Ok. I have had an installation of Moodle installed for a long time, and I am starting to see how it can really benefit my kids. To be honest, it looks like a bit of a learning curve for me. I have used Blackboard for a number of years in my University of South Carolina days, but never really have had any experience with Moodle as a user. Listening to Steve Hargadon’s interview with Moodle creator Martin Dougiamas really has inspired me to take the bull by the horn and get to learning!

Truth is, with all I am doing now with my students, I am largely replicating my efforts and it has gotten a bit out of control. I probably have a dozen websites that I send my kids to so that they can do their work. Time to consilidate.

Here are the components I want to use with my kids, why I want to use it (so crucial to define), my current solution, and how I think moodle will handle it comparably, if not better.

To preface, I upgraded to the new 1.7 Beta to try out the new features. I like 1.6, and am looking forward to the new admin interface, especially. Seems like the old one was a big fragmented. The new interface looks wonderful!

Blogging - This is almost a no-brainer. Our kids need to be writing and publishing. I have covered this before in a roundabout way in dealing with new literacy and the like. Our kids need the experience of publishing content to the web and receiving feedback, both positive, negative, and spam. Truth is, Spam is an important feedback because in part, it separates the Internet from any other medium. You don’t see much spam in the traditional school assignment, unless you count anonymous vandalism, and even that is done by someone in a close proximity. So, I want my kids to be blogging. I am using Drupal right now with my kids and they seem to like it just fine. One check in the win column towards getting that passion up. One of the reasons I like Drupal so much is that every post by every kid aggregates down to one single feed. That way I subscribe to ONE feed and keep track of every post. What I don’t like is that this solution is fractured from my current setup and is fairly plain. Kids like to jazz things up. I also like that Moodle supports tagging, although I am not sure I think the kids would utilize this much. I may create some site-level tags for them to use to differentiate between their rambling blog postings and required ones.

Something I have noticed from reading the forums there is that there are no comments available for blog postings. I understand the reasoning, but I wonder if my kids won’t miss that a little. One of the things they most looked forward to was commenting on each others’ blogs. Now it’s worth notice that the comments were usually trite and didn’t have a whole lot of literary value, but I am working on improving their commenting skills. Maybe the new Moodle will integrate well with forums, to allow for easy discussion.

Wiki - I want to use a wiki for the obvious reasons of collaborative learning. I like the idea that more than one student can work on a single document. My standalone application for this has ranged from Wetpaint to Wikispaces to Jotspot to Mediawiki. See my Wiki posts for more details and applicable links. Moodle’s benefit here seems to be integration. I like that with one single login my kids will be able to access this all. I see that as the sole benefit here. I wonder if OpenAcademic will rival this integration. Oddly enough, I tried to get involved with OpenAcademic as a beta tester/amateur coder some time back. I sent two emails and got no response. There isn’t much news flowing from their feed, either. Not sure where the project stands.

Chat - Not sure if I like this idea too much. My school and district are a bit worried that kids will use anything technological to negative ends, such as cyberbullying or just inappropriate words/posts. I don’t really have a solution quite like this in place now, although my Spanish website (based on php nuke) does have a shout box on the bottom left which allows kids to leave sort of a digital grafitti. They do enjoy it.

Quizzes - My kids take ALL their quizzes and tests online. I do this partially to help me not have papers to grade (which lets me spend more time working on solutions to teach new literacy!) and also so that kids can practice for tests and potentially take them at home. Since I teach Spanish, there is a certain amount of vocabulary necessary for the content. Quizzes and tests are exactly that. Taking them online lets us get through it and onto more side trips much quicker than before. I use a piece of software called Nukequiz that integrates into my php nuke distro. It’s ok, but lacks a lot of the features I would like, such as a more random quiz mode and the like. It’s also buggy, to be expected, though. Not a lot of ‘nukers running class sites. It has served its purpose well, now it’s time to retire.

That is the fairly exhaustive list to begin with. I am sure that as my Moodle knowledge grows I will find new features and better ways to implement them.

What do you think? Am I on the right track? Should I invest this amount of time into learning Moodle?

