Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Gtk-recordmydesktop quits and says "can't write to file"

If gtk-recordmydesktop suddenly quits and says "can't write to file" when you click Record try the following. Click on "Advanced" button.



Then "Files" tab, and "Save as" button. Change the Working directory by selecting a new directory for your temporary files. Then try recording again.



I've experienced this when Gtk-recordmydesktop or recordmydesktop was upgraded to the getdeb package. Gtk-recordmydesktop is the GUI of recordmydesktop. If the above fails, you may simply open a terminal button and type:

recordmydesktop

type the following for help and options.

recordmydesktop --help
and
info recordmydesktop

Monday, March 23, 2009

Moodle versus Loosely Coupled Teaching

Martin Weller in 2007 blogged that the LMS is dead. Well three years after, the Moodle LMS is still alive and kicking.

Is there really a contradiction here? Loosely Coupled Teaching (LCT) relies on services and Moodle can be considered just one of those services that can be strung together with other tools. In fact Moodle is very extensible and 3rd party tools had implemented single-sign-on as well as MoodleNet. An example is the Mahara electronic portfolio. Moodle can harvest rss feeds with the remote feed block. What Moodle can't do (yet?) is open up it's own modules for embedding in external sites, although it can publish rss feeds for some modules.

What about LCT what can it do that Moodle can't. Well one thing is that it is not going to die with one server. Two, given limited resources of distance education institutions in developing countries, LCT affords the use of multimedia rich and bandwidth/cpu hungry tools like video streaming. But then again, with "object embed" enabled (not recommended by Moodle), moodle can embed anything on the net.

At UPOU we tried this approach in our class EDDE221: Design & Evaluation of Multimedia Materials. Some of the tools we used included Moodle, Multiply, YouTube, Skype, Etherpad and other online services that my classmates used that I was not aware of. I tried to keep tabs of it all with Google Reader and my Gmail.

From the perspective of a student, the same problems raised by Weller cropped up. The first is Authentication. Not all of the services implement OpenID, and after six passwords my brain is already in a state of amnesia. The other is student tracking. Heck, we were a 15 something class and it was difficult to keep track of everything how much more if let's say my own 200 plus undergraduate students went online with this "loosely couple design". Even with Moodle integration, this is one of the hurdles that has yet to be resolved. How to securely pass around student tracking and grading.

So I guess Moodle will still be around. Even in a "loosely coupled" networked teaching/learning design there is a need for centrality or a hub. And Moodle can fit this hub. Even if you don't use any of it's activities, you can use it as a student tracker and a jump-off point for authentication (logging in).

Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Moodle Course Creator Certificate (MCCC) as Performance Benchmark for Teachers

Moodle is a very successful "free software" learning management system (LMS). It is currently being used by UKOU and UPOU (and 51,596 sites from 206 countries as of today).

Moodle is offering a certification program called the Moodle Course Creator Certificate. What I like about this program is it lists performance criteria for a course creator. The eight MCCC skill sets are (MCC Skill Sets overview):
  • Environmental technology (has to do with the client-server environment of the LMS)
  • Generic Moodle skills
  • Moodle Blocks
  • Using Resources
  • Using Activities
  • Media and content
  • Participant management
  • Course management
"A successful MCCC candidate will: "Demonstrate competence in using the Moodle Course Management System to design, create, deliver, and manage courses." (Moodle Certification Guiding Principles)

I am not actually going to take the MCCC yet because of four things: first, I don't have the money yet. I would need to finish my Master of Distance Education degree to free up some resources. Second, I am waiting for a Moodle Administrators Certificate (MAC). Third, I am waiting for the landmark Moodle 2.0. And last but not the least, I got an 80% in the sample quiz. I definitely need to review my Moodle skills.

So what I am going to do is blog about my review of Moodle following the excellent MCCC performance benchmark. The 1.9 skills sets are available here in pdf (you may need to register): http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=7183.

Btw I am going to try to extend this skill set with the concept of "loosely coupled teaching" and "loosely joined" course design.

