Moving at the Speed of Creativity

This podcast is a recording of a session I shared on July 9, 2008, at the Missouri Distance Learning Association’s Annual Conference in Osage Beach, Missouri, titled “Digital Learning Objects on the Open Web.” The ideas shared in this session were strongly influenced by Karen Fasimpaur’s February 2008 presentation at NCCE titled “Free Content + Open Tools + Massive Collaboration = Learning for All.” The official conference program description for this session was: The Internet’s world-wide web offers unprecedented access, publication, and collaboration opportunities for connected digital learners. In this session we will explore the dynamic world of digital learning objects, paying particular attention to the ways learning objects can be effectively integrated into existing course curriculum and student assignments for both K-12 and higher education learners. We will also explore the educational ethic of publishing content on the open web, which contrasts sharply with traditional notions of limiting access to content and ideas by sharing on a closed web via login-restricted learning management systems like BlackBoard, WebCT, or Moodle. Creative Commons licensing is playing an important role in the continued evolution of the digital learning object landscape, and a case will be presented for encouraging learners at all levels to both utilize as well as contribute to learning object collections shared under permissive Creative Commons licenses.

 

 Podcast265: Digital Learning Objects on the Open Web [65:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (492)

Show Notes:

1. My wiki curriculum and links for this presentation
2. Free Content + Open Tools + Massive Collaboration = Learning for All by Karen Fasimpaur (podcast available too)
3. K-12 OpenEd Educational Content Links
4. Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia (on Fora.tv in 2006)
5. WikiBooks
6. Free-Reading
7. OER Commons
8. Curriki
9. NMC Learning Object Initiative (Retired)
10. NMC Learning Object Repositories
11. Traveler’s Guide to the Learning Object Landscape (PDF)
12. Elusive Vision: Challenges Impeding the Learning Object Economy (PDF)
13. Creative Commons
14. More Than Cool Tools - K-12 Online Conference 2007 keynote by Alan Levine, Brian Lamb, and D’Arcy Norman (New Tools Strand)

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Technorati Tags: opencontent, content, copyright, creativecontent, elearning, distributedlearning, distancelearning, openweb, closedweb, learningmanagementsystem, licensing

This podcast features interviews with 14 year old Solana and 8 year old Jack who share their perceptions and ideas relating to reading, writing, literacy, technology use, gaming and publishing on the global stage of the Internet. Solana has had her own computer since she was eight, and with the help of her father found the website KidPub to publish and share her own stories, poems, and other creative writing projects. KidPub requires that parents pay a small fee (about $12) per year for kids to participate and have an account. This prevents people from creating free accounts and commenting on others’ work without accountability and attribution. Solana discusses how motivational she has found KidPub and the opportunity to share her voice with others on the Internet, problems encountered with plagiarism and the ways the KidPub community self-polices itself, and the exciting connection she had made with other students who have taken one of her published novels (with permission) and started to create a movie based on the story on YouTube. Solana also discusses what she has learned about computers and technology at school compared to what she has learned at home, including her experiences using Diigo and trying to collaborate with other kids. She discusses things she would change (if she could) about technology use and Internet access at school so she could extend and further develop her technology skills there. She also discusses her experiences with online safety, accessing websites like YouTube and extending her searches beyond engines like AskJeeves to Google, and her experiences with inappropriate content which she has accidentally stumbled upon when doing Internet searches. She also discusses issues related to social networking and directly contacting other kids online. In addition to Solana’s comments, 8 year old Jack discusses the ways he uses computers at home primarily to play strategic games. (Note: The names Solana and Jack are aliases used at the request of the parents.)

 

 Podcast261: Student Perspectives on Reading, Writing, Literacy, Technology Use, Gaming and Publishing on the Global Stage of the Internet [43:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (621)

Show Notes:

1. KidPub - a website used by young authors to publish and share their stories, poems, and other writing on the global stage of the Internet
2. Scholastic 2008 Kids & Family Reading Report
3. Alone in the Middle Chapter 1 (original story written and published by Solana on KidPub)
4. Alone in the middle (behind the scenes) part 1 (YouTube video - Tells the story of using MS Paint, MovieMaker, and YouTube to publish a film version of Solana’s story from KidPub)
5. Alone in the Middle (Paragraph 1) - 1st Paragraph of “Alone in the Middle” in film / video version on YouTube
6. The Sims2 (official website)
7. Savannah Outen Official Goodbyes Video - Songwriter and Singer who brokeout from YouTube to Radio Disney
8. GIMP - Open Source Photo Editing Software
9. SeaShore - Macintosh port of GIMP which does not require X11
10. ASUS - Eee PC
11. Intel Classmate PC
12. Dawn of War game
13. Command and Conquer 3 game
14. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR) game (WikiPedia article)
15. Cheat Codes WikiPedia definition

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Technorati Tags: technology, publishing, writing, reading, kid, kids, student, students, youth, literacy, publication, kidpub, games

These are my notes from David Thornburg’s NECC 2008 presentation “Open Minds: Open Education and Open Culture” on June 30, 2008. David has granted me permission to non-commercially record and share this presentation subsequently. MY THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS.

dthornburg [at] aol [dot] com

David has handouts not related to this session, related to a new project he’s started
- this session will include technology but it is a broader topic
- concerns the state of the WORLD right now
- I am an American expatriot, I am a resident of Brazil, I work both in the US and Brazil and commute back and forth

Have you noticed when you were outside the US you were able to think in a bigger way about some issues?
- we are in a point of new ages of discovery
- one of the questions I ask now, do PCs have the potential to be as transformative in our culture as the book
- what will it take to make this vision real?
- will this benefit the entire world?
- what about 1:1 computing

Indiana and Mr. Michael Huffman are pioneering the uses of open technologies for children
- open source software: see the Open Source pavilion that Steve Hargedon is running

challenge we face in education:
- pedagogical practices have not been standing still
- Gardner’s multiple intelligences, many other things
- the challenge isn’t that we aren’t taking advantage of new discoveries in pedagogies and taking advantage of them
- the challenge is that technology is changing faster than classroom practices

now our technologies let us do things that our pedagogical practices have not caught up with
- lots of sessions now are addressing issues:
– given current technology, how should classroom practices change?
– given current classroom practice, how should technology change

