Blog:DKS
Welcome to Daniel K. Schneider's Wikilog about educational technology, technologies, and related subjects.
I will use this a my personal blog and for announcing EdutechWiki news (for older news I just used a wiki page).
Informal talk about our Mediawiki design experiments
Today, in an internal research symposium at Webster University Geneva, I gave a short talk about our various MediaWiki design experiments. Basically just a remix of EdMedia '09 and EdMedia '11 talks. The Mediawikis for research, teaching and learning article is a wiki version of the published 2011 EdMedia paper.
- Title: Integrating research, teaching and learning through wikis
- Slides: download PPT or PDF
Admire the slide to the right with a drawing made for conference embroidery
Jan 2012 news
I wish you an exciting new year (it's never too late for that ...)
Some small news:
- Upgraded this wiki to MediaWiki 18.1. Most extensions should work.
- Became interested in Citizen science (I'll add more over the next few month)
- Ordered a Silhouette Cameo for our micro fablab. This easy to use cutting/plotting machine is probably the entry-level thing to have.
- 3D printing is now something that consumers are supposed to do, there was even talk in our local newspapers. 3DSystems announced its first "consumer" device and other "big" players may follow.
- I probably will try to find/test wiki metrics, rubrics and collaboration tools and use Semantic Forms for some real project, e.g. update educational modeling languages.
Holiday greetings
I wish everyone a nice holiday break :)
Also, since I deserve one, EduTechWiki login creation is disabled until early January. I now have to deal with a spammer per day on average. That's way too much in any case and I may have to adopt another participation scheme next year.
- Daniel
Moodle 2.2 is out and it includes grading rubrics
Upgraded to Moodle 2.2 yesterday. The LAMS and Mahara integration still work and the rest too :)
The grading tool is usable, although I find Moodle and other LMSs culturally biased and have to cope with this. Efficient people like the Swiss don't distinguish between grades and scores. I.e. we just define the min and max of the total performance indicators as grade. E.g. a score of 5.75 is the grade of 5.57 on our 0 to 6 grading scheme. Americans and Australians love to go through various stages like scores -> percentages -> grades. In addition they assume that good grading is done with respect to a mean score and standard deviation. I grade with respect to what I expect. E.g. for the very same class across years I could have a grade average of 5.75 out of 6 or 3 out of 6. I usually have a high 5.5 since the weak and lazy ones just give up our degree program before the classes end. Of course, an assignment or exam may turn out to be too hard. In that case I just adjust the rubric, e.g. add a linear coefficient or something. In other words: I really would like future implementations allowing teachers to define how the score is computed, e.g. "their way" or with simple formula like:
- sum (indicatori)
- sum (indicatori) * 10 + 0.5
- sum (indicatori) / sum (max_scorei)
Since it's much easier for a student to understand a grade he gets for each performance criterion, one also ought to be able to add a weight to each. Right now you add weight just by choosing different performance indicator values.
Anyhow, this percentage/distribution thing makes using Moodle a pain for people who think simple. I much prefer the simple BlackBoard rubric system and I don't care much for either LMS with respect to anything else since I only use LMSs for assignment management, grading and occasionally running a LAMS sequence. However, I do teach Moodle since, overall, it's one of the better systems around and since in Moodle 2.x even document management somewhat works (that's what most teachers do with an LMS).
Read Grilles d'évaluation dans Moodle if you understand french. It tells how to get grading work done with a minimum of hassle. The bottom line is the following:
- Theoretical max of the grading rubric has to be equal to the max of the grading scale.
- Use a fine grained ascending grading scale since the score is computed from a normalized score multiplied with the max of your grading scale and then rounded.
- Each performance criterion and your grading scale must have a min value of 0. This is to cancel out the normalization effect that seems to be dear to our Australian friends.
Design and fabrication and schools - 3D printers news
I started looking at educational issues and other conceptual aspects of digital design and fabrication and this will take some time before I am done. In the meantime, I suggest reading the British Design and Technology association's Response to the National Curriculum Review. It's a form, but there is a lot of information that I will exploit, e.g. its very good bibliography. In particular, there is a growing literature suggesting that design and fabrication is both highly motivating and that students learn something.
