[B-Greek] Fw: B-Greek Digest, Vol 100, Issue 15 - greek fonts and online teaching
Shirley Rollinson
rollinsondr at yahoo.com
Fri Apr 15 19:01:12 EDT 2011
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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