Using TheWord to deliver courses

[cornopean]

I was wondering about the feasibility of using TheWord to deliver courses in Bible and Theology. It seems like the following advantages would be realized:

• First, the course content could be linked to all the books in the library. This would really facilitate delivery of course content.
  Second, accessing the course content would not require an internet connection.
  Third, the course would be very portable (simply get it on a flash drive and copy the books/dictionaries/etc. and the config.ini file to the student's computer).

There are a couple of features, however, which would facilitate this process, and I wonder if any others here see the value in this.

First, it would be good to have some kind of a wiki like functionality, so that we could build pages that would link to each other. Currently, it is wonderfully easy to create pages for lesson notes and such, but not so easy to link words to the instructional page to which it corresponds. For instance, in my Greek course, I have pages where I explain the concepts as they occur in the text. Here is an example page: http://courses.prts.edu/greek-1-lesson-3/
All the technical terms on these pages are linked to further pages which explain the concept behind that term (like any wiki).

Second, it would be great to embed video or audio files into the pages. I would also love to be able to embed Google powerpoint files as I did on this page: http://courses.prts.edu/noun/

I am sure that much more could be said about this; I am really interested to hear what others think about this.

[cornopean]

I realize now that I could create a new user module as a dictionary. Then input all the pages explaining all the technical terms. Then link each term to one of these dictionary pages. That is a ton of work tho.

[cornopean]

So I am working on my Greek course.

The first thing is to take my entire language wiki and to make it into a dictionary module on TheWord. This is my langauge wiki: http://courses.prts.edu/part-of-speech/
Second, I need to copy/paste over my Lessons as a book module. http://courses.prts.edu/greek-i/
Third, I need to link all the terms in these lessons to the pages in the dictionary.

So...that's where I am at. The only downside at this point is that my course links occasionally to videos and presentations that are online. I don't know how to bring these over to TheWord such that they will show w/o an internet connection.

Is this going to be useful to anyone?

[jonathangkoehn]

Greetings Cornopean,
I'm pretty sure you can link from a dictionary to a webpage. However I know you want the content directly
in theWORD. You should be able to link to an external video/audio player. I know theWORD can handle pictures in it but not sure of video and audio.
For an external program:
You'll need to use manual entry in theWORD hyperlink feature.
For video and I believe audio this should work.
https://vlc-media-player.en.softonic.com/

As for slides is there a way you can make the slides standalone? The Powerpoint viewer (not the program itself) can be setup to run manually. The program itself maybe but would take some more understanding.

[cornopean]

Greetings Cornopean,
I'm pretty sure you can link from a dictionary to a webpage. However I know you want the content directly
in theWORD. You should be able to link to an external video/audio player. I know theWORD can handle pictures in it but not sure of video and audio.
For an external program:
You'll need to use manual entry in theWORD hyperlink feature.
For video and I believe audio this should work.
https://vlc-media-player.en.softonic.com/

As for slides is there a way you can make the slides standalone? The Powerpoint viewer (not the program itself) can be setup to run manually. The program itself maybe but would take some more understanding.

So I am guessing we would have to bundle the whole thing together on a flashdrive for distribution. ?

[jonathangkoehn]

That is probably true or a large download file.

What does ideal look like for this course?

What would plausible look like?

Does it have audio/video/power point/something else?

Can it all be done in text and pictures?

[cornopean]

Ok....I've started working on this. I am going to try to convert my Online Greek course to a module for TheWord. https://courses.prts.edu/greek-i/ It will be usable offline. I have myself and an assistant working on it. I imagine it will be months before we have anything to show. I do have a few questions.

First, I am concerned about getting an official identifier. See attachment. That page appears to be broken on the website. http://www.theword.net/index.php?article.nyi
How important is this? Should I not proceed without it or is it something that can be added in later?

[JG]

Best to follow that advise and give your modules unique id's especially when linking.
Sadly the link to get an id does not work....

Just put 10+ random numbers and letters(no spaces)

I wrote an AutoHotkey script to gen id's... overkill.

[cornopean]

Well there's a TON of linking in this course. It's setup very much like wikipedia. I've made a start on it; I've attached a module with my work so far so you can get a taste for how the course is setup. I appreciate any advice.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/GoodArticles/Greek+I.gbk.twm

[cornopean]

Just put 10+ random numbers and letters(no spaces)

Do I insert the ten random numbers here?

[JG]

Yes that is the place.