dkeats.com

Response to Steven Downes on email and old people Tweet
712 days ago

I tried adding a comment to Stephen Downes comments on my blog post "I only use email to talk to old people". His blog has an open comment box, but when I submitted I got:

Error
Permission Denied (Check Status Error)
 
Fortunately, I had kept the text in a text editor just in case something went wrong, as it often does with this kind of thing. Stephen's comments are at http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=46480

Stephen wrote

At no stage did I say that students should abandon formal communication, and fact ended the short post with "As academics embarking on an eLearning Journey, we need to spend a little time learning about the culture of our students, and get to understand the mediums and language they use to communicate. Embracing their world will go a long way towards helping them bridge the gap in to the world of formal learning and knowledge construction."

I think that makes my point clear. It falls in the real of the "oh duh" that they need to enter the world of formal learning and knowledge construction and the communication that goes with it. What I was attempting to say was part of an attempt to get professors who have only recently graduated from chalk to ink markers to think about other technologies, and to find ways to embrace the culture of their students to help them to "bridge the gap in to the world of formal learning". I will be following this post with some examples of what we are doing, technology wise, to provide means for bridging the gap, and hope that there will be some engagement around the 'pedagogies' thereof.

Perhaps you, Stephen, work in a world where saying that young people communicate differently is cliche. I don't. I work in a world where a tiny bit of change is an uphill battle. I work in a world where, in many cases, national policies have so messed up access to technologies that even in one of the top three Universities in the country 80% of the professors have never heard of the most popular social networking technologies, fewer than 1 in a hundred have used them, and almost none have ever thought about using Mixit or SMS (the two most popular technologies among young people here) for educational purposes.

Cliche's have context. What is cliche in New Brunswick may well be innovative and new in South Africa. Many of our professors think that these observations apply to North America, that our students - over 50% of whom grew up in conditions that do not exist in Canada - are somehow different. There is a belief that poorer students have escaped the technology revolution because of poverty.

The fact is that they are not different at all. And even if they have not had access to a world replete with technolgy, they join it very soon when they enter university, because the other 50% helps them to do so even when we as their university do not. If I can get 2% of professors in my university to think about how they can embrace hw stdnts cmcte n our cntxt, thn smthg wl hv bn achvd. Especially if they can think beyond 'Wy wrnt U N cls 2day?"

I guess I should have made the context clear, but the original post was made on the University of the Western Cape eLearning site, and copied to dkeats.com as I sometimes do. I have to think about how I do that in future, so that I take the context with the post.

Regarding how they communicate in 20 years, when I am 83, being humans, I expect via some method and formula that we have not even thought about yet.The current youth will be us, and no doubt they will be lamenting the death of the SMS, the loss of Facebook, and the final bankruptcy of Mixit. I expect that there will be a lot more voice and video, and a lot less in shorthand. SMS/Mixit shorthand is an evolutionary response to a very short term phenomenon, where communications are limited by cost. I would expect that in 20 years, with more widespread access to big computing via ubiquitous networks, the elusive speech to text might even have arrived. F nt, I grnT tht ths wl nt be th way.

I have logged a job to get RSS autodiscovery added automatically to pages that have RSS feed.  The blog already uses RSS autodiscovery in the posts, but it works with the older way of doing autodiscovery, which is still very widely in use. Give us a week or so. Its not quite a simple as adding it to the template because the template is also used to render pages that do not have RSS.

Regards, derek

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Broadcast video live from your cellphone Tweet
715 days ago

I just came across a new application calle QIK ( http://qik.com/), with the tagline "see what happens" that has some potential in eLearning. Its a little application that installs on your cellphone, and broadcasts your video live to the web via your phone's camera. There is a widget that you can embed into a page, as I have done below. Any time I use my phone for this, you will see the video below.

Of course, here in Africa this stuff is expensive right now, and bandwidth is worse than disgusting, but that will change. Cool to see what some of these new Web 2.0 companies come up with though.

Find me at http://qik.com/dkeats . Who knows what masterpiece I will creat!

Please note that this is an experimental service, and it is not always available. You may just see a grey box if it is down.

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Latest issue of International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET) is out Tweet
716 days ago

According  to an email I just received from Micael Auer, the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET) has just published its latest issue at http://www.i-jet.org. The Table of Contents is included here in case any of our colleagues involved in eLearning are interested in them. The great thing about this journal is the fact that it uses a Creative Commons Attribution license. That means you can use articles in your course content, create derivitive works, etc, as long as you attribute the source.

