Stuff about using computers to help people teach and learn better.

Ideas

Ideas for projects or studies that might be worth considering.

Need Sys-admin/PHP coder

Posted Tue, 2006-02-21 13:14 by pfaffman
I'm looking for a student, grad or undergrad, who can do Linux system administration and code/debug PHP/MYSQL. If you're capabable and interested, please contact me in my office (Claxton 443) or by email.

Sysadmin chores that I need in the short term:

  • get software suspend working on two laptops
  • get Samba working with LDAP so Ed students can use it

Web/Programming chores in the short term:

I can pay you for 10 hours/week. I'm also working with someone at OIT who needs someone with similar skills who can offer another 10 hours and a tuition waiver.

Crash Course In Learning Theory

Posted Fri, 2006-01-06 13:03 by pfaffman

From Couros---Crash Course In Learning Theory - The "Creating Passionate Users" blog has produced an excellent post on various learning theories. The content is situated for the development of a learning blog, and is well-written. The piece he's talking about is from Creating Passionate Users (which I'll be adding to my feed list. I don't have time to fully grock this now, but it'll probably be discussed in IT 669 Real Soon Now.

Check out Sakia & LAMS

Posted Fri, 2005-10-28 12:14 by pfaffman

Sakai purports to be "the world’s leading open source Collaboration and Learning Environment." I've tried a time or two to install it and make it do something useful, but have failed. I'm not sure why. I'd be interested in someone I know checking it out.

It's recently been integrated with LAMS, whatever that is. It ostensibly "creates digital lesson plans that can be run online with students, as well as shared among teachers." That sounds good too.

SurfYourWork.com yields undergrad $1.25 million

Posted Wed, 2005-10-26 16:15 by pfaffman
This eSchool News story is about a student who developed SurfYourWork.com, a web site that sounds a little like an eportfolio site. From what I can tell it's mostly a way for people to keep their info on the web. It might be interesting to look at this site and how it compares to other portfolio sites or volspace or whatever.

Install Davfs on Student

Posted Mon, 2005-10-10 13:51 by pfaffman

Install Davfs2 on student and make it so that folks can log in and have their home directory live on volspace.

Create a UTK-compliant Moodle Theme

Posted Fri, 2005-08-26 14:51 by pfaffman

That's it. That's my idea. See Moodle Themes Howto for hints.

20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have

Posted Thu, 2005-08-25 12:08 by pfaffman

The Journal has a list of 20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have. It's not a bad list, except I'd say "course management system skills" rather than listing WebCT and Blackboard. If you've read anything here, you know that I'm a fan of Moodle and think it irresponsible to teach teachers to use expensive proprietary tools when there are Open Source Software alternatives that, in the case of Moodle, are easier to use.

It also talks about the "Deep Web." I ain't never heard of the deep web. It seems to be accessing database-based stuff via the web. It's not clear to me that this is fundamentally different from just using the web, at least if the databases are well-designed.

I also take issue with the notion that people need to know how to design web pages. I think that blogging software proves that Normal People don't want to learn about designing web sites and don't need to.

Puppy Linux

Posted Thu, 2005-08-25 10:32 by pfaffman

Couros has a link about Puppy Linux. It looks like with a few minutes one can download a CD, boot it, and then install this mini-distribution on a USB drive. It runs most everything from RAM disk, so it's pretty fast. This looks like a potentially useful way to have a computer on a USB drive so that wherever you go you have all of your files and settings with you.

A cool project would be to do something like outfit a classroom of students with these to see how their use of computers changed and whether they do stuff like, you know, actually edit and revise work that they create.

It's really small, so there's no OpenOffice, but it has Abiword, mozilla, and gnumeric. It looks pretty cool. One downside is that it wants to wipe away all the files on your USB drive to do the USB install (not necessary if you're willing to boot off a CD).

Wink--Free Tutorial and Presentation Software

Posted Thu, 2005-08-25 09:59 by pfaffman

Wink is a free (but not Open Source) package that lets you create Flash tutorials. Runs on Windows and Linux. Could be a cool tool to use for some kind of project.

Black Squirrel Content Management System

Posted Fri, 2005-08-19 12:24 by pfaffman

Black Squirrel is another Open Source content management system. An intersting project would be to use it to re-create the ITHES web site.