The University of Girona, Spain recently published a paper "Modelling Role-Playing Game as a Unit of Learning to Encourage Cooperative Learning" This paper details how they will use the Learning Activities Management System (LAMS) and .LRN, an LMS to run role playing games as learning experiences.
There is a great deal of interest in serious games for learning right now and this is an excellent example of the power of LAMS. The image shows what the design looks like in LAMS.
Urgent Evoke a Game for Social Entrepenuers has put the Fun into Functional [www.urgentevoke.com]
Is facebook a game? Is eBay? YouTube?
Amy Jo Kim makes a case that they are in her Google TechTalk on Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software.
On the other side Urgent Evoke, one of the new genre of serious games, presents itself as a game.
But really game or not is not the question. The quesiton is, is the experience fun?
Game mechanics can make life more fun. Games reinformce your behavior and keep you in Flow.
Amy's talk gives some examples.
- Points - remember, variable reinforement is more effective)
- Collecting - for instance friends.
- Completeing a set - badges or in Urgent Evoke's case you get to complete missions
- Leaderboards
- Feedback, both from the system and from other players, graphic presentation of it
- Structured social exchange - leaving comments, giving points for each other
- Customization - create your secret identity!
Life should be fun. I think even the most serious of sites should look at these elements. Engagement is important in everything.
FBI probing school webcam spying case [www.eschoolnews.com]
There has been a case in the new lately of a student suing a school district for spying on them at home with a school laptop. It reminded me of this video of a 1:1 school in NYC.
At about 4:38 in the video you can watch the administrator using this capability. I think it is completely legal inside the school. The whole video is worth watching and its interesting that they included this disturbing clip in an overall very positive piece.
Grassroots/Entrepreneurial Schools in Pakistan [www.hks.harvard.edu]
The Harvard Kennedy School Magazine did a fascinating article about schooling in Pakistan. There are 47,000 private schools in Pakistan. Students in the private schools out performed those in public schools. Most of these schools are run by one educated woman. There was a minimal difference, 2%, if the teacher had post-secondary education.
Lessons from Teach for America's data for Sugar [www.theatlantic.com]
The Atlantic published an article discussing the 20 years and 7,300 teachers worth of data collected by Teach for America.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/good-teaching
Its a great article and for this blog post I want to focus on what it says about assessment. When we've discussed assessment on Sugar's Its an Education Project mailing list there was a tendancy to think of it in terms of the high stakes, once a year or less frequent, standardized tests. The results of these tests take months return and they are not all that useful for teachers to use to modify their teaching.
Presentation on Sugar on a Stick to NH Sea Coast Linux User Group [www.tedroche.com]
Last week I went up to Durham and visited the friendly folk of NHs Linux User Group. I had a wonderful time and here is a write up from one of the attendees.
http://www.tedroche.com/blog/2010/02/09/seacoast-lug-caroline-meeks-sugar-on-a-stick Here is the presentation:
I have been volunteering with the Haiti Ushahididi effort doing mapping of SMS and Twitter messages for help. I also worked at Crisis Camp Boston on Saturday. I'll write more about all of these but I think the most compelling thing I learned is:
Having your street name on a map on the internet can save your life.
Open Street Maps has been getting better and better for Haiti. On Saturday while the hackers were upstairs hacking Haitian volunteers were downstairs working to help identify street and place names to make the maps better.
There are places in the world without many computers or computer literate people, but I think there are very few places that haven't sent some of their young people into the cities where there are computers. If we could crowd source a large number of people making sure their parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and extended family. all had street and place names on the map we could add a lot of coverage.
(photo by iSGTW http://www.isgtw.org/?pid=1002233)
Collaboration capabilities of the GeoChronos platform will be achieved through the use of a model-driven architecture that allows for new data sources, and new applications to be quickly integrated into the platform by scientists. Integrating tools, data, and computing resources into a single platform will enable the automation of scientific workflows. The platform will provide tools for developing a web accessible spectral library, allowing Earth observation scientists to contribute to, and query a database of spectra. The spectral library will support rich metadata necessary for interpreting observed spectra. The overall goal is for the platform to become a one stop shop for Earth observation science.I am looking forward to seeing how there work progresses. I think there is tremendous potential for ELGG to support communities of practice
(photo by Soulja Boy)
I'm glad I did, its given me a front row seat as YouTube deals with copyright issues.
First the music was muted without warning. Then recently I got an interesting email from YouTube.
Dear Meekshome,
Your video, One Mile Dec 15, 2007, may have content that is owned or licensed by Sony Music Entertainment.
The H1N1 virus effects younger people more then older and already has shut down a number of schools for a week or more. Some school districts, such as Wausua, WI are preparing to continue to educate children even if schools are closed using Moodle.
Smart move!
Our goal is to make it easy and effective day to day as well as in emergencies.
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/article/20090710/WDH0101/907100642/1981/WDHopinion
The Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), is the public Spanish Open University. UNED is the second largest university in Spain with more than 180,000 students and since 1997 it has held the UNESCO chair in Distance Education which promotes research, development and documentation in the field of distance education.
UNED is a long time member of the .LRN community and they have just publish an article on their use cases and why they choose .LRN.
(photo by Sugar FOSS Manual)
I'm going to try to post more about our progress as we get Sugar on a Stick ready for prime time. I'm going to try a sweet and sour formula
Record - http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4081
I played with Record on my iMac today.
The Sweet:
- Video worked on my iMac
The Sour:
- Audio doesn't work yet
- Video quality isn't great - but alsroot thinks he knows how to fix that!
Why should we care?
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 22 /PRNewswire/ --
Sugar Labs(TM) announces the availability for testing of Sugar on a Stick Beta-1. This version of the free open-source Sugar Learning Platform, available at http://www.sugarlabs.org for loading on any 1 Gb or greater USB stick, is designed to facilitate exploration of the award-winning Sugar interface beyond its original platform, the One Laptop per Child XO-1, to such varied hardware as aging PCs and recent Macs to the latest netbooks.
Teachers and parents interested in trying Sugar with children can download the Sugar on a Stick beta-1 file from the Sugar Labs website and load it onto a USB stick by following the instructions at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick.