[COLORBOX: boxtype=greybox] International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET)
Vol 3, No 3 (2008)[/COLORBOX]

Table of Contents

Papers

A Pilot Project ­ From Illiteracy to Computer Literacy: Teaching and Learning Using Information Technology
(Mohamad Adnan Al-Alaoui, Mesrob I. Ohannessian, Ghinwa F. Choueiter, Christine Akl, T. Taline Avakian, Ismail Al-Kamal, Rony Ferzli)
http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/221/570

Web Coherence Learning
(Peter Karlsudd)
http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/253/571

Assembling content into dynamic learning objects versus authoring of e-learning courses.
(Jeanne Schreurs, Bart Vanhove, Abdullah Al-Zoubi)
http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/270/572

Item Modeling Concept Based on Multimedia Authoring
(Janez Stergar)
http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/243/573

Interactive Numerical and Symbolic Analysis: A New Paradigm for Teaching Electronics
(Jean-Claude Thomassian)
http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/243/573
 

Ad-hoc Composition of Distributed Learning Objects using Active XML
(Werner Wetzlinger, Andreas Auinger, Christian Stary)
http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/279/576

Short Papers

Games and Multimedia in Foreign Language Learning - Using Back-story in Multimedia and Avatar-based Games to Engage Foreign Language Learners: A Pilot Study
(Lili Teng Foti, Robert D Hannafin)
http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/259/577

Reports

The Trade Fair: Introducing ESP Multimedia at a Technical University in Taiwan
(Shu-Chiao Tsai, B. Davis)
http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/278/578

Calls

6th International Conference on e-Learning Applications
(Call for Papers)
http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/637/555

Second International Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Accessibility - ICTA 09
(Call for Papers)
http://online-journals.org/i-jet/article/view/638/556
 

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SnagFilms not ready for use here Tweet
716 days ago

Found SnagFilms because Allison Kipta was exploring it and had it on her Facebook Status update. Started writing a filter for it, but realised that there is a bit of a problem with it. They use clearspring widgets, and there is no widget for Metaweblog API, only for blogging services. This means that people who host their own blog cannot easily post it, which for the 1 extra minute it would take to provide access to Metaweblog API, they loose some potential users, like me!

I could write a filter for it, but because the way clearspring widgets work, there is no easy way to do this because the URL to the video is obscured by the clearspring widget, which is a Javascript snippet. It can of course be embedded, as I WOULD HAVE done below if I was allowed to, but for the average user telling them to do

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/4837b4759c19ccae/48d6959ec431acf0/4837b4755c571347/350c3288/widget.js"></script>;

is a bit like telling them to change the valve lifters on a modern car, assuming cars still have them.

The other thing about SnagFilms is that the films seem to say Availability: US Only. So while I could post the snippet, I would not be allowed to watch the film so it seems rather pointless. This feels a bit of the old region code nonsense (I know less kind words to use to refer to region codes, but will  remain polite here). Interestingly, the video that I tried to watch was called Alicia in Africa, which was a story about Alicia Keys journey through Africa. It seems a bit weird to prevent Africans from watching that! Oddly though (sic) the commercials at the start of USA Only films play fine in Africa!

Furthermore, the videos are full feature, so with our best bandwidth being less than what the average American would consider utterly useless, it is probably not sensible to try to watch one of their videos anywhere in Africa. Certainly not where I live, in South Africa anyway. Pity because it would have been a good distraction from the insanity of our current politics.

Last but not least, trying to view the film using Flash 10 on Linux crashed the browser. I suppose the is an Adobe problem, not a SnagFilms problem, but it does kind of get in the way!

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I only use email to talk to old people Tweet
723 days ago

I should start by saying that I am an old person. I still use email. My son, who is 19, hardly ever uses email, though he communicates electronically much more than I do, and I do an exceptional amount of digital communication for someone as old as me.

Prof Stan Ridge sent me a photocopied article from Times Higher Education called "Learning from the Future". It talks about the cultural differences between most professors in higher education and the students they teach primarily to shed light on the issue of plagiarism. The title of this blog post is a quote from a student responding to the question of why he did not respond to emails from a tutor.

The article describes the nature of the "culture of sharing" in which young people live. It is one in which music and video have a higher utility than text, and one in which the dominant textual communication is informal and largely unstructured, rather than formal and structured. Examples of such text include SMS messages, Mixit messages, Facebook, Twitter (and other status updates systems) and blogs. The article says "We as academics need to understand this culture if we are to influence it, or we risk becoming increasingly irelevant."

