Administrering->Hjelp

Getting started

You can use xborrow to organize your books, dvds, cds, dinners, exercises etc. Lend/borrow things to/of other people. Practice exercises. Invite friends for dinners and write a note about how it was afterwards.

Exercises Create and practice exercises. You can browse exercises by grade and theme and select to practice exercises on a specific grade or theme. Or you can select to practice one or several exercises belonging to a specific learning goal within the grade/theme.

If you just click on the practice link, you will be given exercises suitable for your current level. The first time you do this, you will be presented with the easiest exercises. As you progress, the system will remember which level you were on and present suitable exercises the next time you select the practice option.

Finally, you can compete with other users by launching the declare a war option. To make this work, the page must be viewed from within the program PeerAware. But you can read more about that in the help pages on the declare a war pages.

Dinner-Share Here you can invite people to dinner and keep track of who owes you a dinner.

Groups There are two types of groups, public and private. Public groups are visible to everyone, and anyone can join such groups by pressing the "Join" button. Private groups are only visible to the owner and the members of the group. Membership of such groups must therefore be spread through word of mouth. NOTE: Only the creator of a group can add new members to a private group.

You do not have to be member of any groups to start borrowing items from people. All items that are added as public by other members (see "Items I own" below) will be visible to everyone.

Items When selecting "My Items" three new choices appear, "Items I own", "Items I've borrowed" and "Look for items", where "Items I own" is the active view by default.

Items I own You can add new items at the bottom of the page in the "Items I own" view. Select the right type and name for your item. If you miss a type, you can suggest one to the administrator of xBorrow.

In the link field, you can enter a http link to a page that contains information about the item. An example of such a link is http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0163651/ which points to a page in the International Movie Data Base that describes the film "American Pie".

The visibility check boxes describes who you want to be able to borrow your item.

If you select public, anyone can see your item and issue a request to borrow the item.
If you select private, only you can see your item. If you lend the item to somone, the borrower will be able to see the item in his/hers "Items I've borrowed" view. The borrower will then also be able to lend your item to a new person, so you should tell him/her specifically if you do not want that to happen.
If you select protected, the item will only be available to members of the groups you check. If there are no groups listed underneath the "protected" check box, you are not member of any groups, and hence the "protected" choice will be treated as the " private" choice.

To control who can view your items, you can make a group (see 'Groups' below) and add the people you want to it. Then, go back to the 'Items, Items I own' view and add the items you want people to be able to borrow. See 'Items I own' further down on how to add new items.

In the "Items I own" view, you can also "Delete" and "Modify" your items as well as specifying a new borrower and request the borrower to return an item through the "New borrower" and "Request return" buttons. Note that the "Request return" button is only available if you have borrowed the item to someone.

Items I've borrowed In this view, you will see a list of the items you have borrowed from other people. If you have returned an item to its owner, pressing the "Return to owner" button will update the database accordingly and send an email to the owner that you have done so.

If another person wants to borrow the item after you, you can press the " New borrower" button to specify the new borrower.

Look for items In this view you can search for items that belong to other people and issue a "Request to borrow item" through the corresponding button. In the "Filter conditions" box you can select to display items of a specific type only and even search for items that contain the text you specify. You can also check the "Include items I own" and "Include items I've borrowed" to see how these items appear to other users.

By specifying a special group as filter, only items that are held by members by that group will be displayed. This can be handy if you want to be sure to find an item held by a person close to where you live. By creating a group with only the people close to where you live, you can filter on that group.

When you log out, your last filter settings will be saved for you until the next time you login.

The other menu options should be self explanatory. If you have any questions on how to use xBorrow, you can contact the administrator of xBorrow, who will be happy to answer any questions

Have fun!