Monday and the live chat with Peru

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Posted on 30th November 2006 by Chris in General

Ok, no more cross posting. From here on out, I am going to update you on my flat class project on my other blog.

http://blog.thinkingaboutteaching.com

And not here. This blog is going to be about open source and open source stuff alone (well, mostly anyway)

Sorry if this sounds harsh. You needed some tough love.

I spent yesterday in Airplanes, didn’t sleep much last night, and the hotel coffee is mediocre. Nonetheless, I have a great big smile on my face and am thrilled to be alive! I am super excited about this video chat, I only wish I wasn’t out of town on the final school days leading up to it. There is so much to do!

Yeesh.

Go read about it on the other blog, then subscribe.

Thanks!

PS…Here’s what is in my batter’s box. No links just yet.

  1. Sakai
  2. 1videoconference
  3. Scuttle – maybe
  4. Markaboo – it’s a ruby on rails app, and I need to learn about those
  5. Twiki – got it working, it broke again. Sigh.

A working list, but a list nonetheless. What’s in your batter’s box?

Our flat clas project

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Posted on 28th November 2006 by Chris in Educational Technology |General

While mine might not be as trumpeted as others (just kidding) my kids are working on a cool project that speaks to the flat world concept! We are in contact with an American school in Lima Peru. My kids have been working on a wiki to prepare for a live Skype videoconference with that school on December 4, 2006.

My kids spent time in class researching common topic of their creation about Peruvian culture. They researched topics such as food, sports, and others. Have a look at our wiki to see for yourself!

I emailed my contact at the school about a dry run, which we scheduled for today. I waited until lunch time, and then switched my Skype status from invisible to online. I waited patiently for her to come online. I hooked up the Sony Digicam (basic low level mini DV camera) via mini USB to an older Dell laptop and tested the video out. As usual, I made a test call to echo123 to test the sound. All was working fine, although there was an echo since I have my laptop hooked up through a stereo system so my kids could hear. No problem, echo is acceptable.

When she came online, we connected immediately, but no video. She could see me, I couldn’t see her. We disconnected and connected and pressed on. I bemoaned it, thinking it was due to a firewall issue. Maybe the ports are blocked for incoming video? Who knows.

Miraculously (and keeping in tune with some noted inconsistencies with Skype) it began to work! My kids were well into class watching me mess with this, and I let them watch. It was a great side trip, a la Warlick.

When the video flipped on the class went wild. They quickly settled down and we chatted with a teacher down there. My kids were nervous but thrilled! They stepped up to the mic (figuratively and literally) and did a great job muddling through basic Spanish. The teacher there spoke perfect English, and she was gracious about it.

Then the cool stuff happened. Her room started to fill up with kids.

Then my kids got to talk to their kids.

That was cool to watch.

The coolest part was seeing the multiple races. We met a young man originally from Korea who was living there and spoke great Spanish, too.

The best part was seeing a young blonde boy. Turned out he was from…ready for it…

North Carolina.

My kids were in awe that a kid from North Carolina was in Lima, Peru attending school.

Since we’re in South Carolina, the Carolina connection was made. Priceless.

We are scheduled for our live video conference (what I call it to the kids) on 12.04.06 in the middle of the day. I am going to video tape it and if I get permission, I am going to make a gently nudging video for the foreign language teachers that I am going to present to in February at the SCFLTA conference. It will be sort of a here’s-what-we-did-today-in-my-class, what-did-your-kids-do type presentation, not intended to offend, rather to stimulate.

Sorry for the cross posting, but this was too good to not share in as many venues as possible. If you decide to link to this, please do so from the new blog, since this isn’t really open source related!

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes! Watch for more updates on the other blog! Have you subscribed yet?