We often think that in South Africa our students are crossing the digital divide when they enter University, and so we have escaped the challenges created by so-called 'digital natives' by virtue of our economic situation and the disgustingly high cost of bandwidth. We have not.

The culture of communicating and sharing is widespread in South Africa, although it is not always PC based. Indeed, to some extent, PCs are for old people. Young people are much more comfortable with mobile devices, and often engage with Web technologies that we associate with PCs using phones and interfaces that are not web browsers. I have two teenage sons. They spend a lot of time in solitary social situations...i.e. they are physically alone, or in a room watching TV, listening to music or doing homework, but are socially connected to their friends via Mixit and Facebook on their cell phones. This is the reality, it is as sensless to decry it as it was to suggest that the invention of writing would destroy oral culture a long time ago.

As academics embarking on an eLearning Journey, we need to spend a little time learning about the culture of our students, and get to understand the mediums and language they use to communicate. Embracing their world will go a long way towards helping them bridge the gap in to the world of formal learning and knowledge construction.

I hpe ths s prty clr to U. F tis nt thn phps we nd a crs abt yng ppl, jst 4 old ppl.

So as not to be guilty of plagiarism, the article is
Culwin, F. 2008. Learning from the future. Times Higher Education, 21 Aug 2008, p. 24.
 

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International Journal on E-Learning Vol. 7 now available Tweet
726 days ago

The International Journal on E-Learning Vol. 7, No. 4 (October 2008) is now available online. There are perhaps some lessons in it for our own e-Teaching-and-Learning practices, though there are not many new concepts in this issue.

Understanding the Factors Limiting the Acceptability of Online Courses and Degrees
Jonathan Adams, FLorida State University, USA
Abstract: http://go.editlib.org/a/24314

Audio Use in E-Learning: What, Why, When, and How?
Brendan Calandra, Georgia State University, USA; Ann E. Barron, University of South Florida, USA; Ingrid Thompson-Sellers, Georgia State University, USA
Abstract: http://go.editlib.org/a/24297

Using a Virtual Learning Environment to Manage Group Projects: A Case Study
Yvonne Cleary & Ann Marcus-Quinn, University of Limerick, Ireland
Abstract: http://go.editlib.org/a/24342

E-Learning Incorporation: An Exploratory Study of Three South African Higher Education Institutions
Wanjira Kinuthia, Georgia State University, USA; Rabelani Dagada, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Abstract: http://go.editlib.org/a/24339

Belonging Online: Students' Perceptions of the Value and Efficacy of an Online Learning Community
Loralee LaPointe & Marcy Reisetter, University of South Dakota, USA
Abstract: http://go.editlib.org/a/24419

The Design of Online Tertiary Courseware for a Blended Learning, Project-Based, E-Business Management Program in the Middle East
Arthur Rush, Higher Colleges of Technology, United Arab Emirates
Abstract: http://go.editlib.org/a/24305

Vienna E-Lecturing (VEL): Learning How to Learn Self-Regulated in an Internet-Based Blended Learning Setting
Barbara Schober, Petra Wagner, Ralph Reimann & Christiane Spiel, University of Vienna, Austria
Abstract: http://go.editlib.org/a/24292

Teaching Aspects of E-Learning
Soonhwa Seok, University of Kansas, USA
Abstract: http://go.editlib.org/a/24323

University Student Online Plagiarism
Yu-mei Wang, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
Abstract: http://go.editlib.org/a/24455

The Practitioner’s Model: Designing a Professional Development Program for Online Teaching
Debbi Weaver & Diane Robbie, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia; Rosemary Borland, Deakin University, Australia
Abstract: http://go.editlib.org/a/24411

 

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Rapping as an assignment type Tweet
727 days ago

In universities we get so entrenched in old ways of doing things, that new ways sometimes come and go without even making a ripple in the space-time continuum of the higher education universe. But if we are going to remain relevant in the lives of young people, we need to take a long hard look at our own assumptions.

I wonder what a typical physics professor would give for an assignment done as a rap song that remixed music, text, video and images?

The video below is not exactly that, since it was written by Katherine McAlpine, aka "alpinekat", a science writer working at CERN.  Her song  "The Large Hadron Rap"  was added to YouTube on 28 July 2008, and, as of today, it had been viewed about two million times.