2 Comments »

Sometimes I dislike being a 9-weeks exploratory teacher. Just as I really make inroads into my kids’ hearts and minds, they leave. Not by choice, mind you, but that is the way things are set up here. Today marked the end of our first nine weeks and the first time I cried in a while. It’s tough to see these kids go, partially because they are so fired up about technology and Spanish (and I only separate them for the sake of the written word), but I am also sad because the tragic reality is that when they leave me, they re-enter a different world with different pedagogical philosophies. I am a huge fan of teaching kids to validate information, a la David Warlick’s idea that we need to integrate the changing face of literacy. Hat tip to Teachers Teaching Teachers for the reminder.

So I began class today with a show-and-tell of two new websites I had come across and wanted to share with them. I showed them The Dog Island and the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. When looking at pictures of dogs freely frolicking they oohed and ahhed. Whilst exploring the endangered octopus, they responded with cries of how we might help the poor little creatures. When I revealed that the sites were fake, they gasped and were speechless. 11 year-olds are not ever speechless. We went on to talk about validating sites in this flattening world. I did not reveal to them the site to which I referred, but I mentioned that if you search for a major historical figure the third result is run by a hate group.

I spared them the details, frankly to keep their eyes from reading the material housed there. I was cryptic enough to prevent them from figuring it out, and gave my own example, that being if I did not like Derek Jeter, I could easily create a website to trick people into believing lies about Mr. Jeter (who, until today, I thought played for the Braves!). I think I effectively drove home the point.

Time was running thin and I was up against a bell so I showed them easywhois.com and left it at that.

I moved onto to a finale video by PBS called Frontline WORLD, from October 2002. This episode highlighted a project called Hole in the Wall. I am probably really late in learning about this, and I can’t recall how I found out about it early this morning, but it shook my perspective. I was amazed at how these kids persevered through learning the technology when my kids have a tendency to give up very easily.

Kids that don’t have access to technology are more willing to persevere. It is new. It is needed. It is seen as revolutionary.

We don’t view it that way in my school/district/state.

Teachers want the latest and greatest machines with the newest versions of this and that special proprietary software. I get the bottom of the barrell machines that were headed for surplus (I’ve mentioned that before).

And my kids love them!

All I need is an internet connection. I am considering a more tightly controlled system a la Steve Hargadon’s Live Kiosk. I would love a turnkey solution to prevent the questions like “What do I do now?”. This is especially frustrating when the only icons in sight are a Firefox icon that beneath it says “Click Here to Begin” and the recycle bin.

And yet they still ask because they won’t think. They haven’t been asked to become literate.

So today sparked some great discussion. I am really going to work on collaborating with other classes around the world through Skype videoconferencing. I am not sure how I will work out the mechanics, but I have a decent MiniDV camera and a good connection and Skype isn’t blocked. Any suggestions or best practices there?

I actually put a call into Ray Hernandez, whom I learned about on Infinite Thinking Machine’s blog today, after watching Episode 2. We’ll see how that pans out, but I imagine we could easily develop a project on which our classes could collaborate.

So a good day, a productive day, a flat day. More soon!

Update: I saved this as I left school and was planning to add tags, references to the k12online conference and David Warlick’s keynote (good portion of the inspiration for this) and headed home. When I got home, I found this email waiting for me..

On the Wiki I put my home work from LA on there!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is the link. LA means language arts (have to assume global readership, right?)

You see, I told my kids that alongside handing their papers in on notebook paper (or typed, of course) they should publish their work and get comments. Then, they should include the URL on a sticky note and ask that the teacher join the commenting community. I riled them up a bit and sent them on their way to revolutionize their classrooms. Sometimes the impetus for change has to come from the kids. Here’s hoping enough teachers respond favorably and don’t attempt to shut it down for fear of the unknown. What I want to know is, what happens when a major name someone comments favorably on a piece of writing that later receives a bad grade from the teacher. What will the teacher do then? When do we as teachers abandon the idea that we are the sole and solitary keepers of student success? Once exposed to this broadening world, the very definition of success must change!

