iSean

i am surprised to learn that my comments on the insiderhighered website received so much attention. i found the site quite by accident. i had no clue that the site was getting such traffic when i started my little debate. well, come to find out, many more people than i expected found my discussion with James Farmer. i even had a librarian here at GVSU comment on my comments just the other day. i guess i need to be more careful about what i say when i think i am somewhere obscure. and, i didn’t say anything bad; i just wasn’t writing with a known audience in mind. as large as the internet is, the little niches can bring together many of the same faces.

anyway, i wanted to post some raw data from last semester. as i’ve mentioned before, i survey my students every week. on the last survey last semester, i asked about Blackboard and blogs and even the phpBB forums that I use. I posted the screenshot images at Flickr, but here’s the gist of the question that got right at the heart of my previous discussion:

i need to add a footnote — i put much more effort into the discussion forum and i wasn’t sure how to best use blogs . . . but, it’s nice to see my students appreciating the phpBB forums. The literature is not clear on best practices with regard to blogs and many professionals who write about blogs have varied ideas on how implementation should occur. That leaves folks like me guessing really.

here’s another question that compares the website I create (using html and CSS, etc.) versus Blackboard:

by and large, my students prefer to use learning tools outside of Blackboard. along these lines, my students overwhelmingly preferred my discussion forums much more than Blackboard.

i will have more entertainment with data in the future, but this was some of the stuff that struck out to me earlier today when i was looking through the data for the first time.

Tags: Blackboard, phpBB, interactive learning, online learning

i have been using phpBB forums for many, many years. these forums have suited my needs quite well over the years; however, i am starting to feel the age of the forums. phpBB forums were built in another era of the web and the code it getting larger and larger and they try and improve old code for the current internet. i have fiddled with MODs as you can read in my previous entry, but that’s not quite done the trick.

i have caught web 2.0 fever, i’ll admit. i love using gmail and hitting a keystroke and seeing changes without having to wait for a new webpage to load. i like the CSS designed sites that use scripting to be more interactive and responsive to what i want. phpBB forums don’t allow for this kind of look and feel. so, i started looking for a replacement about a month ago. i downloaded a new forum software package called Vanilla.

Vanilla is made by Lussumo and they call Vanilla the, "sweetest forum on the web." how can i resist having the sweetest forums on the internet? i couldn’t, obviously. i installed Vanilla a few weeks ago and finally got around to playing with it last night. I ended up staying up far too late trying to see if this forum could suite my needs. i think it can.

i should point out that Vanilla is not perfect. and, it’s only a .9.2.6 release; although, the 1.0 release is imminent from what i can tell. i have created groups and categories. i tried adding an avatar and i’ll have to change some underlying code so that the CSS knows where the avatar folder is located once the avatar gets uploaded. that won’t be hard, but that makes me wonder what other tweaks i’ll need to make when things go wrong. i also don’t like that the default size for avatars (called icons, fwiw) is 32 x 32 pixels. that’s awful small when i am using the avatars to try and learn faces with names. and, i notice that if i change the icon/avatar size that i’ll have to change the CSS because it will then overlap with the username, etc. how much work am i willing to put into something that might not even suite my needs until i really test it out? hmmm.

i created a dummy account that i use for testing what my students will see and i think this thing might be ready for prime time. my problem is that classes start in just a few days (Monday) and i am not sure i will time to make the course changes i’ve planned and run Vanilla through the battery of tests that i’d like to try. i’d love to beta test Vanilla with my 1 spring online class rather than introducing it in the fall semester with all of my classes. decisions, decisions.

