Kris Roger

About Kris Roger

Educational Technologist at LSE. Follow me on Twitter @KrisEdTech

WebCT 6 and e-portfolios

Looks like WebCT are adding another tool to WebCT 6. Things seem to be moving quite quickly!

This from the latest WebCT newsletter.

Get ready for the WebCT Portfolio!
Moving to WebCT Campus Edition 6 will also pave the way for you to start using the WebCT Portfolio. Targeted for release in the first half of 2006, the WebCT Portfolio is a personal portfolio solution that will make portfolio initiatives easy for institutions to manage and for students and instructors to learn.

Doesn’t say whether this is an optional extra or whether it is going to be included in the basic CE licence.

Kris.

February 22nd, 2006|Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

CourseGenie 2 and Moodle

Interesting that Horizon Wimba are now touting CourseGenie as a tool for Moodle. The text below is from their latest mailout, while no mention of it on their web site.

This new version most notably features the ability for instructors to create Flashcards, insert code such as HTML and Java, and export their course content to new Blackboard, WebCT, and SCORM formats (ideal for Moodle users). Course Genie allows faculty to quickly and easily convert their Microsoft Word documents into content for their Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle, and other online courses.

Wild speculation, but I wonder if this might mean possible future support for Moodle from HorizonWimba’s other products. More likely that SCORM is just a happy coincidence for them I guess.

Kris.

February 16th, 2006|Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Open source PowerLinks for WebCT

Looks like WebCT will support wiki and RSS integration, but only if you have the “WebCT Vista PowerLinks Kit for software development”. I’m assuming you only need this PowerLink kit if you need to customise a PowerLink (which you wouldn’t do with Wimba, but might with something open source).

From the latest WebCT newsletter:
“Open Source PowerLinks from the WebCT Vista Developers Network

Are you looking for ways to integrate and extend WebCT? Recently, several open source PowerLinks created by the WebCT Vista Developers Network were made available through the WebCT PowerLinks Showcase:

With the Gutenberg Book Search PowerLink, instructors and designers can create custom searches on the Gutenberg collection that students can run with a single mouse-click from their WebCT courses.
The Mobile WebCT PowerLink lets students and instructors read their WebCT mail from their mobile phones.
With the OSPI Integration PowerLink, institutions can enable single sign-on from WebCT to the OSPI e-portfolio, providing users with easy one-click access to their e-portfolio content.
The PhpWiki Integration PowerLink provides students in a WebCT with course seamless access to PhpWiki via a proxy tool from the WebCT Course Menu.
The RSS Feed Integration PowerLink provides the capability to fetch RSS feeds from any Web site supporting RSS service from within a WebCT course.

WebCT Vista Developers Network PowerLinks are available as-is and are not supported by WebCT. You do not need to license the WebCT Vista PowerLinks Kit or belong to the WebCT Vista Developers Network to use these open source PowerLinks. However, you do need the WebCT Vista PowerLinks Kit for software development to be able to easily and securely customize these PowerLinks. To learn more or to download these PowerLinks today, visit the WebCT Vista Developers Network PowerLinks page.”

Kris.

February 1st, 2006|Tools & Technologies|Comments Off|

Moodle upload limits

An update already on the feedback from I.S. This from Chris:

For the file upload limit, it seems I missed “post_max_size” in php.ini. If I set this to 10MB, this will raise Moodle’s value as soon as we restart the web publishing service.

There are actually 4 levels in which a maximum upload size can be set

– system level (php.ini)
– moodle level (admin->Config ->Site variables->maxbytes)
– course level (Course settings->Max Upload Size)
– activity level

This allows for finer control over certain areas.

Chris

January 19th, 2006|Tools & Technologies|2 Comments|

Moodle pilot feedback

The Information Systems department have started using Moodle on one postgraduate course and already have some feedback for us.