Grades cannot be the goal. As David puts it, education is a lot (if not all) about the side trips! Here’s hoping we can clear the fog for our kids. Thanks, David.

UPDATE 2: I figured out how I found out about the Hole in the Wall project. It came from a post by Guy Kawasaki. I don’t agree with some of the language he uses in his presentations, but his ideas for small technology startups have serious ramifications for education.

4 Comments »

Now before you call me crazy, let me explain the circumstances.

I have recently been given ten computers that range from 550 Mhz to 750 Mhz. They are all Dell and they were headed for the surplus heap to be sold for pennies on the dollar. I headed them off at the pass and directed them towards my classroom to be resurrected. I set about resurrecting them and was successful using a variety of Linux distros. I have posted on this before. I thought I had a great solution lined up in that Edubuntu works wonderfully on most of the machines, Xubuntu works on the ones that Edubuntu won’t load on, and I even have a few thinner client distros like Puppy Linux and Darn Small Linux for the oldest of machines.

I just can’t connect them to the school network.

Our district has a very strict policy that only district owned (these are) PC’s that have been “ghosted” with the district’s image can be connected to the school and district network (these aren’t, obviously). So there is my trouble. Part of me wants to connec tthem anyway noting that it certainly would not do any harm. My issue is integrity. If I am going to ask my students to maintain an impeccable level of integrity in my class and throughout life, I cannot blemish my integrity by circumventing district law. I am called to be obedient to the authorities over me. While I think Linux is in the best interest of my students, I cannot disobey the authority placed over me of my own accord (I took the job, after all).

So, I think I will put Windows 98 back on these machines. As much as it kills me to do it, so much of what I am doing these days is web-based. It doesn’t matter if it’s Windows or Linux, my students will not notice a difference when they access the wiki or their blogs. Frankly, so much of what I do is Internet based. I had given thought to creating a network reminiscent of old school token ring networks where everything connects to itself with no central server of any nature. Then I would use one of the peer computers as sort of a KEduca server but only to host the test file so that students could take tests and quizzes in class.

My problem is that I see no major benefit to that as opposed to the current system I have in place of an Internet-based quiz and test center. Once my kids master the login info, they figure the test and quizzes out in no time. So here again, I am having trouble justifying Tux machines that I cannot connect. I am learning that connectedness is becoming more important than hardware.

I suppose more than that, even, I can’t risk connecting a machine and toss myself into the abyss of disobedience. I do not want to take my family down the road that leads away from blessedness. All too often the deepest questions of life are asked in the context of regret. Hopefully not here.

So I need help, faithful audience. Help me justify Linux in my classroom! Here is a refresher as to my circumstance.

1. I teach Spanish and Latin to sixth graders in South Carolina. I have kids for roughly 22 class meetings total, with a new crop of students each 9 weeks.

2. I am currently working on a Wiki with my students, which they are enjoying greatly.

3. My students are also bloggers, although the semantics of this may change next nine weeks. Maybe a class blog instead of individual blogs. More on that later…

4. All of their tests and quizzes are taken online. See the Online Quizzes link on the left.

So I maintain that I cannot justify using Linux in my situation. Windows 98 works fine, these machines don’t fuss and I can still use Firefox as opposed to Internet Explorer. And Audacity runs on 98 with no issues as best I can tell.

So here I sit, hurting after having written all of this, especially since I am playing with a new copy of Dreamlinux with XGL which is particularly cool. It looks remarkably like my newly updated Mac with 10.4.8! Dock and all.

It’s your turn now. Any good reason to keep a few machines in a local area network without Internet connectedness? Or should I just give in and secretly use Linux and my Mac to power my classroom from home? I had thought about a local Moodle server in class, but see no reason to.

Do you have any good thoughts on the matter?

 

 Open Source Classroom dot com Podcast Episode 9 - Switching back to Windows [11:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

5 Comments »

I am about to go nuts. I have spent almost all day investigating different wiki options for my class. Here are the details of my journey in the hopes that it may help you in yours.