Tags: vanilla, lussumo, phpbb, forums, online teaching

the winter semester ended last week. i had my grades done on Friday. this week is an off week, but as anyone who teaches knows, this is a very busy week for individuals who want to make big changes to their course(s). i am making big changes.

the first thing i wanted to do was to take my phpBB forums to the next level. i upgraded my forums to the latest version. that did not go over without a hitch. i lost all of my customized images during this process . . . and the regular images as well. so, i downloaded the full package for phpBB forums and moved the files over from the full package that appeared to be missing in my install/upgrade. Transmit (on my Mac) made this comparison/addition process very easy. whew!

i have been using phpBB forums for the past 5 years. i have never modified the forums other than changing themes and using customized images. i decided to add some modifications (MODs) to my forums that would make it easier for me to manage. the first thing i added was a MOD called easyMOD. this MOD makes installing other MODs easy. great!

i have always been concerned that anyone who finds my forums can merely click on the memberlist and view a list of all of my students. even if they use an alias, which i encourage, most use their GVSU supplied username and this includes their last name. so, i found a MOD that allows me to make the memberlist only accessible to me. that is terrific.

i then found a MOD that makes it easier for me to set permissions across forums. i tend to make 2 key forums that all students access, but aren’t part of my weekly teaching. the first is Lounge. this is a forum where anything goes, except class-related topics. many students enjoy just talking about life and hobbies and pop culture, etc. i also create a forum for Class ?s and Announcements. this is where students ask class-related questions instead of emailing me. this is a wonderful way to ensure that i don’t get the same email over and over. every student can see the question and they can see my response as well. and, if i am slow and a student poses a question, another student might know the answer and respond before me. i also post announcements in this forum, so students are encouraged to visit when new posts appear.

i also make group discussions that only students in a particular group can view. i try and keep group discussions limited to between 5 and 9 students. i can pose topics for discussion in the individual group. i typically post 2 - 3 topics in any given week. and, since my students can only respond in their group discussions, i create an All Group Discussion forum where students can create their own topics for discussion on that week’s material and content. all students have access to this All Group Discussion forum, but i find that most students are too nervous to start a topic for discussion and that most students are content to stick with the discussions i have started in their groups. this is something i’ll work on this spring.

well, the MOD installation was not all swell. i did have some errors and i ended up spending a lot of time on the phpBB discussion forums trying to find answers. it was slow, but this process worked for me. i think the forums are all set for the semester starting next week.

now i am off to figure out which blogging tool i will settle on using this next semester. i am fiddling with WordPressMU (multi-user), but it’s still early in development and i’d be a guinea pig, no doubt. it sure would be neat to use one database while hosting all of my student blog accounts. i doubt i get it ready in time, but i am trying. but, that’s why i am exploring other options . . . just in case. stay tuned!

Tags: wordpressMU, phpBB, class discussions, forums, MODs, Transmit, online

I learned HTML by playing with code that was already created. This is probably not too unlike most people. When I wanted to move beyond HTML, I learned CSS the same way. However, some things I never took the time to learn because I could just squeak by if I just got the gist of them. For example, on this blog there is a lot of PHP code in various places. I have learned enough to move menus around and to add sections (e.g., my one banner add on the right). MySQL and PHPmyAdmin . . . same thing. Sure, I screw up, but I get it figured out for the most part. I feel confident that I would have spent far more time really learning than I spend trying to figure out how to tweak and fix things when I mess up.

One thing that I have meant to learn is JavaScripting. It’s not difficult and it can really extend HTML on websites. Like many other Internet-related tools, I fiddled with javascript and learned just enough to tweak. And, that brings me to my dilemma today. In my weekly survey with my students two weeks ago, I noticed a comment about how difficult it was to read black text on a white background. So this past week, I added a question for all of my students asking whether they wanted alternatives to to the standard style for pages that I use. About 25% requested something different and about 75% of those students wanted a dark-based background with light text.

And this takes me back to the problem I now have with how I’ve done things. I have had a family website since the 1990s. I registered our last name and have kept a journal (mostly about my kids) for the grandparents and other family and friends. We get A LOT of hits on this site. In the old days, I used this site for experimentation (now, my atticmooses site is for testing, but somehow I snuck my blog on here instead of my professional site???). For the first many years, the whole family site was coded in HTML. I used BBEdit to write all of my html. Somewhere along the way, I discovered Dreamweaver and that’s been my tool of choice (or a combo) ever since. In 2001 or so, I switched to PostNuke (a Content Management System). And, just last month, I converted it all and switched to WordPress (same as this blog). That being said, when the site was all HTML-based, I added a neat feature that would allow my users to go to a control panel-like page and choose 1 of 4 styles for the whole website. I used Javascript to set a cookie and the chosen style would last for as long as they visited my site, but they could also change it any time. This took a bit of time to figure out.