In the May issue of Innovate magazine Marie Sontag proposes "A Learning Theory for 21st-Century Students." I especially like her "Link, Lurk and Lunge" alliteration for describing 21st Century learning.
I'm going to define the stages slightly differently then she does.
Link - Learners look at links, collect them as bookmarks and find both the digital people and on-line places that have the knowledge they are studying. Indeed its interesting how people and online places blur. Is finding a good blog finding a place or a person? What about a mailing list where experts are conversing on the subject?
On Friday, Walter Bender, Pablo Flores from Uruguay, and I went to FOSSVT - Vermont's Open Source and Education Conference. We handed out Sugar on a Stick and it worked!
It worked on the eeePCs, it worked on the Dells big and small, it worked on the think pads, it worked on the classmate. It worked on the HP tablet, including the touchscreen! It didn't work on one of the little HP netbooks but that was our only complete fail. We had problems with accessing wireless on a few models. One laptop needed the boot helper CD.
We had a room full of people doing Turtle Art! It was wonderful.
XO laptops in Uruguay [www.americasquarterly.org]
Project CEIBAL is Uruguay's one laptop per child initiative.
Here are some details:
"This makes CEIBAL different from previous efforts to bridge the digital divide in Uruguay. It combines the distribution of computers with a program to train teachers in the cognitive skills needed to use IT for maximum benefit. It is not oriented toward creating an IT-friendly environment merely inside the classroom, but also outside: students are expected to take laptops home so that the computer can then be shared among family members."
"To date, we have delivered 151,918 XO computers—low-power laptops that operate with flash memory and a Linux operating system—to students in public schools in Uruguay. By the end of 2009 one laptop will be delivered to each of the 301,143 students and 12,879 teachers in Uruguay’s 2,064 public schools. Students with mental, visual, hearing, or motor disabilities—as well as their schools—will also receive computers specifically tailored to meet their needs. CEIBAL’s total initial cost, financed entirely by the Uruguayan state, is $100 million (each computer costs $220). In addition to that, the government will spend $15 million annually for the program’s maintenance and continuity. "
Is Ning the new poster child for why you should go Open Source? [www.chartingstocks.net]
Charting Stocks Reports: "Clients of Ning are outraged over a decision that Ning made public last week. The software maker sent out an email to all of its clients, those who have created a social network on Ning, stating that they would email all members of all websites who use the Ning software to promote the newly designed Ning.com."
The email from Ning says:
"The new Ning.com will be accessible via www.ning.com as well as at the top of your social network on Ning. If you have purchased the premium service to remove Ning promotional links, the links to the new Ning.com will not be visible to your members directly from your social network. Your members will still be able to access these new features via www.ning.com To purchase the premium service to make these links invisible to your members, simply go to your social network's Manage page and choose Premium Services.
Because of these changes to the Ning member services, we will be sending an administrative email to everyone registered with a Ning ID over the next two weeks. We wanted to let you know about this communication in advance."
The article goes on to point out this is not the first time Ning has changed the rules on thier customers. These Web 2.0 companies can hold your data and user base hostage. With Open Source you are free to use the code, change the code and you own your data.
ELGG used at Harvard [news.elgg.org]
Elgg is starting to gain popularity and with ELGG 1.5 out we expect that to continue and expand. Solution Grove plans to be increasing our ELGG offerings soon.
Here is a case study on ELGG use in a program at Harvard: http://news.elgg.org/pg/blog/Dave/read/66/elgg-at-harvard-an-interview
Elgg follows the Facebook metaphor more then traditional LMS systems. However, its still a closed system where only your classmates can access your work if you wish. This gives students the physiological safety they need to explore their ideas.
The portfolio capabilities are appealing to students who need to show off their work during their job hunt.
Fair Use and Copywrite law are effecting us all, especially teens. This is a project to help people understand the law.
I previously posted on Fair Use for Educators, also useful but not as much fun. A Fair Analysis of Fair Use
LAMS has always been focused on improving online pedagogy. The new LAMS lesson planner takes this one step farther and scaffolds teachers while they create rich collaborative lesson plans.
Lesson templates include:
- Exploring Alternative Perspectives
- Problem Based Learning
- Role Play
- Case Study Focus
LAMS International announces US partnership with e-learning experts Solution Grove [www.lamsinternational.com]
21 July 2008, Sydney, Australia & Boston, USA
LAMS International Pty Ltd is pleased to announce that Solution
Grove, Inc has become the first USA partner for LAMS. The partnership
will see LAMS being actively promoted in United States, both as a
standalone solution and as an integrated module with other learning
platforms.
Solution Grove provides hosting, support and
services for open source learning solutions in the United States.
Solution Grove's existing customers include MIT Sloan, Harvard Kennedy
School of Government, Massachusetts General Hospital and many
educational organisations. Solution Grove will actively promote LAMS to
the e-learning community in United States including governments,
schools and universities.
Idealware is a nonprofit that does consumer reports type evaluations for the non profit industry. This article is intended to help nonprofits that might be considering Open Source options.
I was pleased to see a good description of the Open and Freedom part of Open Source.
First, you are free to run these software packages for any purpose--you generally don’t pay anything to acquire them. Second, the source code is free--you can see the code and understand how it works. Third, you are free to copy and redistribute the package to anyone you want. And finally, you are free to modify the software however you like, and to release those modifications.
Write up of the Open Minds Conference [www.infinitethinking.org]
(photo by Dolly)
LAMS was very well recieved at the K-12 Open Minds conference in Indiana. I think its hard to understand what LAMS does until a person has some experience with Moodle without LAMS. There were lots of Moodle users at this conference. My audiance was mostly Tech Directors and they felt that the teachers they were supporting were trying to do LAMS like sequences using Moodle alone and would really appreciate LAMS.
The State of Indiana is officially moving K-12 Education to Open Source so there was a lot of interest in LAMS as a mechanism for sharing lessons plan and helping to administration monitor where in the curriculum teachers were.
Ernie over at LAMS has been working on LAMS "Tool Adaptors". These allow you to use the LMS, e.g. Moodle, .LRN, tools such as Forum, inside of LAMS with far more integration.
