Generic Lecture

Although decentered teaching strategies tend to be more effective than lecturing in a MOO environment, there are circumstances in which you will want to deliver a prepared presentation to other people in your room. For example, DU has hosted virtual conferences, in which people presented papers to colleagues without having to leave their offices. By using the Generic Lecture, you can prepare your remarks in advance and then deliver them in any order and at any pace you wish.

To create your own generic lecture, type @create #6140 named <lecture title>. For example, if you wanted to create a lecture on Stress Relief, you would type

@create #6140 named Stress Relief

After you have created your own lecture, use the Note Editor to write your lecture. Type @notedit <lecture name>.text to set up the proper field in the Note Editor. For example, you would type @notedit Stress Relief.text, and then follow the commands for using the Note Editor. In general, every line you say in the Note Editor is added to the field you are editing. For example, typing:

"Hello, and welcome to my lecture on Stress Relief.

The MOO responds:
Line 1 added.
The line pointer is moved to the end of Line 1, ready for new input. (For a more detailed list of commands, type help here while you are in the editor. You can also read Leslie's Guide to @Notedit for a useful help sheet on Editor commands.) When you are finished writing your lecture, type save (and hit return), then type q to quit.

You can use the @notedit <lecture name>.text command at any time to load your lecture back into the editor and to continue writing or editing your lecture.

You can deliver your lecture automatically by typing deliver <lecture name>. You may then pause <lecture name> or resume <lecture name> to control the pace of presentation. To start your lecture on its automatic delivery, you would type

deliver Stress Relief

The MOO presents yor prepared text line by line to everyone in the room, pausing a specified amount of time between each pre-recorded line.

You are able to regulate the length of pauses during your lecture with the setpause <lecture name> to <number> command. For example, the pause length can be set to five seconds by typing

setpause <lecture name> to 5
For example: setpause Stress Relief to 5

To deliver lines one at a time, you can use the command give <line number|next> on <lecture>. With this command, you may deliver your lines in any order and at any pace you wish. To start your lecture, you could type:

give 1 on Stress Relief

To deliver the next line, you can type give next on Stress Relief or give 2 on Stress Relief.

You can peek at your complete lecture at any time without anyone else seeing it, by typing

read <lecture name>

That will present you with the full text of your lecture, with numbers for each line.

While you are using your Generic Lecture, you can find more helpful commands by typing

@exam <lecture name>

For example: @exam Stress Relief

Written by Chelsea Kuzma. Revised by Leslie Harris. Please send comments and corrections to leslie.harris@plattsburgh.edu.