User talk:Daniel K. Schneider

You can use this page to ask me questions or make comments ....

LauLima

Hope you don't mind but I updated one of your sections to include a newly released variant of TikiWiki called LauLima. I kept the entry short, but we have developed it over the last 3 years. Our project is ongoing, but we use it ourselves in student collaborative projects, and while there are still many ways it can be improved and developed, it has many modifications that have allowed us to use it successfully for student collaborative work, both locally and internationally.

Framemaker

Hi Daniel, I am curious about the process you used for transforming FrameMaker docs into this Wiki. What tools did you use and did you convert one page at a time or were you able to batch process your FrameMaker document into several wiki pages? I am planning a huge migration of content and I can't find many people who are trying to go from FrameMaker to Wiki. Thanks --Myles Pflum

R: Hmm it's quite manual. there are 2 versions:

• Frame to HTML (edit the reference page as to produce only 1 page per document)

Then I use a HTML2Wiki tool, then I fix problems with emacs :(

• Frame to Word

Then I use a Word2Wiki filter that can be installed in word.

• http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/ManageMediaWiki#HTML_import
• http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/ManageMediaWiki#Word_2_Wiki
• http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/ManageMediaWiki#Importation_into_Wiki

Both methods are about equally bad ;)

Thanks for the leads, etc.

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the leads about wiki-related activities that you know about. I will have a look at them soon (but maybe after a couple of my courses end on November 8th). This fall, for the first time, I've been creating a student-written "textbook" about educational psychology. (If you're curious, go to [Educational psychology]. The results are variable--there are traditional writing-skill problems, as well as logistical problems about keeping students out of each other's way when writing and editing, yet still responding somehow to each other's work. (e.g. One of the logistical problems: too many students put off writing/editing until the deadline, causing the wiki to balk at receiving many simultaneous changes.)

As you say, it will take a few more run-throughs for me to become fully fluent with the wiki medium. And I'm not sure if my students (especially the undergrads) will ever do so, but I want to keep trying with them until I'm sure that we have gone as far as we, and the medium, can go.

KelvinLeeSeifert 00:05, 20 October 2007 (MEST)

Move your content to another wiki?

Hi, I've enjoyed your edtech wiki for a long time, it's probably the best resource on the web about educational technology, the learning sciences, and many other related topics.

I was wondering would you ever consider moving any of the content to a place like Citizendium or Wikipedia? I'm thinking about moving some of my material from my blog and my wikis to Citizendium, for example this page on test-wiseness. Citizendium hasn't decided on a license yet, but Wikipedia is about to switch to a CC license, so maybe either one will be compatible with your cc-by-nc-sa license.

-Doug Holton

I won't

I have lots of reasons for not considering it. Here are a few:

• My Editor's and copyright policy is very different from wikipedia. Here, people can express opinions, speculate etc. You also can treat a topic in non-compatible ways (e.g. write another article if you can't merge your ideas with an existing one). I don't believe in "truth". In the learning sciences, a theory is useful or not useful, never true or false. But my main argument is that I need a place where I and other people can write unfinished stuff instead of letting it rot away in private places. Therefore unfinished articles are not a problem IMHO, they just have to be tagged as such :)

• Citizendium and also places like http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/ focus on quality articles. This wiki is mostly low to medium quality. Main purpose is to create a resource where people can get a (maybe bad or wrong) idea of a concept, explore connections to related pieces, and then go and read a real piece. Related to this: I and 2-3 other teachers sometimes have students contribute. So, readers of this web site are expected to have critical reading skills.