We marvel at current technologies, kids today just view it as normal
- kids are going to marvel some day that they didn’t have 3D holographic projectors when they were in school

problem with racing technology bandwagons is that sometimes we lose other things

Now, more than ever, we need access for every learner in the world
- before these tools, you couldn’t do these things AT ALL

Bringing tools to all children
- 1:1 projects must be scalable
- sustainable
- low cost hardware and open source OS and critical applications are the ONLY way the goal can be achieved
- this does not mean there is no room for some proprietary titles, but costs must be scalable and sustainable
- single platform software is anti-child

I DEFINITELY AGREE WITH THIS POINT ABOUT SINGLE PLATFORM SOFTWARE BEING ANTI-CHILD, AND HOW WE MUST PURSUE 1:1 IMPLEMENTATION PROJECTS AGGRESSIVELY

It is quite different kids you have in class may have very different computers at home
- children need to be able to use THE SAME SOFTWARE on any platform they have
- if you look at the number of vendors who are actually rising to that challenge, t

Tech4Learning is one of the companies leading the industry in this regard: Windows. Macintosh, and Linux versions

vendors who just publish on 1 platform are serving the platform and not the child
- I happen to believe in the children
- so I promote and support software that runs on everything

On the hardware side of things
- lots of talk about OLPC
- OLPC is definitely still around, has lots of management changes, not clear where it is going, they are continuing to go in the future

the OLPC has had a major impact on the industry
- before the XO was announced, you couldn’t buy a laptop for less than $1200
- now you can go to Tiger Direct and buy a powerful laptop for $350, without rebates and no limits on how many you can buy
- so hats off to MIT and this project

The Intel Classmate
- this machine is here at NECC]
- not as cute as some other machines
- can get your choice of OS: either Windows or Linux

Another machine in the One2OneMate: a Linux computer
- it looks like an AlphaSmart
- is a full blown laptop

Another example: koolu
- 10 watt power consumption

large hydroelectric dam is on the border of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay
- that dam generates all the electricity for all of Paraguay and half of brazil
- if the number of computers in the world doubled, we’d have to build 20 more dams of this capacity!

Another Example: N Computing Box
- idea is most personal computers have far more power than any individual student is using at one time
- the processor actually runs on just 1 box and is shared

lots of talk about the iPhone, but it was/is a closed platform

Our friends in Brazil who love the iPhone bought them in the US and have them working in Brazil
- but why have to do that

There is a completely open source phone: NEO1973
- you want to add new features to your cell phone, go right ahead! It’s open source.

An argument was started a few years ago that students don’t need a computer, they just need personal storage devices
- I’m more willing to accept this idea now
- if you have enough computers in your community, this is viable
- that is a BIG “if”

The price of flash drives is coming

booth 5260: you can get a 1 gig pen drive for free after you play a game
- if I had said that a few years ago, this room

new version of linux called Puppy Linux
- can put that entire OS on a flash drive

Why open source?
- do the math
- (number of computers) x $100/ year to just run the Windows OS
- 2/3rds of Indiana students do not know they are using Linux! (and they didn’t care. they just cared about their applications and data.)
- applications are robust
- service calls are minimized
- new applications are being created every day
- applications can be shared legally

In Africa: Freedom Toaster
- take a CD, choose the software you want, and you can take the software home
- you know how the principal makes money selling pencils? Try this at your school!

some African countries are letting people also upload files, like music (I am sharing this as some factual information, not as a recommendation)

Linux and Education
- finally easy to install and maintain
- reliable
- low total cost of ownership
- graphical user inferface
- applicable and usable by all grade levels

Now lets go back down to Brazil
- photo of “the digital port”

instead of going northeast and risking capture, some Dutch Brazilians went NW and were looking for an island with rivers on both sides
- came ashore
- the same Dutch from Brazil founded New York

consider Brazilian kids in our neighborhoods, who 20 years ago would not have been in school
- curriculum in Brazil is inquiry driven and project-based

President Lula was asked by Microsoft to please use Windows
- He asked Microsoft to charge them just $3 just like China is
- Microsoft refused and said they would change $100 per copy

we have to export 60 bags of soybeans then for every license of Windows

we think of Linux as an emerging market here in the US
- 36 million children in Brazil will be using Linux by December 2008
- 52 million by the end of 2009

some people in our country are viewing children as wallets, not as human beings

Computers for All: Brazilian governmental program
- stores in Brazil sell both food and technology
- special logo on machine means the government will give you a 24 month interest free loan
- sold 800,000 of these machines without any marketing at all (grass roots word of mouth)

some countries get serious about education and technology, and that is really cool

MLK quotation: 3-31-1968: “Through our scientific and technological genious, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we haev not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood.”

We can talk of web 2.0 and these technologies
- the bottom line is that we CAN make of our world a brotherhood

Minister of Culture for Brazil: Gilberto Gil (also a singer and songwriter)
- founder of the movement Tropicalismo
- idea is that you understand someone else’ culture not so you can appreciate it from afar, but rather use it yourself in your own life and culture [APPROPRIATE AND REMIX IT]

Brazilian filmmakers are generally located on the coast
Quotations from Gil:
- a global movement has risen up in affirmation of digital culture…
- the creative impluses of teh Brazilian people need access to the digital world…

Gil is setting up schools on filmmaking in the interior, teaching final cut pro, seeing what types of creativity and innovation come out of this

Look at some of the AFrican cultures
- corn rows have a very rich cultural history
- there is a mathematical pattern there which is a fractal
- you can create a logo procedure which replicates that
- so now a kid who knows about corn rows (goes back at least to the 1700s) can now understand the mathetmatics of that
- and maybe that becomes a pathway to get students interested in mathematics who might

how can we build bridges to understanding and learning
a lot of schools now are like the United Nations
Many things like this can be used as pathways to learning, which are not in any textbooks

Breaking borders with software: CMap
- kind of like an ugly version of Inspiration, but it is a collaborative tool
- the map can stay open to other people and it doesn’t matter which continent you’re on

noticed when kids get stuck making a contact map?
- in CMap click on the suggestions map
- the program looks at what you have done so far, compares it to other Cmaps made by others on the web, and then gives you words it “thinks” (DAVID IS BEING APPROPRIATELY ANTHROPOMORPHIC HERE) might help you
- the idea may have come from Zimbabwe, it doesn’t matter
- you have to be online to use this feature