Going back to Moodle, I am currently comparing the look and feel of it in three browsers (environmental technology) available to Ubuntu Intrepid. These are Firefox, Konqueror and Opera. It's always good to start with the basics as advance users take it for granted. I will try to report on that later.

See you in my next post :-)...

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Transactional Distance Theory vs. Connectivism: Which is the Unifying Theory of Distance Education? Musings of a simple minded teacher .

This is not a scholarly response to Gokool-Ramdoo's "Beyond the Theoretical Impasse: Extending the applications of Transactional Distance Theory" and Kop and Hill's "Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?". My understanding of Transactional Distance Theory (TDT) and Connectivism is somewhat shallow and probably heretical. I am merely stating here a commentary based on impressions and gut feel (not very intelligent huh? :-)). But I do need a theory for my special project in Masters of Distance Education, and these two seem to be the only ones that had emerged from online distance education rather than being borrowed from face-to-face teaching pedagogy.

The reason why I am reacting to these two journal articles that both appeared in the 2008 issue of IRRODL is that I was intrigued by the idea that one of these may be a unifying theory for Distance Education.

What got my attention was when Sushita Gokool-Ramdoo (2008) wrote:

"The premise of this article is that the Transactional Distance Theory (TDT) should be accepted as a global theory for the further development of distance education. Despite the fact that a transactional approach seems to be consciously or unconsciously adopted by theorists and practitioners alike, the reluctance to recognise it as a global theory has plunged distance education into a theoretical impasse from whence there has not been much development."


My understanding of "global theory" is that Gokool-Ramdoo is claiming that TDT is the unifying theory in DE. Much like the Theory of Relativity for Physics.

What is TDT?

TDT centers around the idea of transactional distance. What is transactional distance, pray tell? According to its main proponent Michael G. Moore (1997), it is not geographic distance but "psychological and communications space" between teacher and student. My simple brain understand this that whenever the course is designed such that the teacher and student perceive a wider transactional distance then learning is ineefective, and vice versa.

Moore (1997) that there are three sets of "macro-factors" that determines the width of transactional distance. They are:

  • Structure
  • Dialogue
  • Learner Autonomy

I think the formula is that higher structure increases TD, more dialogue decreases TD. So structure is proportional to TD (which is bad?) while dialogue is inversely proportional, (which is good?). Higher learner autonomy is needed when you have less structure and more dialogue, while lower learner autonomy (more control by teacher or institution) is needed when the course is designed with more structure and less dialogue. (I hope I got that correct.)

Simple isn't it?

Gokool-Ramdoo said that a global, comprehensive theory explicates all activities pertaining to distance education. And that Moore’s Transactional Distance Theory [is] the global theory that can explicate and ensure the sustainability of distance education in a technology-driven world.

What bothers me with that claim is the very simplicity of the learning phenomena that TDT is trying to explain. It appears to me that it focuses on a teacher-student relationship (pychologically) and assume a static content (or is it only me that assumes the assume that?). But the problem here is that the complexity of a networked learning environment had been chopped off. It reminds me of a classroom environment projected to distance education (a teacher and a student) without looking at the the classroom with no walls and no boundaries. Tha classroom that spills out into the world were dialogue does not only occur between teacher and student but also with the world.

The way TDT is logically structured reminds me of Eucledian geometry and descriptive statistics. Btw numerical statistics is the quantitative tool for measuring TD. The main problem with theories that are patterned after Eucledian geometry is that there is that in order to go beyond it you need to change the assumptions and create a new universe of ideas like Non-Eucledian Geometry and it's intersection of parallel lines.

On the other hand Connectivism's mathematical tool is graph theory. Graph theory as applied to Social Network Analysis claims to visualize facts about a network that numerical statistics cannot present. And in the same line connectivism to me appears to present the bigger picture, the more complex structure of distance education learning than TDT. It looks to me more like the global theory than TDT.

What is connectivism?