Catalog Shopping for Open Source Software

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Posted on 25th November 2006 by Chris in General |Web Resources

Open Source Victoria, which bills itself as “an Industry Cluster consisting of over 80 Victorian firms and developers which provide services and technology related to Free and Open Source Software” has put put a catalog of free and open source software for education. This is one huge list! You can download this monster (80 pages and 13 mb) pdf file from the Open Source Victoria website, or through this direct link. Each mention has a screenshot (or logo) and quality synopsis.

I don’t think this site has been updated in a while, and some of the versions of software listen in this “catalog” are outdated, as noted by the screenshots, but I think it’s a good resource anyway. Take it for what it’s worth.

It is an Australian site, which means the bandwidth is not so great coming from their site. If it gets too bad, let me know and I can upload it and host it here. Just comment below.

Podcast Show 11 – Loudblog

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Posted on 21st November 2006 by Chris in General |Podcast Episode

Loudblog is a content management system for publishing media files on the web. It does not claim to handle all your blogging needs, but in fact specializes in media files of many different flavors. In this podcast I walk through the wonderfully easy install (web-based) and some possible uses for this software. It is fully open-source and I really liked it.

It claims to integrate with WordPress, but I have not tried that as of yet. I am currently using podpress to handle my podcasting needs, and have found it to be robust, but I will investigate this further just for kicks.

You can see my little Loudblog install here. I must say this, I posted a need for help to the forum and received a response within minutes (13 minutes to be exact). I cannot say how impressed I am with this software, I just wish I had more of a need for it.

I am almost tempted to create a need for it, just to be able to use it.

One of the cooler features is that it can capture an audio file via HTTP only, meaning that if I had a file hosted on another server, it would copy the file without any further effort on my part. Nice!

Next in the batter’s box, Sakai. I am a HUGE fan of Moodle but I want to learn as much as possible for my own personal knowledge so I figured I ought to give Sakai a try. We’ll see how that works out.

Any other open-source software you think should be in my dugout ready for the batter’s box?

 Standard Podcast [16:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Podcast Episode 10 – The obligatory show

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Posted on 18th November 2006 by Chris in General |Podcast Episode

I’ve been listening to podcasts for some time now. They seem to fall into one of a few categories. The first category is the one with Educational consultants, folks who present, write, and listen to this stuff for a living. Podcasts/Netcasts/Webcasts seem to come with regularlty and come often. One might posit that it is good or business, another might posit that we teachers need a steady flow of information from those that sit in the watchtowers.

The second category are podcasts from teachers, intending to share what they know or how they feel about a particular topic. These shows seem to start strong, and then eventually fall by the wayside. Then, on a stroke of feeling guilty, the show’s creator does another good show, and mentions how he or she will try hard to do better in the future.

I have been debating the future of the open source classroom dot com podcast simply because life got in the way. If you’ve read my blog, especially my post about the nature of relationships, you’ll see that my God is my first responsibility, followed by my family, and then comes the rest of this fun stuff. That’s why I am writing this before the sun has even peeked out of it’s slumber.

So I have come up with a new format. Hear it in this episode. Like it? Comment. Something I can do to improve it? Tell me in the comments.

Thanks for being faithfully here with me, I appreciate you all very much!

 Podcast Episode 10 - The obligatory show [4:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

New version of Audacity plus new students equals fun!

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Posted on 13th November 2006 by Chris in Educational Technology |General

Today my kids are going to embark on one of my favorite projects that they will do in their time with me. They are going to record commercials advertising Spanish class!

When I was a student, I ofted asked the question, “Why do I need to learn this?” albeit markedly less articulate.

My method of combating this is to have them create commercials advertising the benefits of learning Spanish in sixth grade. I am going to do it using Audacity 1.2.5 and beat up old computers running Windows 98. This version was just released on 10.30.06 and I am curious to see the bug fixes of which it speaks. I am avoiding the new 1.3.2 Beta version because these old machines can’t handle anything beta, except fish. Well, maybe.

