User:Daniel K. Schneider
About myself
- My E-mail: Daniel.Schneider at unige.ch (E.g. if you have questions about the why and what of this Wiki)
- See my good old HTML Home Page
- Classes in french: Cours STIC: STIC I - STIC II - STIC III - STIC IV
- Classes in English: See Courses and workshops
- Talks: some slides
Blog
Last 10 posts from Blog:DKS, my wikilog:
Informal talk about our Mediawiki design experiments
— by Daniel K. Schneider (talk) - 3 February 2012 - updated:3 February 2012
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
— by Daniel K. Schneider (talk) - 24 January 2012 - updated:24 January 2012
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
— by Daniel K. Schneider (talk) - 23 December 2011 - updated:23 December 2011
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
— by Daniel K. Schneider (talk) - 8 December 2011 - updated:9 January 2012
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
— by Daniel K. Schneider (talk) - 26 November 2011 - updated:8 December 2011
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
— by Daniel K. Schneider (talk) - 14 October 2011 - updated:26 November 2011
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).
→ more...How Finland became an education leader
— by Daniel K. Schneider (talk) - 27 September 2011 - updated:27 September 2011
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
— by Daniel K. Schneider (talk) - 14 September 2011 - updated:27 September 2011
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 ...
→ more...Mediawiki 1.17 upgrade
— by Daniel K. Schneider (talk) - 16 August 2011 - updated:23 September 2011
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
— by Daniel K. Schneider (talk) - 3 August 2011 - updated:15 October 2011
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.
Other
Need a new desktop laptop (spring 2010). It should be 3D enabled (both CAD and gaming 3D).
- Should have good Opengl and good activeX support, e.g. either a GTX (e.g. 480M, 580M,..) or Quadro Nvidia (e.g. 4000M) or Radeon (e.g. 6970M)
- Fast CPU, e.g. i7-2630QM (Quad procesor) or better
- Biggest possible display
In addition, I'd prefer a SSD and less weight for the same performance.
Alternatives I consider:
- Gaming/multimedia laptops (can do for the little CAD I do)
- Alienware M17x (too heavy, good gaming 3D Radeon HD 5870 , good screen)
- Asus G73 series, e.g. G73JW (cheap, only hdtv 1080p, quite heavy, ok screen, good gaming 3D NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M)
- Acer Aspire Ethos (cheap, slim, slow 3D, bad screen)
- Apple MacBook Pro (slim, don't trust win drivers, slow 3D Radeon 6750M)
- Clevo (also sold as Sager or XMG Schenker, plus other brands) 17 in. and above series. Flexible configurations. Probably the fastest laptops, various i7 chips, GeForce GTX 560M/580M for the high-ends, 18.4 in FHD (1920x1080). No better resolution ? Cheaper than comparable "brands". Resellers in Germany: Schenker Notebook, Deviltech, Notebookguru.de
- Samsung Series 7 Gamer Notebooks, in various variants. 700G7A with Radeon HD 6970M, 4GB, is about Euros 2000, 4kgs and higher.
- Sony Vaio, VPC-F22S1E or similar.
- Cad Laptops (certified, also better OpenGL support)
- DELL Precision M6600, Nvidia Quadro 4000M or 5010M (expensive!), HD (1900x1080), CPU: I7-2720QM (or better).
- HP EliteBook 8740W, 8760W (UWVA-Display, starts at 3.5kg, Various Nvidia Quadro (e.g. Quadro 4000M), various CPU, e.g. i7-2630QM
- Xirios W series from Schenker. Various configurations. An almost top W701 mobile Workstation model with a GTX 580M, Intel i7-2760QM, 8GB RAM, 300GB SDD etc. is about Euros 2500 (or about 2800 CHF). Schenker used to sell much more expensive Quadro-based models, e.g. the W710 (can't find them anymore).
None has what I would call a decent screen resolution. The actual trend is in fact towards less (i.e. HDTV 1900x1080 or 1900x900). So far, I don't think that any is really worth it, although I asked for DELL M6600 with a 4000M. There seems to be a fair market for custom-built laptops, but I won't trust any that is not local (in case I have to return the unit for some quick repair)
