Last post should have some altered screenshots so you could see what I was talking about, like in Shida’s blog. So, while I don’t have time to fix it right now, I will find a way to upload pictures properly. Until then, you can see the first image here and the second image here. 

Okay, Second Life just crashed on me, Does that happen often? I don’t think I’d like to rely on a piece of technology which crashes unexpectedly…

And then when I logged in again, it took me back to orientation island… but I was on Help island when the computer crashed. Do I have to download all my templates and other free stuff again? What happens if the stuff I got for free actually cost money, and then after I’d bought it, SL crashed and I lost the stuff that I had payed money for???

Oh, but now I’m back on the island I crashed at… odd…

Okay, that was odd. I just went to go to the last part of Orientation Island, Communicate. As I stepped in the purple area, the HUD said that to complete this tutorial, I needed to talk to people, then telling me to type some text into the chat bar. After I did this, it decided that I had completed the whole entire tutorial and gave me the key to the next island! I didn’t even go onto the communicate section of the island! Last time, I went right up to the top of the volcano, doing the activities. I am confused as to why I wasn’t prompted to do that this time. This is the second time one of the tutorials has played up, which does’t seem very reliable.

I have just spent 34 minutes (and counting) trying to log in to Second Life to complete my e-learning subject. I’m getting frustrated…

I’m taking blame for not remembering what my password actually is, but I’m attributing part of that to Second Life’s rules for passwords - rules like not being able to repeat characters in the password, or having to have both letters and numbers - which made it necessary for me to make up a completely new password … which I have now forgotten. And, like a good, security minded person, I didn’t write my password down anywher either…

So I spent some time on the Second Life login page, looking for the ‘have you forgotten your password?’ button. After an extensive search (just to make sure I wasn’t blind) I resigned myself to the fact that there is no such button here and that I’d have to create a new account (*sigh* all that paperwork all over again). And when I clicked on the ‘create new account’ button, it directed me to their homepage… where I discovered the ‘have you forgotten your password?’ button! Great!!

So, I sent myself an email and followed the email link back to SL and answered the secret question, whereupon I was told I would have the opportunity to activate a new password account. Only, when I entered my secret question answer, it sent me back to the SL homepage. I’m still in the dark about what my old password was, I haven’t been able to create a new one, and I’m not logged in anywhere!

Now I’ve spent 45 min trying to log into Second Life. I think I’ll just make a new account…

So, it is apparent that pages are just pages and that one continuous piece of writing can be put on the page, but that is it. Separate postings cannot be put onto a page. So, instead, I will make more extensive use of the categories option to organise my posts and use pages for things like posting assignements, etc. a resolution

Okay, that didn’t seem to work… so if anyone walks past here and knows how to put more than one post onto a page, can you please help me. I’m trying to put the reading overview I posted into the ‘Class Activities’ page I have created. I think I’m going to ask around as well to see if anyone I know knows how to do this.