OpenSource

OS Software & Content

Open Source in Education: A European Perspective

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Just perused this 91 page PDF (now available as HTML) produced by Teemu Arina and Timo Tervo of the FLOSSE Posse. This is an excellent overview of many trends affecting online learning. It covers everything from the long tail, power law, connectivism, small world networks, blogs and wikis. It’s a bit short on detail, but if you’re familiar with these concepts, then it’s a fast read. If you’re not familiar with these concepts, then read the references.

The second part of the presentation covers the results of a workshop on open source in education and discusses a number of future scenarios that were ranked by the participants, for instance:

100% [of workshop participants] agreed:


Rip, Mix and Learn is the new metaphor for constructing learning objects

Amateur audio and video enters learning
Connectiveness a core competency
ePortfolios focusing on capturing informal learning appear

These will give you an idea of what has traction on the other side of the pond in the OS world. Most of the paper is CC licensed and there are a lot of interesting diagrams. Definitely a keeper for your digital archives.

DrupalED Now Available

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Boris and Will are two of the founding members of a new site called DrupalED with an aggregated edtech feed.

DrupalED is a distribution that combines core Drupal.org with a selection of modules optimized for use in educational settings. These range from K-12 to university, as well as per-class, per-department, and per-institution scenarios.

It is free, open source, libre, and available for you.

I think that this one is going to grow :)

Update: Please read Will’s comment to this post.

Architecture for a better future

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Dave Pollard produces more thought-provoking articles than almost anyone else on the Web. I have used his Natural Enterprise model to inform my own work in developing better business models for small businesses, and now Dave has started to put many of his ideas together in his latest post, Creating a Post-Civilization Culture. His framework consists of four components – Principles, Learning, Enablers & Infrastructure. The premise is that,

With the right principles that can guide our decisions, the learnings to build the new culture properly, and the enabling building blocks, we can create the infrastructure that embodies the new culture.


This framework, coupled with Robert Paterson‘s narrative on the next Reformation, could sow the seeds for some grassroots action. It may be just what we need at the local level to address our own community’s sustainabilty issues.

Yahoo uses Drupal

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Sebastien Paquet is blogging the Information Architecture Summit [what’s the difference between a summit and a conference?] in Montreal this week (thanks Seb). The presentation on Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study, shows how Drupal meets the needs of the expanding company:

I used to work with an internal group to build an intranet. We didn’t want to go around begging for money, so it needed to be cheap. [php, movable type, drupal, other logos pop up] We wanted it scalable [some logos go away], customizable and extensible, easy to use (unlike coders, designers are a fickle bunch) [some other logos vanish], and conducive to collaboration. A bottom-up feel to it. Categorization. The answer was Drupal. It has broad functionality, blogs, calendar, strong taxonomy system. Active developer community – I want to do as little work as possible. There’s a new version about every four months. It has a very abstracted engine. It’s not the greatest at everything, but the taxonomy part is very strong.

The strength of the Drupal community just keeps growing :-)

Seb has blogged a number of other sesssions, well worth the read if you’re interested in IA.

 

The Drupal Alternative to Proprietary Courseware

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Charlie Lowe at Cyberdash has a presentation available on Teaching Writing, Collaboration, and Engagement in Global Contexts, using the Drupal CMS. According to the presentation (which I reviewed in OOo Impress 2.0 beta), a traditional LMS "Privileges course administration and content management over class community interaction, configuration flexibility, and usability", whereas students and educators need systems that integrate with the Internet and allow more collaborative learning that reflects life outside of academia.

Two slides on user needs provide an excellent synthesis of why proprietary LMS’s do not meet the needs of higher education.

Students & Educators Need:

  • Online platforms that better enable social constructionist principles of collaborative learning.
  • Students need an early opportunity to learn professional communication using real world software systems.
  • Better integration of current and cutting edge Internet communication technologies such as weblogs and RSS.
  • Increased flexibilty through more extensive customization and configuration options.
  • The choice of whether to make the class space private or public.

Institutions Need:

  • Web application platforms that can be used for a wider variety of purposes.
  • Increased opportunity to adapt the online course component to the institutions’ needs.
  • Reduced total cost of ownership would be nice.
  • No vendor lock-in.
  • Reallocation of funds from site licensing fees into learning opportunities for students. [I like this one!]

This presentation is a good review for anyone in education looking at their technology options. It is more a review of proprietary versus open source, with specific Drupal examples. The argument is clear, and there are a lot of screenshots from sample sites.

Update: Charlie follows up with some suggestions on how to use the money that is saved on license fees.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta Review

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I recently downloaded the OpenOffice.org (OOo) office productivity suite, version 2.0 Beta. The suite includes Writer (word processor), Impress (presentation), calculator (spreadsheet) or other parts that I don’t use yet. Given that it’s a Beta, there are still some minor issues – e.g. the application gets hung-up sometimes, but not often, and you have to close it from the Windows Task Manager [All of my comments are for the Windows version].

Overall I would say the OOo is ready for prime time, especially once release Version 2.0 becomes available in the next few weeks. The interface is much more intuitive, especially for those used to applications like MS Word or WordPerfect. This recent version continues from previous ones with its ability to open, edit and save in Microsoft formats, or in the less bulky OOo formats. Saving docs as PDF’s is even easier, and you now have more compression options. If you have documents in an older version of OOo you will have to save them in the new format in order to use all of the newer functions, something I learned in OOo Impress with its newer and better slide sorter.