A few days ago I got a pretty good idea for a collaborative learning “project”. My kids watched a video about a young lady who lives on the shores of the Amazon River in Peru. We watched what life is like there and compared it to life here. Since I have been to Peru more than once to live, I could relate my own ideas. So here is the idea…when the video ended, I asked if my kids would like to meet “Elida” the subject of the documentary. They of course were excited about the idea. I strung them along for a bit and then dropped the bomb that Elida can’t come into the United States at will. She would be rejected without special permission (read: a visa). Bearing in mind my kids are 11 years old (mean age) they were particularly shocked.

This led us into a stimulating discussion about immigration. We began with the question, “Should the United States let people in”, just for the asking. Well the reason I am posting this here is I have been investigating ways to collaborate. I divided my class (rather, they divided themselves) into two sides, the Pros and the Cons. Some did not necessarily agree with their chosen side, but wanted to explore the reasoning behind it. So, how do I make this open source and web 2.0 tasty?

Here are my wiki-based thoughts…

1. Since I know teachers in Peru, I could easily have my kids post to a Wiki and then have the professors and students comment to it.

2. I could have other teachers from other classes around the world, from San Fernando, CA (maybe Marco Torres ?) to Shanghai (Jeff, you listening?) have their students read and comment.

It’s also worth noting that I pay for web hosting so I have lots of space, gobs of bandwidth, and enough MySQL databases to keep me going for some time. So I am not limited to a free or ad-supported wiki.

Since I have six classes with roughly 25 students in each class, and since they are divided into groups of typically four, I wanted a wiki with a quality drill-down menu and easy commenting, so that people reading my kids’ work would be encouraged to leave their two cents without frustration. Ease of commenting is crucial to a truly collaborative project.

So that ultimately led me to a Wiki search. I was over at EdTechTalk Sunday night and listened into the first half of the broadcast. I will catch the rest via podcast. They were interviewing the co-founder and VP of Marketing of PbWiki. So Monday morning I fired up Flock and went to work trying to find a wiki suitable for young minds not accostumed to this type of learning.

I began with Mediawiki, made famous by Wikipedia, of course. I found it to be feature-rich and enjoyed its full range of extensions. The trouble is simply that it requires too much knowledge of WikiText, and my kids are doing well if they can handle even basic WYSIWYG commands! Wikimedia is full and robust, but not a great choice for the type of Wiki I want for my class. I am aware that it is possible to integrate FCKEditor into Mediawiki, and I have done so for some of my other Content Management System installs, but the security risks were too much for me to handle. I need an easy solution for my kids.

As I mentioned a moment ago, I listened to Ramit talk about some of the neat features of Pbwiki. I like the concept and it certainly was easy to sign up. I know they have some features that are in the batter’s box to be rolled out, and I’d like to know what they are. I was a little taken aback when I got an email offering me a big savings if I upgrade. One of the things I like about Wikispaces is that while I know there are premium upgrades, they seem to be totally fine with me staying at my level of comfortable freeness. I felt a little strange getting a sales ad in my email inbox so shortly after signing up for a free service. Ok, have to pay the bills, so I won’t hold it against them. What ruled Pbwiki out for me is of course, the lack of a good WYSIWYG editor based on a non-Wikitext format. My kids have such a short time left that there is no time for a learning curve. I know they can figure it out, but at what cost?

So I moved on to Jotspot. I have had a Jotspot account for some time, but not really used it based on the severe limitations given to the free account. At least until recently. Thanks to Miguel Guhlin and two posts, I went back to Jotspot to give it another shot. I loved the Spreadsheet integration, although it is not anything I can really use right now. Again, I found it to be a little tough to use (from an 11 year old standpoint) given the lack of a quality WYSIWYG editor integrated. I just know my kids would get confused by exclamation points and the like. Remember, these students leave me on October 20, so that cancels the teach-them-and-it-will-be-ok argument. I have 9 classes left with them, I need a turnkey solution.