Frankly my dear, I have no idea. Sometimes I understand George Siemens and Stephen Downes but most of the time I don't. And when I read Kop and Hill's "Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?" I have this gut feel that they don't get it either. (or am I just projecting)

All their convoluted definitions and criteria for a theory made my head swirl. As far as my simple minded brain cells tells me Connectivism claims that (actually Siemens) "the learning is the network." (Downes as cited in Kop & Hill) And that to learn is to create connections.

In fact Kop & Hill's question (their title) doesn't make sense to me at all. All their criteria for a theory seems alien to connectivism. Connectivism is not about sui generis theory building, but about "innovation in assembly" (was that Tim O'Reilly's phrase?). It's not constructing knowledge from thin air, but connecting ideas both prior and new knowledge, within and without. While reading their work I can't help feel that they were trying to put new wine into an old wine skin. I think connectivism doesn't care where it's been, but only where it's going.

Aside from this, I believe connectivism does not only informs us about learning but informs it's own method of theory or construct building. It connects and disconnects ideas to itself, and I don't think Downes and Siemens can stop it's metamorphosis after they had brought it to life.

But I would agree with Kop and Hill that connectivism is not a "separate learning theory in and of its own right". In fact I don't think it's a theory at all but rather a "learning model". A simplified abstraction of learning, much like Watson and Cricks DNA model for Biology.

In conclusion I feel that this learning model has a better chance of breaking the theoretical impasse than TDT. But I intend to keep reading, perhaps there is some synthesis at the end of this tunnel.

Hoping for your reaction.

Reference:

Moore, M. "Theory of transactional distance." Keegan, D., ed. "Theoretical Principles of Distance Education (1997), Routledge, pp. 22-38. Retrieved March 21, 2009, from http://www.aged.tamu.edu/research/readings/Distance/1997MooreTransDistance.pdf


Gokool-Ramdoo, S. (2008). Beyond the Theoretical Impasse: Extending the applications of Transactional Distance Theory. In The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning,9 [3]. Retrieved March 21, 2009, from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/541/1148.

Kop, R., & Hill, A. (2008). Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past? In The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9 [3]. Retrieved March 21, 2009, http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/523/1103.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Debugmode Wink ;-) on Ubuntu Intrepid

Update: As of Nov. 4, 2009 the wink.deb file in this page is not installable in Ubuntu Karmic Koala because 9.10 dropped libstdc++5 and is now using libstdc++6. Perhaps compiling a new deb package against libstdc++6 can be done but I don't have the time to test that yet. In the mean time readers are advised to install wine in Karmic and then the windows installer of wink. Wink version 2.0's sound recorder does not work in Ubuntu Karmic as far as I know, but the screen capture does work.

I consider screencasting tools as a workhorse for developing digital instructional content for distance education. Two of the best that is available for Ubuntu GNU/Linux are recordmydesktop and wink.

Screenshot of Wink

Wink is neither a "free software" nor an opensource software. But it is freeware. It's license states that:

"This program and the accompanied DLLs/plugins are FREEWARE. You can use it for personal, business, educational or any other need of yours, subject to ... restrictions:"

So if you're sensitive about licenses then stick to recordmydesktop.

Recordmydesktop produces theora-vorbis videos in ogg containers usually with the extension .ogv. The video can then be converted with mencoder to any other format (e.g. avi). On the other hand Wink produces flash swf applets. SWF's advantage over videos is having a smaller file. 20-30 MB of video may be equivalent to 5 MB of SWF with the same content.

Aside from this, swf allows some interactivity. Wink allows you two Goto Buttons aside from Next/Previous Buttons that allows you to jump to a frame. According to the Wink User Guide:

"This enables the creation of more complex flows though a presentation than just a linear flow from start to finish. If you are showing two ways to do a particular action in your presentation, you can capture screenshots of both ways and give the end user the option to choose which way he/she wants to see.