A great new feature with Writer includes the ability to open WordPerfect documents. I noted that Writer 2.0 also handles MS Word tables much better now, which was my primary complaint with OOo 1.x.

Those used to MS PowerPoint’s multiple layout options and clip art galleries may not like OOo Impress, but there are always open source image galleries like Wiki Commons available. You should also note that the new format (.odt, .odp, etc) is not backwards compatible, so if you save a document as "xxx.odt", someone with OOo Version 1.x will not be able to open it.

I have previously recommended OOo to my more computer-literate friends but now can wholeheartedly endorse it for the average home or business user. Remember that it’s free; you can install it on as many computers as you want; and there is no Microsoft End User License Agreement requiring you to give up "quiet enjoyment" and various other rights. If you think that saving a lot of money and having greater flexibility with your office applications is a good thing, then get OOo 2.0.

OpenOffice.org 2.0

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For the adventurous, OpenOffice.org 2.0 (Beta), the free, open source office suite that is compatible with MS Office, is now available for download and testing.

This one is our candidate for the first OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta. It needs further testing and QA. If no showstoppers are found, it may be selected as our first public beta release. These builds need testing and your feedback. There are no guarantees.

It’s available for Windows and Linux, but not yet for Mac.

* March 4 – "The OpenOffice.org project is pleased to announce that the first public beta release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 is now available for download." This includes a Mac version.

ePortfolios

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If you’re wondering about the value of ePortfolios in high school, then read Helen Barrett’s article in response to a student’s question, "I am a student in high school. Why is it manditory for me to make a proficient on my portfolio for me to graduate? I have all of my credits to graduate, but if I make lower than an proficient I don’t get to graduate."

Would you rather spend a day taking a series of tests that just make you nervous, don’t help you learn and only assess how well you can remember a lot of facts or solve a lot of problems, most of which are irrelevant to your life? And if you don’t pass those tests, you have to keep taking them until you do pass? Isn’t it much better to carefully and reflectively develop a portfolio that showcases your strengths and your growth over time?

For those interested in ePortfolios at the university level, take a look at ePortfolio@York

* You can also go to the Open Source Portfolio Initiative and see what this community initiative is doing around ePortfolios in general.

Via Jeremy Hiebert

Portals – Lessons Learnt

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In the paper, A False Dawn Over the Field of Dreams? [full-text no longer available], Stephen James Musgrave looks at the UK experience with community portals, including educational ones. He refers to a study of portals that divided them into a four-layer scale of interactivity:

  1. Promotional: sites providing information but little interaction.
  2. Content: sites providing more sophisticated information and some interaction.
  3. Content Plus: sites providing very useful content and more advanced on-line self-service features.
  4. Transactional: sites which are accessible, complete, thoughtful, and coherent; and with more than one type of on-line interaction (e.g. payment, application, consultation, bookings).

Only 2% of sites were considered Transactional – pity.

In concluding how to blend people and technology, Musgrave states:

The People and Technology improvements addressed in this narrative are required so as to enhance a portal based delivery of citizen-centric services through the adoption of common standards, and the development of common components. Technology improvement through systems integration is required to achieve the interactivity demanded by users; giving services that will be valued by users. The use of open source software – with vendor support – is likely to become a "middle way" that gives ownership of core elements to the portal developer community; minimising problems with vendor lock-in, whilst enabling industrial strength portal products to be deployed.

Though not a portal, Scott Wilson’s graphical description of a Virtual Learning Environment shows some of the same principles as those espoused by Musgrave. It is a series of smaller pieces (many open source) loosely joined, and focused on the needs of the individual, not the institution. This approach could avoid the hopelessly optimistic "if you build it, they will come" syndrome alluded to in the title.

ATutor 1.4.3

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ATutor, a Canadian Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System (LCMS), has just released its latest version 1.4.3. ATutor’s trademark function is that it is designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind.

New in this release:

Forum Upgrades: System wide and shared forums for communication across courses. Create communities around groups of course forums, or around an entire ATutor course server. Alumni participation in course forums.
Subscribe to general forums or course forums, or subscribe to specific topic threads to receive messages by email. Quickly access current forum messages through the Forum Posts menu module.



Enrollment Manager Overhaul: Create, import, and export course enrollment lists, and manage enrolled students and alumni. New tabbed display for managing student information, managing course lists, managing roles and privileges, as well as creating and managing groups.



Language Overhaul: Language management has been completely re-designed. Translate, import, and export language from within your own ATutor installation. Support for the UTF-8 character set. ATutor is available in more than 30 languages.



Question Database: Create tests by adding questions to, and retrieving questions from, a test item repository.



Test/Survey Manager Upgrade: Create image based test items, arrange multiple choice questions vertically or horizontally, assign tests to a class, to groups, or to individual students, analyse test data and generate statistics.



Theme Manager: Easily copy, import, and export ATutor themes.



RSS Feeds: Syndicate ATutor course announcements to display them on remote Web sites.



Embed ACollab: Embed ACollab [collaborative workspace] into ATutor, or open it in a new window to participate in course group activities.

Easy Enrollment: Students can now enroll in courses through the Browse Courses screen.

Open source learning systems, like this SCORM compliant LCMS, are steadily improving and becoming viable options for any organization, public or private.