CMap runs equally well on whatever platform you have
- this is about the children, not the vendors

If your school server wants to be visible to the rest of the world, you can set this up with your firewall
- then your folders become available to the entire world, if you want
- you can also keep them restricted
- each child can then decide if their files can be viewed, commented on, or fully edited (sets permissions)
- this is about empowerment

Copyright has a very important role in our socity
- the default assumption in this country is that even if you don’t put a copyright sign on your work, you own it
- this is problematic when you want to share rights
- the clearinghouse for this is Creative Commons
- we have some papers on this on our website
- when you see the CC mark, that means you can freely use this without any legal restrictions
[HE IS TALKING ABOUT CC-ATTRIBUTION HERE, FOLKS SHOULD REALIZE NOT ALL CC LICENSES PERMIT COMMERCIAL WORKS AND DERIVATIVE WORKS]

I think these are very powerful and good ideas

what happens when we go from liberty, equality and fraternity to rip, remix and burn?

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society: H20 Playlist

MIT has made the bulk of its courseware available online
- once you say it is NOT about the content, you have to be really clear WHAT it IS about?
- what is it that justififes your salary then? it’s not just this body of knowledge that you are trying to protect

Gilberto Gill quotation: “Together we might become the most powerful laboratory of culture mixture in the world. (If we are) isolated from one another we may no longer be able to achieve that, since there is an increasing international tendency toward a multi-cultural style that hinders mixture, trying to reinforce borders as a strategy for the preservation of differences.”

Tropicalia is about cultural mixing: building networks, not walls
- It is xenophilic, not xenophobic

I like salads: you can keep the different tastes!
- there are surprises in salads that you don’t find in a soup bowl
- elements of different cultures (in the metaphor) are preserved
- this is powerful
- how are we doing in that regard

There is a movement afoot to build a wall with Mexico
- this debate will continue for some time
- if McCain is elected he may not build it, he was born in Panama
- there is a constitutional issue with that, but who has cared about the US Constitution the past few years anyway?

There was a problem with illegal aliens being used to build walls on the border
- story of listing some of the famous, very successful immigrants who at one time were here in the U.S illegally and whether

What is your fear?
- is someone going to sneak onto your property at night and mow your lawn?
- do you fear them sneaking into your house during the day, making your bed and cleaning your toilet

Story of a PhD from Monterrey who worked on the GNOME desktop
- is on a waiting list for 16 years to get a visa
- that is an exclusion policy, not an immigration policy
- 150K envelopes for H1B visas last year

Picture of Norma, David’s wife, took a process of 7 years and $15,000 in legal fees for her normalization documents

the longest part of the process in getting a Brazilian visa was fingerprinting

Questions
- who built the infrastructure of this country? Railroads?
- East: Irish
- West: Chinese

the infrastructure of this country was built by foreigners
- today it is being
- we have negative immigration now: we have more Irish leaving the US now than are coming
- we have a big challenge in terms of cultural issues, in the world we are living in

as we become more isolated, that diminishes the entire planet
- I want our children to see what others have, and others to see what we have

picture of the statue of liberty
- quoting poem from statue

I am so proud to be a citizen of a country people still fight to get INTO not to get OUT

book recommendation: “The Flight of the Creative Class” by Richard Florida
- we are seeing more people becoming bi-nationals
- not just about Brazil
- through modern telecommunications, the market is not just our neighborhood, it is the entire blue ball

familiar with the Phoenix probe
- the found salt and ice: they are THIS close to a good margarita!
we are really making huge progress

Toh Friedman: “The way to keep good jobs in this country is not by building big walls, but by attracting people with big ideas.”

“Your people, your people….” When will you realize that your people are our people too! (Graffiti david

We are all each others’ people on this planet.

Technorati Tags:
necc08, necc2008, n08s264, thornburg

This podcast is a recording of a presentation by John Jones on June 12, 2008, titled Drupal for Education. John presented this session at the Trends, Tools, and Tactics for 21st Century Learning conference in Wichita, Kansas, hosted by the Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas (ESSDACK). The conference program description of this session was: Drupal is an open source web community engine that has the power and flexibility to provide highly customized user experiences for schools and districts. This presentation will review the software, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of open source solutions like Drupal, and showcase what these sites can do. A link to John’s PowerPoint presentation is available in the podcast shownotes.

 

 Podcast259: Drupal for Education by John Jones [65:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1090)

Show Notes:

1. Drupal (official website)
2. My text notes from John’s presentation
3. John’s PowerPoint slides from this presentation
4. My post “Moodle as “the killer app” (includes a great discussion in the comments about Drupal vs Moodle)
5. Trends, Tools, and Tactics for 21st Century Learning Conference
6. Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas (ESSDACK)
7. CivicSpace WikiPedia article (formerly DeanSpace, based on Drupal)
8. John’s personal gaming/blog website (built in Drupal, of course) - Radiating Gnome
9. Siteground, my web host (which supports Drupal via Fantastico)

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Technorati Tags: drupal, web, website, design, webdesign, html, cms, school, education, ttt08, ttt2008, essdack, kansas

I have had VERY positive experiences this past week with both NeoOffice (the Macintosh OS X port of OpenOffice) and SeaShore (a variant of the open source GIMP photo editor for Mac OS X which does not require X11.) For both of my presentations Saturday for the 2008 Survive and Thrive Single Moms conference in Edmond, Oklahoma, (Internet Safety and Digital Storytelling with VoiceThread) I used NeoOffice to create my presentation slides. I was VERY impressed. I used NeoOffice for the first time in earnest (not just playing with it, but creating an actual 80+ slide presentation) about a month ago when I shared a presentation on social networking and Internet Safety for the Oklahoma Library Association. NeoOffice is robust and powerful. I know there are many school officials who continue to question the value and power of open source productivity software suites like OpenOffice. I think doubters should make time to create a full presentation in an open source alternative to Microsoft Office to see for themselves if their doubts are justified. The more I use open source software tools, like NeoOffice, SeaShore, and Audacity, the more I become convinced these programs should be ubiquitous computing staples on every school computer.

