The first group at the Summer Institute is talking about ways to do online collaboration. Has anyone really tried this in the wild? Our tech department at work has used a wiki with great success for online collaboration. (We’re using MediaWiki, the engine behind Wikipedia.) It’s not real-time, but we’ve found that relatively few collaborations really require synchronous communication.
Tag Archives: wiki
Choosing a Content Management System
Do you need a content management system (CMS) for your school or district Web site? Absolutely. In a world where Plone, Drupal, Mambo, and many other free and open source solutions exist, you would need to convince me that you shouldn’t use a CMS. It’s clear to me that individually maintained Web pages just don’t cut it anymore. By utilizing a CMS you can:
- distribute management of Web content to the persons and groups that are most responsible for it
- instantly improve your site’s design by utilizing one of the many templates that are typically provided with the CMS software
- gain immediate improvement in your site’s accessibility, usability, and standards compliance
- make your site searchable
- easily add blogging, wiki, and many other interesting features that will encourage collaboration (instant RSS!)
- improve access to information for everyone in your community
Adopting a CMS can be a daunting process. Do yourself a favor and check out the CMS Matrix and OpensourceCMS Web sites. They provide side-by-side comparisons of all of the most popular solutions and will help you get a sense of the scope of features that a CMS provides.
Anyone have any feedback on a particular solution that they’ve used? Post about your experiences (good or bad) and recommendations in the comments.
Buzzword alert: AJAX
It’s impossible to keep up with the acronyms that appear on the Web these days. One of the latest to show up on my radar screen is AJAX which stands for “Asynchronous Javascript and XML.” In a nutshell, AJAX describes a technique for building web applications that don’t necessarily act like web applications. If you’ve used the keyboard navigation in Gmail or the smooth map scrolling at Google Maps then you know what I’m talking about. Instead of continually loading entire Web pages like traditional Web-based applications (e.g., most online stores), AJAX apps usually fetch information in the background and respond more like desktop applications. If you’d like more geeky details, you might find the Wikipedia entry interesting.
So the next time a software vendor comes calling and advertises his application’s AJAX-compliance, you can be suitably unimpressed by his buzzword-compliance.
Update: Kottke’s got a post about how he’s using AJAX on the main page of his blog. More details about the technology if you’re interested.
I’ve been Tigerized
I have now emerged from the geek cave. Actually, my Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) installation went smoothly and I’ve been chugging along quite successfully since I finished the install last Saturday. There are a ton of new features, but my favorite so far is Spotlight, Apple’s system search tool. It’s lightening fast and very cool.
One interesting feature in Tiger server is the built-in blog tool based on blojsom. System administrators can enable a blog for a user with a click of the mouse. On the browser side, the newest version of Safari has some great RSS features built in. I’m still exploring the new goodies, but I won’t go into detail because Tiger reviews are a dime a dozen.
Comics for learning
The success of Frank Miller’s Sin City in theaters has brought the comic book genre into the spotlight. As a former Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil fan I was quite intrigued when I heard about Comic Life on the MAKE:DIYcast podcast this morning. Comic Life is a Mac OS X application that takes photos from iPhoto and lets you drag and drop your way to a comic book. Check out the Comic Life gallery for some examples.
This software has such amazing potential with kids. Can you imagine how geared up students would be to use this? Heck, I had a blast creating my first comic. (I created it very quickly. Please forgive the rampant silliness.) Who wouldn’t be motivated to do a writing project this way? Given that iPhoto can be used to manage any kind of image and not just digital photos, my brain is racing to think of uses for this software. Here’s the first off-the-top-of-the-head list:
- Science students create lab reports combining digital photos of an experiment with hand drawn or computer generated graphics explaining what’s going on. They could include their data analysis right in the “comic.”
- History students find some period costumes and re-enact a historically significant event.
- Students use Comic Life to create a storyboard of a video project including some sample dialog and key visual elements.
- Combine digital images and hand-drawn graphics in the same panel to send characters back in time or create giant ladybugs that can crush cars.
- Students create a comic book that explains their family history and combines old and new photos.
This software would be a great addition to the student laptops in our one-to-one computing project. The cost is very reasonable (especially for site licenses) and the potential is huge. This is easily the most fun I’ve had with a piece of software in a long time. If you’re reading this and think of a good project idea, post it in the comments. Let’s see if we can get a good list going.
Moodle update
I installed Moodle on a spare server last June as an experiment. Since my district was an online learning pioneer in Minnesota and continues to work in that area as part of the Northern Star Online collaborative, it seemed logical to see if some of our teachers who have gained experience teaching online might be interested in incorporating some of those skills into their face-to-face courses. The results, at least in terms of popularity, have been dramatic.
What began as a little-promoted experiment has turned into a system that serves nearly 1,600 students in 150 courses across the district. We’ve got teachers and students doing online forums, journaling, sharing links, making wikis, and using many of the other standard Moodle modules. Most of the teachers are using Moodle as a simple course Web page system, posting links to relevant Web sites and uploading course documents, but the flexibility of the Moodle system makes it possible to start simple and add more interactive elements later.
I don’t know how long we can sustain the current growth rate, but I look for Moodle to take off in our elementary schools next. The elementary teachers who are using it love how easy it is to assess their students’ writing. I’m also planning to explore how Moodle can be used to support online staff development. So much Moodling, so little time.
I’m an ADE
I got the word on Wednesday that I’ve been selected as an Apple Distinguished Educator for 2005. I’ll be heading out to Apple HQ in Cupertino in July for a week of professional development and will probably have opportunities to represent Apple at a few conferences here and there. I feel very fortunate to be selected because I know there are so many educators doing fantastic work with technology. With any luck, being an ADE will give me a chance to spread the word about blogs, wikis, open source, and all the other interesting technology I’m fortunate enough to get paid to work with every day.
Hacking Google Maps
Saw this today on Jon Udell’s weblog. It seems that with enough knowledge of javascripting, Flash, and access to a handheld GPS unit, it’s possible to create semi-animated walking or driving tour using the new Google Maps service. Jon, inspired by Matt’s work, has created a five-minute guided tour of an area near his home complete with voiceover narration, zooming in and out of the map, still images, and short video clips. Amazing!
My first thought is that this could be a great addition to the “soundseeing tours” that have become pretty popular in the podcasting world. I haven’t investigated far enough to know how complicated it is to make one of these Google Maps animations, but wouldn’t it be a great multimedia project idea for students? The project ideas are endless:
- Tours of the kids’ hometown with local landmarks and points of local history highlighted
- Virtual tours of places the kids have visited or would like to visit
- Recreations of historic trips
Jon’s blog appears to be thoroughly slashdotted at the moment. I’ll post an update as soon as I can get back to it.