Posts from — October 2009

Thank you for your excellent participation so far in our presentation. We appreciate your comments in the Module 7 discussion on One to One Technologies–and thanks Byron for these other pointers.

Make sure you check out under learning models: in the discussion forum re: the question about what your PLE diagram would look like.

Making your own PLE concept map is a fun way to see how we are already customizing our learning using the new web 2.0 tools available. Visit the Learning models main page to see a link to lots of student PLE samples, then feel free to post your PLE diagram at:

http://1to1tech.ning.com/forum/categories/learning-models/listForCategory  Please join in this interactive activity–we can’t wait to see your “BOOtiful” diagrams-Happy Halloween.

First off, thank you Module 7 for this presentation, it’s got me thinking in some new directions.

I was thinking through some of the issues with moving towards a 1:1 ratio, many of which are being discussed in the forums and comments, and looking for inexpensive ways of deploying more computers for students to use. I have better than a 1:1 ratio in my class, but my school at large is nowhere near. Here are two technologies that I’ve found, and I’m hoping that together we can find more.

Linux Terminal Server Project (http://www.ltsp.org/)

Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) is designed to connect multiple low-cost terminals to a powerful server which does all of the processing and storage for all users. The terminals can be old computers or newer thin clients, as long as they have a basic processor, video card, network card, and keyboard and mouse support. They don’t need any drives, as storage is handled by the server. Input by users is sent over the network, the server does the processing, and the results are resent over the network for the terminal to display. Practically, it’s like having your own machine.

The advantage to this is in costs and maintenance. The server is the only machine that needs to be setup and maintained. All of the terminals are interchangeable, and with the drives removed, the most common failures are gone as well. A single quad-core machine acting as a server (about $700) should run about 30 clients at reasonable speed. If the terminals are powerful enough, some processing can be done on them to reduce the load on the server too. Just about any old computer can be a terminal, so the clients can be old inventory or donated machines. Ubuntu includes a LTSP configuration in the install disk, so setting up a basic lab can be done in just a few hours.

The issue with this setup is that it uses Linux. While the OS and applications are free, it may be difficult getting IT to manage the system. If the IT already supports Linux, it should be an easy implementation.

Userful (http://www2.userful.com/)

From what I can tell, Userful behaves similarly to an LTSP environment, but instead of dummy boxes connected by network to the server, a keyboard, mouse, and monitor is connected directly  to the server. It also uses Linux as the OS, so the same implications with software as the LTSP apply.

There are some performance advantages to this setup. Since each monitor/desktop has direct access to a video card, video performance is improved. Also, since a server is limited to about 10 user desktops, each user could have a larger slice of the processing power.  The company claims that it costs about $70 per user in hardware costs in addition to the server. Here’s my own cost estimate for a brand new lab of 30 machines. You would need 30 modules ($2100), 3 servers ($2100), 15 video cards ($900), 30 keyboards, mice, and monitors ($6000), which comes to $11100. I imagine that many schools would be able to scrounge the keyboards, mice and monitors, and that would reduce the cost significantly, to just over $5000.

If you know of other options, I’d love to see more solutions for schools looking to expand their computer offerings.

Following up on the OSS Module activity by Group 6, I wanted to note that OpenOffice has posted its version 3.2beta today.

Apparently this version corrects many of the formatting issues with document interoperability that have been the barrier to entry for many, including me.

The blog post about the OO 3.2beta is here:

OpenOffice 3.2beta

I’m currently downloading this version to see whether it addresses my issues.  I would love to walk the “open” talk completely, but document formatting is an issue.  Let’s hope it’s good news.

Please view the article (link below): 
Is your school ready for one to one computing?

Handhelds, laptops, tablet PCs…Which is best for your school? Guest columnist Elizabeth Sky-McIlvain offers a simple rubric for administrators, teachers, and parents to use when evaluating their school’s readiness for one-to-one computing. Print this rubric and share it with your entire school community.

Education World ® Technology Center: One-to-One Computing.

Join in the discussion at our Module 7 NING site:

Sorry for my delayed post, I was in Bali, Indonesia for the last week and although I brought my laptop, I had very few opportunities for internet access, connecting (and a slow connection at that) when I was in the main city of Kuta.