Main page on Tool Adaptors: http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/Tool+Adapters
The secret to understanding this is to go into the .LRN and Moodle pages and watch the vidoes of the Forums integration.
But the real power and promise isn't in using Forums, its the concept of being able to integrate tools from the LMS in rich ways with LAMS. That opens up a wide world of possiblities for creating customized solutions for learning.
Our customers, and thier students, are often using a wiki for the first time on one of our sites. I saw a great video on YouTube explaining the whys and hows of Wikis.
I also made a quick demo to show the features they go over in our wiki. Try out the basics and then when you are ready to learn more check out this documentation: http://www.solutiongrove.com/docwiki/howtoxowiki
One of my friends who is also a Linked In Contact wrote me this email in response to Linked In's automated updates :)
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 5:45 PM, Greg wrote:
LinkedIn
------------
GROUP UPDATES:
...
* Caroline Meeks has joined Women 2.0
...
Geez. I had no idea. I won't ask about the new features.
(Sorry, but it couldn't be left alone...)
Lots of things suck about the Wii Fit game. You can’t string together activities so you waste a minute or two between each activity. You can’t share your data on the internet so you can’t compete with your friends. But I assume they will fix these problems and charge me another $39.95 to get a new version.
The board itself works remarkably well. It's amazing how it can tell where my body is and it's cool to have visual feedback on my balance as I do the yoga poses.
I will be presenting a workshop on Collaborative eLearning at this year's Grassroots Use of the Internet Conference. It's always a great conference. Here is the description of our specific workshop:
The internet is a great source of information, but how do you move from putting your information out there to really supporting learning online? In the past people have moved from static web pages, to multi-media presentations that use the “listen-and-read, then answer questions model”. However, learning is a social activity. People learn best together. As the web becomes more social and collaborative so can online learning.
In this workshop you will get hands-on experience using an open source learning tool (LAMS) to support collaborative learning. We will explore a bit of the theory behind learning and try out some collaborative activities.
LAMS is a tool that allows the creation and sharing of online sequences of activities. Using easy drag and drop tools to facilitate the online equivalent of lesson planning it encourages a real focus on the structure and theory of learning (pedagogy).
The goal of the workshop is not to focus on the how-to of any particular technology but to inspire new ideas for making online learning effective, engaging and collaborative.
Does Sugar coating Linux make kids like it more? [bits.blogs.nytimes.com]
The New York Times wrote an article on Walter Blender's split with OLPC. What bothers me is the black and white mentality about Linux.
Sugar is based on Linux - but that does not make it the same as most Linux desktops.
Sugar was made to support constructivist learning in small children. That's great, but does anyone know if it works? It's a great thing to try to do, but personally I find it hard to use. Now I'm not a non-literate small child, whereas a co-worker's 4-year old pre-reader can navigate the system intuitively. Does anyone know what research they have done on the effectiveness of Sugar vs. a more traditionally laid out operating system for different age groups? One of the unique things about OLCP is they are focusing on 1st graders.
Open - Standards, Source, Content, Services and Culture - Do you know the difference? [www.archimuse.com]
We have an open source product for museum class registration we developed for the Museum of Science so I followed a link to an article on What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community? What I found was a very clear discussion of different forms of openness:
- Open Standards
- Open Source
- Open Content
- Open Services
- Open Culture
LAMS on the XO [wiki.lamsfoundation.org]
LAMS - The Learning Activity Management System is one of the open source eLearning systms we support. They recently met with One Laptop per Child people (OLCP). LAMS learner runs fine on the XO laptop (pictures here) and they are developing a version to go on the servers that will be at each school.
LoveThreads - OpenACS Eccomerce site [lovethreads.com.au]
Mark Aufflick, a friend in the OpenACS community, just launched a new openACS based e-commerce site for environmentally friendly fashion. Love Threads, Rethead the Planet
Nice site design and nice clothes. Good work, Mark!
Google Summer of Code pays college students to spend their summers writing open source code.
This summer has 3 projects that are related to OpenACS.
A Business Rule Management System based on the high-level object oriented scripting language XOTcl
Student: Franz Wirl
Mentor: Gustaf NeumannVienna
University of Economics and Business Administration
Business Rule Engines (BRE) are gaining popularity in complex
situations where a high degree of flexibility and declarative problem
formulation are important. In particular, BREs enable the use of
declarative programming---"What to do" rather than "How to do
it"---which will allow people with limited or no traditional
programming experience develop web-based applications.
(photo by Elgg Social Networking)
The highlight of Chapter 1 of Elgg Social Neworking is a concise features list - What can Elgg Do?
- Blogging
- File repositories for individauls and communities
- Podcast support
- Full access controls
- Supports tagging
- User Profiles
- Full RSS support
- RSS aggregator
- Create Communities
- Collaborative community blogs
- Create friends' networks
- Import content
- Publish to blog
- Thorough pricacy controls
- Multilingual
- Branding/Customization
- OpenID
- Import/export friends with FOAF
In addition to introducting the features, Chapter 1 covers the basics of social networking as a foundation for understanding Elgg. However, this is probably not how most of our educational users come to Elgg. My observation of educational users is that Elgg's first role is as a simple ePortfolio, then to support blogging for reflection.
Elgg has a new book!
We are currently using Elgg as the ePortfolio and social networking tool of our Personal Learning Environment. My plan is to review the book and highlight the sections in each chaper that are most useful for people using our integrated system.
Preface:
I am writing a lot of marketing material these days as we launch our PLE product. Thus I have a huge respect for how hard it is to describe these rich complicated systems simply. Here is a quote:
Elgg provides each user with a personal weblog, file repository (with podcasting capabilities), an online profile, and an RSS reader. Additionally, all of the user's content can be tagged with keywords - so they can connect with other users with similar interests and create their own personal learning network. However, where Elgg differs from regular weblog or commercial social network (such as MySpace) is the degree of control each user is given over who can access their content. Each profile item, blog post, or uploaded file can be assigned its own access restrictions - from fully public to readable only by a praticular group or individual.
Cesar Brea, who is also on the Board of the .LRN Consortium posted an annoucement on the next OpenACS/.LRN Usergroup.