This project caught the attention of Steve Hargadon some time ago and he recorded the first (and so far only) interview for a series called Take 5. I imagine it’s because Steve is so busy. Nonetheless, he seemed to like the idea of my kids recording audio and publishing it. I am going to create a slew of Gcast feeds and then upload the audio directly from these computers into the Gcast feed when the kids finish. No copying to a thumb drive, no having to copy via network, just straight to the publishing with them! I will certainly screen the, but don’t anticipate any problems. I am going to create one feed per block, and I am going to begin this new wave with two blocks today. So keep checking back, I will announce when they have been published for your listening pleasure.

On a side note, my upgrade to the stable version of Moodle 1.7 went swimmingly. No troubles yet! So we keep trucking with it, but I still would like more feedback, so let me know what you think!

Moodle is down, Drupal is up!

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Posted on 12th November 2006 by Chris in General |Software

Tonight has been a productive one. I have been thinking about my desires for openness for my students, and I have come to the conclusion that we need some sort of outward-facing website for them to edit and publish work. They sure like the Moodle for slide presentations, online quizzes, and messaging, but don’t seem to really be blogging much. Perhaps it is because Moodle’s blog integration doesn’t really feel like a “blog”. Last nine weeks, my kids went to town on a Drupal install, so I decided to revamp my own interest in Drupal.

I noticed that there was a new version, 5.0 Beta 1. As I always a sucker for a good beta of open source goodness, I installed it on a different server, as not to mess with my trusty 4.6.4 install.

My single biggest aggravation with Drupal is the lack of csv uploading of new users. There seemed to be an add-on for that in 4.7.4, but there is no such animal for 5.0 as of yet. Grant you this is an early beta.

So that’s where I am. I want more chances for my kids to publish work. Our wiki got a little messy with nonsense, so I need to clean it up. I am having MAJOR trouble with my Jot wiki, and can’t get any support. Maybe they are busy migrating to Google. Maybe the answer is to have my kids publish to a wiki? Boy I sure like them being able to just ramble about nonsense in a blog setting. It’s just so much to do in nine weeks. And to think, this bunch is almost halfway done! In January, we start this journey all over again. Sigh.

Need Moodle feedback please

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Posted on 10th November 2006 by Chris in General |moodle

Ok so I need some help. Now that I have been working with Moodle for a bit, I have been thinking a lot. Here are my areas of concern and desires for feedback.

If you want to look at it (not much to see) the moodle is here… http://moodle.thinkingaboutteaching.com

It runs as a subdomain of my new blog site.

First some back story. As it stands right now the Moodle is a walled garden. There are no account creation abilities and guests are only allowed access with an enrollment key. I intend this for parents who want to be able to check in. Presumably they could ask the student for login info, but it’s a nice fix for me not to have to look anything up. So there is no outward-facing site. This is part of my problem. We went from blogging, podcasting, and wiki-ing to a walled garden of just us. I am not sure I like that. Moodle has a blog engine built in that can be set to allow the world to read the postings, but I like that Drupal allowed me to show everyone’s posting on the front page and they all funnel down to one sole RSS feed which made for easy keeping-track.

Inside Moodle there is a chat feature. I can see the benefit of this for college students that may be taking a class and need to collaborate from dorm rooms, Starbucks, or parent’s basement. Do my kids need it? Now to be sure, they LOVE it. But is it worth the risk? I looked at all the chat logs from the two days chat was available and I didn’t like the looks of what I saw. There was nothing dirty, so to speak, but the way kids speak to each other these days is a bit harsh. If I permit them to speak to each other in a manner less than respectfully, am I opening myself up to liability? Especially considering no one around me has done this before so there is no precedent. Would I be better off not allowing chat? I would hate that, because that is this site’s biggest draw for my kids, that they can complete work online, take practice quizzes online, and ask for help in real time. Not to mention we are planning a live Skype Videoconference on December 4 and I would love for my kids to be able to chat with the kids in Peru with whom we are going to conference. All the major chat servers are blocked from school, except Google Talk and that of course requires a Google account. Not an issue for me, but imagine all these kids in Peru that I can grant guest access to with an enrollment key, compared with trying to explain how to obtain a Google account…

So is there room for a separate blogging solution? Do I let them chat?