So my next idea was to investigate Wikispaces. I am sort of a big fan of the Technospud blog and she seems to have a special place in her heart for Wikispaces, so I gave them a shot. I especially like that they are giving away 10,000 free wikis to educators. So I went and signed up. I like the Wikispaces idea, it was a really clean environment and I like the natural feel of the WYSIWYG editor for my kids. I think it would seem native to them and reduce the learning curve. I would prefer a little more ability to categorize the pages, but I can deal without it. So far, Wikispaces is my front runner, and I love that there are no ads. That’s a big deal.

I decided to investigate a little more into the world of installed, database backed-up Wikis thinking that since I have hosting, I may be at an advantage. So I headed over to my favorite Open Source Content Management System (and Learning Management System) playground, Opensourcecms.com. There I found a good list of different wikis that are installable and fun. The nice thing about Opensourcecms is that you can log in to their demo installations that are refreshed every few hours. So I was able to see how all of these different wikis function without having to install them on my own server first. There are also a number of different LMS’s, such as Moodle, Site @ School, and ATutor, not to mention others. If you’ve ever wondered what a fresh install of any of these pieces of software looks like, go play!

My travels to Opensourcecms.com turned me on to Dokuwiki. As noted by the name, Dokuwiki is mainly aimed at developers and small companies trying to create documentation on something, such as a project of piece of equipment. Nonetheless I decided to try it since it stores information in simple text files and requires no database. This means that installation is a simple matter of FTP’ing the directories to my web space and running it. I liked that a lot because there is zero risk of SQL Injection hacks or other security worries. Inherently, one can’t build a large Wiki this way, but no bother since I am going to refresh it each nine weeks. This solution would also keep me from having to manually run the MySQL queries using phpMyAdmin to empty the Wiki tables each time (a potential problem using Mediawiki if there were residual entries in the tables, albeit a low risk). Additionally, upgrading would be a breeze since one would only have to copy new files into the directory and not replace the text files from which the information is called. Troublingly, there was very little in the way of access control (outside of the standard .htaccess) and no commenting ability built it. There is a plugin manager, but I quickly hit roadblock after roadblock that I could not justify overcoming with Wikispaces luring me back with a siren’s call. So Dokuwiki went out the window, although it remains installed to play with later should the desire return.

So following my Dokuwiki disappointment I turned to a resource I found in a quick Google search; Wiki Matrix. I was thrilled with the Wiki Choice Wizard, which allows you to answer a few simple questions and helps you determine what you need given your criteria. I spent a good half hour trying to figure out which Wikis went with which options. I have been wanting to learn Ruby on Rails (or either by itself) but found nothing that fit my needs. Ultimaltely, I figured out that these wikis were more designed for the coporate world than the educational world (there’s a shock) and I found no software that could defeat the strong push for Wikispaces. So as of the afternoon, it was still looking strong for Wikispaces.
I came across another turnkey site called Netcipia, which I have to admit lured in me strongly based on a fun, clean home page. I liked the “web 2.0 participation” spin they put on it so I signed up. Immediately, I was disappointed. Once I actually got into my site, I found a standard Drupal-esque interface not terribly different from any other php-based CMS. Netcipia disappointed like no other in my search. They lured with strong words, even offering to let me download their software (see bottom under cancellation), but providing no link. I find no reason to stick with Netcipia when I already have various CMS’s installed, such as phpNuke and Drupal. So bye bye, Netcipia.

I thought back to the first time I had ever used a real, live Wiki. It was during the Discovery Educator Network’s planning stages for their National Leadership Conference. They purchased some space on Editme. I liked their interface because it was clean (a recurring theme, you’ll notice) and offered a simple WYSIWYG editor and easy discussion opportunities. The obvious drawback, $4.95 per month. As thrifty as I can tend to be, spending nearly $60 per year for my kids was a bit much. Truth be told, it’s my salary and four of us, so you can imagine the budget is tight. I love my students, but I love my family more. So editme went by the wayside because I can’t afford it.