Following the recent global user group meeting in Guatemala, o resurgence de OpenACS/.LRN will next pop up in Brazil. Here's Eduardo Santos' summary:
I'm happy to announce the first (or the second, if you consider this) OpenACS Brazilian users group meeting. The event will take place at the 9th International Free Software Forum (FISL 9.0) in Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil, from April 17th to 19th.
The article is entitled, "Analysis: How multimedia can improve learning - New research sheds light on students' ability to process multiple modes of learning" and provides a nice, easy summary of the research in this area.
Highlights include a quick summary of the learning theory:
Student preconceptions of a curriculum must be engaged in learning process. Only when the student has the opportunity to correct misconceptions, build on prior knowledge, and create schemas of understanding a topic will learning be optimized.
I attended the National Science Teachers Association conference here in Boston and saw many wonderful things. One thing that puzzled me was a multitude of vendors selling "clickers" for students to key in a multiple choice response to a question. I asked all those vendors if they had competition from people using mobile phones to do the same thing. They all claimed to have never heard of it.
It struck me as pretty easy to build so when I returned home I, of course, checked the wonderful blog From Toy to Tool and sure enough there is a post about a free (for less then 100 responses) service. Liz, you rock!
We love to use pictures in our blogs. My personal favorite is Flickr creative commons search, but thanks to TechSoup we now have a dozen more places we can look for free images.
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page5977.cfm
I know lots of people saw the interactive white board from the Immersive Education post and wanted one. Here are instructions on how to make your own from Johnny Lee at Carnegie Mellon University
Detailed how to:
(photo by by Davb)
This weeks reading in The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen includes the concept of the Buying Hierarchy. Products are bought based on four factors in order: functionality, reliability, convenience and price.
I want to apply this to online teaching content. Material that could potentially replace the text book.
Functionality – There is a lot of wonderful content out there and more being produced for free all the time. In addition we know how to get groups of users to collaborate to create content and there are a lot of people in the world who know the basic K-12 curriculum.
Planning an online community [www.idealware.org]
Online communities take planning, care and feeding. If you want one, be sure to read this Idealware article first. Here are some quotes:
do your homework to clarify your community's purpose and composition. If you were building a new residential community, you'd certainly think hard about what sort of people might choose to live there and why.
and
Finally, be sure that you intend to be in it for the long haul. Online communities take time to catch fire. A member's connection with your community grows with each individual small interaction, even those that have no obvious immediate organizational benefit. If you interact with your community members only when you want a favor from them, you may drive people away. Like a friendship, relationships that are only about favors do not stand the test of time.
This is a double learning experience for me. It is a reflective on the reading for this week's class, Chapters 1-3 of The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, and how it relates to my project, which is a business plan for our MEL product. It is also my first video of this type as I continue to try to keep up with the average high school student level of video production!
Brandon Hall Research recently reported average LMS prices. The trend towards hosted LMS systems becoming cheaper than installed ones is new but is very consistent with our experience here at Solution Grove. Hardware is getting cheaper and replication systems are getting more sophisticated. If you control all the hardware and every part of the software stack then it's very easy to create a new instance of the LMS system. However, setting up systems inside another organization's data center remains complex. We do set up systems on-site on the customer's preference of operating system, but each operating system, each firewall, mail server, etc. has its own peculiarities and settings and, of course, new sysadmins to get to know.
As an open source fan I had to share this video that so accurately conveys the everyday culture of Italy. ;)
Recently I attended a conference "Enabling the Age of Immersive Education".
The best presentation was by Daniel Laughlin Research Scientist, NASA Learning Technologies. He was able to use Learning Thoery to give a very clear presentation that reinforced commone sense, but helped to organize understanding of the topic. This is definitely a goal for me.
A definite highlight of the conference was the hallway conversation with a photographer, writer and oral historian from Roxbury. She helped me really understand what I'd like to see done with Immersive Environments. As Daniel from NASA explained, our beliefs are burnt into our synapses. If we want to challenge those beliefs, especialy about emotional issue like racism and identity we have to invoke emotions while we teach. Thus, to deeply understand history, in a way that allows us to change our current beliefs, we have to have empahty with the people and cultures we study. I think emersive technologies, in the hands of artists like this woman could have the potential to do this.
Tom Werner of Brandon Hall Research posted a blog featuring an example by Karl Kapp that featured learning about and setting up displays for a hardware store. We have a client in this business so I loved the example.
Positives
- It's a great example of how a 3D environment would provide a better learning experience
- Better detail on the drill
- More authenitc hands on experience learning about the features
- More authentic practice where the learners actually set up the display and have it checked!
However, I really doubt this would work for our client
(photo by Moodle Teaching Techniques by William Rice)
I love the preface to William Rice's book "Moodle Teaching Techniques".
Rice says,
"While most [software manuals] do a good job of telling you how to perform tasks, that is, what buttons to push and menus to choose, they often leave the two most important questions unanswered:
What effect will doing this have on your audience's experience?
When would you want to do this?"
We are getting very close to having an integrated Moodle+ELGG+LAMS product and I'm realizing that we will need to write exactly this type of manual and/or training. As Rice puts it, "we need to combine 'keystroke-and-click' directions with advice on how to make the best use of the solutions and what effects it will have on student's experiences."
Cesar Brea pointed out Bill Ives' post, "Serena has Adopted Facebook as their Intranet."
We've created corporate intranets (demo site showing off what we did for Cesar's company) and Facebook apps so we've thought about this. I think the key to what Serena has done is using Facebook as a front end but having the intranet itself on a private and secure system. Then, you have the best of both worlds. Facebook becomes the watercooler, an open place for employees and friends to interact, while corporate documents and work discussions take place on a private system with controlled access.
Happy New Year!!
If you are reading this on an RSS reader, then you might not have noticed our new look!
After you admire the attractive new graphics and layout, you may find yourself wondering why we have ads. If I were to give an advice to a small company, I would not recommend a corporate blog with ads as the ads will likely lead off your site to a competitor's.
So why don't we take our own advice? For us, our blog is more than a marketing tool, it's our playground to learn about all things on the web. Our space for hands on learning. Ads can be important to a web site and so we're experimenting with different ways to incorporate them.