• I am a senior lecturer and as such I am supposed to write a least conference articles. I decided to take time to work on this wiki with the argument that there is (some) need for scholarship of integration and teaching. So if someone in our university starts complaining about lack of papers, I can argue that I worked on this wiki :)

• I hate to use LMSs (and other such software) for teaching in small classes that are either fully presential or blended and found it quite practical to integrate learning materials, class syllabus and support forums into the wiki. Couldn't be done in a place like wikipedia or citizendium. It always has been my opinion that one should optimize speed for teacher's activities (else why use technologies ?) and I find wikis a quite good all-in-one solution. E.g. see my introductory Internet course in the french version. http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/fr/STIC:STIC_I

• I have been using Internet for education since the late 1980s and don't trust anyone. Web sites can go away very quickly or be taken over. This wiki will be safe (unless I die and even then it probably will survive). Contents have to last, else as an educator it doesn't make sense to write stuff that can be used in teaching. Web technology changes every 5 years, computing (like OO programming and databases) every 25 years, education (maybe) every 50 years ....

• I don't like to read pieces that are not signed by someone (Wikipedia is anonymous and this is not compatible with my idea of "relative" truth). Also, I have the impression that some people in the future will be more likely to contribute if they can get recognition. Thisi is to be seen of course (this wiki is less than 2 years old and not very well known. It takes about 2-3 years before a web site is known according to my experience).

• Specialized wikis can offer better navigation. I.e. there are a reasonble amount of categories, the front page is an entry point to whole field. Of course, navigation and categorization can be improved, but most concepts can be found after some search (I hope so at least).

• Lastly, since I have control over this wiki I can enforce everything I want. This doesn't mean that I don't believe in cooperation but I can make sure that invested time fits all my needs (as explained above). Related to this are two extra clauses in the copyright. I reserve the right to use contents for publications. Other copyrights are also allowed. E.g. some articles here are gnu copy-left, some pictures here are copyright with permission. This gives all users some extra flexibility, i.e. if let's say some person wishes to publish a full piece under his own name and a very restricted copyrights he/she can do it by adding manually a copyright to a page.

Thanx for your question and I hope my answer is more or less complete, I probably got some extra reasons :)

- Daniel K. Schneider 15:29, 2 December 2007 (MET)

Functions -- Sijpkes 06:04, 25 August 2009 (UTC) -- Sijpkes 06:04, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Daniel,

I've been using the Actionscript 3.0 tutorials and am finding them really useful for my own teaching. I found a link from "AS3 Instances Functions" which had not yet been completed. I've created an entry explaining the basics of functions under this heading, I hope that's okay. I was not quite sure what you meant by Instances Functions, though... I undersand an instance as being an instance of an object, as when you instantiate an object eg. var gouda:MovieClip = new GoudaCheese() where as a function is just a function, if you get my meaning. Anyway I hope that my entry is at least a starting point...

Thanks, Paul Sijpkes

Re: Functions -- Sijpkes 06:04, 25 August 2009 (UTC) -- Daniel K. Schneider 09:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Paul Any kind of contribution is extremely welcome and in any way you want it to do :). Now to answer your question:

• Someone else started this entry and I don't know her exact intention. In addition, I am not a computer scientist.
• I like your example and it makes sense to me. As I said, I don't know it the term "instances function" is correct. If you feel that you should change the article name, just rename it, i.e. click on the "move" button :)
• Your Gouda example reminds me me stuff I have seen when I learnt Scheme). Functions as first class objects.

In addition, I never find time to work on AS3 stuff :(

- Daniel K. Schneider 09:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC) PS: I made some changes to formatting, added a category etc.

Spammers

Hi. I've just discovered this wiki. I am the principal editor of WikIT, which you link to in a few places: Thanks, I'm glad you find it useful.

I'm leaving this note to initiate a discussion about spammers on wikis. I see from your user list that you have had many (though I found no spam content after a couple of quick searches on obvious terms) so you obviously have their activities under control.

When I started WikIT in 2008, I allowed editing without making an account. Soon a spammer found the site and started making advertising postings. I checked frequently and deleted each post soon after it appeared, thinking that (s)he would give up, but when it persisted for several weeks, I eventually required users to make an account.

The spamming stopped dead, and in the last 15 months I have not had a single spam post.

So I was curious about your use of CAPTCHA, from two angles. The first is why you use it - it must be that your experience is different to mine, perhaps because your wiki has been established much longer than WikIT. And secondly, how it is implemented in case the need arises for me.

