The Generic Classroom was created to afford teachers greater creativity, control, and flexibility in conducting MOO classes. The Generic Classroom allows the instructor to break students into groups for small-group discusstion or to allow open discussion among the entire class. It is also possible to register a variety of classes for the room. You must be a builder and dig your own room before it can be turned into a Generic Classroom.
To convert your room to a Generic Classroom, type @chparent #<roomnumber> to #142. If you had a room named MyRoom with the object number 34275, you would type
@chparent #34275 to #142
Once you've created your generic classroom, you'll want to design its basic layout. The room comes equipped with a Blackboard, a Teacher's desk, a Big Table, a clock, and a Bulletin Board.
To leave messages for the people entering the room on the Blackboard, type writeb <message>. For example, to welcome everyone to your room, you would type: writeb Welcome To My Classroom! If you looked at the Blackboard by typing look blackboard, you would see
The first line (Welcome!) is a default message that comes along with the room.1)Welcome!
2) Welcome To My Classroom!
You can erase lines from the Blackboard by typing eraseb <line number>. In order to erase the original "Welcome!" message, you would type eraseb 1. If you want to clear the entire Blackboard at once, you can type cleanb.
The room's clock can be checked by typing look clock. The MOO responds with the day, date, and time in Eastern time and in Greenwich Mean Time.
More importantly, you can customize the room's physical environment to support your pedagogical objectives. You can add or remove your own features from the room by using the commands
@addfurn <name of item> and @rmfurn <name of item>
For example, if you wanted to add a conference table to your room, you would type @addfurn conference table. The MOO would then ask you to describe the conference table, to which you could respond:
The MOO will then ask you whether visitors can sit at/on the object, to which you can respond yes or no. After you have finished setting up the new room feature, it will appear among the list of things in the room.A rectangular table with white formica top, around which are grouped several padded office chairs.
Before you can use many of the features of the Generic Classroom, you must set up the room for a particular class and group of students in that class. To add a class to the list of classes taught in your room, type @mkclass <class name>. For example if you wanted to put an English 101 class on the class list, you would type @mkclass English 101. You can remove any class by typing @rmclass <class name>.
Since it is possible to create a number of different class offerings, you must use the @class-setup <class name> command to make a class the current one. For example if you were going to have a class meeting in English 101, you would type
@class-setup English 101
Once you have established your classes, you can add and remove students from the class by using the register/unregister command. The name entered will be registered into the roster of the current class or of the class you just created using @mkclass. For example, if English 101 is the class currently set up for MyRoom, but you @mkclass English 102, the students you register will be in English 102. You can then @class-setup English 101 if you want to register students for that class. If you wanted to register Jane Smith for English 101 you would type
register Jane Smith
After doing this, you can check the status of your generic classroom by typing @status. This will provide you with the class list, number of students registered for each class, and a list of the students' names in the current class, among other information listed.
There are a number of ways to moderate the classroom. When class is in session, type @sign on so that when anyone on the MOO types @who, he/she will see that your class is "In Session" and your students are therefore busy. If your class is finished or you'd welcome visitors to the discussion, you can turn off the sign by typing @sign off.
You can keep unwanted visitors from entering your room by typing door closed. This will restrict entry to persons in the current class. You can turn this function off by typing door open.
Within the classroom, you can simulate small group discussions by allowing students to sit at different places in the room. If half of the students type sit Big Table and the other half type sit Conference Table, neither group will be able to hear the other group's discussion. By typing speakup <message>, a student can communicate with the entire class. The student can also type stand to stand up from the table, and his/her messages will be heard by everyone in the room. However, a standing student can no longer hear what is being said at the tables in the room. He/she needs to sit back down at one of the tables (for example, sit conference table) in order to hear the comments of his/her seated peers.
You can use the @stifle on command to prevent seated students from emoting to everyone in the room. With the stifling enabled (the default setting for the room), only those students seated at the same table will hear the emote. Typing @stifle off will disable this feature, allowing seated people to emote to everyone in the room, whether they are sitting or standing.
For a complete list of commands or to get help on general and special functions of the generic classroom at anytime, you can type help here or @tutorial within one of the Generic Classrooms.
Written by Chelsea Kuzma. Revised by Leslie Harris. Please send comments and corrections to leslie.harris@plattsburgh.edu.