Yet another interesting article in the latest issue of Innovate on an online tool to evaluate Fair Use in copyright law: Fair Use Education for the Twenty-First Century: A Comparative Study of Students' Use of an Interactive Tool to Guide Decision Making. Greenhow, Walker, Donnelly and Cohen (2008) evaluated a Fair Use Analysis (FUA) tool developed by the University of Minnesota Libraries intended to scaffold working educators who wanted make a good decision as to whether they were within Fair Use guidelines.
The Learning Circuits Blog has a monthly Big Question. For December the question is: What did you learn about learning in 2007?
This year I started a Master's program at Harvard Graduate School for Education with a course on "Learning Technologies Across the Content Areas" by Prof. Barry Fishman. However, what was valuable was not being exposed to the various learning technologies but to the basics of the Learning Theory. Uninspired pedagogy in the classroom, translation onto the Web is not going to be any better.
by Robert Herrick
WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free ;
O how that glittering taketh me !
Tonight is my play with new Web 2.0 sites night. So how do you go from Web 2 to Renaissance Poetry?
It all starts when Jott spams me with an announcement of their new jott-links that let me add events to my google calendar by dialing their number and speaking into my cell phone. This seems cool and when I get to the signup page there is a list of other web sites that have jott-links. One of them is Mosio, which is a service that promises you human answers to any message you text them.
DAMN! Why didn't I read about Zotero 2 months ago? I just finished my first research paper in 20 years and, let me tell you, it was not a pleasant experience. Thanks to Innovate, the Journal of Online Education, I now know about Zotero, an open source firefox plug-in. If you have a paper due soon check out the video tour.
Version 1.0 looks useful for an individual student, but what I am really watching is the server support in Version 2.0 that will let people share resources, urls, notes, etc. Many K-12 schools have issues with student information being shared on the open internet. Because Zotero is open source it could potentially be set up for a single school, creating a private version of a top rate research tool. I will be watching to see how well it could be integrated into a Personal Learning Solution (PLS). My wish list includes:
One of our clients, The Center for 21st Century Skills, is a leader in this arena and we are supporting the ELGG–Moodle Personal Learning Solution they are using in high schools in Connecticut.
Putting on my learning technology geek hat instead, I wondered how this idea could help teachers keep track of what content their students were using on the web. In .LRN, as well as other LMS systems, teachers can load in content from a course pack, IMS, SCRORM package, etc., and make it available to their class. They can then review reports of students, pages viewed, time on page, scores in exercises, etc. However, more and more content is out on the web, not in a course package. The National Science Foundations (NSF) National Science Digital Library (NSDL) project is just one example of the many.
What to do when faced with a 40+ page RFP that has been clearly written with proprietary vendors in mind? Have other open source vendors faced this? Usually, we are just too busy to play a very time consuming lottery ticket. Is there education we can do for procurement people that will make it easier for them to find an open source solution that might be a significantly better deal?
I have found one excellent blog post on the web: http://service-architecture.blogspot.com/2006/07/when-open-source-meets-procurement.html
I recently had to decline to bid on a project that was trying to confederate a large number of state schools that could quite likely save a significant amount of money by using open source. Here is an excerpt from the letter I wrote declining to bid:
So much to say so little time to blog...
I have a lot to report from the .LRN Conference, but if you don't want to wait for me to have time to blog take a look at the videos of the whole conference!
Meanwhile I'm just going to reblog a few interesting articles from Tech Soup:
Ever the source of practical advice: How to Record, Edit, and Promote a Podcast
Podcasting is a useful, affordable way for nonprofits to expand their reach and further their missions. We'll walk you through the process of creating and posting your own podcasts. http://ga0.org/ct/n7a7i2917EIy
Stop Cyber Bullying Day [www.pbs.org]
I am posting in support of Kathy Sierra. I have the privilege to hear her speak at the .LRN conference in Boston last fall. She gave wonderful, inspirational, insightful and educational talk I feel she is acting with great courage to post about what is happening to her.
It is frustrating to have no ability help beyond a post in support. Working in a male-dominated field such as open source is challenging. As a woman working closely with highly male dominated open source project I've been very pleased to see growing number of strong new female contributors to the project. I definitely notice the ratio and I do feel that when working within the setting of my open source project, whether online or a face-to-face, I am very conscious of how I act, dress, what kind of jokes I make, compared to contexts that have a more balanced gender ratio. However, I never would have dreamed of this level of harassment of an IT blogger.
Cesar Brea has written a wiki page on OpenACS.org that explains the "what" and the "why" surrounding the recent announcement that OpenACS/.LRN is the first to support the IMS LD specification for designing open-ended, collaborative learning experiences online. Currently this is a univesity research project but as Solution Grove works to find the synery between online games, communities, and learning we expect this sort of functionality to be extremely useful.
Olga C. Santos is presenting at FLOSS International Conference (Jerez, Spain - March 7-9, 2007) two papers regarding the usage of .LRN at UNED. The first one presents the two different use cases taking place in this University, Exploitation (Innova Section) and Research (aDeNu Group), and the second one the on-going works of aDeNu group in ALPE research project where .LRN is used.
Martin Kloos' "Comm.unities.of.prac.tice 2.0" examines how three different collaborative tools; blogs, wikis and social bookmarking, support learning in communities of practice.
http://www.martinkloos.nl/thesis-M.Kloos.pdf
Solution Grove implements all three (plus forums) and I often struggle with how to explain to people which will work for their situation. Here is Kloos' take.
Social bookmarking focuses on informal information sharing and the creation of
a shared repertoire, blogs focus on meaning making, and wikis focus on knowledge
creation and collaboration. In other words: social bookmarking focuses on
informal information sharing, weblogs focus on informal socializing (e.g. interaction
and discussion), and wikis focus on formal knowledge creation and
collaboration.
One of the interesting rewards working in an open source community provides is the opportunity to learn about work being done in other countries.
FAA (Open and Accessible Training) is based on *.LRN* to support accessible standard-based (IMS, SCORM) collaborative and adaptive courses along the full life cycle of eLearning.