The following are paraphrased from the original e-mails:

One of the most tedious things about Moodle (as it is with WebCT) is the stage of uploading files before you can do anything. In place editing or at least drag and drop upload is strongly desired (using something like WebDav).
By default there is a 2Mb upload limit on all files. CLT have altered the PHP configuration to allow 8Mb, but this seems to be the upper limit imposed by Moodle. This is okay for individual files, but a serious limitation if uploading a Zip file containing multiple files. This however needs testing.
When you modify an item there is an accept changes button but no abandon changes button.
You can copy but not paste using keyboard shortcuts in Mozilla/Firefox and you can copy an paste in IE. Interestingly in Netscape 8 when you use dispay as firefox it behaves like firefox, but when you choose display like IE you can neither copy nor paste!!
When you modify an item in any way or add a resource or … when you return to the front page you are returned to the top of the page, not where you were, so you have to scroll back down again each time. Really tedious if you are working down week by week.
The System knows week numbers, they appear when you edit a resource for a week, but does not display them. To show them i had to enter them manually.
On a more positive note – the system Design students could try to write enhancements for Moodle next year if we stick with it. So we can look at that then and see if there is anything on a wish list they could get stuck into.

That’s all so far and thanks to Mike Cushman for these.

Kris.

January 19th, 2006|Uncategorized|Comments Off|

Edublog workshop – part 4

feeds and aggregators
to desktop, browser, webpage
make your own!

Bloglines

demo…

ooh, i’m going to set up a bloglines account.

a bit about podcasts, iStanford etc

plus some interesting stuff i’ve shamelessly copied from Kate Boardman as the net connection here failed when I pressed ‘Save and continue editing’. So much for live blogging…

“rss mixers. do I like the sound of this? kickrss… . feed2js, feedbook (great idea by dave cormier -ideological prototype on giving students aggregator of feeds rather than a course book), SuprGlu (mixing different blogs)”

By the way Apple have insisted that ipodder Lemon, the main competition for download podcasts to your iPod, change their name as Apple think we’ll all get confused. So iPodder Lemon is now Juice Receiver (?ughh)

Can you tell it’s nearly 3.30pm?

The rest of the session was spent, how can I say, playing with the various blog related tools.

Cheers,

Kris.

November 17th, 2005|Blogging|Comments Off|

Blogging notes from edublog workshop – part 3

Part 3 – after lunch
Learning Theory and online networking tools
ways of thinking and knowing, ways of doing (practice), social networking tools

theories of learning
behaviourism (Gagne), cognitivism (Piaget), social constructivism (Vygotsky), sittuative learning (Wenger), + Connectionist – forming networks, pattern recognition
context and related task types for each theory (e.g. cognitivism > problem based learning)
socio-cultural model –
learning is a conversational activity, social environment acts as scaffold for tutor and learner to engage in dialogue. collaborative activity forms vital component.
what changes are we responding to?

information age mindset

edu uses of weblogs

Distance learning MA in war studies
core materials via LMS
dialogue via e-mail, discussion forums, skype, weblogs

access subject to temporal, distance and tech constraints
is a need to discover and create role in learning community
these relationships need to be made explicit through online dialogue (as they are normallly implicit face to face)
using WebCT vista

fitness for purpose
discussion fora – structured and semi-structured for knowledge building and dialogue (disputational, cumulative, exploratory)
weblogs – personal publishing for reflection, taking ownership of learning experience
wikis – knowledge sharing and building

Conversational tools
content free templates that scaffold “the inner conversation”, “outer conversation with tutor”, “outer conversation with resources in the personal domain”.

In practice
all students have a blog, tutor blogs
they use a newsfeed aggregator to collect blogs using RSS (bloglines)

What happened?
student evaluation
revealed strategic pragmatic economic management and perception of their own education
evaluation – time and assessment were key

connectivism
from community to network – student and tutor blogs link to external ‘expert blogs’ – forming a ‘knowledge network’
Knowledge can rest with the network…

Does our theory of knowledge drive our choice of tools?

