iSean

i largely avoided linux for the vast majority of its history. i tried it on an old Mac at one point and quickly abandoned ship as it wasn’t ready for prime time. but, when Parallels for Mac came out and i upgraded to a Macbook last year, i purchased Parallels and quickly installed Ubuntu, which is an open source linux build that just happens to come with other open source solutions preinstalled. i have to say that i was amazed at how mature this operating system is. it really is ready to be used by the masses. the next version is out in 15 days and the snippets i have read lead me to believe that anyone who can get this OS installed is ready to use it . . . obviously, the getting it installed part is the hard part. using the OS is a breeze once it’s installed. and, Ubuntu does some things better than Windows and Mac OSs. at the very least, i hope some folks reading this (all 2 of you) give Ubuntu 7.10 a test drive. you might just be amazed enough to consider it over the more costly solutions. i’d love to see the elementary school where my children attend switch to Edubuntu. but, i doubt it’ll happen any time soon. they’re none too happy to spend big $$$ on Windows.

Technorati Tags: open source, linux, Ubuntu, edubuntu

just in case you’re curious, the MACUL conference speaker proposals are due tomorrow. i have been presenting at this conference since i moved to Michigan in 2000 and it’s a great little conference. i say little, but it’s probably one of the largest state technology in education conferences around. it’s really a regional conference and thousands of educators will flock to the conference. last year was in Detroit and this year is in my backyard — Grand Rapids. i am running into a problem as I’d like to present on something novel and innovative and i can’t decide what to do. hmmm. last year i talked did a presentation titled, “Wiki, Wiki, Wiki . . . Textbook?” and i have since switched to the idea of an open source textbook, but not using the wiki. so, i guess i jumped the gun by trying to be too innovative, eh? that being said, the theme of the conference is, “Technology: 21st Century Learning Tools” so an innovative focus would probably be welcomed.

however, i would really like to focus on assessment and the method of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) — describing strategies for how technology can really enhance the process and make it all possible, etc. i could demonstrate how i am doing this in my classroom with weekly surveys and how easy it is to make curricular changes and adjustments and all of that jazz. as exciting as this is to me, i can also picture a potential attendee reading about assessment and CBM and thinking, “ewwww.” heh. so therein lies my dilemma . . . do i want to potentially impact more people or do i want to present a really meaningful session for a small number of participants? i think i’ll actually stick with the CBM idea, but i’ll fiddle with ways to make the session sounds as exciting as i think it can be. time will tell if it works or not. for that matter, i still have to be accepted. ;~)

Technorati Tags: MACUL, CBM, assessment, technology, technology in education

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

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

i am one of the select few individuals working this summer to revamp and update our teacher education program. i get to help figure out how to best provide our future teachers with the strategies, skills, and know-how to use technology in their future classrooms. wow. currently, we have a single technology course for preservice educators that is required. it is a prerequisite for getting into the College of Education and is taken before any students can apply to the COE. i hate this model. getting a college sophomore in ED 205 who doesn’t have experience with lesson plans and who doesn’t have teaching experiences to draw makes much that is taught in ED 205 seem like an abstract concept. so, i have much higher expectations for the new model we create.

in the best case scenario, the various classes and professors in the COE would work together to teach all of the ISTE NETS-T (that’s the standards for teachers with regard to technology in education) and a technology course wouldn’t be necessary. i spent much time reading up on things in the Journal of Computing in Teacher Education. the bottom line is what i already knew . . . that most college of education faculty are not prepared to teach their students the various technology standards or even a decent sized nugget of the standards. thus, an educational technology course is still fairly necessary. but, i am going to push for some of the easier standards to be transferred to other courses. i am going to make a case that other professors should be modeling the use of technology in their teaching and some standards rely on access to classrooms, so they are more ideal for student teaching.

we had our initial committee meeting and i think (still early) that our technology course is going to be moved away from being a prerequisite. in fact, the course might now be moved to occur in the semester before student teaching. this is also the semester that will occur after a semester where students go into the classroom for a field experience called student assisting (not as interactive as student teaching, but not a passive experience either). i am quite pleased with the potential of this model. our students will have actual classroom experiences to draw on when doing the ED 205 requirements. i am keeping my fingers crossed the end model turns out this well. but, our whole College of Education is just now being emailed the minutes and results from our initial meeting. hmmm.