Another use would be if there is both some basic knowledge and more advanced knowledge in a presentation. Here it would be possible to make the option to jump directly to the advanced knowledge if the user already knows the basic stuff." (Madsen and Kumar, 17-18)

Wink in Ubuntu Intrepid

The Wink in Ubuntu Intrepid is older than that available for Windoze. It's currently Wink 1.5 build 1060. The main feature lacking in this version is the inability to record voice simultaneously with screencapture.

But even without that feature it's still a great software. Your user guide should be available in your computer at /usr/share/doc/wink/Wink User Guide.pdf.gz. And you can look at tutorials by clicking the help menu->View Tutorial Project 1. It will first ask you to render the tutorial. The preferences dialogue box will pop up and will ask you to put the path of your browser. Type the following in the box labeled "External HTML viewer path...":

/usr/bin/firefox


Your tutorials reside at /usr/lib/wink/Samples/ (make sure to type Samples and not samples in your file browser because Ubuntu Linux is case sensitive). There you will find a sample.wnk, tutorial.wnk, and websample.wnk. You may want to open each in Wink.

Installing Wink on Ubuntu Intrepid AMD64


Wink does not have an ubuntu package for amd64 (ubuntu version not your chip; an amd64 machine can run i386 or amd64 flavors of ubuntu) , it only has for the i386 version. If you try to install the i386 wink, it will result in error in architecture.

First off install the following package:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Further instructions are here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=938838. Or just download the deb package I prepared following the said instructions here:

wink.deb (2.86 mb)

After downloading. Right-click and install with Gdebi or in a terminal window type:


dpkg -i wink.deb


Have fun (^-^)


Reference:

Bent Moller Madsen, & Satish Kumar. S. (2003-2004). Debugmode 1.5. Wink User Guide [PDF].

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

How to install eXe on an Ubuntu Intrepid AMD64

Update: As of Nov. 4, 2009 I do not recommend python2.5-exe package be installed in Ubuntu Karmic Koala even with dpkg --force-architecture --force-depends. Doing so will result in a blank window. It may have something to do with the name change in python2.5-zopeinterface to pythong2.5-zope.interface. It may not be just an addition of a period but may also be changes in the zope package itself. Still need time to check this out. In the meantime you may install wine and then install the windows version of exe.

The eXe package for ubuntu at http://eduforge.org/frs/download.php/842/python2.5-exe_1.04.0.3532-ubuntu1_i386.deb is only for i386. If one tries to install this on an Ubuntu AMD64 there will be an architecture error displayed.

Download the latest package of eXe for linux here: http://eduforge.org/frs/?group_id=20&release_id=20.

Install ia32-libs first, so that the Ubuntu amd64 can run i386 packages. Also make sure you have python-zopeinterface, python-twisted and python-nevow installed. Yo can open a terminal and copy paste the following code:


sudo apt-get install ia32-libs python-zopeinterface python-twisted python-nevow

Then cd to where you downloaded the eXe package and in the terminal, install exe with this code (replace the name of the file with what you have downloaded from Eduforge):

sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture python2.5-exe_1.04.0.3532-ubuntu1_i386.deb

Then fire up eXe by typing exe in the terminal window. Of course if your using i386 flavor of Ubuntu you'll just dpkg -i python2.5-exe.xxx.deb.

Here's a video tutorial from mescareal on how to install it in Windoze:


Monday, March 16, 2009

How to install the OpenMovie Editor effects plugin in Ubuntu Intrepid

OpenMovie Editor is probably the easiest non-linear video editor available in Ubuntu. It is available at http://www.openmovieeditor.org/.

Here's a quick video tutorial about it from oracle2025:



Unfortunately, the effects shown on the video above cannot be done with Ubuntu out-of-the-box because the effects plugin package frei0r is not installed.