Right now, I just started taking notes, e.g. here:
- Design and technology in England's national curriculum
- Fab labs in education
- 3D printers in education
- Computerized embroidery in education
- A synthesis may appear by the end of december 2011 in Digital design and fabrication in education
Also, the first easy to assemble European 3D printer is out. The designer has a good background in mechatronics and that's the only evaluation criteria I found for now.
- Felix 1.0. Also shortly described in my list in 3D printing.
The Netherlands now seems to have become the leading nation in low cost 3D printing (other companies include Mendel Parts and Ultimaker). This isn't a big surprise given that the Dutch also had the first European FabLab and that Universities are open to change and new fields.
3D Printer update
I updated information about 3D printers and moved this information from the fab lab article to 3D printing. The hot new consumer (or almost) machine is the Chinese UP!, available for about $2700 and ready to go. Commercial disruptive technology is now being designed in China. Good for China :). If you can't afford this model, look at the Solidoodle, available for an incredible low $700 (introductory price).
How Finland became an education leader
Here are a few points that could explain why they do better than others in PISA tests ......
- focus on teachers and not on domestic testing (only one out of every 10 people who apply to become teachers will ultimately make it to the classroom)
- teaching has become the most highly esteemed profession
- partnership between businesses, policy makers and educators
- not a memorization-based curriculum, but a thinking-based curriculum
- think about teachers as scientists and the classrooms are their laboratories
- professionalism as working more collaboratively (teachers stay at school after classes ...)
Read:
- David Sirota's (jul 2011) interview with Harward's Tony Wagner in Salon, How Finland became an education leader
- Wagner, Tony (2008). The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need - and What We Can Do About It, Basic Books. ISBN 0786731745
My new digital piano
I got myself some exciting new hardware: A Yamaha CVP-509 digital piano. This time paid from my pocket, but I do plan to get a cheaper one at/for work. I also plan to introduce some EduTechWiki articles about using digital pianos in education and Music education technology. So far, I just got started and there isn't much of interest for now ...
Mediawiki 1.17 upgrade
Upgraded EduTechWiki to Mediawiki 1.17 and also upgraded most extensions. As usual, the upgrade was easy and flawless.
In addition, I decided to explore Semantic MediaWiki and in particular its Semantic Forms extension. Right now, I don't know what I shall do with them nor do I yet understand any technical details. Keep tuned, I may use these extensions for representing some types of information (e.g. about educational design systems). I also see great potential for implementing learning scenarios, e.g. we could use Mediawikis instead of other portalware like Drupal to implement forms-based student writing scenarios.
I also added a skin for handhelds (mobile devices). This may break older browsers, but I don't hope so.
System administration with a cell phone
System administration is not my idea of fun. Nevertheless, operating our own servers means freedom to run whatever we want to. In addition, I believe it's less work to operate our own servers than negotiating what can be installed with central services. And finally, someone else does most of this work at TECFA. I only administer portalware and machines I am using a lot (e.g. edutechwiki). That way I understand the issues and can fix problems if there is an emergency.
I went to my usual fairly Internet-free three week summer vacation and only took my cell phone. I then checked in every two days for spams and other incidents. One day, EdutechWiki wouldn't display the "recent changes" page, giving an obscure SQL runtime error. One solution would have been to call up some other person to investigate, but I decided to do it on my own. Took me a few hours since I had to install a remote ssh client on my phone and then I made a stupid mistake, i.e. I started repairing tables instead of checking the overall system state. My typing skills on a cell phone are low, really low, and I went straight for the error instead of thinking and typing some more...
Morale: Before you leave on vacation,
- Install Connectbot on your Android. Modulo the limitations of a cellphone virtual keybord, Connectbot is a really good client. You only need to learn how to enter CTRL characters and such. Read the help. Btw. there are several SSH clients for Iphones, e.g. iSSH. On the Blackberry, try Midpssh.
- Make sure to have a "data roaming package", else you may get a huge bill. Fortunately I did contract a 200MB/84CHF one month plan from Swisscom before I left. Other operators now may offer similar plans. Anyhow, data roaming costs are ridiculous. Fortunately at least the EU has plans to crack down on this absurd situation.
- Clean up the root partition. There was a 10GB log file from the networker backup program and MySQL couldn't create temporary files. Found this by looking up the MySQL error code :(
- If not already done so, create a user with a not too complicated password. I couldn't manage to type in the root password in the short timespan allowed. After logging in as normal user, going su then doesn't have this limit.
