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

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.

Attachments Considered Harmful

Posted Tue, 2006-01-17 13:38 by pfaffman
I hate it when I receive something like a party invitation as an attachment in some proprietary format. (Actually, I hate attachments in general, but I'll save that for another day. And in case you don't catch the reference to "considered harmful" you might check this piece from the 1960's.)

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.

Use Your Gmail Account for File Storage

Posted Sat, 2005-12-03 21:44 by schastai

We were taking the other night about a way to use our Gmail accounts for backing up files. Here's one way I've found that you can do it. Its a fast and easy. You just use a browse button to navigate to the folder and file you want to upload and then press send. It works alot like your Volspace account. Just one drawback; like Volspace you are limited to uploading just ten (10) files at a time, but other than that its a nice tool.

Xmail Hard Drive

TETC 2005 Presentations

Posted Wed, 2005-11-23 15:36 by pfaffman

I'm presenting at TETC this year. I'll be doing workshops on Drupal, Moodle, K12LTSP and a couple sessions on Open Source Software.

Writely is rightly amazing

Posted Fri, 2005-11-18 07:02 by pfaffman
Wow. This post over at Weblogged mentioned Writely in passing. I hadn't heard of it, but now I have and it's pretty cool. The post said "Who needs Word?" which is something that I've been saying for about 10 years now, but for entirely different reasons.

Laughing Stock of the World

Posted Wed, 2005-11-09 09:35 by pfaffman

"We're not in Kansas anymore" is taking on a whole new meaning.

We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that.

Board member Janet Waugh

Here's coverage on Kansas's new "science" standards from the NY Times, MSNBC and Slashdot.

The quotation marks around "science" are to indicate that Kansas is now using their own definition of science.

How does this happen?

Teens Create Content

Posted Tue, 2005-11-08 10:45 by pfaffman

The Pew Internet and American Life Project just released a report called Teen Content Creators and Consumers. I found it over on Weblogg-ed who cited a New York Times piece about it. Ken Smith complained at Weblogg-ed that it seemed that the Pew piece was looking largely for dangerous and social aspects of blogging. More about that on his blog. Read on for my comments.

Less is More--why not to create HTML files

Posted Tue, 2005-11-08 10:33 by pfaffman

Alan Levine opines about how easy it is to create web sites using scripts instead of creating static HTML pages. I agree. Except for a throw-away temporary thing, I mostly haven't created an HTML page (instead using PHP) in the past 10 years. Of course, I really didn't start putting stuff on the web with any frequency since I started using Drupal.

HTML is a drag even for people who are good at it. This is why I'm interested in moving our departmental and college web pages to a content management system like this.

Stanford on iTunes

Posted Fri, 2005-10-28 12:34 by pfaffman

So it seems that Stanford (a private university near San Francisco, California) is providing access to some lectures and such via the Apple iTunes music store. They've got a web site with more info.