whoknows.ca

Today is the last day of class for the ECI 831 master’s course that I am taking. Alec (the prof) asked students to provide a bit of a reflection on how the course went, so here goes…

What you did:

• schellenbergmath.wikispaces.com
  • created a wiki to house math screencasts created with the math classes I teach (Math 10 - Math C30). Example screencasts are done by me, and students do a bunch in the “Textbook problems” sections of the wiki.
• cs30.wikispaces.com
  
  • a wiki for my Computer Science 30 course, in which all of my students are members of the site, and have full permissions to do anything they want. We had to go this route as opposed to an open wiki, as this was the only way to give the students the ability to change the design of the site.
• drupal.whoknows.ca
  • a last minute addition to the major project, I decided to evaluate Drupal to see whether it was a suitable tool to create and maintain our school website.

What you learned:

Math wiki

• students LOVE having access to instruction on their own terms
• students want to have the same instruction as if they were at class (ie. although my screencasts could be used by any math student, my students particularly enjoy the fact that it is me they are hearing)
• students are excited to show off what they have done — will show friends/parents screencasts that they have created in class
• typesetting math in wikispaces is better than many places on the web, but the lack of inline equations is still frustrating (ie. an equation needs to be on its own line)
• it’s incredibly humbling to capture what you do and throw it up online for all to see (without editing it at all). At first, I would toss out a video if I made a little mistake, or thought that I’d said “um” too many times. Now, something pretty bad has to happen for me to not just fix it up while ‘on camera’. I think there is value in my students seeing me work through technical or mathematical issues, whether in class or in the archived class content online.

CS wiki

• students found the lack of full HTML limiting (one got around it by downloading a backup copy of the website, which allowed him to check which CSS class a certain <div> was accessing. Quite clever)
• students enjoyed personalizing the class wiki — a sense of ownership was developed. Although their personalization resulted in a fairly mediocre looking site, they certainly enjoyed the process. Will try to extend this further to see if it can help with next point.
• organic growth of a wiki resource is hard — and depending on the type of resource, fairly useless (cite Just Google It!)

Drupal

• setting up a Drupal site is quite simple, if you have prerequisite knowledge of how to install MySQL databases, etc on your webserver (can be even easier if your webhost has an auto-install script)
• looks like I’ll be using this to get a production-ready site up for our school
• once the basic site is created, editing it should be a cinch — may need to train one other person at school in the complexities of Drupal, but it should be fairly simple…

Barriers

• Jing is slow; makes my low end machine at school fairly unresponsive
• Wikispaces lack of full HTML editing was irritating for the CS wiki — might look for another wiki that allows for it.
• teach support at school can be… interesting. For example, IT wouldn’t let me use an Ubuntu LiveCD, as I’d have to change the BIOS settings, so instead the IT department spent about 25 manhours getting VMware server and an Ubuntu image on the machines, only to find that they actually need more RAM due to the fact that you are then running two operating systems simultaneously. The RAM comes this Friday. More manhours to follow.)

In conclusion, I’d have to say that my digital project was a resounding success. My students have thanked me many times over for the math wiki, and the CS students are finding their wiki useful as well. (Total tangent — check out the progression in what this student knows about web design by checking out his assignments one after another. This is why I love teaching CS.) I am more and more convinced that the idea of “small tools, loosely joined” is the way to go (this preference is my one hesitation on using Drupal for the school site, incidentally). I’m really pleased with how the combination of Jing and Wikispaces works for my math wiki. For my CS blog, being able to embed del.icio.us links that I tag “CS30″ makes it dead simple for me to share interesting sites with my students.

I’m always on the lookout for new tools that will add some sort of functionality to how I work and how I teach. Most don’t find their way into my classroom, but when they do, it’s pretty powerful.

danschellenberg Education, General

The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) have begun what may become standard in the future — distributing a DRM-free, full quality version of a TV show (Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister) for all to download and view for free.  To make things even better, CBC has chosen to use BitTorrent technology to distribute the file.  This allows a large file such as this TV show to be distributed to a large number of people without costing the CBC exorbitant amounts of hosting fees.  In essence, you share the file while also downloading it, so the more people who are downloading, the faster it becomes (the exact opposite of what you might expect traditionally).

The CBC is the first North American broadcaster to take this step, though not the first in the world.  A Norwegian broadcaster (NRK) took this step earlier this year, with great success.  Eirik Solheim, one of the masterminds of the Norwegian project, was interviewed by a German news site, and the interview is very interesting.  One major problem with distributing shows using this method is third party contracts, which makes adopting BitTorrent distribution something that only new shows are likely to do.

This is exciting news, and I hope the CBC continues to expand on this.  It seems like such a obvious thing for a public broadcaster to distribute shows to their viewers using the cheapest and most convenient method available, but the issue of third party sponsorship will surely cause some difficulty during the initial stages of this concept.

danschellenberg General, Technology

I had the privilege tonight to listen to Stephen Downes present the software that he uses to run his Stephen’s Web site.  Stephen has created a fairly complex system in Perl that allows him to grab, read, remix and post information from a variety of sources/feeds.

In the Q&A time, I asked Stephen whether the vey nature of open source requires a hierarchy.  The motivation behind the question was simply that I have noticed that for every great piece of software I’ve seen, it has begun with some person scratching their personal itch (ie. solving whatever workflow problem they have).  This one person creates a (usually) complex system that allows them to do whatever they need to do.  Then, once the software is usable, others begin to become interested in it, and collaboration begins.  However, the person who started the project has a higher place on the totem pole, by virtue of the duration of their time with the project, as well as their greater familiarity with the code.

Stephen’s response was, if I understood him correctly (I’ll have to go back and listen to the recording again to be sure), was that heirarchy is not required, since a person can simply fork the code (begin their own version of the software) at any point.  While this is true, I am not at all convinced that this removes the heirarchy.  Does it not in fact simply create a second one (one in the original project, and one that begins with the new fork)?  I am terribly intrigued with the collaborative process of open source software, but it seems to me that it must always begin with a “benevolant dictator” (to quote the Python community in reference to its creator, Guido Rossum).

I don’t think that beginning the collaboative, open source process with an individual makes it any less powerful.  I just think it’s important to recognize that all good projects (that I can think of or imagine) must start through an individual, not a collective.  Does anyone have a good example of when this has not been the case?  I’d love to hear of it if it exists.

danschellenberg General

I just finished watching Howard Rheingold’s TED talk on collaboration.  Rheingold is the author of Smart Mobs, a book that explores the use of internet/mobile communications in organizing social action.  In his TED talk, Rheingold says:

This is all about self-interest that adds up to more… around the world, citizens have self-organized political protests… using mobile devices and SMS.

The basic idea is that there is a new currency of wealth that is being created through collaboration, and that we need to continue to study the impact that this can have on our individual and collective lives.  It’s worth the 20 minutes.  Have a look.

danschellenberg Education, General, Technology