Tips for wiki spammers
Dear spammers,
Most of you probably are in a difficult economical situation and you need to earn money by polluting wikis with ads and I can understand that. According to Wikipedia, Western so-called link promotion services pay about $0.80 to $1.20 for each 1,000 solved CAPTCHAs to companies employing human solvers in Bangladesh, China, India, and many other developing nations.
Let me tell you why spamming Mediawikis is a waste of time and counterproductive.
Back from EdMedia 2011
EdMedia '11 included the usual mix of various paper genres. Most belong to what I would call "mainstream topics in technology-enhanced education". I had the impression that both attendance and proportion of younger people was lower than usual. I truly enjoy the openness of EdMedia. Anyone that has a good idea or did create a nice design (and can write) is allowed to present. In that respect, EdMedia continues to play an important role in the landscape. I also found the PhD track interesting, although it might be improved by adding more difficult and more technical subjects.
The big topics of the keynote talks were the social, open content and mobile apps. I got various problems with all three of these as I shall explain below a bit.
My Mediawikis for research, teaching and learning paper got an award. I first thought that there was a mistake in the program, but the person in charge of the program told me that she double checked. Well, if I got an award for everything I did with MediaWikis, i.e. the stuff described in the paper, then I can accept it. I won't further investigate :)
My embroidered shirt didn't work at all and that's ok for a first version. The problem was that people did not "see it". Most interviewed folks told me that they did notice some strange and maybe intriguing colors but they did not look closer. A next version must have a big text on top to attract the eyes, e.g. something like "EdMedia '12" or "Better EdTech". However, after pointing out to people that I was wearing conference embroidery, the idea was liked and GillianP on twitter gave me a "best shirt" award :)
Mediawiki talk at EdMedia 2011
Next week I am going to EdMedia 2011 in Lisbon.
- Thu, Jun. 30, 2:45 PM, Room 6.1
- Paper: Mediawikis for research, teaching and learning (wiki version)
- Slides: http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/talks/schneide/edmedia11/
Talks as co-author:
- Wed, Jun. 29 10:00 AM Room 9 - Conceptual Change through Computer-Supported Argumentative Writing - Kalliopi Benetos, TECFA, University of Geneva, Switzerland
- Wed, Jun. 29 4:00 PM, Room 11 - A community portal for professional development - Barbara Class Abboud, University of Geneva, Switzerland
I'll try to give a fun talk (more fun than the paper) and I will come dressed up with my first conference embroidery creation and that should - I hope so - start heated discussions :)
See you there maybe !
Academic embroidery wear
With this posting I am launching the concept of "academic embroidery wear" (Google didn't return any results for this search term]).
Do not believe that I refer to those funny looking disguises that are popular in Anglo-Saxon countries, although deans and rectors wear such things once per year even in less formal countries like Switzerland.
Wear refers to something that one actually would use to express academic ideas, for example at a conference. So here are examples of some first attempts.
(1) A subset of a learning taxonomy or a power point slide embroidered over a shirt that I could wear at a conference.
(2) Logos that refer to brands we use in teaching and research as opposed to brands that rather refer to food (like crocodiles and horses).
- Embroidery samples (click to enlarge)
LAMS mascot prototype
Mediawiki logo prototype
Drupal logo prototype
PPT embroidered
Task taxonomy
plant growing
None of these sample designs reach professional quality yet. I just started learning some principles and techniques of machine embroidery (see the computerized embroidery category). If you plan to digitize academic logos yourself, read Stitch Era embroidery software for some technical tips.
Computer-controlled embroidery
Here we go. Yesterday I got ourselves some new hardware.
The basic steps for creating a computer-assisted embroidery are as follows:
- Get or create a digitized embroidery design file
- Load the design file into the embroidery machine
- Stabilize the fabric and place it in the machine
- Start and monitor the embroidery machine
Read more:
- Elna 8300
- Computerized embroidery
- Concepts of computerized embroidery
- Stitch Era embroidery software
Why did I buy this machine ? I like the fab lab idea and would like to create a tiny subset of such a lab. The first item I got over a year ago was the RapMan.
Computerized embroidery may be of interest to educational technology in several ways:
- Having students create designs will train them in design and in using design software. Design is important for our societies and should be taught more. Also, micro-fabrication will gain importance in the future and we should be ready for that.
- Subject-specific designs could be motivators in project-oriented classes (nature, science, political). I.e. the idea is to have students create designs that represent knowledge in various forms.