Technorati Tags: ed tech, undergraduate, teacher, preservice, technology in education

i am back on my blog after a few weeks of intensive teaching. the next 2 months are devoted to writing materials for use in an undergraduate educational technology course for education majors. i have dibbled and dabbled with various iterations of this “textbook” in the past. i am currently an author for the textbook that been used previously in this course. i get 50 cents a copy when the textbook is bought new. we have between 400 - 500 students take this course per semester, but most buy the book used as my royalty check is typically just over $100/year. given the time i put into writing the textbook, i think that works out to about 2 cents an hour (kidding). seriously though, the profit i make is meaningless. i see no reason to help a publisher and a college book store rake in well over $20 off of my students so that i can get enough money to buy my students pizza once per semester. this is the thrust of why i want to bypass the publisher and the bookstore. my contract with the publisher will not allow me to write another textbook for profit to compete with the current textbook so i have no intention of doing so. i do have the intent to have a new product for our students this fall. moreover, i have no intent of claiming authorship, so i think it would be hard for McGraw-Hill to come after me.

i wrote an article last year called, “wiki . . . wiki . . . wiki textbook?” i argued that wiki-based textbook should be replacing the paper textbooks most educational institutions are using. i really liked the open source nature of the wiki engines. well, after time to reflect and test things out and hold many conversations (including a conference presentation in March of 2007) i have come to a new conclusion — i am abandoning my wiki-based textbook ideas. instead, i am going with the open source CMS tool called Drupal. Drupal has a module I’ve installed called, “Books.” my experience is that the Drupal book module will help to produce a much better product for learning. Much like a wiki engine, Drupal can allow for anyone to edit and contribute content. however, i have no intention of being that open with my textbook. for one, i had a wiki-based textbook started and after more than a year, i am dealing with spammers signing up and adding spam far too often. i’ve forced users to register to make changes and they even jump through this hoop. i am going to be trying some strategies with the Drupal book tool, but I still am planning on allowing anyone to potentially contribute material and everyone will encouraged to add comments to various material pages. but a textbook cannot be edited during a school semester, so taking advantage of the technology is somewhat limited. i do plan to have a mechanism in place to allow for content to be added and edited but it will be in a queue waiting for the appropriate time. while in queue, folks who are interested can view this text/edit/revisions, etc. and discuss, etc.

i will spend more time on this new textbook over the next month, but this is where i am right now. i am not ready to give the web address to the new book yet, but i will post it soon enough with another link to the older wiki-based version so that folks can see the differences back to back. stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: drupal, ed tech, technology, wikis, wikitext

i have an assignment in my undergraduate education technology course that has my students using Technorati to find other educational technology related blogs. my students are supposed to find a blog entry and read it and then add a comment to the blog site. of course, i then need to visit every single comment to see what my students wrote and i will inevitably read the blog entry. i also check the other comments to see if a conversation develops and to see if the blog author has engaged in a dialog with my students. overwhelmingly, my students will write a thoughtful response and that’s that. No response back from the original blogger. I should add a caveat, some of my students find older blog entries and I can see how a blogger might tend to ignore an entry they wrote many months ago. fine. but many of my students are finding very current stuff and still being ignored. i don’t think busy bloggers need to respond to every comment, but i think the strength of the blogging tool is that it allows for a certain level of interactivity. if you are not trying to build this interactivity then i wonder why you blog in the first place — merely sharing information perhaps? and, i realize i may not understand the ins-and-outs of a busy blog as i rarely get more than 5 or so comments for any blog entry i add; however, most of the blogs my students found have just a few comments as well. perhaps i checked in too quickly. the responses were due on a Sunday and I checked things out 3 days later on a Wednesday. i’ll give my peers the benefit of the doubt this time, but i have my eyes on you mr. blogging community. ;~)

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, ed tech, students, technology in education

well, my first spring/summer class begins tonight and it’s a Computer in Education course for undergraduates who hope to become teachers. in the past, i have used various tools to teach this course and i take great care to try and choose the best tools for my students each semester. when i last taught this course, i used Drupal for all course content and student blogs and I used phpBB forums for my class discussions. this setup worked well for me.

i was content to try these tools again; however, i ran into some snags. first, my previous installation of Drupal somehow got corrupted when i was fiddling, so i couldn’t even get logged in to see all of the settings and modification i had made. my spring course is only 6 weeks long and i didn’t think it was fair to myself to start over using Drupal. i am going to get this straightened out for the fall semester and get back to using Drupal, which is also in version 5.x now — i used 4.x previously. Instead, i have reverted back to using Dreamweaver and CSS/HMTL for all course content. this is slightly disappointing, but i work very quickly using Dreamweaver and this was really the sensible choice for me for this course at this time.

since i no longer have easy to use student blogs like i would when i use Drupal, i received a recommendation from a teaching colleague who suggested wordpress.com. i checked it out and decided to give it a whirl. i like the thought of using wordpress even though it’s a bit more high end than blogger and drupal-based blogs. for students who are willing to put in extra effort, the wordpress blogs can pay off bunches.

and, my biggest change this semester also comes from a recommendation . . . this time from a former student. i have been using phpBB forums for all class discussions for about 5 - 6 years. i finally got around to checking out the competition and decided that i liked SMF forums better. i was actually excited about the upcoming phpBB version 3.0 forums, but these are currently in beta and i am not going to use a beta that hasn’t even reached a release candidate stage in my classes. i could use the current stable release — version 2.22 or something like that, but i honestly felt like the SMF forums were better. who knows if i’ll stick with SMF when phpBB 3.0 comes out, but that needs to happen before mid August or i’ll stick with SMF again. here’s a snapshot into how the forums look for my class (from the perspective of my account):

(click for a larger view)

when i add items to a news feed, they are constantly cycled on the front page of the forums. i like that my announcements are so prominent. previously, i had to request students to visit an announcements forum when there were new messages (announcements) therein.

so, i have made some big changes and reverted back to some old methods, but i hope the end results is a quality learning experience for my students. time will tell . . .