This afternoon I helped my son take some photographs and create a header banner for his new website, “String and Me: String Figures and How To Make Them.” We used SeaShore, which is a Mac OS X version of the open source GIMP photo editor. Unlike GIMP on OS X, however, SeaShore does not require X11, and we found it to be both powerful and quite capable to facilitate the creation of a multi-layered photo composite. No, it is NOT exactly like PhotoShop, but given that it is FREE it’s just amazing what SeaShore can do.

It is delightful to personally experience the creative power of these open source software programs. Both of these are included on the list of Mac OS X software applications I currently (and have recently) used.

Since the USB portion of my Keyspan Easy Presenter remote control for advancing slides during my presentations is still in Howe, Oklahoma, I wanted to use my Apple Remote control (which came free with my MacBook) to advance my presentation slides remotely on Saturday. Since I was using NeoOffice instead of Keynote (which works natively with the Apple Remote) I was pleased to discover NeoRemote. NeoRemote is a free application which lets you use your Apple Remote with NeoOffice (as well as other programs which use the same keyboard shortcuts) to drive a presentation. The only problem I had with NeoRemote is that the program menu would not let me quit the application, I had to use the “force quit” key sequence to stop the program when I wanted to go back to using the Apple Remote to drive a Front Row photo slideshow.

Long live open source software and the developers who have created and shared their talents in and through these projects!

Now I need to find time and an excuse to play with online software I’ve been wanting to dabble with, including Picnik and Jumpcut…..

Technorati Tags:
openoffice, neooffice, macintosh, remote, gimp, seashore, photo, editing, software

These are my notes from John Jones‘ presentation “Drupal for Education” at the TTT Conference in Wichita, Kansas, on 12 June 2008.

BEFORE THE SESSION JOHN TOLD ME SOME HISTORY: THE DEANSPACE SITE WAS BUILT WITH DRUPAL, THERE IS NOW A PROJECT CALLED CIVICSPACE WHICH IS A DRUPAL PROJECT FOCUSED ON POLITICAL SITES. JOHN DEVELOPED THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WEBSITE FOR KANSAS BEFORE WORKING FOR ESSDACK. JOHN’S PERSONAL WEBSITE IS A GAMER SITE: radiatinggnome.com

Drupal is an open source content management system
- free for anyone to use, is a huge community of users

now you are stuck with…
- kid tied down and adults working on him with saws
- page of lots of complicated knots

many are tied to a proprietary package
- static pages created years ago
- very limited options for

What you need
- WD-40 image
- needs to be smooth
- can’t promise WD-40 right out of the gate
- are always challenges with getting people to use the website

what we are trying to do
- flexible, customizable design
- distributed content creation
- a site that grows with you
- a robust community of nerds (leveraging this, the Drupal Project)

Open Source idea
- now owners, no bosses, just community
- Lots of competing ideas and exploration
- never be alone
- no licensing fees

OpenOffice is now pushing Microsoft further

I do other things for fun, but many people working on these open source projects like Drupal don’t
- it is a worldwide community
- very passionate people who really care about what they are doing

idea of how to control access to certain pages
- how do you define user roles
- one solution is not intrinsically better
- depends on the context

Open source community provides you with a library of options that can be very customized

If I was a 1990s web designer, I have written thousands of lines of code and I am the only one who really understands it, even if there are hidden code
- open source reality is very different, there are many Drupal developers who could step in

Drupal background
- comes from English pronounciation of “druppel” - the Dutch word for Drop
-started in dorms at the Univ of Antwerp in 2000 as a way to share news, ideas, and an internet connection
- tens of thousands of monthly downloads
- very passionate and active community

Now flashing through different websites built with Drupal
- in a lot of open source packages (Joomla, Mambo, Plone, PHP Nuke) - with many of those you may feel more constrained in terms of look and feel
- AOL Corporate site
- Fast Company.com
- Imbee
- Savannah Morning News
- Warner Brothers music site
- Lullibot is a group now doing lots of drupal sites
- SonyBMG site is all driven by Drupal
- Jerry Garcia’s website

very different look and feel with all these websites

flexibility
- a wide variety of modules available
- variations to fit different use cases
- many themes available, and they can be customized

shared responsibilities
- the old way: News, calendar, classroom resources, and announcements all go to the webmaster who posts to the website (single gatekeeper, this turns into a big bottleneck)
- the drupal way: the one creating the content is putting it on the website (this is a big training issue)
- Ellinwood schools were our first Drupal school site
- it will be years before we get there with the teachers in terms of everyone doing something on the web…

Dynamic content
- show users something fresh (you always want to do this)
- promote your events and programs
- reward users for returning
- if info there on Monday is the same as we had on last Wednesday, I’m probably not coming back
- that is a lot of work if it all falls to 1 person

The ESSDACK Package
- robust functionality to start
- room for growth in the future
- customized to your needs
- training, videos, and documentation

we already have classrooms and classes setup, subgroups
- kids can subscribe to a class (then they can go to the main calendar on the site, kids will see main events as well as their own classroom assignment deadlines integrated into the same calendar)

school menu: what is the best way to make that available to the public
- if you are getting it as an excel file, is making a PDF the best way to share it?
- can train school lunch folks to provide that as a dynamic part of the site

core functionality: typical district site
- distinct look and feel for each building
- district and building home pages with calendar, news, etc..
- more…
- groups are a powerful tool
- public or private (most is public)
- image galleries
- contact forms
- breakfast and lunch menu
- email newsletters

THIS IS REALLY GOOD STUFF. ESSDACK IS VERY SMART TO OFFER THIS FUNCTIONALITY TO SCHOOLS.

marketing: problem with the web, it is a pull technology (you need people to want to come to your website)
- email is the best web-based push technology, reaching out to people
- trick is that everyone gets a ton of spam
- trick is we want to publish high quality content that drives people back to your website

can have specific

What to remember:
- drupal is flexible + our experience = WD-40

Ellinwood: USD 355 is an example Drupal site we have setup

position I dig in on: your school needs a professional space, a consistent interface that will be easily updatable
- use email newsletter to send out bulleted announcements
- kids can still create webpages and add to the web, students do need a place to create, design and publish
- Drupal gives you control over the “middle of the page” content
- menubars at top and sidebar form the template
- menus can change based on the content
- I encourage the school to have a separate website where kids can work with full HTML, a sandbox

demosite we use for newer school districts (to look at different options and customization choices)

