Navigation and Outline Tools

The OER Glue dock navigation controls let you select or create a course, access course outlines, and move between course pages.

The course outline lets you access course web pages and change an outline (when authoring).

When you access a course web page, OER Glue highlights it in the outline and remembers your position. You can return to your previous position in a course by selecting the course from the course list.

Course Outline Tools. In addition to modifying an outline by right clicking over a node, you can use the tools at the top of the outline dialog:

Add page – Add the page displayed in the web browser to the outline.
Add folder – Create a new folder for structuring the course.
Add outline – Adds the links selected in the browser to the outline.
Add quiz – Adds a quiz to the outline via popular quiz services.
Add / access calendar – Generates and/or shows the course calendar.
Publish course – Publishes the course to a website so that others can download it.

The dock contains additional tools for authors, students, and teachers.

Authoring Tools

When creating or changing a course, you can use the OER Glue authoring tools to modify web pages and integrate content and services from multiple sources.

Resource Collector – Gather media from pages and place it in other pages.
Snippet Collector – Collect snippets from web pages to put them in other pages.
Eraser – Remove elements from web pages.

Widgets Dialog – Insert assessments, discussions, and other services into pages.
Remix Tool – Send content to content management tools where it can be remixed.

Resource Collector. When browsing a web page, open the resource collector to collect images, videos, and applets. Collect an image by dragging it into the collector. Collect a video by clicking the Collect This! button that OER Glue shows next to it.

Put a resource into a web page by dragging it from the collector into the page.

Snippet Collector. Use the snippet collector to collect parts of web pages.

Then drag the snippets back into pages.

Eraser. To erase part of a page, click the Eraser tool and then highlight and click the part to delete.

Un-delete an item in the Erased Items list by clicking the X next to it.

Widgets Dialog. Open the widget dialog to drag widgets into web pages. This example shows a page that the the Intense Debate discussion widget has been added to.

When the widget dialog is open, OER Glue outlines elements that have been added to the page. OER Glue provides widgets for Facebook, Intense Debate, Disqus, Skype, Twitter, and any web page (using the iFrame widget), with additional widgets soon to follow. OER Glue will support community contributed JavaScript widgets to allow integration with any third party service.

Remix Tool. Use the remix tool to copy part of a web page to a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla where you can modify it and make sure that it doesn’t change or becomes unavailable. The first time you open the remix tool you are asked to register a CMS to send content to.

Specify the web address of a CMS you have access to and provide credentials for accessing it. Once you have registered a CMS, the remix tool asks you to select the content to remix:

Then you are asked where to send the content. You can choose one of the services that you have registered or add a new one.

Student Tools

Students OER Glue tools to view class schedules, submit assignments, and communicate with class members.

Calendar – Access the class calendar.
Google Docs – Access your Google docs to include them in a course or submit assignments.
Class Members – Access profiles and communicate with students.
Chat – Chat, screen share, and share whiteboards with class members.

Calendar. As a student, you can access the class schedule via a Google Calendar. This example shows the Google Calendar for a student that has subscribed to calendars for Astronomy and Algebra courses.

Google Docs. OER Glue lets you search and view your Google Docs. As a student you can submit a Google Docs for an assignment from the dialog. When authoring a course, you can drag Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations into web pages.

Class Members. Access the Class Members dialog to view profiles of class members including aggregations of their blog, bookmark, and other feeds.

Chat. An integration with Tiny Chat to that lets class members text, video, and audio chat with each other as well as screen share and share a whiteboard.

Teacher Tools

In addition to the student tools, OER Glue will integrate with third party services to provide student management functionality including assignments grading. OER Glue will also provide the option of using Google Spreadsheets for grade book functionality.

Browser Support

OER Glue is being developed first for the Google Chrome web browser because of its highly optimized JavaScript interpreter, excellent support of the HTML 5 web standard, and its sophisticated development and debugging tools. Soon to follow will be versions for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. Because the extension uses cross-browser JavaScript libraries such as jQuery and jsTree and relies upon the HTML 5 standard, it should be easily ported to those platforms.