You'll need the libgavl1 library from here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/libgavl1
or get the libgavl1 and frei0r plugins from Darwin Bautista's archive here: https://launchpad.net/~baudm/+archive/ppa

Install the relevant .deb packages for your architecture (e.g. i386 or amd64) with Gdebi. Voila! You can now play with OME's effects. Later on I'll explore it's application in teaching.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Reuse, Remix and Mashup Instructional Materials

Teachers always have too much to do, and too little time to do it. We find it hard to find enough time to create new instructional materials. Most of the time we rely on old textbooks. But at times we find it's content too old, or out of sync with our method of teaching, and even dissatisfying to our learning objectives.

We need a faster approach to developing and deploying flexible instructional materials. And we need it cheap but high quality. What should we do?

Reuse, remix and mashup instructional materials freely available in the world wide web with what we have locally in the school.




Reuse Free Content


Where do we find free content? And in what form? There are two types, reusable resources could just be images and text from Wikipedia, or it could come in the form of SCORM and IMS packages. Learning objects (LO) packaged in SCORM and IMS can be thought of as video game cartridges or even CD's. You know they have a lot of information in them but you'll never know until you have a player. So LOs need players. Here is an example of a SCORM module that I have made: http://matangdilis.moodle4free.com/mod/scorm/view.php?id=12 . You might need to login as guest and check preview than hit the enter button to play it.

The difference between Learning Resources and Learning Objects, is that the former are simple static things like pdf files, images, sound, etc.; while LOs are more interactive, they may contain activities and quizzes to name a few.

You may also download whole courses or parts of it from sites like Merlot, MITOpenCourseWare, or for higher education courses like engineering at Stanford. Some of the best schools in the world are offering free stuff out there you wouldn't believe. It's just a google away.

Just make sure you read the license of what you're using.

Mashup

Once you have your free content, you can use free or opensource software to mix it with what you have. You can download for free a set of tools from Edubuntu. Or if you're into multimedia IM you may want to use UbuntuStudio tools.

If your teaching via distance education you may want to mashup with free online services. You would be familiar with mashup if you'd ever embedded a YouTube video in your site before. Now even quizzes can be embedded for free, like this great example from MySTudiyo.




Can you can imagine what you can do with Picassa Web Albums, YouTube and a lot more.

Some of the great software featured in my video project at UPOU above can be found here:

Creating a Planet: Blender 3d http://www.blender.org
Solar system demo: Celestia http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Constellations: Stellarium http://stellarium.org/
Geometry - Geobra http://www.geogebra.org/cms/
Chemistry - Kalzium http://edu.kde.org/kalzium/

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Open & Free Educational Tools: A micro pamphlet

What is Open Educational Resources?

"OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge." (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation)

What is OpenCourseWare?

OCW is a term applied to course materials created by universities and shared freely with the world via the internet. (Wikipedia)

According to the website of the OCW Consortium, an OCW project (Wikipedia):

  • is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses.
  • is available for use and adaptation under an open license.
  • does not typically provide certification or access to instructors.
What is Open Source Software?

Generally it is a software that allows access to the source code. But according to the "Open Source Initiative" it also has criteria for distribution which can be found here: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

What is Free Software?

Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer”. (Free Software Foundation)

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. (Free Software Foundation)

What is Open Access Publishing

Open Access is relevant to accessing scholarly journals. Open access publishing is the publication of material in such a way that it is available to all potential users without financial or other barriers. (Wikipedia)

What is Open Instruction?


The term is not common, but the idea was tested in the Connectivism & Connective Knowledge course opened to the public by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. The course can be found here http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/.

What is Copyright?

I am not a lawyer so the following is for information only. Each country has it's own copyright laws so see your lawyer for any real case.

Copyright has no definition. (Amador, p.2) Generally it includes five exclusive rights with respect to the copyrighted work (Amador, 367):
  1. reproduce
  2. distribute
  3. perform
  4. display
  5. prepare derivative works

What is a Copyright License?

A license is a written document, a contract assigning or transferring the above rights to others. These rights may be transferred separately or assigned individually (Amador, 368). There are two types of licenses, exclusive and non-exclusive.