In turn, EU4ALL (European Unified Approach for Accessible Lifelong Learning) aims to build an open and accessible service architecture for all to cope with the accessibility requirements in higher education institutions in Europe. *OpenACS* toolkit (using the web services support developed by Wien) is going to be used.
Links:
I've posted a "wink" of the class registration system we did about a year ago for MGH on the med.openacs.org site.
Dr. Carl Blesuis did a poster presentation on the system at AMIA. It's a great poster that covers the collaborative features as well as registration. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be on the web any where. I'll post when he puts it up. Meanwhile I hope you enjoy video the tour of "dotLRN Ecommerce" a very flexible and powerful course registration tool for .LRN. If you would like to learn more about the features of this package please refer to the Register to LRN page on Solution Grove.
This is a demo of a "Carousel UI" integrated into OpenACS to allow users to pick images.
- Old Microphone: Tour of our social Bookmarking app
- New Microphone: Tour of our drag and drop portals
From Creating Passionate Users - "How to be an expert"
So the world conspired to encourage me to attempt to learn a new skill – Video. What lead me to foolishly believe I could learn to put videos on the web?
- Last week I read an interesting article about students using cell phones for video.
- I was chatting with Cesar Brea who has big plans to install a blue screen and do video interviews.
- I wrote a post on Revver a profit sharing video hosting service.
- I also have a shiny new cell phone, the Motorola Q, and it does make videos.
I have been reading Web 2.0 for Business Advantage: A Personal Guide to Profiting from the New Web by Kathleen Gilroy of the Otter Group. She says, "Find your personal style" when you blog and I think I may have finally found mine. I think I'm a Wink-er!
I have a confession. I hate to write. Well maybe not hate it. I can do it and in running a business I get lots of practice. But I sure don't love it. It doesn't put me into "Flow" as Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users puts it. But I do love discussing web sites and web ideas. I enjoy showing people sites and talking about how those ideas could be used to solve their problems.
Beth Kanter pointed me to Revver. Revver puts ads at the end of your videos and splits the profit with you. This seems cool and I was excited to see if I could create winks describing OpenACS, host them there and maybe collect a few cents for me or for the dotLRN consortium. Unfortunately, they don't support swf, which is the format wink creates.
AMIA2006 - free software AND free beer [www.rodspace.co.uk]
http://www.rodspace.co.uk/blog/2006/11/amia2006-free-software-and-free-beer.html
Portals by Mashing Up – Solution Grove & IBM [billives.typepad.com]
Solution Grove featured in Octavianworld.org [www.octavianworld.org]
Here is the back-story.
We have a client that needs to add significant graphing capability to their site and we are determining which open source tools to integrate with to meet this requirement. We always strive to have our work be reusable, so I thought what would be the most valuable thing we could do with a graph for each of our clients.
Many of our sites are variations of communities of practice. In a community of practice the users are interested in finding other users like themselves, and seeing where they are different from others. They may also be interested in new users and perhaps who are the old timers.
Web 2 with lots of colorful pictures [www.masternewmedia.org]
I am blogging this because I want to reuse it with nonprofit clients who are just starting to think about how they want to use Web 2.
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/10/12/web_20_ten_ways_nonprofits.htm
PR 2.0 [www.shiftcomm.com]
PR2.0 Essentials: http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/pr2essentials.pdf
This covers Web 2.0 from the point of view of Public Relations. Although current Solution Grove clients are promoting missions and trying to create communities of practice, the unapologetically commercial view point of this article provides a slightly different angle that may help drive new ideas.
Search 2.0 [www.readwriteweb.com]
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/search_20_vs_tr.php
I'd add to the list google's social search offering:
http://www.google.com/coop/docs/guide_topics.html
This is important to a number of Solution Grove clients who's business/mission involves helping a wide audience find deep, high quality information on fairly specific areas. Feeding/seeding these sorts of tools may be a means of achieving that end.
Good Advice from Ideal Ware [www.idealware.org]
Based on my experience and observations I would add another section to this article on Learning Management Systems. I see many organizations combining formal "learning" with the less formal types of KM described in this article. For example we have built a corporate intranet that includes both SCORM-based training programs for new employees and many of the "Answer Questions" and "provide information for decisions" types of KM. I've observed that many nonprofits, professional organizations and continuing education organizations combine formal education for certification requirements with less formal knowledge management, especially of the "encourage people to take advantage of other people’s knowledge" and the "ensure everyone can find the documents and other resources useful to them" kinds.
Ten Ways to Use Web 2.0 to Change the World - http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/webbuilding/page5425.cfm I think I might title this: "Using the web to help your mission - You don't have to build it all yourself". It contains good advice for looking outside your own site and organization and using the greater web to connect with like minded people and promote your mission.
Writing for Your Web Site - http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page5392.cfm - Web 2 maybe the new buzz word, but at the end of the day content is why people visit your website. This article gives links and information on how to write for the web and how to re-purpose printed material on the web.
Newsweek notices Web 2 [www.businessweek.com]
Solution Grove is definitely seeing this effect with several customers doing corporate intra and extra-nets with various Web 2 features.
Screen shots: http://ca.rroll.net/?cat=3
The Announcement:
Curriculum Central is a system for managing outlines for Courses or Units of Study. The system is targeted at academics that have to revise their course outlines before a course can be offered. Quality assurance is built into the workflow process, which requires approval from a department or school coordinator before the information is published for students to read.
New Version of the dotLRN Manual [www.solutiongrove.com]
It is also available in Spanish:
Scent of Information [www.uie.com]
This is an excellent article that talks about the difference between a portal and a home page. Solution Grove often creates sites with both a home page for unregistered users, and an intranet like portal for more involved users that belong to one or more classes or communities. Understanding the difference is crucial to good information architecture design.
I also like the "Scent of Information" model presented in this article.
http://www.uie.com/events/roadshow/articles/intranet_portals_scent/
http://openacs.org/storage/index?folder%5fid=344943
The installer is for people who wish to try / test OpenACS and dotLRN systems in a fast way under the windows platform. (As well as tool for demonstrators in the e-lane project)
The source code will be available for any interested user, as well as further updated versions of the installer will continue, plus more improvements.
Usage Scenario:
You are a large organization and you implement .LRN and give your instructors access to a host of innovative collaborative tools. At the end of the semester the administration wants to analyze which tools are used and in what areas or the organization.