And therein lies my problem. I no longer have the code I used. I have to sit down and research things and try and figure it all out again. Of course, Google back then versus Google today is no contest. I’ll likely do a search and find something that will guide me or greatly assist my efforts much easier than it happened back then. But, it sure would have been nice to have kept that old code because it’s exactly what I am going to be doing for my students right now. My class sites are made with HTML and CSS only. I just don’t like “systems” for this content as I feel a bit constricted by the limitations (e.g., I like everything students need each week on one, easy to view webpage in a numbered, annotated list). For the time being, I am creating two pages for the webpages that have a lot of reading and I provide two links. Each pages is the same except they link to different stylesheets (a light and a dark). My fingers are crossed that I can get this figured out quickly.

Tags: Javascript, CSS, stylesheets, HTML

This is spring break week for me. What could be more fun during spring break than learning how to program? Heh heh. That’s what I am doing. I bought this book (called learn to program). It’s all about teaching Ruby to the newbies of the world. I am a newbie. The last “programming” I did was back in the 80s when BASIC was popular. I loved BASIC, but the other language I explored since then have been far from basic.

So, I got Ruby installed on my Mac (along with several other necessities). I am already up to page 71 of 140+ and so far so good. It’s making sense and I think much of it is easier than I expected. Of course, I can’t really do much at this point.

Why am I learning Ruby? I want to build Web 2.0 applications that are useful to me and Ruby tends to be preferred by many developers. Plus, I watched a demo of a programmer making his own blogging tool and it literally took about 15 minutes to create and he was explaining what he was doing along the way. The actual code could have been completed by him in about 5 minutes (58 lines of code). I want a browser window that opens each of my student’s blogs and allows me to add comments, but it should also have check boxes that I can click to indicate whether the blog entry was completed or not and whether any points were deducted. And, I want it to create a comma-delimited text file that I can download and import into Excel to transfer to Blackboard (Bb), which is the tool I use to keep track of student grades. My process is fairly cumbersome right now and I use a lot of tabbed browsing to try and view and grade the blog entries. It’s fairly easy to lose my place and all that jazz, so hopefully this programming experiment pays off. I am hoping to figure it out by spring semester (May).

Fortunately, my hosting company (BlueHost) supports Ruby on Rails. So, once I get things tested on my Mac, I should be able to transfer code to the server fairly seamlessly. Fingers crossed.

Tags: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, programming, Bluehost

i am using a new system to get myself organized. it’s all based on the book titled, “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. i went to an podcasting presentation on my campus last week to see what the Apple representative had to say and just to make sure i wasn’t missing anything in my workflow. he mentioned a neato online resource called, 43 folders. 43 folders is a blog-type site that is all about Getting Things Done and is inspired by David Allen’s book. but, the 43 folders website caters to Macintosh users. the solutions are mostly Mac-based and there’s many tips and tricks, etc. i am totally changing the way i approach “work.” while i was never the kind of person who gets stressed out over mounds and mounds of work on my plate, i have found that i am less than efficient in figuring out how to attack the bigger picture items (e.g., writing an article).