So I was back to square one. Wiser yet frustrated. I felt like there should be a better solution. I went back to Miguel Guhlin’s post concerning Wetpaint and decided to give it a shot. I was immediately captivated by the site, and how fun it looked. I signed up for an account and have been mesmerized ever since. You naturally know what my one issue is, right? While they have a great WYSIWYG editor, I am scared of the ads! Google’s AdWords works contextually, and if my kids begin wiki’ing about a certain topic like Immigration, who knows what ads will pop up. I have to be super careful about what I allow in my kids eyes and ears, especially at the tender age of 11 (some are 10!). There is no way to limit the ads, no way to turn on the ad-equivalent of Strict-Safesearch so I think Wetpaint is not going to work. This really hurts, because this has been my favorite so far. One trick I really like is that I can upload a graphic to replace the text banner. Simple stuff, really, but it got my geek attention going.

Bottom line is that I am going to focus on Wikispaces for now. The nice thing about having students for a mere nine weeks is that I can try something new each nine weeks. So if Wikispaces turns sour (and with this much time and effort researching this, how could it?!) I can move to a different solution in a short time.

Do you have a Wiki story you want to tell? Did my analysis seem biased? Did I miss something? Am I just flat wrong? Tell me! Thanks for getting this far with me!!

22 Comments »

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Discovery Educator Network leadership for the inspiration to do this…

At the DEN NLC 06 I heard a keynote presentation from Alan November, who speaks a great deal on our flattening world and how to give our kids a leg up in this changing world. The final straw was what I read during a pretty amazing little PowerPoint presentation brought to fame in the DEN world by the DEN’s own Aaron Smith.

So I decided it was time to teach my sixth graders the power of going from being consumers to contributors of content on the Internet. Their eyes grew wider and wider as time progressed and I told them that there was a chance that real people they did not know might read their blogs.

I didn’t exaggerate too much, I told them that folks might never read their blog, but the truth is at the very least, all their posts would be aggregated for each other to read.

I will keep you posted as to how the experiment goes. That’s really all teaching is anyway, right, one grand experiment where there truly are no constants save for the lack of constants, and the variable change exponentially year by year. That is why we adjust, adapt, and overcome.

Naturally, Drupal is open source, and you can try it on a live tester demo at www.opensourcecms.com, one of my favorite sites in the CMS/LMS, etc realm.

UPDATE: I started a Discussion Board forum on this topic.

 

 Standard Podcast [15:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

1 Comment »

Right now in San Francisco, CA, on the heels of Apple’s WWDC not too far away, is the Linuxworld 2006 Expo and Conference. While I certainly couldn’t attend, the topics of discussion give us a chance to take the pulse of the Linux and open source world, and find any good tips for the educational realm. Some of the topics expectedly focus on Enterprise IT topics, but a couple struck my attention. I am searching for the podcasts of these keynotes, but so far to no avail. First, a Stanford Law professor names Lawrence Lessig spoke on what he describes as the Free Culture movement, and the threats and struggles within. No doubt he highlighted the strain of a consumerist tendency seen in those who partake of open source software but do not contribute in any respect.

Next up on the keynote list was Greg Besio, Corporate Vice President of Software for Motorola with a talk called Creating “Must Have” Mobile Experiences with Linux. In an educational society when we are confiscating cell phones instead of leveraging them, this talk could have fantastic ramifications for a more student-driven cell phone culture in schools. Sun Microsystems has been talking a lot lately about Sun ME, their mobile version of Java, allowing developers to write programs for mobile phones. Getting back to Linux, a consortium was set up with major players back in June to develop and agree upon a standard version of Linux.

So lots of open source news these days. I will try to keep you more posted, especially in regards to how this may impact education. Until next time…

1 Comment »

In this show I talk all about Wordpress, an open-source blogging software that is either available for local hosting, paid for hosting, or they will give you a free blog!

 

 Podcast Episode 2 - Wordpress [13:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

1 Comment »

I have created and mastered the first episode of the Open Source Classroom dot com podcast! It was a laborious process as I can tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. I am truly joking considering this episode is purely stream-of-consciousness and straight from the heart. It was fun to do but I found myself watching the clock too much. Well, here’s to learning more and more as time progresses. I would love comments! Thanks for listening…

 

 Episode 1 [5:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

2 Comments »