What tools are used the most?
Who used the tools the most?
Which departments used which tools?
etc.
Currently the package covers:
- Photo Albums
- Assessments
- Evaluation/Gradebook
- FAQs
- Forums
- Learning object repository
- News
- Presentation (wimpy point)
- Weblogger
XoWIki [media.wu-wien.ac.at]
The new package differs from the existing wiki in a number of ways. Notably it uses a rich text widget and supports creating an intra-language link (a flag) pointing to the same information in another language.
This diagram is from "IMS LD reusable elements for adaptive learning designs" by Adriana J. Berlanga, Francisco J. García, Department of Computer Science, University of Salamanca. http://jime.open.ac.uk/2005/11/
It is a nice visual crib sheet to help understand all the terms and acronyms that are used in adoptive learning.
.LRN Presentation at Educause [www.educause.edu]
Three leaders from the educational institutions using .LRN will be speaking at EduCause, a large conference for technology professionals in higher education.Solution Grove is proud to have representatives from two sites we have worked on speaking...Alfred Essa of Sloanspace and Carl Blesius of Partners Healthcare. The third speaker is Vicente Cerveron of Valencia University in Spain. In his bio he explains why his institution choose .LRN:
Semantic Internet Innovation to present .LRN - OKI - Digital Repository integration at EXPO e-Learning Ferrara 2005
At EXPO E-Learning Ferrara 2005, Semantic Internet Innovation (SII) and Guinti Interactive Labs will present their pioneering work in integrating .LRN with digital repositories using the Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I.) standards developed at MIT.
Semantic Internet Innovation (SII), a .LRN Consortium member, is a leading provider of e-Learning solutions in Italy. Guinti Interactive Labs the IT branch of the Guinti Publisher Group, supports innovation in digital content management processes within knowledge and learning organizations.
Randal Pinkett (MIT S.M., M.B.A. '98, Ph.D. '02), an entrepreneur and founder of BCTPartners, is one of 18 contestants on this season's Apprentice, most of whom were hand-picked by Trump to appear on the show.
Randal was an early user of the ArsDigita Community System (ACS) which has evolved into OpenACS, the core of Solution Grove's products. For his dissertation for his Ph.D. from MIT, Randal used the community tools to created a website that addressed the digital divide and improved the quality of life for low-income residents.
Video Demos of .LRN [dotlrn.org]
Check it out!
dotFOLIO [www.dotfolio.org]
We have been getting a tremendous number of inquiries about portfolio systems and Solution Grove has already begun testing and development on dotFOLIO for a project funded by the State of Connecticut.
What is dotFOLIO?
The goal of the dotFOLIO project is to develop an open source e-portfolio application for the purpose of supporting personal learning and development. dotFOLIO can be used to construct a thoughtful collection of work and experience that leads to a desired outcome or educational goal. dotFOLIO will provide the functionality for this, as well as allow learners to preserve more knowledge over time and to forge richer connections between their academic and work endeavors.
The blog of the Astrodome Community Technology Center..providing internet access at the Astrodome - http://texasctcs.blogspot.com/
A online volunteer effort to create a comprehensive people finder database - http://192.122.183.218/wiki/index.php/PeopleFinderVolunteer
EnterpriseDB to Increase Role in Postgresql Community [www.enterprisedb.com]
Full story: http://www.enterprisedb.com/pressrelease7.do
Relevance: Postgresql and Oracle are the two databases supported by OpenACS/.LRN
Long Tail of Software
A General Article on Long Tails
I recommend these as reading for everyone involved in .LRN marketing. I think .LRN’s broad functionality and modular design positions it to have fantastic potential to serve the “long tail” of organizations that need some sort of Learning Management system but do not fit into the “box” assumed by the large proprietary vendors.
Lectures on OpenACS from Australia [pumptheory.com]
CIO Magazine on the ROI of Open Source [www.cio.com]
“Finally, take the entire organization into account. While a specific open-source project may not offer great ROI, the cost benefits of pioneer applications often materialize downstream in later projects that are able to adopt the open-source package. Even if you purchase enterprise licenses for your commercial products so that your marginal cost for a new application is effectively zero, keep in mind that someday, when those licenses are up for renewal, that marginal cost may be much higher.”
Client side java course creator [openacs.org]
This is being discussed on the OpenACS boards.
Current work by Solution Grove and others in the .LRN community have been expanding our Learning Objects Repository to meet the needs of organizations that are looking to create and manage large numbers of courses. The LORS-Central work Solution Grove did for PBS Teacherline was explicitly to meet the needs of delivering and managing many slightly customized versions of the same material delivered to many different classes. (E.G. teacher training courses that are slightly different from state to state to accommodate local standards)
Here is a brief exerpt:
Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management from Gopal Kapur
1. Half Baked Ideas
2. Inadequate sponsorship
3. Inadequate due dillegence
4. Poorly trained project manager
5. Lack of a robust process
6. Not taking project vital signs
7. No Project portfolio management
Case Study: Harvard's E-Government Executive Education (3E) Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government [dotlrn.org]
In the case study Dr. Jerry Mechling, the project's founder and lead says, ".LRN provided a huge head start toward what we wanted, plus support for things we didn't originally anticipate. It feels like a big house we're still moving into, and we're discovering all sorts of useful spaces even as we get comfortable in the main living quarters." Janet Caldow from IBM adds, "as a 3E Charter Sponsor, we made a big bet, and .LRN has paid off for realizing the Compass vision. We got what we wanted on time and on budget, it's scaling nicely, and we're proud to have IBM's name on it."
Please read the 3E case study.
dotLRN announced as SCORM Adopter partner by ADL [dotlrn.org]
Much of this class is focused on project management. I will be posting my notes and how I think the ideas can apply to Solution Grove's project work as well as for the greater OACS/LRN projects:
Notes from Kennedy School of Government Class on Executive Sponsorship - Session I
Research shows
Successful project explicitly and early state what is in it for the stockholders.
Understand that not everyone has to want/need the same benefits as long as they all have benefits.
do this first
Same great service, same great people, just a new name to continue our growth.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to Aristoi's sucess. We look forward to serving you as Solution Grove.
