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NYSED Tech Plan up for comments

November 1, 2009 in Policies, Technology | 1 comment

Last April, the New York State Department of Education (NYSED) embarked on an outreach campaign seeking input on their new draft technology plan. They started with a meeting leaders of major professional organizations. They set up a survey on their website and met with educational technology leaders at the NYSCATE leadership summit this summer. As planned they have been holding community forums throughout the state this fall.

As a practicing educator in New York State with a keen interest in education and technology, I applaud NYSED in creating such a plan and seeking input. The problem is that I have no notification of the plan and their outreach efforts through my school. I found out about the plan and survey though Twitter. I learned of the NYSED discussion at the NYSCATE Leadership Summit though NYSCATE and attended. I missed the community forums because I never received notification.

I, like others, feel that we need to further broaden the conversation and widen the avenues for input. To that end, I have created another blog based on the digressit WordPress plugin. The blog features the NYSED draft technology plan and is set up so that readers can comment upon it on a paragraph by paragraph level.

Please visit the blog and add your feedback. I will contact Larry Pasca the NYSED Technology Policy Coordinator once feedback begins to come in. Please pass the word to others that may be interested.

NYSED Goal 1: Accessible Digital Content

July 29, 2009 in Policies, Technology | 3 comments

The NYSED Technology Plan’s first goal addresses digital content:

Standards-based, accessible digital content supports all curricula for all learners.

Accessible is defined as: content available anywhere, easy to retrieve using multiple technology devices, and content is universally designed. Aligning digital content to the New York State learning standards is how we will ensure quality and relevance in the PreK-12 environment.

Learners and practitioners both need access to rich digital media. Alignment with standards help make appropriate content more easily accessed by all.

New York has moved in this direction already through the auspices of state public broadcasting stations. EDVideoOnline is a portal to PowerMediaPlus which provides teachers with access to downloadable video, audio, and images for use with their students. They also include worksheets and quizzes.

Unfortunately, this is a subset of what was available in the past. When I started using this program, it included full access to the Discovery Education library. Public stations scaled back the program to the current offerings. They said too few were using it to justify the expense. I didn’t see a lot of teachers using it either, but those who did were excited about it.

Beyond PowerMediaPlus and Discovery Education, New York needs go further in digitizing and providing access to its own holdings. New York museums and libraries hold a treasure trove of material. Some institutions have done a great job digitizing materials and providing access, while others have done little.

I hope this means access to more content in the future. Access to a broader audience is also essential. While everyone can access some of the material, students are shut out of PowerMediaPlus. This repository could provided a wealth of content for independent study, exploration, and working on assignments.

Access to digital content also encompasses licensing. Let me relate my own experience. I have spent countless hours creating media rich presentations for delivering engaging social studies lessons for my class. They include historical documents, images, maps, and embedded digital video. Under fair use, there is no question that I was legally using these materials for my own classroom.

I thought it would be great to share these materials with other practitioners throughout the state (and ideally beyond), so I contacted PowerMediaPlus about doing such. In essence, they replied that there was no way I could do such legally.

We need to be able share what we create with this digital media with other learners and practitioners. They need to be able to reuse and remix that work to adapt it to their individual needs. NYSED should explore Creative Commons Licensing for content that is state owned and that of state funded institutions. They need to negotiate for means to more broadly share the content they pay for through entities such as PowerMediaPlus. Further, it needs to create a platform to facilitate such sharing.

In conclusion, there is more to digital content than availability. There needs to be access and the ability to remix it and share with others.

I will continue a discussion of New York State’s Educational Technology Plan in future posts, including a discussion of each of the six broad goals. I look forward to hearing your comments.

Tags: access, creative commons, digital content, nysed, policy, powermediaplus, tech plan

Will NYSED Tweet?

July 27, 2009 in Policies, Social Networking, Technology | 3 comments

While I attended the NYSCATE Leadership Summit last week for a variety of reasons, the main motivation was to hear the New York State Education Department’s (NYSED) presentation on their proposed state technology plan. Beyond the presentation there were roundtable discussions to provide input and feedback followed by an opportunity to ask questions.