I worked one summer with upward bound students and HTML
- had kids work with notepad instead of WYSIWYG, because there is nothing like trying to figure out what comma or quotation mark
- really emphasizes attention to detail which kids may not get other places

we can do wikis with drupal
- wikis mean different things to different people
- core idea is a page that multiple people can edit together, see revisions, have multiple

original wiki site links required CamelCase

are audio and video modules for Drupal

Drupal isn’t the prettiest CMS out of the box, but it is the best for a community that I have ever seen
- Mambo and Joomla are great for a news or magazine site, for that kind of publishing site
- Drupal’s real strength is community and shared content creation

I have a World of Warcraft Drupal site where we are collaborating together to create content

literacyleader.com is a professional learning community site that we have built and are supporting
- teachers involved are creating and sharing content together

for Drupal comment moderation, teachers would have site-wide comment moderation rights

I was a PC guy before coming to ESSDACK, when I got my Mac I discovered SnapZPro to create tutorial videos

it is hard to create a unified manual for Drupal because sites are so customized

I use SnazPro now to show tech support people exactly what a problem is with site… this is a GREAT benefit

St John, KS - www.usd350.com
- lends itself toward more centralized control over content (that is an individual choice for the school district, however)

Questions about text readers
- Drupal has been very ADA friendly historically
- most designs are CSS driven rather than table driven

I was at WSU when the state mandated ADA compliance (big issues were tables and images without alt tags)

tech support for Drupal in this case would be me, it is more about knowing where to go for help

JOHN ESTIMATES ABOUT HALF OF KANSAS SCHOOL DISTRICTS ARE NOW USING SOME SORT OF PROPRIETARY PACKAGE FOR A DYNAMIC WEBSITE, THAT SCALES WITH DISTRICT SIZE IN MANY CASES, WHAT ESSDACK IS DOING IS CREATING A MODEL WHERE SMALLER SCHOOLS CAN AFFORD AND HAVE THIS SORT OF FUNCTIONALITY.

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Steve Jobs’ WWDC 2008 announcements about iPhone 2.0 software and the 3G iPhone on Monday have generated considerable excitement as well as questions. Personally, I am most excited about MobileMe, a service from Apple which replaces .Mac and will offer many new features including “push calendar and contacts.” I’ve struggled with calendar synchronization issues the past two years, using MS Outlook / Exchange in my office on a WinXP laptop, my Macbook when I’m traveling and presenting (and at home of course) as well as my iPhone. I’ve written about my past synchronization experiences and woes in my posts “Synchronizing contacts across 3 platforms” (May 2007), “Plaxo addresses sync issues with contacts” (June 2007), “Outlook to iPhone sync process working” (July 2007), “Pleased with Plaxo” (11 Nov 2007), and “Abandoning Plaxo” (21 Nov 2007).

Apple has posted guidance for .Mac users anticipating the switch to MobileMe, but so far I have not seen anything which addresses my main question: Will GMail/Google Calendar or Yahoo Mail/Yahoo Calendar interoperate, sync, or work “with” MobileMe? Several years ago I transitioned (for my personal email) away from client-based email software programs (I used Entourage extensively for several years, as well as Apple Mail) and started utilizing Yahoo Mail exclusively. About a month ago I made a switch to GMail, and have LOVED it, especially the way it aggregates/threads email conversations. (I HATE the way my MS Outlook version on the Windows side can’t presently do this– when an email goes out to a distribution list and multiple people respond, a confusing morass of time-consuming messages is created which I find unnecessarily tedious.) Hopefully, calendar sync options will be available for Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar. I’m not entirely opposed to switching my personal email and calendar over to the new MobileMe interface, but I REALLY want to maintain the features of GMail which I’m growing to love. I’m still using Yahoo Calendar because I found that Yahoo Intellisync (free) works reasonably well with my MS Outlook/Exchange calendar.

All this discussion of email programs and options reminds me of Eudora and people I have (and in some cases continue to) assist and support with their email. Some folks (especially in less enlightened organizational IT departments) like to complain about Mac users and how they can be quirky relative to Windows users, but how about Eudora users? When it comes to folks that don’t want anyone to “move their cheese” by suggesting they should utilize a different email program, Eudora users are surely close to the top of the list! Change IS difficult for human beings, but in the arena of information technology it is also inevitable. I don’t support change for change’s sake, but I do think it is important that we encourage and support others in making transitions to new programs, new operating systems, and new user interfaces. (Please don’t read this as an endorsement for Windows Vista or MS Office 2007, however.) It’s interesting to note that Qualcomm is no longer selling or supporting Eudora commercially, but an open source version of Eudora is now being developed. Change is a constant when it comes to information technologies, and even Eudora users (eventually) have to make some changes to their “old ways.”

Overall I think it is a WONDERFUL thing Apple is adding a strong focus on enterprise customers with these latest iPhone and MobileMe announcements. Like it or not, MS Outlook/Exchange is utilized by a lot folks, and the ranks of iPhone users are sure to grow by leaps and bounds with more robust (and secure) support of enterprise applications like Exchange and secure VPN.

One of the questions I had after following a live blog of the WWDC keynote on Monday concerned the GPS in the iPhone and Google Maps: Is the GPS chip in my “old” iPhone the same one as the GPS chip in the 3G iPhone, and is it a “real” GPS like my Garmin eTrex Legend HCx? All my questions have not been answered, but I have learned that the new iPhone 3G includes “Assisted GPS.” AGPS is evidently faster than plain / traditional GPS because it uses local cell phone towers to identify a device’s location faster. I’m not expecting my first-generation iPhone to have or be able to utilize this feature, I understand this will be something special on the 3G iPhone. I AM expecting to be able to utilize MobileMe and all of its associated beneficial features, however, and that has me most excited amidst all these recent iPhone announcements.

Too bad we have to wait till July 11th to give all these new software features a try, since that is after NECC 2008!

Funambol is an open source mobile messaging and calendaring service which provides similar functionality to MobileMe but is free. (Nod to Matt Asay.) Funambol does support the iPhone, so it will be interesting to see how the functionality available from MobileMe (for $99 per year) will be differentiated from Funambol.