I am not saying that students should not learn to write or do serious academic work. That falls in the realm of the 'oh duh' - something that is so obvious that it doesn't even need saying. However, if this kind of assignment can help revitalize learning, whyever not?

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What are twitters saying about the Large Hadron Collider? Tweet
727 days ago

I was just wondering what  Twitter users have been tweeting about the Large Hadron Collider. Fortunately, thats an easy task for Chisimba!

[RSS:limit=6]http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=+Large+Hadron+Collider[/RSS]

Cool thing to do, even if the comments are mostly inane.

Now that the time is past, I have reduced this to three  comments by setting limit =3 in the filter. The main purpose of this exercise was testing and demonstrating the use of the RSS / FEED filter.

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Flickr photos from Kirstenbosch last weekend Tweet
727 days ago

This displays a live feed from Flickr, so for a few days the title will be accurate. But since it is a live feed, this will change.

[RSS:limit=5]http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=93242958@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200[/RSS]

I am doing this to test my new RSS filter. I see a couple of small bugs.

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My YouTube videos Tweet
728 days ago

Here are some of the videos I have posted to YouTube.

[RSS: limit=10]http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/derekkeats/videos.rss[/RSS]

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Our chisimba twittering Tweet
729 days ago

This is a chisimba RSS feed of all mentions of Chisimba on Twitter. It was created using the RSS filter:
[RSS:limit=5]http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=chisimba[/RSS]
which demonstrates the power of Chisimba filters.

[RSS:limit=5]http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=chisimba[/RSS]

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New version of Chisimba released Tweet
733 days ago

The next release of the Chisimba PHP5 framework is now available.

Major enhancements included in this release are:

 - PDO and MDB2 support
 - Improved database performance
 - Bug fixes
 - Better code documentation
 - API integration for many more modules
 - Remote downloads of modules (apt like module installations)

and, of course, new modules to add onto your installation!

Please take a look, download it and give it a test drive!
 
Chisimba, for those that don't know it already, is a PHP5 framework made in Africa, for Africa and the world. It is a collaboration between around 13 African Universities, as well as around 35 active developers from around the continent.
 
It can be downloaded from AVOIR at:
 
http://trac.uwc.ac.za/trac/chisimba/downloader/download/release/5

and the docs can be found at:
 
http://avoir.uwc.ac.za/

There are server setup instructions, as well as installation walkthroughs available linking from the main AVOIR site:
 
For those interested in developing a module, or just getting some additional info please join our mailing list and ask some questions:
 
http://mailman.uwc.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/nextgen-online
 

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What mark would you give? Demonstrating the value of remix Tweet
735 days ago

Assume that I am a student, and I hand in the following text to you in a Third Year Education course, where I had to do an assignment on Education 3.0.

What kind of grade would I get for the above information, all of which is copied from somewhere, though the words are changed? I am guessing that you would not give me a very good grade. These are not even sentences, and I must be some kind of idiot to hand in something like this. You would probably glance at it and toss it in the ZERO pile.

 

What if instead of doing text like that, I went to Flickr and grabbed a whole bunch of images, and just handed them in to you? What kind of grade would you give me? (Note: Click the image to advance)

OK, what if I took the worthless text, and combined it with the worthless images. What would you give me for a grade? Does it demonstrate that I know why Education 3.0 is important in the African context, and does it use power or pursuasion? (Note: Click the image to advance)

Now you understand the value or remix!

 

Note that the images used in this presentation may have a license that varies from that of the page contents.

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Beyond the traditional learning management system: moving towards personal learning environments Tweet
738 days ago

Prof Derek Keats, Ms Juliet Stoltenkamp and the eLearning team from the University of the Western Cape


Recent years have seen the emergence of the personal learning environment (PLE), which is a way of learning using technology, not a particular technology.  PLE has been seen as a challenge to the dominant design of eLearning based on the concept of the "learning management system". With a  PLE approach, learners may take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to

- set their own learning goals
- manage their learning, including both content and process
- communicate with others in the process of learning

and thereby achieve learning goals.

At one extreme, PLE may be viewed as entirely without formal structure, and there is a school of thought that says formal institutional involvement in learning is not necessary. However, a more moderate perspective views PLE as the integration of both formal and informal learning episodes into a single experience, the use of social networks that can cross institutional boundaries, and the use of networking protocols (peer-to-peer, web services, syndication) to connect a range of resources and systems within a personally-managed space.