Phone Camera Blogging [www.tala-arawan.net]
I just tried out an OACS site that lets you send pics from your phone to a blog. This seems cool, maybe I'll try to put it on Aristoi.
Its my kid :)
BrowserCam - Cross Browser Compatibility [www.browsercam.com]
Cross browser compatiblity has been coming up a lot lately. This site takes picture of a url in a choice of browsers and screen sizes.
Brosercam.com
Thanks to Dave Bauer for the hint!
Firefox with Web Developer Extensions [texturizer.net]
Andrew pointed out this excellent tool for debugging html and css. I strongly recommended this for anyone doing OpenACS or other web development. Here are some features:
- Display and edit CSS
- Resize the browser
- View with disabled images, cookies, java, javascript
- Validate html, css, accessability
- View Form Information
- Outline tables and struructure
Cesar Brea's Blog Entry on the dotLRN conference [blogs.law.harvard.edu]
The Vertical Markets within the Nonprofit Sectior [nten.typepad.com]
It has some good points about how to think about the nonprofit vertical. OpenACS definitely falls into the Businessprocess and workflow mgmt tools sector of figure 1
How many group posters does it take to change a light bulb?
1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been
changed
14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the
light bulb could have been changed differently
7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs
27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light
bulbs
53 to flame the spell checkers
41 to correct spelling/grammar flames
6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb"
Its CMS Month [www.boxesandarrows.com]
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/managing_the_complexity_of_content_management.php
Actaully OACS 5 has a much better look out of the box and a better looking back end.
I can now categorize my blog entries..not that I've entered any categories yet.
OACS 5 is now multilingual. Whic in theory means I can have the UI of my site in a variety of languages. In practice it means I have a bunch of missing message keys I have to try to fix tomorrow.
The success stories were all about finding out from their constituencies/members who they were and what they wanted.
However, the vast majority of what the nonprofits talk about doing is pushing information, email, newsletters, pushing people to their sites.
The lesson I took back was that we need to encourage and enable nonprofits to bring information in rather then always pushing it out.
Specifically, I think the work that S&R did for AESIC allowing them to slowly, and thus less obtrusively, collect demographic and other survey info on their members could be very valuable to the nonprofit world.
--------------
Tech Support: Yes ma'am, how can I help you?
Customer: Well, after much consideration, I've decided to
install Love. Can you guide me through the process?
Tech Support: Yes I can help you. Are you ready to proceed?
Customer: Well, I'm not very technical, but I think I'm
.
What do I do first?
Tech Support: The first step is to open your heart.
Have you located your heart ma'am?
Customer: Yes, but there are several other programs
Is it okay to install Love while they are running?
Community Technology Review Journal Call for Submission [www.comtechreview.org]
A presentation on OpenACS [opensourcearmenia.com]
Notes from the eLearning Supplier Summit [www.internettime.com]
Article by Jonathan Peizer of OSI on FOSS and nonprofits [www.nten.org]
Nonprofit Sector," by Jonathan Peizer, Chief Technology Officer of the Open
Society Institute, http://www.soros.org, sponsored by OSI and distributed by
N-TEN. To read the complete report, please see the N-TEN Reports page at
http://www.nten.org/reports.
EXCERPT: "One of the latest technology protocols to benefit from the magic
bullet buzz is Open Source. I am deeply concerned about this because the
Open Source methodology does show a lot of promise in helping non-profits
take advantage of technology in new ways. In fact it is happening as I write
this article. The idea that applications can be licensed to use or modify
freely has a very powerful attraction. The Open Source methodology is
certainly a viable choice for some of the technology I use, recommend and
fund. However, I don't see it as a magic bullet that will revolutionize the
software development and deployment process for non-profits as some pundits
do; at least not unless it's dealt with in a far more strategic and
realistic context by civil society actors...
Open Source Conference in NYC on Oct 8th [www.fcny.org]
Non-US governments are starting to put significant backing behind open source elearning tools.
and Communications Technology Sector (ICT) -
A Collaborative Fact Finding Study
http://www.e-cology.ca/canfloss/report/
The final report for this study of open source software (OSS) commissioned by the
Government of Canada and conducted by e-cology Corporation is now available. The main
report is organized in five Chapters that cover the methods and data measured in the
study, the analysis of trends and forecasts of the future. The Appendix contains detailed
information from the study including questionnaire results, profiles, licenses and
scenario workshop report.
theyrule.net - US Fortune 100 Board Members
Graphical linking of Google data
touchgraph.com
kartoo.com
vivisimo.com
He did not demo but mentioned that Richard had an open source tool he used that created networks based on links in both directions and created XML output.
Lots of nice people lots of good ideas.
Write more later.
Yesterday we met a friend of Jeffs who was a Sloan graduate (well close, a society and internet major) who is interested in open source and internet policy issues. She took the fast catamaran to Vis last night. She had been having a wonderfull time traveling around the croatian islands for the last week.
I hope to get to the archeology museaum before the ferry.
With luck my next entry will be from Camp! (and mz own keyboard!)
I got to spend several hours walking around Anocona, it was a very nice town. I think i like split even better. Ill write more when I have access from mz lap top. Im on a nonUS keyboard so its tough typing.
Having a great time!
Summer Source - Software Camp for NGO's [www.tacticaltech.org]
I fly from Boston to Newark to Rome. Then a train to Ancona. Then a ferry to Split. I hope to hook up with Jeff Starin, also from the US on the ferry. We should arrive in Vis on Thursday morning and spend a day seeing Split before we take another ferry to the Isle of Vis on Friday.
The conference looks great. I encourage you to check out the link to see the agenda. They are asking us to keep the attendee list private but it looks awesome. An incredible diversity of countries. Below is the list.
I'll be posting what I learn here and I hope that people from the OACS community contact me if they see something interesting so I can facilitate networking.
Subscribe to notificaitons
- China Mobile Phones
- This is pretty exciting news
- This is exciting!
- Elluminate Session
- ShovelReadyEd.com
- LAMS is GPL
- Sound ok?
- Followup Article on OLPC News
- It was a Toshiba Portege M400 at FOSSVT
- unable to get this working