When the opportunity to ask questions arrived, I raised my hand. I told the them that I hadn’t heard about the proposed tech plan through regular channels, rather through Twitter. Then came the question: Would they consider setting up an account and using Twitter?

The answer: We’ll have to check with our counsel.

Let’s juxtapose this with Goal Two of the Statewide Technology Plan:

Learners, teachers, and administrators are proficient in the use of technology for learning.

Proficiency is defined, in large measure, by standards for desired levels of skills, knowledge and performance. Proficiency encompasses such areas as social networks and internet safety.

Apparently, while NYSED wants students, teachers, and administrators to use social networks, they fear doing so themselves. They seem flummoxed by the same issues that technology pioneering districts and practitioners have been wrestling with for years. The message is that NYSED regards the very activities in which they wish us to engage as legally questionable.

Educators know that good leadership involves modeling the desired behaviors. NYSED knows that and should do the same. Using social networking tools shows that they understand them. They could model what they regard as best practices.

To succeed NYSED needs to help cut through the systemic fear and uncertainty that runs from practitioner to district to BOCES and beyond. Hesitation is the enemy of change and innovation. We need some degree of guidance in what are acceptable practices.

Twitter is a simple tool. It’s a good place to start. The US Department of Education, Centers for Disease Control, and President Obama tweet. NYSED needs to tweet too.

I plan on a number of posts on aspects of the NYS Tech Plan soon. I’m eager to hear comments.

Tags: nyscate, nysed, tech plan, twitter

OpenGoo Web Office

March 21, 2009 in Technology, open source | 10 comments

My search for a decent online word processor has led me to another potential solution: OpenGoo. OpenGoo is an open source web office suite that also has some characteristics off a project manager. Version 1.3 has just been released. It includes the following tools:

Word Processor
Presentation
Task Lists
E-mail client
Calendars
Web Links
Contacts

A spreadsheet is reportedly in the works. OpenGoo is installed on an Apache server and requires PHP5 and MySQL 4.1 +. It also requires InnoDB support.

I had a great deal of difficulty getting OpenGoo up and running. First, I had to figure out how to enable InnoDB. If it is not enabled, you will need to edit etc/my.cnf deleting the line “skip-innodb,” then restart MySQL. If you are using a hosted account, your provider may not be willing to enable it for you. My second problem was that somehow OpenGoo does not play nice with the default Mod Security ruleset. I finally modified the Command Injection portion of the ruleset so that it no longer triggers my firewall.

Once all that was in place, installing OpenGoo was straightforward. You’ll need to create a database, upload the files, and browse to the opengoo/install directory. You will be prompted to fill in database information and create an admin account. Then, you are brought to a log in page. Once you log in, you are delivered to the Overview page:

goo_1

Since this is part of a search for an online word processor, that is what I looked at first.

goo_2

OpenGoo uses the FCKeditor that is commonly used as a text editor for the backend of many web based programs. The editor produces works with html files. It cannot open MS Word or Open Office files. It does work fairly well with word processors that can read and save html files. I was able to open and edit downloaded text files from OpenGoo with Word 04, the latest OpenOffice, TextEdit, and old versions of Pages (not versions 08 and 09) all on the Macintosh platform. In turn I was also able to create documents on my computer, save them as html, upload and work with them in OpenGoo.

I had better luck working with text across the various word processors than I had with eyeOS. I’m not sure that this was because it truly handles these files better, or because the documentation made it clearer what OpenGoo could or couldn’t work with. At least OpenGoo creates text filtes with a standard .html extension rather than .eyeos.

Like eyeOS, OpenGoo has a built in Presentation Editor called Slimey. Slimey is incredibly bare bones at Version 0.1. You cannot work with PowerPoint, Keynote, or Open Office files with it. I’m not sure how much further Slimey is going as it has almost been a year since it has been updated.