The PLE is fundamental to the evolution of collaborative education, having a set of characteristics that we have called Education 3.0. There are four key features that characterize Education 3.0:

- the role of students in making choices of a different kind than are available today, for example, designing their own programs of study rather than participating in exclusive programs;
- students as socially networked producers of reusable learning content which is available in abundance under licenses that permit the free sharing and creation of derivative works;
- increasing cross institutional, decentralized or even non-institutional participation in education;
- institutional arrangements that permit the accreditation of learning achieved, not just of courses taught.

The technologies for implementing PLEs may be desktop applications, one or more web-based applications or services, or a combination of the two. Almost anything that allows for the aggregation of RSS feeds, use of web widgets, creation of fairly rich mashups, and communication can act as a PLE. Perhaps one of the best tools available today for individualizing learning opportunities is the blog, supplemented by a wiki where collaboration is needed. In fact, even the humble word processor can be a PLE of sorts.

Of course, a PLE requires a those learning to have certain characteristics, inclding

- being independent, self-regulated;
- being a self-directed learner;
- actively participating in networking
- having a high degree of self-efficacy
- possessing a high level of motivation, working best where there is a passion for the subject
- having a high degree of technical and information fluency

While we have the phrase "Beyond the learning management system" in the title of this workshop, perhaps we should have used "Beyond the TRADITIONAL learning management system" because many learning management tools are now acquiring the ability to provide for the more moderate approach to combining formal and informal learning.

In designing the KEWL3 platform, we took both the traditional approach and the PLE into consideration not just in the interface, but also in the underlying architecture which allows KEWL3 to be integrated with anything else, and almost anything else to provide functionality into KEWL3. In this workshop, we will therefore use KEWL3 to show how formal and informal sources of learning can be blended into one tool, with online and offline components that integrate. Specifically, we will make use of the following modules:

- blog
- podcast
- personal blocks
- presentation sharing

In addition, we will use content and widgets from the following sources as examples:

- Google Maps
- YouTube
- TeacherTube
- Slideshare
- Chameleon WebPresent

We will also make use of the Personal Learning Desktop and the PodderLive classroom podcasting system.
 

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Wuala, the social online storage Tweet
739 days ago

I just came across Wuala beta, which claims to enable you to start managing and sharing your files online - free, simple, and secure. I like the principles, but got a whole bunch of Java errors when trying to register an account. They give 1Gb of free storage, and options to purchase extra for about $25 per year for 10 Gb. I am looking for options for storing content for this sites, so I am going to follow them to see if they eventually become stable enough to use. This kind of hardware as a service approach fits with my thoughts on the technologies that enable personal learning environments.

http://www.wua.la

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Creating a Podcast system using the EEE, PodderLive and Ubuntu-eee Tweet
742 days ago

Background

At UWC, we use KEWL3 for our eLearning platform, and Paul Scott  developed a podcasting application based on the the gstreamer framework. The application is written in Python, and designed to make podcasting a simple process for lecturers in the classroom. The podcast application has three main functions:

Record - Stop - Publish

Clicking publish sends the recorded podcast to the eLearning (or blog, etc) application which is based on the Chisimba framework. For more on the Chisimba framework and KEWL3, visit http://avoir.uwc.ac.za

The Asus EEE PC is the ideal tool for this purpose, as it is small, lightweight and can be signed out by a lecturer (when we finish the pilot) from our Audiovisual department. It fits in well with the other items a lecturer may carry to the classroom. Of course, it can also work in corporate training, schools, other training situations or conference podcasting as well.

The only problem is that the EEE comes with a hard to maintain version of Xandros, so the first thing that has to be done is to setup a version of GNU/Linux that is easier to maintain. We settled on Ubuntu, and I came across the Ubuntu-eee project, by Jon Ramvi, to whom I am soooooooo greatful for making this available.

This blog post describes getting the ISO file, making a bootable USB memory stick, installing Ubuntu on the EEE, and getting started with PodderLive from the AVOIR project. These instructions have been used on Ubuntu Hardy using the ISO file as provided by Ubuntu-eee.

Getting started

To set up the USB memory stick as a bootable device with a Live setup of the EEE version of Ubuntu, download UNetbootin (Universal Netboot Installer) from

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

UNetbootin allows for the installation of various GNU/Linux or BSD distributions to a partition or USB drive, so it's no different from a standard install, only it doesn't need a CD. It can create a dual-boot install, or replace the existing OS entirely. There are versions for GNU/Linux and Windows.