November 17th, 2005|Blogging|Comments Off|

Blogging notes from edublog workshop – part 2

Josie Fraser – history of blogs…

The slides are here

Intro. to blogging in education. Comparison of blog tools available.

History

1997 weblog in OED (really?)
1999 Blog coined

Technorati -eg of business that has grown around blogs

20 billion blogs by Oct 2005, 80k per day

Formats and tools
Ease of use
public and ungated – this is a debate within education, should they be open to all
Short posts, developmental, subjective, informal ‘enmeshed in distributed conversations’
Web 2.0 – user centred platform
That Downes man again (as in Stephen) – e-learning 2.0, recent article from ‘foremost edublogger in the world’ (!)
All types of users in education, at every level.

Finding a voice – a ‘blogging voice’. What do I want to say and how?

Schools – Musselburgh Grammar School using blogs for exchange purposes.

Researcher and edtech blogs – community of practice, Downes, Derek Morrison, James Farmer

edublog milestones – Gateshead Library since 2001. edublogs.org from James Farmer 1000th blog in 2 months, for educators. Now provides blogs for students.

edublogger directory

student blogs – to fulfil assessments

this is quite rushed!!!

Future VLE – Scott Wilson ‘the most popular diagram in e-learning world’

Comparison of blog tools
multi user and individual blog tools – wordpress recommended for multiusers
20six, aclblogs.net, aclearn weblogs toolkit, blogger, elgg, typepad, yahoo, xanga
Comparison chart (MS Word file)

The next part of the workshop was to go off and try another example of some blog software. I thought I’d go and try elgg as it has the added educational dimension that the others do not. It also has a social aspect through the use of FOAF (Friend Of A Friend) social networking and linking people by the use of tags. See my first elgg post!!

Now it’s time for lunch!

November 17th, 2005|Blogging|1 Comment|

Blogging notes from edublog workshop

I don’t know whether I’ll keep this up, but I’ve decided to blog from the workshop and save making notes later. I doubt any of this’ll make sense, but I’ll maybe add detail (and links) later. I’ll publish in parts, as otherwise I’ll have one very long entry. So here goes…

Multitasking – chat, blogging and listening at the same time.

Intro
Social s/w tools – IRC, IM, discussions fora > social bookmarks (de.icio.us), social networks (friendster) > wikis, weblogs.

Who is blogging? communities, companies – but famous cases of people blogging about work getting the sack! universities (warwickBlogs), individuals – e.g. Stephen Downes

www.frappr.com/edubloggers – network of educational bloggers.

Um – and there’s a substantial chat session going on while the presenters speak. this is slightly bizarre.

Lots of description about what makes up a typical blog tool e.g. entries, categories, comments etc.

Trackbacks – way of saying ‘i’m using one of your posts in my blog’.

Why so popular?

Easy, democratic, allow [re]creation of self, playing with identity

Web 1.0 = Traditional static publishing via FTP etc.

New system – east, fast, scaleable > with RSS – syndicated, peer to peer, social > Web2.0

Update your blog, it’s not just words (KR ?)

RAMBLE

mo-blogging

video-blogging
photo-blogging
audio-blogging (podcasts)

Weblogs vs wiki

wiki – group
blog – personal

egs of wikis – usual suspects err – wikipedia

Information overload? how to manage gigantic flow of info (paraphrasing Robin Good quote)?

Answer: Use RSS

aggregators – some have embedded into web page – e.g. Stephen Downes

Bloglines – internet based tool but personalised

Web 2.0 – “an architecture of participation” Tim O’Reilly 2003

Just a slogan? web as platform (as opposed to web as medium)

web 2.0 and e-learning 2.0 what do they mean?

read/write web
consumer vs producer
online identity
community > network
point of presence
semantic web www.foaf-project.org
folksonomy
micro-content
e-learning framework (JISC)

so much jargon!!!!!

e.g. flickr

social tools and blogs – all good?

cons – just replacing old tech with new?

And time for some coffee!!

November 17th, 2005|Blogging|Comments Off|