so, i started using a new application (Omni Outliner) and implemented a free prebuilt system called kinkless Getting Things Done (kGTD). this forces me to write down everything i need to do and turn everything into actions i can take. and, this includes house-stuff, which pleases my wife very much. ;~)

anyway, we’ve neglected our family website that we started when our daughter was born in 2000. we add entries every month . . . or two . . . or three, but it gets much traffic from the extended family and beyond. i built it originally in HTML and then shifted it into PostNuke. This was before blogging tools were really known; though, that’s really how it was used. i have spent the past few days setting up a new hand-installed WordPress blog on our server. i customized the theme and then i installed Menalto’s Gallery. i even figured out how to get our old photos imported into Gallery 2.0 (painlessly at that). these efforts have been fun and have been weighing on my mind for a long time. in the next few days, i am going to set up a way for my wife to add blog entries by merely sending emails to a special address i create. i want to make the usability of this family site as easy as is possible so that she can jump on board and contribute often.

and, while this has been family related, i am scheduled to present at the MACUL conference next month and i will be speaking about my experiences installing various MySQL databases and how i use these tools, so this has been helpful for me.

Technorati Tags: lancaster, MySQL, wordpress, gallery, MACUL

ever since i started using coComment (see previous post), i have noticed quirkiness in the comment notifications on my blog. for example, my previous blog entry shows No Comments right now. in fact, there are two comments to that entry. now, it is entirely possible that i messed things up; however, i don’t think i did anything other than follow the instructions for installing coComment . . . and, coComment appears to be working. i’ll submit a bug on that. UPDATE: while i was submitting this, I received an email from the coComment team letting me know that they’re looking into this. terrific.

in other news, i have changed the way my comments operate to look more like my email. no longer will the newest comments appear at the end of the list. now, when you visit comments on a blog entry that has many comments, you should see the most recent comments at the top. this isn’t a big deal, but it’s a nice little time saver for me.

to switch things up in WordPress, i merely added 4 letters (DESC) to the end of line 18 in my /wp-includes/comment-functions.php file. ORDER BY comment_date DESC”); instead of ORDER BY comment_date”); — thanks to this blog for the tip.

if nothing else, having this blog is forcing me to learn much about php files than i ever imagined i’d do. i am now to the point where i can make minor tweaks and sort of understand how to make these edits. i couldn’t write it to begin with, but i can modify things to fit my needs (e.g., the menu off to the right has been rearranged to suit my preferences).

i like to read a lot of blog sites. occasionally, i even post comments on other blog sites. and, i often forget where i post comments. if the author happens to respond i may never know. now, some bloggers will come back to my blog and comment and that allows a dialogue to take place. but, i wonder how many dialogues i’ve allowed to flounder away? well, this is how i go about introducing coComment — a free tool to track your comments on various blogging sites. i have a little bookmarklet that i click just before i submit my comments and then my comments are recorded and tracked on the coComment site as well. i can visit the coComment site and login to see where i’ve posted and to see if follow up discussions ensued. here’s the snippet from the coComment site:

When you comment on a blog, coComment keeps a copy of your message on a special page - called "your conversations" - that allows you to quickly see your comment and where it was posted, with a link to the original site.

moreover, i can also have my comments from elsewhere appear right here on my blog, which you can view right now off to the top-right. i should be able to customize it in the future, but coComment is still in the very early beta-testing phases. in fact, you need a secret code to sign up right now. i was lucky enough to find a bunch of invitation codes posted on another blog, so i don’t have any i can give away at this time. but, as the tool develops more, i imagine the site will open up. and, if you really want to try it, you might just have luck emailing the folks at coComment and asking. cheers!

Technorati Tags: coComment, blog, ed tech

well, i have spent the past few hours installing MediaWiki, which is the same wiki engine that Wikipedia uses. a comment by Dave Cormier in my previous blog entry suggested i try it out. i like the look and feel of Wikipedia so i figured I’d give this thing a shot. the problem i encountered is that most of the tools i try are easy to install and uninstall using Fantastico. MediaWiki had to be done by hand. i haven’t installed a database in over a year, so i had a bit of relearning curve . . . but, i was successful.

so, if you want to preview what i have, here’s a preview of the very beginnings: http://integratetech.net/wikitext/ — i registered integratetech.net a few years ago and it’s largely gone unused. i have to play around with the subdomain features because i notice when you click on the link, the URL gets shifted so that atticmooses.com appears as well. hmmm. shouldn’t be too hard to fix when i have a little more time. and, eventually i want to move it to take over integratetech.net without being a directory down . . . but, not until i fiddle first. and, at some point i want to talk about the installation process and why it could be quite daunting for a newbie.

anyway, i just wanted to pat myself on the back for installing the MediaWiki tool and even updating the little logo. if only i had some artistic skills to match my desire.

