iSean

i am having all sorts of problems with setting permissions on the Drupal site i have created. i want to make student blogs public so that i can pull them down with an RSS news reader and so that their blogs on my Drupal site can be read by the world. i also want to keep all course content and information private so that only students can view it. so far, i have accomplished keeping my blog private where i make course announcements, etc. however, the links i have at the top of each screen (i.e., course links i created) are showing up on the restricted page that anonymous users see and it’s the login screen for students. i would rather have these links show up after students get logged in. hmmm.

phpBB is also forcing me to spend a lot of time learning the ropes. as i mentioned previously, i have upgraded from version 2 to version 3 and this is a HUGE upgrade. all of the administration tools are new and permissions are vastly different. i ended up figuring things out, but i actually had to change the way i set things up to get it to work. i was pretty frustrated after spending the hours i spent. i am typically a pretty good guy at trial and error and figuring out how to tweak, but this stuff was boggling. i can’t imagine a teacher who isn’t very astute at using technical technology tools even hoping to use these tools if they have to set them up in the first place. that’s discouraging to me because i really want to be an open source cheerleader.

but, i think it’s sometimes nice to see that even geeks run into troubles using technology. heh.

Technorati Tags: drupal, ed tech, phpbb, open source, technology in education

my wife and i are eligible for a sabbatical next year. we need to write up a proposal by mid October. my wife is working on doing some research in Italy so we’ll be spending 4 months or so in Europe next year (July - October or thereabouts). i can piggyback onto some of my wife’s work, but i’d really like to do some research that is more ed tech oriented. if you’re located in Europe or know of folks i can talk to then i’d love an email to see if we can work out some sort of collaboration to write an article. perhaps we could do a comparison of technology use between the U.S. and a country in Europe? i also have some educational software that is designed for use with students who have mild disabilities and we could test it on adolescents in a high school to compare to results we’ve collected here in the U.S. i am also interested in many other topics and would love to have a purpose of my own for being in Europe. i realize this is getting late in the game, but i wasn’t sure that my wife was actually going to carry through on this idea and it appears that this is really going to be our plan. if you are involved in ed tech (higher ed or k-12) and you live in Europe then please consider working with me. i can reached at jayhawk and that’s at mac.com — clickable link on my main website (i use javascript there to ensure that spammers won’t collect my email address).

Technorati Tags: ed tech, teachers, technology, technology in education

well, my semester starts in a little over a week and i still haven’t decided on the tools i’ll use. i was really hoping phpBB version 3 would be out, but they released a release candidate 4 in late July and i doubt that the final version comes out in the next week. i’ll wait until next week to decide, but i fiddled with an earlier release candidate and i really like what they’re doing with this upgrade. i am probably going to use the RC 4 even though it isn’t a final version. ah well.

drupal is up to version 5.2 and i’ll likely be using it for my classes this semester. i’ve used it a few times in the past and it’s a nice replacement for most of things that Blackboard does, but i really need a gradebook module to fully break free from Blackboard. i thought one was being made last summer as part of the Google summer of programming or something like that, but here we are a year later and i haven’t heard about it being ready yet. i might check out drupaled.org’s drupal release that is customized for educators. that means that they’ve set it up to install with extra modules already included that help educators use drupal more effectively in their classes.

i plan to take a few days early next week and explore some other potential tools that could supplement the tools above and make for some better online learning for my students. for what it’s worth, i am scheduled to teach 3 online courses this fall.

Technorati Tags: CMS, phpbb, drupal, lms, ed tech, technology in education

my family is set to leave for Canada in less than a week. today i should be receiving a new GPS (Garmin 60CSx) unit (if Fedex tracking is working correctly). this trip is largely about Geocaching. we’ll be staying at the Water Tower Inn in Sault Ste Marie, Canada and venturing out from there. we’ll be in Canada for 4 days, but i am going to make sure that we spend at least one day in the beautiful Lake Superior Provincial Park (i don’t believe geocaching is allowed in the provincial parks, but that won’t stop us from hiking and enjoyed the scenery). As we leave Canada we’ll cross the Mackinac Bridge and then get on a ferry taking us to Mackinac Island. this is a beautiful island where motorized vehicles are prohibited. people either bike, walk, or use horses to get to various places on the island. i believe biking around the entire island is only an 8 mile adventure, so it’s a relatively small island. bike rentals are quite expensive, so my family will be hiking from our hotel to various entertainment spots (unless i can get a 4-bike rack installed on the car by next week). we’ll also do some geocaching on the island while we’re there. this should be a neat adventure and a chance for me to explore a technology with kids to better evaluate and experience the educational application (see, i had to tie this into my blog). ;~)

Technorati Tags: mackinac, geocache, michigan, geocaching, hiking, Ontario