Education and Technology
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March 13, 2009 in Elgg, open source, Social Networking, Technology | 2 comments
Elgg 1.5 has been released by Curverider. Over the past few days, Elgg’s revisions to their Subversion repository had slowed as they put the finishing touches on the new release.
Elgg 1.5 is available as a package or from the subversion repository. This development means that I will return to my comparisons of Elgg and BuddyPress. It also signals developers, including myself, to update Elgg themes and plugins.
Tags: elgg 1.5
March 9, 2009 in Elgg, open source, Social Networking, Technology | 2 comments
Curverider released a second release candidate for Elgg 1.5 today. It can be downloaded as a tarball from their site, or you can get it from the subversion library. Release Candidate 2 brings about 40 new revisions to Elgg code since the release of the first Release Candidate last week.
March 5, 2009 in Elgg, open source, Social Networking, Technology | 6 comments
A release candidate for Elgg 1.5 was unvealed by the Curverider team today. Release candidates have been tested and are generally very stable. Nonetheless, Curverider does not recommend its use for production sites.
The core Elgg team has been working feverishly to squash remaining bugs and enhance Elgg’s performance. They have committed over 100 commits to their Subversion repository since Saturday.
I have personally tested earler incarnations of Elgg 1.5 and am glad to report that it works well. I am sure that anybody has worked with earlier versions of Elgg will be pleased with the latest. Stay tuned for another post highlighting more enhancements to the software.
February 28, 2009 in Elgg, open source, Social Networking, Technology | 6 comments
February is winding down in a few hours and many are awaiting Elgg 1.5. Whether or not they make the projected February isn’t important if you consider what the Curverider team has achieved in there progress to a much inproved social networking platform.
Elgg 1.2 was released in Decenber with Revision 2515. As of today, in the space of 2 months, they have committed 485 revisions to the code in their Subversion repository–an absolutely astounding feat!
Having tested Elgg 1.5 myself, I can tell you that its release is very close. The developers are determined to make this release as smooth and as free of bugs as possible. From what I can see remaining issues are largely minor.
I look forward to the release very soon. I am also a firm believer that it is better to delay a release than to push it out the door before it is the best it can be! Those who simply cannot wait can always check out the latest version in the Elgg repository. The usual caveat applies: don’t run trunk on a production site.
Tags: elgg 1.5
December 27, 2011 in DDI
Some of my colleagues and I have been looking ways to implement Data Driven Instruction (DDI), one of the components of the educational reform being implemented by NYSED’s Race to the Top. We had looked into packages such as LinkIt, but these comprehensive services are only interested in working with schools rather than individual teachers. [...]
August 22, 2010 in open source, Social Networking
I recently found another social networking server app through Twitter. As we know Ning recently changed its terms of service and is no longer offering free social networks. This sent a wave of panic throughout the educational technology community, accustomed to having “free” apps at their disposal. People immediately sought alternatives to Ning. Of course [...]
August 16, 2010 in multimedia, pedagogy, presentations
This is one of a number of posts exploring multimedia learning. I have been reading research on this topic with an eye toward improving my presentations and other multimedia instructional material. Here are earlier posts in order of creation: Text and graphics in Multimedia Presentations Multimedia Researcher Mayer on Slideware Graphics in Instructional Presentations In [...]
August 10, 2010 in multimedia, pedagogy, presentations, Technology
As I grapple with research trying to improve my instructional presentations, I have learned about Richard Mayer’s assertion that people learn better with words and graphics than just words alone. As a result, I have been investigating information about the role of graphics in learning. One natural extension of the reading that I have done [...]
August 9, 2010 in open knowledge, open source, Technology
Jim Groom just got me fired up again. Groom, in conjunction with Brian Lamb, wrote an important article in Educause entitled Never Mind the Edupunks; or, The Great Web 2.0 Swindle. The article laments the corporatization of Web 2.0 in education. The authors acknowledge the appeal and power of free online services offered by Google and [...]
July 19, 2010 in multimedia, open knowledge, pedagogy, presentations
The animated Chinese timeline shown my previous blog post was a demonstration of a workflow using proprietary software to make a stand alone animated timeline. While viewing the timeline several times, I started examining it through the prism of the research on multimedia learning that I have been reading–particularly that of Richard Mayer. One learning [...]
July 17, 2010 in multimedia, open knowledge
This is a fairly specialized procedure for users of Keynote and TimeLine 3D, both proprietary Mac programs. The important thing is that it results in something that could be a high quality OER. I had a couple requests for a how-to on building a timeline like the one shown below. Bee Doc’s Timeline 3D is [...]
July 12, 2010 in multimedia, open knowledge
If you have a Flickr account, one of the easiest ways to to contribute open educational resources (OERs) is to Creative Commons license your images. Once you have done so, your photographs will appear on Flickr’s Creative Commons search page according to the license that you have designated. This is quick and simple to do. [...]
July 10, 2010 in open knowledge
In general, teachers love freebies and actively seek them out. These free things range from blogs to web apps to lesson plans. I’d like to challenge teachers to go beyond just consuming freebies to producing them as well. Teachers create great resources all the time in the course of their practice. We could go a [...]
July 7, 2010 in multimedia, presentations
Richard Mayer is one of the leading researchers on the impact of multimedia on learning. However, in his two books, Multimedia Learning and e-Learning (coauthored by Ruth Colvin Clark), slideware is not often mentioned. Multimedia Learning he simply mentions PowerPoint presentations as an example of multimedia. Since I have ben exploring his research as a [...]
CommentPress
February 24, 2009 in open source, Social Networking, Technology, wordpress | 5 comments
I recently came across CommentPress. It’s a WordPress plugin that allows readers to comment on a post paragraph by paragraph. CommentPress looks like a very promising collaboration tool. CommentPress is on the cusp of a major upgrade from version 1.4.1 to 2.0. We will look at features in the current version, and preview Version 2.0.
Currently, CommentPress is a WP theme. Install it and activate it.
The resultant main page includes a table of contents on the left side, a “page” that you can customize in the center, and some widgets on the right. The meat of this comes when you clink a link to one of the posts.
Each paragraph has a “speech bubble” to the right of it. Click on that and you can view all the other comments on that paragraph. Comments can even be threaded. Whether or not there are comments already, there is a text field for entering comments.
As it stands, CommentPress works well. Yet the developers plan on giving it even greater flexibility with version 2.0 due out in a couple weeks. I had trouble with the beta on my server, so I can only write about what I have seen and read on their site.
Rather than just a theme, the new version will include 3 plugins and a theme that can work independently so you only use the components you need. You will be able to use it with most WordPress themes. The comment box can be dragged and dropped to any location on the page. There are also enhancements that improve CommentPress’s ability to work with changed text in the posts. I also understand that it will be more flexible in working with other widgets and plugins.
CommentPress’s potential in education and in other areas is great. The ability to annotate and critique text paragraph by paragraph make it much easier to focus a response to a given segment of text. It would work well for peer editing of student writing. Teachers could post a segment of text for students to read allowing them to respond to the text and other comments. I have installed CommentPress to facilitate discussion of our school’s web publishing policy.
I look forward to working with a new version of CommentPress, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it as it is today. As a bonus, the current version works with WPMU, and I hope the newer version will as well.
Tags: collaboration, commentpress, comments, wordpress, WPMU