[B-Greek] Fw: B-Greek Digest, Vol 100, Issue 15 - greek fonts and online teaching
George F Somsel
gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Sat Apr 16 02:45:01 EDT 2011
I would most seriously recommend switching everything to unicode. It does not
matter then what font the student decides to use since unicode is unicode is
unicode. The only difference is in the appearance of the letters though all
letters in whatever unicode font is chosen are recognizably the same letter
which is not true with legacy fonts such as SPIonic or (What was it?) Galatia
SIL? While the size of the unicode font files are perhaps larger than those
of the legacy fonts, they are not so much larger as to be prohibitive. Change
once and you don't need to change again.
george
gfsomsel
… search for truth, hear truth,
learn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth,
defend the truth till death.
- Jan Hus
_________
________________________________
From: Shirley Rollinson <rollinsondr at yahoo.com>
To: susan at read-the-bible.org
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Fri, April 15, 2011 4:01:12 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] Fw: B-Greek Digest, Vol 100, Issue 15 - greek fonts and
online teaching
Dear Susan,
I've taught online for a number of years, at a college which has been through
several versions of WebCT, Blackboard, and other "Learning Platforms". As a
teacher you're at the mercy of whatever package the Instructional Technology
folk decide to try for this year - and next year there will probably be an
"upgrade" HA.
However - there is a work-around, which will save you a lot of re-writing,
re-coding, and wasted time. If you set up your own web-site, with the permanent
resources you need for classes, you can keep it under your control (and retain
copyright if need be). Then just use whatever package the Institution decides
upon, and put up some introductory pages, pointing the students to the (real)
course on your own website. That way you get to choose your methods of
presentation, and can have your material available for all on the 'Net - not
just the students currently enrolled in Blackboard.
If you use XHML and CSS (easier to learn and universally applicable, not like
the package-ware of Bb and WebCT) you can change your Greek fonts just by
changing the specification in the CSS file whenever you decide to change fonts.
It does mean that your viewers need to downlaod and install the same Greek font
that you are using. However, if students are going to be sending in assignments
written in Greek, you will all need to have some agreed-upon Greek font used by
all in the class.
I've taught Greek with an online component (mainly in-class, but with online
support) for over 10 years. Next semester I'll be trying a completely online
section.
Until now I've found SPIonic.ttf to be one of the best fonts for general student
use. It's small (25K) and in the public domain, thanks to James Adair. The
students don't have problems downloading and using it and the keyboard is very
intuitive.
However, it does have problems with displaying and printing webpages - often
putting a space between a vowel and a breathing.
I've been considering going to a unicode font for webpages - which will mean
that viewers will have to download and work with one of the gigantic unicode
files. Some of my online students are on the rez - conditions are primitive,
equipment minimal, and I know their technology is inadequate. So I'm probably
going to stick with SPIonic for student word-processing assignments for now, try
to do something with embedded fonts in .pdfs for printed resource materials, and
start using unicode fonts on webpages.
Ain't computers wunnerful.
a bas la Blackboard :-)
thank you
Shirley Rollinson
==========
If anyone on this list is teaching online Greek using either "Moodle" or
"Blackboard" -- I'd be grateful if you would email me off-list and tell
me how you handle fonts; in particular, whether you use unicode, or a
truetype (old-style) font such as bwgrkl. There are particular issues
with these courseware packages; I'm hoping to at least use some unicode
next year but would like to avoid pitfalls.
Thanks!
Susan Jeffers
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