IMPORTANT: Before installing, remember to back up all your data, in case you do something wrong in the partitioning stage of the installer.

The following steps were documented during my setup.

1. Install mtools, which is needed for the USB drive install mode of UNetbootin

2. Install p7zip-full, which is needed UNetbootin

3. Make the downloaded unetbootin-linux-272 file executable, either from the properties menu or by running

4.  Double click the file or type

5. Select Diskimage from the startup screen of UNetbootin and browse to where you downloaded the ISO file.

The startup screen of UNetbootin.  Note that Diskimage is selected.

6. Browse for the ubuntu-eee-804.iso file and select it, and click open.

Browsing for the ubuntu-eee-804.iso file.

7. Select the USB drive, and the Drive that you want to install to. Make sure you KNOW what the correct drive is, and the safest way to do this is to unmount any other USB drives that you are using, and unplug them or switch them off. When you are certain, click OK.
 

Selecting the USB drive. Note that mine is sdd1. Yours may differ.

I found it stuck on 4% for a long time, and was just about to kill it whent off it went again, so leave it to do its job. Go get a cup of coffee or a nice glass of South African Shiraz.

8. At the end of the process, you will be prompted to reboot or exit. You can exit here, unless you want to boot the system you are working on with Ubuntu-eee.

Reboot or exit prompt.
 

Setting up the EEE PC

9. Move to the EEE PC, insert the memory stick, switch it on, and while the machine is booting press the ESC key a few times, then select USB boot. When prompted, select Install Ubuntu, and complete the install process.

10. Fixing the shutdown problem

The EEE does not shut down cleanly with the Ubuntu install, it only blanks the screen. The following recommended fix was applied:

Add the following contents to the script and save the file:

Make it executable

Now in /etc/rc0.d (scripts run at shutdown), create a symbolic link named K60eeepc, pointing to ../init.d/eeepc
By renaming the symbolic link, one can control exactly when the module is removed.

Pressing on the shutdown button should now power off completly the Eee Pc.

11. Setup PodderLive for podcasting (download PodderLive and Chisimba from http://avoir.uwc.ac.za).  To set up for PodderLive Podcasting:

Either open Synaptic and enable all repositories, or using a terminal type the following:
gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Check that all repositoriess are enabled, especially multiverse at the bottom of the file. Also enable Partner repositories.

Then update your sources:

Install python-wxgtk2.8

Install the gstreamer framework

Create a directory for PodderLive to work from

The easiest way to get PodderLive is to check it out of Subversion
aptitude install subversion

Start PodderLive by typing the following into a terminal:


You can also add it to the menu, or make a applet and give it your favorite icon as well. I will write another post with some information about how to set up and use PodderLive in a day or two.

Getting sound recording working

To get sound recording, you need to install alsa-oss

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Notes: On start up, there was a message that the battery was old or broken because it had only 1% charge. I have not figured that one out, but eventually it went away, and the power applet seems to display the battery status correctly.

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Education 3.0 presentation featured on Slideshare Tweet
743 days ago

My presentation Education 3.0: Why should Africa care? was made presentation of the day on Slideshare, and I was intensely proud of it. I thought there must be some intellectual interest in the notion, and therefore some hope!

Then I took a look this afternoon, and saw that it was succeeded by a presentation entitled Return of the Bunny Suicides:  Watership Down for the deeply sick. Is there a message there, or am I just too concerned  that Education 3.0 might be mistaken for a suicidal bunny?

 I hope I don't get in the rabbit of this.

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Education 3.0: why should Africa care? Tweet
745 days ago

This presentation uses some stats about Africa and the world to suggest that collaboration is the only way for Africa to build critical mass to address some of the challenges that we face. Once vehicle for collaboration is the set of conditions we describe as Education 3.0.

Note that the license for the images used in this presentation may vary from the license for my own part of it.

You can download this presentation from our Chameleon server.

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Chismiba development with Eclipse Ganymede (3.4) Tweet
752 days ago

To do Chisimba development with Eclipse 3.4, you need to do some manual work to get it installed. The version in the Ubuntu repositories is the way outdated ersion 3.2. The current version is 3.4, called Ganymede. These instructions are for using Ganymede on Ubuntu Hardy Heronm which is available from  http://www.eclipse.org/ganymede/">http://www.eclipse.org/ganymede/ .