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Does anyone know of a FREE, good, Windows-based software program than can burn AVI video files into DVDs? The program needs to both convert the AVI files and burn them to DVD. (If two programs are needed to do these tasks separately that is OK, but it would be nice if these could be done by the same program.) I know people who use Nero for their DVD video burning on the Windows side but it is commercial. There are open source Linux-based programs for this, but I do not know of a Windows-based software option that others I know have used and can vouch for as malware-free. (A very important issue when looking for downloadable Windows-based software.)

I have done all my DVD authoring to date with iDVD, and plan to continue doing so, but I have a friend who is looking for a free Windows-based solution to convert and burn some AVI files he’s created with a camcorder to DVD. I posted this awhile back to our COV forum but didn’t get a response.

In hunting for a possible software solution for this, I turned to del.icio.us and with a “dvd software avi free” search found the program Avi2Dvd. (752 folks have saved this page to date in del.icio.us.) The homepage includes multiple award links at the bottom, including one from softpedia.com (a reputable site I have used before, recognize and trust) which certifies the software is malware free.

This process of locating software and then trying to verify if it is indeed malware free is VERY important, and something which is worth discussing with both teachers and students. In many cases today in U.S. public schools, computers are locked down to prevent users (non-administrators) from installing new programs. Malware dangers are one of the primary reasons for this. At home, however, teachers and students are generally free to download and install new programs on their own. P2P software is notorious for including various types of malware, but programs claiming to be video and DVD burning software also often include malware. In striving to help equip ourselves and others to be saavy and responsible digital citizens, it is important to discuss these issues and help others get comfortable with the process of verifying the SAFETY of a particular software program to install on their computer system.

In using friends’ computers running Windows Vista lately (I know, friends shouldn’t let friends use Windows Vista, and I do what I can…) I’ve noticed that Microsoft has integrated more warnings about installing software which has not been officially certified by Microsoft. Mac OS X 10.5.2 now also integrates a warning when a user tries to open an executable file / installer which was downloaded from the Internet:

These operating system features are good and needed, but the bottom line is that users need to make decisions and choices about what to install or avoid when it comes to software applications. In K12 schools, the focus of IT departments is often to limit trouble tickets by locking down systems and limiting the installation and configuration options available to users. This is understandable, but that context is not universal. In addition to home computers, many more students and teachers/instructors (especially in higher education) are bringing laptops to class on which they have administrative installation rights. As educators, discussing malware and software installation issues with students is important if we want to help students become SAFE lifelong, digital learners.

If you have a recommendation for AVI to DVD burning software that fits the above requirements (and you are NOT a vendor of said program) please let me know by commenting here.

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safety, software, windows, avi, dvd, burning, free, freeware, malware, citizenship, digitalcitizenship

I posted the following as a response to Paul McMahon’s post “Where do we Mash to?” Whether we are talking about students in Hong Kong and other parts of east Asia (as Paul is) or here in Oklahoma, I agree with Kent Brooks that Moodle is as close to a “killer app” as we can find today in education with respect to blended learning, particularly when it comes to organizational portals (the subject of Paul’s post.)

Paul: I think the key is helping students as well as parents develop their own capacities and dispositions as “digital citizens.” No, teachers can’t take and shouldn’t take responsibility for everything students do and encounter online at school or away from school. The analogy of driving is appropriate here. What we are doing (or should be doing) is helping equip kids to be responsible and ethical decision makers when they are outside the direct control and supervision of adults and teachers. Will they make bad choices? Will they mess up? Inevitably. The world is and will remain a dangerous place filled with diverse options, and we need to help our students make good choices.

In terms of the “portal” idea, I was struck a couple of weeks ago following a conversation with Scott Charlson and Kent Brooks about how “un-needed” technology support departments are from a certain perspective. For teachers and students who want to utilize web 2.0 tools, everything they need is “out there” on the web and available. The reality is, of course, that the majority of teachers are NOT innovator / early adapter teachers, and therefore won’t use these tools without formal support and encouragement.

Portals are therefore important to help the early majority, late majority, and (perhaps) laggard teachers with respect to technology integration get on board and utilize these tools. The experiences of Scott and Kent at WOSC suggest that Moodle may be “the killer app” when it comes to organizational elearning and blended learning portals. My suggestion, if you have not already, is to setup a Moodle server and invite several of your more adventurous teachers to utilize it as a sandbox with students. Moodle is free, very robust, has a great user community, and can take away some of the important excuses teachers as well as administrators may put forward when it comes to elearning portals: EXPENSE. Moodle isn’t free, you still need a server and bandwidth, as well as technical folks to support the installation, but comparatively speaking I think there are VERY compelling reasons for utilizing it as the sort of portal it sounds like you’re looking for.

Good luck.

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moodle, elearning, portal, school, remix

For the past three years, Scott Charlson has served as the Director of Learning Support Systems at Western Oklahoma State College  (WOSC) in Altus, Oklahoma. In this role, Scott has served as a facilitator and coach for college instructors teaching entirely online and in blended learning environments. In this recorded interview from May 28, 2008, Scott relates many of the successful strategies he and WOSC technology director Kent Brooks have employed the past three years to help instructors redesign their courses to integrate identified best practices for distance learning and blended learning, as well as the pivotal role which relationships and peer coaching have played in the learning revolution underway at Western. WOSC is a state leader in the utilization of Moodle as an open source learning management system, and continues to innovate with many other open source and web 2.0 technologies to help improve opportunities for learning. Scott is leaving WOSC to accept a new role at the K-20 Center at the University of Oklahoma this summer, and will continue to support collaborative learning as well as pedagogic change in the K-12 school districts working with the K-20 center to implement customized versions of its IDEALS framework. Oklahoma is lucky to have passionate, innovative, and dedicated educators like Scott Charlson helping other instructors and teachers “make the change” from 19th and 20th century paradigms of instruction to more learner centered, engaged models of learning focusing on student media products and digital interaction.