First of all, great work Group 6! I really enjoyed learning about OSS. Since I was in Indonesia, I decided to focus on this country’s use of OSS.

 OSS is starting to becoming popular in Indonesia with more Indonesian people using this free software. The government is looking towards the development of OSS as a way to reduce the billions of dollars being spent on software from foreign vendors and as a major prevention against piracy. The biggest difficulties are that Internet access is limited (only the big cities, some universities don’t have internet), the high cost of computers and the language used in the software.

 The Open Source Contributors Group (OSCG) was founded is maintained by people at the Informatics Engineering Department, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia http://www.itb.ac.id/en/. Anyone can contribute in this open source software development and technology enhancement group by contributing his/her works, ideas, opinions, and/or suggestions.

 The following are some of the institutes’ students early projects: (see this report for more information)  

gx-admin

This is a generic web-based interface for UNIX system administration using any browser that supports tables and forms. gx-admin was designed to be generic and able to configure any kinds of UNIX text-based system files. The configuration for this application itself is on a text file that enables users to add as many configurations as possible. gx-admin consists of a simple web server and a number of CGI programs which directly update system files. The web server and all CGI programs are written in Perl version 5, and only use the standard perl modules.

Pegasus

An indexing web robot that can be used to index some defined urls, a range of IP addresses, or even the whole web. Pegasus can be executed with a web browser (for an interactive interface) or straightly from the shell with valid arguments. It will send a request for a HTML page, parse the HTML page, save some significant information and then follow all the links in that page and repeat the process ‘recursively’. Pegasus will store the information on a database with PostgreSQL as its Database Management System. The database can be used for various purposes, such as search engine’s database for a website, or a private database which can be used to search information offline. Pegasus was written in Perl version 5.

 RTSimula

This is a suite of programs that simulate the behavior of railroad hardware model. The simulator is truly real-time and intended to be used for the course of Real-time Programming. RTSimula currently consists of three different programs: the simulator – runs on Real-time Linux – doing the simulation by calculating some parameters provided by users, a monitor – runs on X-Window – drawing crude visualization of the trains and railways, and a simple controller program. The whole suite of programs (and the documentations) were written using OSS: Linux, Real-time Linux, and GTK+. All programs were written using C language.

 Unicorn

This is a subject guide that has a search engine for its main facility. The search engine was developed to search information on a database as a result from Pegasus’ indexing process. Unicorn uses various techniques to search through the database, such as simple search, exact phrase search, and a wildcard search. Users can also define the options for the search process, including the search sequence and a time range of the last-modified date from a page in the database. Unicorn was written in Perl version 5.

Finally, here is a short video (not in english) that is used to campaign for Indonesia to go open source. 

View Module 7 feed

Group 6, congratulations for the great work. Content was very much informative and engaging.

In this post, I’ll briefly try to reflect to one or more of the blog discussion topics you raised. From my own experience working for commercial IT companies, the OSS do exists in Egypt but with lower market share if compared to commercial software. There could be many reasons but the most obvious is the political power that international/global IT companies have established so far. For Example, company like IBM has established a research and commercial branch in Egypt since 1954, with this very early presence you can expect the type of relations IBM has with local government. Companies like Microsoft and Oracle had also established very strong connection with the government here. The driver for this type of partnership is a Win-Win situation, where commercial companies would offer very special prices and discounts as part of national-wide agreements, I recall few years ago there was an offer for college students to have Microsoft Office for less than $10. Of course with the economy of scale and future expansion would make such a deal justifiable. Initiatives to train K-12 teachers for almost zero cost encourages the ministry of education here to participate in Intel Future Teacher program, which mainly adopt the WinTel (Windows running over Intel processor) setup.