- Co-workers in an outfit that has such a machine could create identity-building designs.
- Embroidery could awaken interest for IT in people who otherwise just stick to Word and Facebook.
For myself, I plan to create academic embroidery (more later).
PS: This machine wasn't paid from our regular hardware budget, but from revenues from an adult training course
Upgrades EduTechWiki
Today we upgraded the OS (now running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS), our MediaWikis (1.16.4) and most important Mediawiki extensions. In principle, everything should work. Else, if we can detect something that is wrong, we will fix it.
Enjoy :)
PS: Authors who want to contribute without having to bother with the ReCaptchas - these difficult to solve letter recognition puzzles - can send me a short mail and I'll add you to an "authoring" group that doesn't need to bother. I'll do it automatically if I see that someone did more than two interesting edits.
Improved Google search - Manual Google search tweaking
Hurray ! Google improved its search algorithm and quite severely punishes content and link scraping web sites. (via Google Tweaks Algorithm; EHow Traffic Plummets on Slashdot, April 19 2011.
After several weeks of trials, it seems that Google now uses an algorithm that really does have an impact. E.g. try searching for "on-screen annotation" a search term I whined about in a previous post. Or "embroidery software" that just wouldn't work 2 days ago. "Fantastic changes" !
- Thank you Google
If this is not enough improvement for you, read on ....
FTP is 40 years old - E-learning is older
Yesterday, FTP (the still popular file transfer protocol) had its 40th birthday (via Slashdot).
Now, server-based e-learning systems are older than that! Read the excellent Plato article on Wikipedia. By the mid-seventies, it had most of the components a modern LMS has. I also could argue that it had stuff that we still don't have in a typical e-learning platform. Of the course, the interface wasn't the same, but all the ideas were there.
Finally, for people who believe that virtual communities are a new idea: In 1968,Licklider &Taylor (PDF) argued that “ What will on-line interactive communities be like?" ...In most fields they will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest...”
Believe me, everything in education takes at least 40 years to make it into the mainstream, iff everything works nicely. Most ideas need between 50 and 100 years, i.e. between two and four generations ..... In computing, things move much faster, I'd say the typical diffusion of innovation into mainstream takes between 15 and 30 years.
Computer-controlled sewing machines
I know next to nothing about CNC sewing machines, although I may have embroidery in the blood since I was born in one of world's leading towns and since my two grandfathers were executives in the textile industry.
I probably will buy one for TECFA in the near future since it might be a good tool to get young teenagers interested in 2D graphics and maybe even in some programming. Also, I could create cool T-shirts with stitched concept maps, EduTechWiki logos, and other creative drawings. I also could contribute to my reputation as someone who likes to play with easy software and hardware ... as opposed for example to wearable computing or advanced educational software.
This little summer project is part of my interest in fab labs and relates to my last year's exploration of the RapMan low cost 3D printer, which still sits in my office.
I think that I will get a Bernina Aurora 450 with the stitching module (about CHF 3000.- promotional price). Bernina has a good reputation and I can't stand commercial hardware that is not reliable. Any tips with respect to hardware / software and other resources would be very welcome. E.g. Bernina's design software based on Corel Draw is fairly expensive (around 2200 CHF) and I don't know yet if I really need that. [1 $ = 1.1 CHF]
Read (and maybe help out with): computer-controlled embroidery and sewing (started on April 14)
Google WebMaster report about EduTechWiki April 2011
Last night I submited a little last-minute piece about EduTechWiki to EdMedia 2011 and finished a more difficult design/research piece as co-author that we started writing well before. The submitted article on Mediawikis aks the very simple question how MediaWikis should be configured for educational and other academic purposes. But today I thought that I might have a look at data that show how EduTechWiki is seen by the Google search engine. I'll probably write another post about Google's Analytics view.
EduTechWiki pages get undeserved high search page rankings. Of the 623 pages included in the statistics, the average is 7.4. I mean, I am proud enough about the beast as a whole but I am talking about individual pages here....
Method:
- I downloaded the .cvs files from Google webmaster tools
- I declared all values marked "<10" as missing.
- Period: March 11-April 10 2010 (unfortunately the free version only allows to get statistcs for the last month)
The following histogram shows a skewed distribution. Median of a typical position in a search page is 6.2.
Read on for some more details ...