Have you tried lifting the CAPTCHA requirement? If so, do you mind sharing with me what happened?

And if you have time, I would appreciate it if you can tell me how it is implemented in WikiMedia.

Thanks.

Roygrubb 03:10, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Re: Spammers -- Daniel K. Schneider 09:16, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I introduced the captcha after I got too many spamming logins created by scripts (I think). I never tried lifting it again or going for an easier one. This captcha version is difficult since it relies on the idea that half of it is machine readable and the other half is very difficult to read as explained here (you also can find installation notes for edutechwiki in the second link). In other words, some users may be able to read the digits and not understand that they can reload the page.

• http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Mediawiki#Anti-spam_extensions
• http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Spam#Mediawiki_spamming
• http://recaptcha.net/plugins/mediawiki/

The spammers I got lately must come from the same source, since the pattern is always the same. Creation of user page that promotes some product. Same page style. User comes via different IPs, but I didn't take time to trace them down systematically and threaten with legal action (would take too much time, but some day I may just do this)

Indeed amount of spamming is related to popularity on google. This wiki is fairly low traffic (about 4000 different users/day), but most entries show up high on google search and I think this is what attracts spammers.

- greetings ! - Daniel

Re: Re: Spammers -- Dr Tom Benjamin 06:01, 20 June 2012 (CEST)

Daniel,

I'm grateful to be allowed onto this wiki. I need clarification as to what you regard as 'advertising' and spamming. I presume that you wouldn't regard references to our own published work, conference papers, video, demos etc as either advertising or spamming. As I'm in a new area there are very few other papers besides my own. The same goes for my web sites. For example, I developed a new music-ed-tech system that was published by a journal that has given me permission to host it on my own site. So the only reference to it is to my personal websites. There is nothing comparable to which to make reference. So before I make any articles, reference lists, or links we need to clarify this. Naturally I want people to try out the resources and apply them to education as that is their purpose. Mine are Creative Commons free resources and my sites are without ads so there is no commercial issue.

Tom Benjamin, Sydney

Re: Re: Spammers -- Daniel K. Schneider 09:47, 20 June 2012 (CEST)

Hi, you are right. Your plans are not spamming :)

Re: Re: Re: Spammers -- Brad Hanks 18:00, 21 November 2012 (CET)

Daniel, I work for a company that provides a free diagramming tool for educators. It is directly related with the education technology field and is free for educators. Can I create a page about that? Common uses at the university level (we also have a k12 cohort) are UML diagrams, ER diagrams, and BPMN.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Spammers -- Daniel K. Schneider 18:54, 21 November 2012 (CET)

Hi, yes you can. My only request is that you make it real information and not marketing waffle. People should be able to come here and understand what the service can do. In other words, make it bit like Wikipedia page. In addition, feel free to add "how use it" information. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARIS_Express Layout can be very simple .... I didn't port their infoboxes :)

- Daniel, 18:54, 21 November 2012 (CET)

=Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Spammers -- Brad Hanks 21:12, 21 November 2012 (CET)=

I will be sure to include tutorial information. We are working on videos for different use cases. Any chance you turn captcha off for me? ;)

X3D+VRML=X3DV

Welcome, I fixed typos and updated Web3D content to reflect current situation more accurately. For example Flux lives here: http://mediamachines.wordpress.com/flux-player-and-flux-studio/ , while Vivaty ended in hands of Microsoft: http://www.engagedigital.com/blog/2010/10/01/microsoft-buys-vivaty-for-new-project-may-be-looking-for-more-2/ Flux 16:19, 14 July 2011 (CEST)

Because VRML and X3D cross-shared about half of their content (VRML topics in X3D and X3D topics in VRML) I merged them under X3DV, especially because:

X3DV is a Web 3D technology summarizing VRML and X3D as follows: [1][2]

• Mime type: model/x3d+vrml

Now merged content of both VRML and X3D is under X3DV, while VRML and X3D are now redirects. Flux 16:28, 22 July 2011 (CEST)