 

 Podcast254: Coaching and Leading Faculty on the Blended Learning Journey: An Interview with Scott Charlson [26:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (885)

Show Notes:

1. Western Oklahoma State College (WOSC) Online Learning Standards of Excellence
2. Western Oklahoma State College
3. Scott Charlson’s homepage at WOSC
4. Moodle
5. Scott Charlson’s profile page on the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices Learning Community
6. The K-20 Center at the University of Oklahoma
   

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Technorati Tags: learning, education, wosc, oklahoma, leadership, change, reform, instructor, college, university, community, communitycollege, support, relationships, support, redesign, syllabus, web2

I have absolutely LOVED using Juice Receiver along with PodNova and iTunes to manage my podcast subscriptions the past several years. Unfortunately, the developers of Juice Receiver appear to have discontinued updates, and the available version (2.2) for Macintosh OS X runs VERRRYYYY slowly and sometimes (at least for me) doesn’t run at all. I usually run Juice Receiver every week or so to update my podcast channel subscriptions, and have noticed for several months that Juice runs very slow. (I keep my primary iTunes library on an external hard drive, so this updating process requires a bit more inconvenience because of this.) For some reason this evening, however, Juice will not run an update. It launches fine, but locks up when I click the update button. My computer shows that Python maxes out the CPU cycles on my MacBook, and I really can’t do anything until I force quit the application. The graphic below shows my CPU usage history (with iStat) just after I force quit Juice Receiver. You can see the cycles were just maxed out before this screenshot was captured with Skitch:

Since I maintain my podcast channels on PodNova and PodNova permits the downloading of an OPML file of podcast subscriptions, I decided to download the OPML and then import the podcast channels included in it directly into iTunes. Initially I had trouble with this because PodNova wanted to append the extention “.xml” to the OPML file, and iTunes didn’t like that. When I chose FILE - IMPORT within iTunes, I could select the opml.xml file created by PodNova, but iTunes wouldn’t import anything.

To troubleshoot this, I subscribed to a couple podcasts via the podcast directory in iTunes, and then exported that OPML file from iTunes to the desktop to see if I could identify a difference between the OPML file syntax which iTunes likes versus the OPML file syntax of PodNova using TextWrangler. Fortunately, I didn’t have to even look “inside” the OPML file and make any changes– the difference was the file extension! iTunes apparently requires OPML files have the extension “.opml” to import them as podcast channels. Once I changed the extension, whoa-la! All 44 channels directly imported into iTunes!

It is entirely possible I have a misconfiguration or a corrupt file on my system which is causing Juice Receiver to malfunction on my Macbook running OS 10.5.2. I have actually ordered a new laptop hard drive and plan to soon reinstall my OS and all my applications– At that time I’ll give Juice Receiver another try. For now, however, it looks like I’ll have to settle for using iTunes to manage my podcast channel subscriptions. The main feature of Juice Receiver I’ll miss is the “clean up” feature, which I detailed in my January video podcast “Cleaning Up Downloaded Podcasts with Juice Receiver.”

Is anyone else continuing to use Juice Receiver on a Macintosh computer with iTunes, running the latest operating system? I’m hopeful I’ll be able to return to Juice Receiver at some point in the not too distant future.

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I posted the following as a response to Corey White’s comment on my February post, “Advocating for differentiated content filtering.” This was a lengthy comment, and seemed to justify its own post. Hopefully my tone here is not too confrontational.

Corey: Like many in IT in our schools, your comment reflects an assumption that part of your job should be filtering out websites that students could use to be off task and “not productive.” My position is, that should not be the role of the IT staff. Teachers have the responsibility of designing engaging work for students, and in MANY, MANY cases, they are not doing this. See Phil Schlechty’s excellent book “Working on the Work: An Action Plan for Teachers, Principals, and Superintendents” for more about this.

As far as your idea of “leaving creativity to the art department,” I strongly disagree. Encouraging and supporting creativity should be EVERYONE’S job at school. Unfortunately many teachers and administrators have a “fill the pail” mentality when it comes to schooling. They view their job as trying to fill the pails (brains) of kids with a fixed amount of content, rather than trying to provide students with opportunities authentically engage in meaningful work with interesting content. Creativity and curiosity play a natural role in authentic learning, and that is why I continue to maintain that we should emphasize creativity in our schools.

You lament how kids can’t use a spreadsheet, create a webpage, edit an image in PhotoShop, do a mail merge, or create a formula in Excel. My questions are:

1- What problem-based learning contexts are teachers providing for students which require and invite them to use Excel as a tool, to solve REAL problems– not simply equations that a teacher pulls out of a textbook, out of context, or invents but doesn’t relate to the real world students understand? I agree students should be able to use spreadsheets to analyze and chart data, identify trends, predict outcomes, etc. How are teachers at your school regularly challenging students to do these things in meaningful contexts, where students are genuinely interested in doing the work and finding the answers?

2- In relation to students not knowing how to create a webpage… Have you checked how many of your students have profile pages on MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, and Myyearbook? Chances are quite a few of them do, certainly a high percentage should if they follow national trends like those highlighted in the summer 2007 National School Boards Association Report “Creating and Connecting.” Creating and maintaining a profile and webpages on a social networking website IS “creating a webpage.” Are you wanting students to use a program like Frontpage or Dreamweaver to create a website? Gaining experience creating content on a social networking site, keeping your profile private, and carefully monitoring the content that is published and “tagged” by you as well as your peers to monitor the electronic portfolio which Google is amassing about everyone are all important skills.

3- In terms of photo editing, has anyone at your school created and sponsored a digital photography contest for students? Having a contest like that could be pretty affordable and yield some great benefits. Setup categories for the types of skills you want students to develop. If you want them to learn photo compositing, then have that as a category. Rather than limit them to PhotoShop, which is very expensive and likely beyond the computing budget of most families, introduce students to free, open source photo editing programs like Gimp which they can use legally both at school and at home for zero dollars.

4- In regard to your lament about students apparent inability to do a mail merge, how many teachers at your school can independently do a mail merge? How many local entrepreneurs in your community can do a mail merge independently? Certainly it is great if people know how to do a mail merge, and I am a big fan of learners of all ages knowing how to powerfully manage and manipulate data not only in spreadsheet programs but also in flat as well as relational database programs. How sure are you that “doing a mail merge” is a critical 21st century skill, however? Many times in school, I think we make assumptions about things EVERYONE needs to know how to do– from memorizing the quadratic formula to writing a haiku, that really seem pretty silly and irrelevant when you consider the skill sets of people living and working quite successfully out of school.

I do appreciate your input and comments on this thread, Corey, but I continue to maintain that tiered content filtering is essential and an overall focus on both creativity as well as authentic student engagement in our schools is direly needed. You raise some points that are valid: My challenge to you is, DO something about them, rather than just lament them.