The version you need is Eclipse Classic 3.4 (151 MB), unless you intend doing Java EE development as well. 

1. Download Eclipse from the Eclipse website or mirror, and move it to a temporary directory.

You can use wget to download it from the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University if you want:

Move it to a temporary directory. For example,

Then using the Nautilus file manager or the mv terminal command, move the eclipse download to that directory. I used the terminal because it is faster:

2. Unzip the file using Nautilus file manager or the tar command on a terminal.

To use Nautilus, right click the file, and select Extract here from the menu. Alternatively, in a terminal type:

Either way, you will end up with a directory called 'eclipse'. If you do not, then something went wrong.

3. Create a home for eclipse on your system.

I keep eclipse in /usr/local/opt/eclipse/ as this seems to be a fairly standard place for manual install of eclipse. On a fairly fresh install, the opt/ directory may not exist, so in a terminal type

4. Move eclipse to /usr/local/opt/

In a terminal, type

Yes, I know, you could just put it there in the first place, but I prefer to download and extract in my home directory.

5. Grant Eclipse execute permissions

Go into the eclipse directory

and give execute permissions

6. You need a JDK to use eclipse

Get the Sun Open JDK either by installing from the Synaptic package manager or a terminal. In a terminal type:

Make sure that this is the version used by configuring its settings:

Edit the JVM configuration file

and add the following line at the top of the file:

There is a bug that causes Eclipse to ignore the default java setings in Ubuntu, so it is necessary to ensure that Eclipse uses the JVM that you  installed.

and add the following to the top of the file:

7. Start Eclipse and configure workspace

You should now be able to start Eclipse using the command

When Eclipse first starts, it will present a dialogue box for you to input your workspace. It defaults to /home/dkeats/workspace but I prefer to use /home/dkeats/eclipse-workspace just so I know what application owns the workspace. You may configure it to be whatever you want it to be, but eclipse-workspace is an unambiguous name.

You should also check 'Use this as the default and do not ask again'.

8. Create a menu entry


Right click on the Gnome Ubuntu icon on the top left of the Gnome toolbar, the icon to the left of 'Applications' and select 'Edit menus' from the menu that appears.

Click on Programming in the left pane of the resulting dialogue, and on the right pane click New Item (the one with the plus sign).

In the dialogue that appears, select or enter

and click OK. You now have Eclipse on the Pogramming menu.

You can also provide an icon for it if you want. To do so, if you have saved already, right click on Eclipse IDE in the menu editor, and click the Icon button (the one that is unlabelled, that looks like a platform atop a spring). And brows to the icon that you want to use. You can download an Eclipse icon from the web. Use a search engine to find one. I use the icon from:

http://www.iconlet.com/download_32x32_/vistainspirate/32x32/apps/eclipse.png

I made a directory in my home directory, under Pictures, called icons and put it there.

 

9. Install a subversion plugin for Eclipse

Previously, I used the Subclipse subversion plugin with Eclipse, but Subclipse 1.4.x requires Subversion 1.5.0 version but the Ubuntu repository contains Subversion 1.5.0.  Installing this version of Subversion might break your operating system, so it is better to work with the Subversive plugin rather than Subclipse when using Eclipse Ganymede.

Instead of using Subversion, Subversive uses a native Java implementation of the Subversion protocol. You need to install the Java HL API:

Then you need to add this to the eclipse.ini file located in

In a terminal, type

and then add the line below to the end of the file and save
 
Now you can install Subversive. The subversive installation includes Subversive team provider and Subversive Team Provider Sources. In order to start work with Subversive you should install both of them. This is now part of the Ganymede update site so you can access it from Eclipse using:

And install them in the normal Eclipse way.


You also need to add

and install the connectors. License incompatibility prevents them from being distributed together, so you have to live with this inconvenience.

10. Install a PHP plugin

I prefer PHPEclipse, rather that PDT, but either should work. The instructions below are for PHPEclipse.

From the Eclipse menu choose Help -> Software Updates and switch to the tab named 'Available Software'.

On the bottom of the dialog, make sure 'Show only the latest versions of available software' is checked, and 'Include items that have already been installed' is unchecked.

Click the 'Add site' button to open the 'Add site' dialog.

Enter the URL http://update.phpeclipse.net/update/nightly and click 'OK'.

Highlight the new entry 'Update site: http://update.phpeclipse.net/update/nightly' and drop it down using the little arrow handler left to the checkbox.