Technorati Tags: blogs, drupal, ed tech, phpBB, dreamweaver, students, teachers, SMF

this is the last full week of classes at GVSU and i am bombarded with theses from students trying to wrap the semester up. nothing new there, but i have neglected my blog. blogs are an interesting development the past many years. my family blog started in about 2000; though, i didn’t call it a blog at the time . . . it was called our journal back then. i used HTML to update entries. 2000 is when our first child was born, so most entries were required to include photos to keep grandparents happy. i eventually (later 2001ish) moved from HTML to postnuke or phpnuke (a CMS tool) and continued the “blog” running. once blogging took off, i decided to convert my family journal to a blog, but i kept it in the tool i was using . . . mostly because i didn’t understand MySQL stuff enough to export the database and import it into a new tool. actually, i still don’t. but i finally moved it all to Wordpress and i’ve spent the past 1.5 years trying to copy-and-paste old entries from HTML and from the CMS into Wordpress. i think i only have about a year gap left to transfer. it’s one of those back-burner projects that always comes after everything else. we update our family blog about once a month these days. a little more when bigger things happen. but the blog serves a purpose and the audience is consistent and fairly static.

this blog, however, serves an entirely different purpose. sometimes i tend to forget why i started this blog and i often feel like it’s a chore to do. on the other hand, writing for the blog forces me to try and follow the ed tech blogging community to see what’s going on, so i still enjoy the blog as a motivation for staying active. but, i thought it would be nice to evaluate my blog up to this point nearly 2 years after i started it. in my second post here i wrote, “i will use this blog to help trace my steps as i try and improve my online teaching and as i test out new tools along the way.” if i look back, i can clearly see many blog entries that highlight tools i’ve tried and strategies i’ve used in my online teaching. i have had a fairly light semester this semester with a weekend class (Jan./Feb.) and thesis students, so i haven’t had much to experiment with lately. in a few weeks, our spring/summer semester starts and i will be back in the saddle as i am scheduled to teach an online undergrad ed tech course and a 2 week long grad course in ed tech. i plan to upgrade to the new phpBB 3.0 forums, which you can see here; though, the beta has been out since January (beta 5) and there’s no sign of the final release, so i have to decide whether to use a near finished beta (#5) if i don’t hear anything in the next 2 weeks. i am also going to upgrade my course to the latest Drupal (5.1), so i have new tools to learn. as i finish more preparations for the course, i want to come back and explain some of the curricular changes that i am going to try in my undergraduate course. i have much to say, but i just didn’t have the best semester to write about the kinds of things that were the reason for making this blog in the first place. hopefully that’s about to change. whew! ;~)

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, drupal, CMS, phpBB, drupal

well, the annual education week Technology Counts report is out. they have evaluated every state and reported on each state’s “grades” for technology in education. not surprisingly, Michigan received a grade of C. as you get into the specifics, they report that Michigan actually does a good job of using technology, but that we are particularly poor in providing access to technology and that we don’t have the capacity to use technology. what does that mean you ask? well, they basically looked to see what kinds of standards and requirements we have. we only have teacher standards at the State level. but we lack administrator standards, initial certification requirements, initial admin license requirements, teacher recertification requirements, and admin recertification requirements. this earned us a D in capacity.

Access was another area of weakness. only 41.5% of classrooms here have a computer in the classroom. that’s pretty pathetic in 2007. and, 78% of students can access computers in a library or media center. that’s still very disheartening to me. i guess i am surprised we could get a D+ for access when more than 1/2 of students in the state don’t even have computers in their classroom.

we do well with regard to using technology . . . at least at the State level. we have student standards (based on the NETS) for using technology, we have a virtual school established, and we offer computer-based assessments. we lack a State test for students with regard to technology (only 4 states have this, fwiw) — so we get an A-. what this survey fails to recognize is that Michigan requires all students in K-12 to have an online educational experience before they graduate. that’s a big step for a state and Michigan is at the front of this initiative. unfortunately, this isn’t part of the test.

Michigan has about the worst economy in the nation, so i don’t see our technology access improving too quickly. but it’s nice to see that we’re not at the bottom of the barrel even though our economy is. hmmm.

Technorati Tags: ed tech, edweek.org, NETS, Technology Counts, students, teachers, technology, Michigan