This is harder than I thought.

Truth is, I want to open the Moodle up to the entire world because I think I have created an entirely online Spanish class. I am using Slideshare, and soon will be posting recordings of my mini-lectures so kids can watch. It’s like Spanish in a box! I also want there to be interaction with the outside world, not just each other. I want feedback from people, not just other kids.

What do you think? What do I do??

Moodle experiment continues, with kids!

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Posted on 9th November 2006 by Chris in General |moodle

So I decided to be brave yesterday. Here’s the backstory first…

A few days ago I decided that it was high time to get kids involved. Nothing finds a loophole in software, or an undesired feature better than a kid with some free time. I have spent weeks pouring over this software trying to figure it out, learn it, master it. Now it was time to unleash the students!

Getting their usernames and passwords uploaded turned into a nightmare. Because the username is a system of numbers that begins with 0′s, Excel kept erasing the 0′s as it would for a number. For example, if the user number is 001234, Excel made it 1234, naturally. Perfectly legitimate, but a dealbreaker for me. So between OpenOffice Calc and Excel I was finally able to upload the usernames and passwords via csv.

The majority have worked. With classes averaging 25 kids, only one or two have had trouble, and usually it is because somehow they mix up the numbers, or transpose a digit. Normal for this age. There’s grace for that…

So it began. Naturally, the first thing that the kids went for was the messaging function. I had included a Who’s Online block so they could see each other (and limited it to first names) and they began chatting and messaging within seconds of logging on. I suppose I should not be surprised that this is the biggest draw, after all, this is the new face of communication. I tried to lure them to the online quizzes, slide presentations, and integrated wiki. I lured a few, but not many. Ultimately, I had to instruct them to message AND online quiz, since they are such good multitaskers at home.

What I saw was surprising, rather than ask the person sitting next to them for help on a quiz question (and these are practice quizzes for the record), they asked the messaging recipient. Wouldn’t it seem quicker to ask next door? I was not fussing that they be quiet, rather I was enjoying the low buzz of learning! I wonder why they consistently preferred to ask a chat partner rather than a physical being in a close proximity…the most remarkable of all was that sometimes the messaging recipient WAS the person next to them!

I suppose this is a manifestation of the new face of learning? I wish I knew. All I know is, kids were engaged, they are working towards become self-sufficient and less teacher-dependant, and they are beginning to own the learning. Should I be concerned about the amount of messaging? The content of the messages? Still working that out in my head…

I guess I have to compare it to a class 1.0 setting. When I was a kid, to practice for a test we would complete a worksheet or three, and then maybe make flashcards with a partner. Can I say that my method worked better than the old school style? Well, kids walked out happy, and even in my most discipline-prone class, I had zero trouble.

I’ll chalk this up as a victory for new learning. Now it’s up to me to spend less time worrying about vocabulary and find a way to help them learn to teach themselves through some sort of fun inquiry model…

Maybe I should start a revolution in foreign language teaching…that would be fun…

Announcing my new blog…

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Posted on 5th November 2006 by Chris in General

This blog needs to get back to its roots. I intended this blog to be very focused on open source software for educational use. If you’ve read my blog for any time, you’ll see that I’ve spent a fair amount of time pouring out my heart in regards to the educational community in general. I decided that I like the outlet to sort of say what I think about this topic, so I have learned my lessons from this blog and begun a new one as well.

This blog will keep going strong, mind you!

The new blog can be found at blog.thinkingaboutteaching.com

The feed can be directly subscribed to here.. http://feeds.feedburner.com/thinkingaboutteaching

Please visit it, subscribe, and enjoy! I would love to hear what you think! It is certainly in its infancy, but I hope it will be not just another aimless voice in the edblogger community. Thanks for your faithful support!

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