Portal Part 5: Maximising the New Calendar

This is my favourite new feature of the portal. You can do some geeky stuff with what we now have available. Some possibilities:

• Import your personalised calendar into iCal, Google Calendar, Outlook (do people even use it?), or other programs.
• Print your weekly schedule and never loiter by the bulletin board scribbling into your diary again!
• Sync an imported calendar into your mobile/smartphone.

In this post, I’ll cover the first point of importing. If there’s enough positive feedback about the post, I’ll put up something for points 2 and 3. Talk to me in person or show some love in the comments and I’ll post something in response.

All these are definitely optional. If you like your pen-and-diary method to stay on top of things, all the power to ya. If, however, you want to geek it a little, keep reading along.

Importing Calendar Files

You see the little boxes there? The red and pink squares? Those are links that let you download a .csv file or a .vcs file. Those, friends, are files that you can import into Google Calendar or iCal (the programs that I’ll demo) to get this:

First things first. Click on the blank box for Google Calendar and on the box with the blue ‘i’ for iCal. Save it to somewhere you’ll remember. You’ll need it soon.

Next thing to do is to import. Step-by-step with iCal:

Step 1. File -> Import.

Step 2. Pick “Import a vCal file” and press “Import”.

Step 3. Browse to where you saved the file earlier and press “Import”.

Step 4. Choose a calendar to which you want to add the events or choose “New Calendar” and press “OK”.

That’s it! 30 seconds and you’ve got your schedule for the week in your iCal. Sweet, huh?

Now for Google Calendar, the idea is the same.

Step 1. Finding the Import option is a little tougher with GCal. Look at the bottom left corner of your browser and you’ll find a little link called “Add” with a triangular arrow. Click it and there it is! Click “Import Calendar”.

Step 2. Browse for the file you downloaded and click “Import”.

Step 3. Choose the calendar to which you want to add the events. IMPORTANT: MAKE SURE THAT THE CALENDAR YOU CHOOSE IS SET FOR LOCAL TIME (i.e. Brisbane).

Step 4. Click Import and you’re done!

The beauty of GCal and the .csv file is that you get the locations of your events included (the iCal .vcs does not).

Comment below if you have any problems.

< Back to Part 4: Downloading Resources

The New MBBS Portal: Directory

The Year 1 MBBS Portal has undergone some changes, and there’s been a fair bit of confusion accompanying them. There is a lecture scheduled on Wednesday morning to explain these new changes. The following posts have been posted to supplement the presentation. Click on the links below for quick access, or start from Part 1 to get through the whole thing.

Part 1: Find the Portal
Part 2: Main Page Overview
Part 3: PBL Triggers
Part 4: Downloading Resources
Part 5: Maximising the New Calendar

Portal Part 4: Downloading Resources

The accessibility of downloadable resources has has increased markedly in the new portal. You can actually search for stuff based on criteria as well as browsing for them by modules while still retaining the ability to download them based on your timetable! For geeks like me, that’s almost as refreshing as looking at the schedule board on Monday morning and seeing that Friday week has no lectures scheduled (isn’t that the sweetest feeling?).

The Search and The Browse
These two combined give you very organized access to any resource that has been posted. Let’s say you’re looking for lectures from the Respiratory module. You can access them by narrowing your search in the Search fields or simply by looking at Lectures under Browse. It really depends on the “search question” you’re dealing with. “How do I find all the ethics learning resources?” would be deferred to the Search, whereas “How can I download all the lecture files from Cardio module?” would be more quickly served by perusing Browse. They both access the same stuff.

The Timetable
For those of you who like the older portal’s arrangement of resources, don’t panic. You can simply click on My Timetable, click on the week that you want to check, then the resources corresponding to the schedule should be available in that very frame. Again, it’s all about the “search question”.

I confess that this explanation required you to be a little more familiar with the portal by now. If you would like more detailed instructions on how to use the tools, please post something in the comments so that issues can be addressed.

< Back to Part 3: PBL Triggers | Forward to Part 5: Maximising the New Calendar >

Portal Part 3: PBL Triggers

For those of you whose groups use the computer in your room to read and display PBL triggers may have been befuddled this week. Even those of you who know how to use the new portal already would have found that it wasn’t working on Monday morning/afternoon.

It wasn’t your fault. No one could access it that morning.

Luckily, the triggers are now available for viewing. I suspect that it will continue to be visible and updated as regularly as they had been with the old portal.

This is how it’s done.

Step 1. Click on My Timetable in the Main Page. If you aren’t familiar with the general interface, check out Part 2.
Step 2. If necessary, find the week you’re looking for. You’ll be shown the current week, which is what you’d need most of the time. However, if you want to go back to do case summaries or something like that, you can toggle through the weeks above your active timetable to find it. Pretty simple, really.
Step 3. Click the trigger link and the subsequent link, and you should get a pretty little setup of the triggers for the week.