EDIT - UPDATE: i think i fixed the subdomain issue. oh, and i have already found how easy it is for a random poster to just post anything unrelated on the wikitext site (thanks Dave). ;~) i really need to learn how to manage the mediawiki site, but there’s much i have yet to figure out and understand behind the scenes.

for several weeks now, i have been exploring the notion of creating a textbook for the undergraduate educational technology courses i teach. let me amend that . . . the textbook we use in the 40 sections of this course taught here each year was written by 4 of the instructors — me included. we wrote a textbook that is very affordable and meets our needs almost perfectly. we’re on the second edition and are beginning to think about a third addition and have also been contacted by the publisher about taking our textbook national. that’s all well and good; however, even at the lower cost the textbook still runs close to $30. and, the publication/production process is fairly involved. the publisher likes to print 1000 copies or more (i forget the exact number). we made our first edition and immediately started working on edition #2, which we were able to implement after using edition 1 for just one semester. this is when i learned about the bookstore business and just publishing in general.

apparently, our bookstore had bought a lot of extra copies and the publisher made a lot of extra copies. in other words, when we came out with edition #2 a semester later, a lot of folks lost money. our ability to produce a new edition annually is almost a hindrance — and, in the educational technology field, there are topics changing continually. having a textbook that can respond to the timeliness of the field is important, but so is being able to correct errors based on professional and student feedback. i make 50 cents a copy on the current textbook, which factored out to a loss of $20 last semester (i am hoping that the number is positive at the end of the year). i lose money based on the time i spent on this project. i mention to this to help illustrate the fact that i am not doing the textbook to make money; rather, i want to provide a resources that is relevant and beneficial to the class we teach.

so, that brings me to something i have been toying with for several weeks now — a wikitextbook or wikitext. i first came across the notion from this website: education bridges & also wikitextbook, which are collaborative efforts at making educational textbooks. perhaps this is what i should just contribute towards and that would be that??? on the other hand, i have a textbook that needs to get updated soon or i need to start a wikitext soon. i have been installing various wiki software packages from phpwiki to tikiwiki. the management of a wiki is still very, very new to me so i am spending a lot of time trying to read about the plusses and minuses of various wiki engines. i am also spending a lot of time installing and playing with administration tools on the wikis that i do install.

from what i’ve seen of wikis, i have trouble conceptualizing a textbook that would be useful to other instructors. a wiki tends to have a “page” that is edited and perfected by the community for each individual topic. so, i want to have a unit where my ed tech class places our attention on distance learning in the k-12 classroom. a wiki would be set up to have a page devoted to each specific category, but not the whole chapter that i currently can assign to my students. at least this is the limitation i am hitting in my mind.

so, with a wikitext, would i just go through the various pages and try and pull together all that apply to the unit i am teaching and just provide my students with a whole list of related, but not connected wiki entries for them to read to help understand the topic? that seems discombobulated to me.

on the other hand, finding a way to have ‘chapters’ instead of individual ‘pages’ might work, if that is possible with a wiki. then again, the more we decide what those chapters are, the less appealing we make the text for many users. for example, i might want to teach a chapter on issues in educational technology. another person might have a different conceptualization of the issues that i include and might add many others. so now, i am assigning only parts of the chapter to my students, but maybe i want some of those other issues included in another chapter.

as you can see, this is something that many folks should be discussing. unfortunately, my blog doesn’t yet have the traffic to generate the interest in this project that i’d like, so i’ll keep plugging along and staying up late trying to find a solution that can grow into the future. i realize many folks are having these discussions, but at worst, my efforts can just get integrated into their efforts when they finally figure out what direction they’ll take.