Another point I like to reflect on, is Moodle as open source. As M6 content showed, there are many ways to compare OSS with Commercial in terms of maintenance. Where I work now, we do offer Moodle services for our customers (Universities in the Middle East region). I’m always very careful when I promote Moodle to any prospect and make sure to set the right expectation. Many would be deceived that because it’s OSS there would be no hidden costs. On the contrary, you have to be prepared to host Moodle as if it’s a commercial software. You either need to have your own pool of resources who are very much capable of supporting Moodle and able to integrate it with other campus applications (like the Student Information System), or you should have a commercial agreement for support and maintenance with commercial company. That’s why beside Moodle.org , there’s Moodle.COM (the commercial arm of Moodle). But Moodle as OSS saves the customer the up front investment of purchasing users license, an excellent option to redirect part of the technology budget to other resources (hardware or other commercial applications). Nevertheless, I’ve ran into customers who don’t want to hear the word OSS !!, they want commercial and commercial only solutions, simply they want to deal with “real” single owner (a mortar and brick company) rather than virtual multiple owners – that is in thousands or even in millions -.

Still the OSS is attracting many developers here in Egypt and this is only one example http://www.eglug.org/  it’s the GNU Linux chapter in Egypt. Also I know of many other small companies who built their solution on top of OSS, biggest example I can think of web portals and content management solutions on top of Drupal and Joomla.

After taking a quick look at open office.org it seems to me that there are many similarities with Microsoft office.  Now, I believe in students learning how to use computer technologies in schools.  Most businesses require employees to use their software for communication and development of presentations.  If I owned a business I would not be interested in training workers on how to use a simple word processor.  I would expect that they would have been exposed to that during their education, especially in these times which we are relying more and more on technology in the working world.  

Having said that why is it that students need to use Microsoft Word?  After quickly looking at open office it seems to me that the interface is very similar to Word.  Why is it necessary to have students or schools pay for expensive proprietary products when they can just use the free OSS offered on the internet?  Open Office also states that their program is fully compatible with most other types of software so there shouldn’t be a problem transferring documents to Open Office from other programs.   There are most likely subtle differences between Open Office and Microsoft Word as well and between other applications from Open Office and the Microsoft suite.  In my opinion it is probably not going to be so great that it would cause a new hire to undergo intense training in Word in order to be able to use its basic functions. 

Besides this brings to mind a couple of years ago when I was working as a teacher and the entire school upgraded to the new Microsoft Office 2007 product.  The differences between the older version and the newer version were huge.  Myself as well as many co-workers were very distraught with the fact that our work production was slowed because we had to learn how to use a new program.  Things as simple as finding the line spacing format tab and the print preview button became frustrating examples of changes to the program that slowed us down as workers.  Not to mention there were problems with viewing older works from other word processors that made reading some students work impossible, I’m not even going to get into the frustrations with Power Point!  So even with new versions of PS coming out every few years workers are going to have to undergo some changes to what they are used to using anyway.  If employees are going to have to make changes anyway why not just encourage schools to use the free software for their students so they can cut down on their costs?  Better yet why don’t we have businesses using OSS technology and saving themselves money?

For those of you with your sleeves rolled up in the K-12 sector, I’m pleased to announce a prospective alternate path for your A3 assignment that is entirely optional.  It’s absolutely a one-time only, very special opportunity for those of you who are applying learning technologies in special ways in K-12 classrooms.

Tomorrow morning UBC will issue a press release regarding the UBC Global Minds Challenge.  UBC will award up to five (5) prizes of $2010 each to international K-12 projects that demonstrate innovative uses of learning technologies with respect to themes resonating with the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.  All projects are posted on the 2010 Winter Games website in the Education Project Showcase area.  The deadline for submission of projects is December 19, 2009.

The UBC Faculty of Education has been collaborating for six years with the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) to conceive and now realize the learning potentials of the upcoming 2010 Winter Games.  The UBC Global Minds Challenge is one dimension of this collaboration which we aim to establish as an enduring legacy of the 2010 Games.

For those of you wishing to take this on for A3, the basic idea is that your A3 can be an appropriate project that you’ve completed with your classroom already, or that you are able to complete and submit before November 29th (yes, we’ll keep the ETEC522 schedule, thank you!).    We will keep the rubric for A3 as assigned, only that the Pitch and and Executive summary would be your submission to the Challenge, and you’ll email a separate Critical EVA and Self-Evaluation to me.

Have a look (please ignore the guy in the video at the UBC site!) and email me if you have any questions.

Thanks!

DavidV