There you go. Nice and simple, this one. Oh, and if you want to make the triggers easier to read from several feet away, use your browser’s text size function, usually found under the View menu.

< Back to Part 2: Main Page Overview | Forward to Part 4: Downloading Resources >

Portal Part 2: Main Page Overview

Here is the hierarchy of links you will find on the left. I will make some quick comments on each section.

Information

• Feature: I’ve got no idea how this will be used. Shouldn’t be a big deal, though.
• Announcements: These will likely be a feed or archive of Vanessa Cooper’s occasional e-mails. Good to keep yourself informed, I reckon.
• The Magazine: The link on the right indicates some kind of student contribution, but it’s simply to allow for student feedback on the portal.
• Key Contacts: This list is surprisingly useful to have around. All the major SoM contacts are here for you to use.

Work Programme

• My Learning: At this point, this section contains the .pdf files for the Module Learning Guides.
• My Timetable: This is the most relevant and important section. It has your weekly schedule, your learning resources and lecture slides, and calendar files (which you can import to iCal or GCal). Check Part 3 for some basic instructions on using these.

Learning Communities

• My PBL Group: This one contains discussion forums and a wiki for each of the cases in PBL. If you don’t know what the difference is between a wiki and Wikipedia, I suggest you read the Wikipedia article on wikis. This can be an awesome collaborative tool for learning. Seriously. No sarcasm.
• My Clinical Skills Group: Contacts and messages to your respective CC groups. Nice to arrange last-blitz practice sessions for all 7 MSK examinations.
• My Yr Discussion Group: I don’t think this will be used frequently. I have a feeling that it might not be secured at first, allowing people to spam the board with class messages. Don’t count on that feature lasting more than a week.

Resource Discovery

• Advanced Search: This is a kickass way to find and download all the resources available online. Check Part 4: Dowloading Resources to find out how to use this tool well.
• Browse Resources: A different way to dig up what you need.

So that’s pretty much what you’ll need to use. There are some other links at the bottom that lead to external sites. They, too, are great tools for learning, but I’ll cover that another time. If you’re interested, check them out.

< Back to Part 1: Finding the Portal | Forward to Part 3: PBL Triggers >

Portal Part 1: Find the Portal

OK. It took me a couple of head scratches to figure out that our “new portal” wasn’t actually labeled as “2008 Year 2 Portal“. I kept checking our old Year 1, 3, 4 portal more than a few times thinking that it was still down, so don’t feel silly if you did the same. If you’ve done this without issues, jump to subsequent posts on:
Part 2: Main Page Overview
Part 3: PBL Triggers
Part 4: Downloading Resources
Part 5: Maximising the New Calendar

But here’s a quick run of how to access the site in the first place:

1. http://som.uq.edu.au (Use Firefox or Chrome to liberate yourself from n00bdom)
2. Click “Current Students” on the top links.
3. Click “2008 Year 2 Portal”. I think this link will change to a proper name eventually, so don’t flame at me if it does. You can take the long way and click through “MBBS Portal” -> “2008 Year 2 Portal” if you feel like it.
4. You’ll see a somewhat familiar login screen. Your login should be the same as the old portal.
5. Now you will see the new Portal main page.

Now that you know how to get in, let’s move forward to getting familiar with the Main Page in Part 2.

Access Old Exams via the MBBS Portal Maze

Hey all,

I was thinking about how annoying it may be to navigate through the MBBS Portal to find old exams. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Log in to Portal (If you don’t know how to do this, please see someone. Seriously.).
2. “MBBS Students”
3. “Year 1 – Foundations of Medical Practice”
4. *left-hand menu* “General Resources”
5. “Past Examination Papers”
6. It’s a lot of excess clicking to get all of the individual files. Check the post on how to do it while saving your digital musculature.

Defeat Arthritis!

…by saving unnecessary clicking on individual links to download old exams! For those liberated from the evil clutches of IE (I don’t care what they say about IE8) and use Firefox, there’s a handy extension called DownloadThemAll! that will help you combat long-term muscle wasting.

If you can’t be bothered to acquire and use this tool, bring a USB key to class and find me in the front row far left and I’ll hook you up.

Internet Quota

Idea: Increase internet quota to do all the research necessary for PBL and studying.

Dr. Kippers’ Response:

• He was told  it would cost $200,000 to increase medical students’ internet quota, however this may have been for unlimited or many more G than we need.  
• Thus he offered to look into how many G’s the $200,000 was for, and also to look  into how much it would cost to increase our internt to  1G

Link between blackboard and portal

Complaint: Students are tired of having to bounce between blackboard and the portal

Dr. Kippers’ Response: Should be able to access blackboard via the portal before the mid-year