OpenGoo has a serviceable email client built in. Currently it only works with POP3 mail, but there are plans to develop the ability to work with IMAP and SSL giving it great flexibility. Once SSL capabilities are it may support Gmail.

goo_3

Open Goo as a number of features that one might find in project management software. It has a calendar component that allows individual users to confirm whether or not they can attend an event. There is a task manager that allows individuals to create and assign tasks, prioritize, track their progress, tag, attach objects, and track time spent on the task.

The administrative interface provides group and user management along with access control.

goo_4

It also allows you to enable and disable the various components, create workspaces, and more.

The installation requirements might make it impossible for many to set up. OpenGoo is clearly oriented toward the business environment. Some quick edits to the language files could change “companies” to classes or groups. There are a lot of features such as billing, that have no use in the school environment. It has good file upload and download tools that are a bit more obvious than those of eyeOS. While eyeOS is more attractive, OpenGoo generally has a more functional interface. While the word processor is a bit easier to use with regular word processors, it is still probably too difficult for student use. Access, group, and user control appears, at a quick glance, suitable for the K12 school environment. I think OpenGoo bears watching. I also plan on setting up accounts for my sons aged 10 and 13 to see how they respond to it.

Tags: eyeos, opengoo, word processor

Eyeing eyeOS

March 14, 2009 in Technology, open source | 8 comments

I continue to look for an online word processor that we could host from a server and dug up a few new items. One was eyeOS, a server based open source linux desktop with some bare bones applications. They describe it as a Cloud Computing Operating System.

eyeOS has no database so it only requires a server running php5. Get the package, unpack it on your computer and upload to the server. Alternatively, you can use SVN via ssh to transfer the files to the server. Next, browse to the eyeos/install and you get a very simple one step installer.

eye_1

Enter the password for root twice and enter a name for the site. You are also prompted to to allow or disallow public registration. The name and registration access can be changed easily after installing. Browse to your installation and log in.

eye_3

We have a desktop with a variety of tools:

Word Processor (of greatest interest).
Spreadsheet
Presentation Player
Calendar
Internal Messaging
A few games
Image Viewer
Browser
RSS Reader
FTP Client
Calculator

Other applications can also be added from the administrative interface.

eye_4

The Word Processor is the application of greatest interest.

eye_5

eyeOS sports a reasonably featured TinyMCE word processor with basic formatting that is certainly adequate for most purposes. The real test comes with transferring work to and from other word processors on local computers. eyeOS claims to support OpenOffice and Word document formats, but to realize this, OpenOffice must be installed on the server and it must be properly configured. Many on shared hosting do not have this option. When I started to look at the scant documentation, my eyes glazed over and I decided that it was more than I cared to handle without blocking out a significant chunk of time for the trial and error that this would require.

With the basic set up, there are still some options. First of all, one could use the clipboard to move text to and from eyeOS. Here are the results I got making a simple bulleted list In four Mac word processors: MS Word 2004, Pages 09, TextEdit (rtf mode), and the latest Open Office.

eye_21

None retained font characteristics. As you can see, the results are inconsistent. Using the clipboard to move test from eyeOS to local word processors does not retain text characteristics. It also converted the bullets to asterisks and converted the tabs into three spaces.

Attempts to upload and open a variety of word processing files and formats was fruitless. Files downloaded from eyeDocs are in html format. Word processors capable of working with html documents such as Open Office can work with these downloads.

Another important feature is that the file may be stored and accessed on the server through eyeOS. There are options to both upload and download files through the file manager interface. There is even an ftp client that comes with the default installation.

eye_6

eyeOS also sports a simple RSS Reader with categories.

eye_7

In addition there are Administrative controls. This allows you to create groups and manage users in a rudimentary form. Members of groups have a common repository in which they can share files.

eye_22

eyeOS is an attractive functional package that I believe has potential for use in the K12 arena in the future. While I could make the word processor work across formats in make shift ways, it is too complex and finicky to use with students. Perhaps with better documentation I will be able to configure Open Office on my server to give it greater flexibility in working with various file formats. I’ll be checking with eyeOS regularly to see if there has been progress that will make it viable for school use.

Tags: eyeos, linux, online word processor

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