The sub-entry 'PHP Eclipse Nightly Builds' should appear. There may be others as well, but make sure you check the Nightley Builds one by selecting the appropriate checkbox.

Make sure that none of the other checkboxes are selected and click the 'Install' button.

After the despendencies have been successfully resolved, a confirmation screen is displayed. Click the 'Next' button.

On the license dialog, select 'I accept the terms of the license agreements' and click 'Finish'.

When prompted to do so, restart Eclipse.

After installation, the PHP perspective needs to be activated by going to Window -> Open Perspective -> Other -> Select PHP -> OK.

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Thats it, you now have an Eclipse based development environment for Chisimba development.

Sources of information used in setting up my eclipse setup:

• http://www.practicalweb.co.uk/blog/08/07/06/eclipse-34-ganymede-first-impressions
• http://www.digitalbase.eu/blog/installing-eclipse-3-4-pdt-2-x-nightly-build
• http://olafsblog.sysbsb.de/?p=53
• http://www.eclipse.org/subversive/downloads.php

 

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Demo of inserting a podcast into a page Tweet
756 days ago

I did this while demonstrating how to embed a podcast in a page. I figured I may as well leave it here.

The steps are:

1. Upload a MP3 file in file manager or using the podcast interface

2. Copy the embed code

3. Paste the embed code

4. Save the page

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My birthday card Tweet
756 days ago

Paul and the FSIU team sent me this cute birthday card.

What's scary about this, is that I recognize people! Thanks team!

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Education 3.0: How the coevolution of technology and society will change education Tweet
761 days ago

Below is my presentation from a talk that I gave at Wits on Aug 4th, 2008, that you will also see a few posts ago without the sound. I have added the sound using a Slideshare slidecast. The presentation was on Education 3.0: How the coevolution of technology and society will change higher education over the next decade.

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Personal learning environment Tweet
762 days ago

I am getting ready to deliver a workshop on Personal Learning Environironements (PLE) with Juliet Stoltenkamp and a few other staff of ICS at the WWW conference in September in Cape Town. I was hunting around for some raw materials to use to illustrate the aggregation aspects of creating a PLE, and I found this really neat video on PLE by Graham Attwell. He has such a neat accent that he would be interesting even if he was talking about cabbage farming, but this is a good overview of the key notion of PLE.

The workshop is actually called "Beyond the learning management system: moving towards personal learning environments" and will take place at the University of Cape Town.

I think we will use this in the workshop, not that people will be expected to watch it, but rather to use the concept to illustrate the concept. For example, here I am aggregating content about PLE in my own PLE, for this blog is as much about me sharing with myslef as it is about me sharing with others. If that makes any sense. Blame it on the lovely glass of red wine I just had.

Note that the video may have a different license from this blog post.

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Disqus is disappointing - some web 2.0 is web 1.5 Tweet
763 days ago

I was excited recently when I came across a product called Disqus, which sells itself as follows:

This would be so cool, or so I thought, so I went about implementing a filter for it in Chisimba. At first it looked great. But then I realised something was not right. Replies to comments were not visible in the page on which the reply was posted.

Everything worked exactly as expected and as advertised, except  for this problem that replies made in the page did not work. The replies were stored correctly, but could only be viewed if the blog post is opened via the permalink for it. This can never be senisble behviour.

I reported this to the disqus support, and got mail after mail from them with 1-2 sentences which clearly showed that they had not read my email. Over a number of weeks, I got several of those kinds of responses, but nothing that indicated any intelligent consideration of my problem. Without any explanation of why their very instructions did not work, I got a final email from one of them last week saying

Duh! Replies are not supposed to work correctly!!! I cannot be the only one who thinks it is just strange to require the first comment to be opened in a separate window, something nobody would know about, in order to post or view a reply. That means that there is a gap in the market for a discussion engine that actually works. Any takers? Sounds like a good project against which to raise venture capital.

Meanwhile, I have disabled the Disqus plugin (or will have tonight when I FTP up the code with it disabled), and do not recommend anyone to waste their time on trying to implement something that is designed not to work.

 

 

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Education 3.0: How the coevolution of technology and society will change higher education Tweet
764 days ago

This presentation on Education 3.0: How the coevolution of technology and society will change higher education over the next decade is from a talk I gave at Wits on Aug 4th, 2008.

It was a talk about how the technology-society evolution is affecting education, it was NOT about eLearning.

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