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Post Preflighting

The following is a tutorial provided for conference co-conveners in charge of different strands for the K-12 Online Conference. In the 2009 conference, we have used new procedures so presenters directly upload their videos to blip.tv and dotsub, and complete a form on our blog to create their individual presentation blog posts. This Wordpress form is powered with the free TDO Mini Forms plugin. STRAND CONVENER TO-DO'S THE WEEK PRIOR TO YOUR CONFERENCE WEEK For each presentation in your strand:
  1. Review submitted presenter blog posts to make sure links work, no typos
  2. Add DotSub embed code to each presentation post (code should follow the presentation description, see Kim's preconference keynote post for an example)
  3. Schedule and approve the post to "go live" on the date and time on the official conference schedule
  4. Add "(s)" after the presentation title on the official schedule, to indicate you've scheduled it for publication.
STEP 1: Review submitted presenter blog posts to make sure links work, no typos Login to our Wordpress blog using the admin login page. Refer to the official conference schedule to see which session you are going to schedule. On the blog admin dashboard, click PENDING SUBMISSIONS to view draft posts submitted by presenters. Click Pending Submissions Locate the presentation post you want to review and schedule. Mouse over it, and click the EDIT button under the title. Edit a submission In the upper left corner of the post, click PREVIEW to view the post as it will be seen publicly. (As a technique, right click or control-click on a Mac and choose to open in a new tab.) Preview the post in a new tab Click the direct links to the presenter's Ning profile, the post's DotSub, Blip.tv video, and Blip.tv mp3 version files and confirm they all work. Also click the link to supporting materials, if one is provided. Make sure all these links work. K12 Online Conference 2009 | Little Kids, Big Possibilities The Blip video link should go DIRECTLY to the m4v file, the Blip audio link should go DIRECTLY to the mp3 file. If these links are incorrect, copy the correct ones and replace the links in the original post. You may want to switch from HTML mode to VISUAL mode in Wordpress when editing these links. To view these direct links, when logged into Blip.tv as "k12online" click the "+" in the right sidebar beside FILES AND LINKS under FEATURED VIDEOS. Then copy the link you need to change. (Remember to TEST IT first!) Blip.tv links Fix a link in a Wordpress post 

If the m4v and/or mp3 file versions are not available on Blip, they may not have been requested at the time the file was uploaded. Since we have a "pro" account on Blip, we can request these after the file is uploaded. This 4 min, 22 sec Screencast shows these steps.

 While you have the presentation's DotSub link open, click the share/embed icon just under the video's flash version and copy the EMBED code for the presentation. Do NOT click SHARE link in the right sidebar to reveal the <iframe> embed code. It won't work in Wordpress. Use the <object> embed code instead.

Return to the draft Wordpress blog post. (Not the preview, the editable version.) Switch from VISUAL to HTML mode, so you can see the code. (It know it may look scary, but it will be ok, don't worry!) Find the end of the post's description. You are going to PASTE the DotSub embed code after the post's description, BEFORE the DotSub direct link. This is where you insert the DotSub Embed Code This is what the embed code should look like after it is inserted/pasted. This is "iframe" code. (As a technical note, Wordpress user rights only let editors and administrators insert embed code like this. Other users have this code stripped out. That is why we have to manually insert this, it cannot be inserted using the TDO Mini Forms plugin, because the user for that plugin can't be an editor or admin.) Properly inserted DotSub embed code Now you're ready to schedule the post for publishing. Check the official conference schedule for the date when the post will "go live." Our blog time is set to GMT. To schedule the post, in the upper right corner of the Wordpress draft post click EDIT beside PUBLISH IMMEDIATELY. (We do NOT want to publish the post immediately, that is why we're editing this to set the date/time.) Click EDIT to schedule a post The first post for each day always posts at 12 pm GMT. Because links will tweet out after each post goes live (assuming someone in the world opens the blog - that triggers the actual publication of the scheduled post, which triggers TwitterTools to tweet the post) we need to schedule a one minute delay between each post. This means the second post of the day should be scheduled for 12:01 pm GMT, the third post for 12:02 GMT, etc. If your strand is the second strand listed on the schedule, start your first post at 12:05 GMT. We do not have more than three presentations per strand "going live" each day. This should permit sufficient between the posts for each to go live and be automatically tweeted out. Set Wordpress post date and time When all your edits are finished, click SCHEDULE. This will APPROVE the post and put it in the queue to post at the date/time you specified. Schedule your Wordpress post When you click back on the Wordpress Dashboard, you should now see your post added to those SCHEDULED SUBMISSIONS. Wordpress scheduled submission You can always go back and make further edits by clicking SCHEDULED SUBMISSIONS and clicking to EDIT a specific post. Just remember to click UPDATE after you make changes. :-) It is a good idea to do a "final PREVIEW" of the post and confirm everything looks good. Make sure any links the presenter provided under "Additional Information" are actually linked, and make formatting changes if needed there. 

Change the user who "owns" the post to YOU instead of the default "k12online" user account.

 As a final step, add "(s)" to the official conference wiki schedule to remind yourself (and let our co-convener team) know that post is scheduled to go live. Add a * 

 Each morning of the conference, someone needs to add the direct links to the conference schedule for the posts which "go live." It is also a good idea for that person to be online at the time the posts go live, to make sure there are not any problems. Because we don't have a way to automatically post to our facebook group, that person can also copy/paste our tweets for each post onto our Facebook page. We can setup a schedule for who will do this each day of the conference. Those are a lot of steps, but this is MUCH, MUCH easier than the procedures we used in the past. (Conveners built each blog post from scratch, copying and pasting each piece of information required for the post from presenter wiki pages.) Good luck and don't hesitate to ask for help if you needed it. DEADLINE: ALL POSTS SHOULD BE SCHEDULED TO GO LIVE NLT THE FRIDAY PRIOR TO THE WEEK THE CONFERENCE STRAND BEGINS. If a presenter has not submitted his/her presentation draft blog post by that time, that will at least give you a couple of days to contact them and see what is going on. If extenuating circumstances have caused a delay, we can indicate on the wiki schedule that the presentation's publication is being delayed.