Start a digital photography contest at your school.

Help a teacher develop an integrated lesson which involves so much data to process, that students ASK for a tool (like a spreadsheet) which can help them aggregate and analyze it. Invite students to help design the project so it focuses on a local issue of real importance, in which they, their families, and/or others in their community have a genuine stake and interest. If their learning is situated in that type of context, I think you’ll find the impact of their learning experiences will be far greater, and many more of them will learn digital literacy skills alongside traditional literacy skills. Teaching in a problem-based learning environment is a lot more work than simply lecturing and delivering content to students, but it is the type of learning environment our students need to remain engaged in school work. Too many kids today are BORED by school. As the adults running our schools, it is our responsibility to remedy this situation.

As a last suggestion, please consider introducing all the teachers at your school to EduTopia. They publish a free, monthly magazine for educators and have a fantastic site dedicated to helping teachers learn about new ways to help students engage in project-based learning, cultivate digital literacy skills, and improve the opportunities for learning in our schools in other ways. The price is right, the resources are free, and chances are high if you share this with your faculty you’ll find at least a few teachers who will love some of the ideas and actually implement them for the benefit of your students.

There are many things we can lament when it comes to schools and students, but there are also lots of good things we can DO to try and improve things. We’ve all got to do what we can.

Good luck.

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filtering, internet, schools, education, edutopia, creativity, engagement, reform, schoolreform

As I am sure you have noticed, we’re living in an attention economy where information is exploding. With all the content around us, how do we manage available information streams most effectively and efficiently? This is an essential question for EVERYONE, not just those of us who are admitted “geeks.” Information continues to explode, but we continue to just have 24 hours in each day. I love my iPod and all the great content now available digitally, both from free and commercial sources. Eric Hileman and I taught a group of seniors about iTunes University, among other topics, last week in our “Tech Talk” at a local church, and I think many of them were really amazed by everything that is now available FREE online as audio and video podcasts. When it comes to podcast channels, how can we effectively manage all the GREAT content “out there” and avoid being overwhelmed by it? These are questions with which I continue to struggle. I don’t have all the answers, but I have found some helpful ways to answer at least some of them.

I created a short video podcast / screencast several weeks ago explaining how I use Juice Receiver (free, cross-platform software) in conjunction with PodNova (a free, web-based service for podcast channel subscription management) and iTunes to periodically “clean up” the podcast channels to which I’ve subscribed. (Currently I subscribe to 53 different channels. PodNova provides an OPML link if you want to download these and subscribe to any of them yourself using any OPML compliant podcatching software.) Certainly you can manage all your podcast subscriptions within iTunes, but I have found this mix of software and web-based services to be beneficial for several reasons. (See my post last May, “The joy of Juice Receiver and PodNova” for more background on this.)

During my most recent “podcast channel cleanup,” I was struck by how important podcast episode titles are. As I scan through several hundred podcast episodes, the title of individual podcasts is really all I have to go on to make a split-second decision: Keep or delete?

I love maintaining a rich and diverse array of high quality podcasts on my iPod and iPhone, which I can turn on anytime I’m in the car alone driving somewhere. No, I don’t always listen to podcasts in the car, but I frequently do, and it is wonderful to have such wonderful professional development options literally at my fingertips 24/7.

I took some journalism classes when I was in high school, and I remember a few lessons our teacher presented about the importance of writing good headlines. Headlines generally aspire to “grab” our attention as well as summarize the content of an article. We live in an attention economy, where information is plentiful but time (and our attention) is very limited. It is important for us to help students learn the techniques as well as the importance of “headline writing” not only in formal journalism classes, but also in other content area classes where learners are writing and publishing.

Does that title or headline grab my attention?

Does that title succinctly summarize the content of that podcast episode?

Those are important questions for learners and content publishers in the 21st century information landscape to consider. Shouldn’t that “group” include everyone in your school and mine? I think so.

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Because of problems on the TechLearning blog with commenting, I am cross-posting this over here so you may comment on my blog if you are not able to comment there. (I wasn’t able to directly comment this morning on Dave Jakes’ post from yesterday, so I’m following his lead.)

I’m a staunch advocate for project-based learning. As teachers, we need to be regularly facilitating student work on projects using real-world tools, as they collaborate with others in face-to-face as well as distributed work environments. Students need access to a diverse array of resources to accomplish their defined tasks, and need to work under deadlines. The real world is full of groups working on project teams, and part of the solution to fixing the disconnect between 21st century skills which employers say they want, and the skills emphasized in our schools, is operationalizing a learning culture in our classrooms which regularly involves project-based learning.

One of the biggest challenges to embracing project-based learning as a teacher, however, is the formidable task of structuring, monitoring, managing and evaluating student work. It is MUCH easier to simply lecture to students and deliver content, rather than manage a project-based learning environment. Often (as Darren Draper reminded me at NECC07) educators are focused on “doing what is convenient, not what is best for students.” As Dr. Tim Tyson exhorts us, however, we should be focused on maximizing student achievement, but that focus has virtually nothing to do with the emphasis of NCLB and high-stakes accountability. My understanding of maximizing student achievement includes inviting students to engage in potentially relevant, meaningful work in project-based learning contexts. Certainly our students need to take tests and score well on them, but there is SO much more we must do and on which we must focus in our schools than simply minimum standards for student performance established by the state.

My question, given this context, regards the most effective (and cost-effective) tools for helping teachers facilitate project-based learning. What are they? What is on the PBL software facilitation menu today? I learned about Project Foundry (commercial software) last summer, but I have more recently discovered a series of open-source project management tools that could be potentially used in school contexts for teachers facilitating PBL activities. The ones I have found to date include:

• Taskjuggler
• dotproject
• Open Workbench

I’ve started a social bookmark list for “project management” via Diigo, which also cross-posts to my del.icio.us social bookmarks. I’m looking for more tools like these which are web-based, and include Gantt chart functionality similar to Microsoft Project. A couple of questions for you:

1. Are you aware of other software options which should be included on this list?

2. Are you personally using or aware of other teachers using project management software currently to facilitate student PBL activities?

Dean Groom has created a PBL group over on Diigo which I’ve joined, which looks like a great place to continue this conversation as well and share resources.

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