In an exclusive license, the copyright holder permits the licensee to use the protected material for a specific use and further promises that the same permission will not be given to others. (Amador, p.371) It has to be granted in the form of writing.

A nonexclusive license permits the use of a copyrighted work in a particular manner but the same may also be granted to others. (Amador, 372)

Some popular licenses that give teachers and students access to free and open educational tools and resources include: GNU GPL, GNU GFDL, and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike.


The terms above are the fundamental principles underlying open educational tools that will be commented on in this blog.



Ref:

Amador, V.B. (1998). Copyright under the Intellectual Property Code. Philippines: Rex.

Coar, K. (2006). The Open source definition. Retrieved March 14, 2009, from http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd.

Open access (publishing). (2009, March 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 04:04, March 14, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Open_access_(publishing)&oldid=274912273

Open educational resources (OER) - making high quality educational content and tools freely available on the web.
(2009). The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Retrieved March 14, 2009 from http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/Education/OER.

OpenCourseWare. (2009, March 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:40, March 14, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OpenCourseWare&oldid=276484840

Free Software Foundation. (2009) The GNU operating system. Retrieved March 14, 2009, from http://www.gnu.org/.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Tinkering with Student Assessment Tools

I grew up in a town that was lo-tech, a rural place where there were no public libraries nor bookstores. Information was not only not open and free, but there was just no information available for further study of the world. The only source of reading materials was the newsstand that sells tabloids, local comics and magazines. This was a place where a teen's leisure hours are spent swimming in the river, playing pool or watching the mango trees bear fruit.1

And that was during the 1980's!

When I was a child, I've never seen computers. They were the stuff found in comics and sci-fi television. School's didn't have them either. The first time I got to touch one was in the late eighties. My cousin's had an 8086 clone, and we played games with it.

When I was in college I wanted to be a physicist or an engineer. But destructively experimenting with atoms was too expensive. After shifting courses, and majors I ended up being an education student. During that time the major educational technology used in the classroom was the photocopier i.e. teachers would hand out copies of their readings. But we did have some "introduction to computers" courses and I was introduced to the Apple 1. The one with a wooden case, single sided 51/2 inches floppy, and green monochrome monitors.

My first computer was a used Korean 80286 clone. Which I destroyed within a few months and swapped with a used 80386. With the 286 I was able to program in Pascal a very simple program to compute my grades because I hated using the calculator. The program is text based and would ask the user to simply input a series of numbers and when the last grade is typed, it sums it up and multiply the weights. After showing the output on the screen I manually copied the grades to my class record.

I probably went through all the major models of the Intel PC except the Pentium 2. And all of them were junk. And all of them were what I would call "Frankenstein" computers, with surplus parts sourced from here and there. With a P3 I programmed in VB macro my excel sheet to automatically calculate grades while I was sick for two weeks in the early 2000's. This was one of my first attempts at creating a distributable GPL'ed tool for my collegues. Unfortunately no one was interested in using it, except me.

Later on I used a program called WebGrades by Rasul Shafikov which seems no longer available on the Net. It was written in PHP and I used it to display my student's grades in my former site timawa.org. It is not a tracker or calculator but simply displayed manually calculated grades to a specific logged-in student.

In 2005 I managed to put up Moodle at my defunct site tagalog.ws (which is now at http://matangdilis.moodle4free.com) and used it's automated Gradebook. With it, computation was automated but the output did not match the grading system of my school. And because I am the only one running Moodle in my school I am not that motivated to customize it.

I am currently thinking of porting my VB excel code to Openoffice Macros but I still don't have enough time to sit down and study that language.

I am not a programmer nor a computer scientist. But because I'm a teacher who creates his own tools, in a sense a tool maker I tinker a lot with educational technology. This is possible because bits are cheaper than atoms. Looking back, my current student assessment tools are a far cry from my Pascal program. It made my work a little bit easier.

Paaralan

Paaralan is the Tagalog word for school.

Hello World!

This is where I will comment about tinkering open educational technology, and related topics.
 
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.