Dave’s Educational Blog » Blog Archive » Opensim/Drupal integration for education - proposal and call for help

Opensim/Drupal integration for education - proposal and call for help
June 24, 2008 – 11:05 pm

Well… i’m finally getting my teeth back into opensim and finding that there are a couple of things i’d like to get built over the next couple of months. We’ve already gotten a good start on the automated installer for opensim, but what i’d really like to do now is attempt an integration with drupal. I’ll be keeping my running requirements list for that integration on the openhabitat project page and will hopefully pop a few updates into here from time to time.

What I need
I need two things.

1. I need a good drupal/opensim programmer. Someone familiar with both platforms who can spearhead the drupal integration (or, if you like opensim integration).
2. I need some sense that there are other folks in the British Higher Education community who would find this integration compelling for an application to the emerge community for extra funding.

Your Virtual Ph.D. - Popular Science

Want to master a new computer language? Brush up on your calculus? Learn how to fix your car? No sweat. With the vast array of college courses and podcasts available online, the apple of knowledge is ripe for the clicking. Here, we've narrowed the options to our favorites—the best of the geeky best, from free podcasts and lectures to accredited distance-learning programs from major universities.

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This list is really a mashup of the work done by others - see shoutouts (references) below:

• 1. Gold Farmer
• 2. New Media Producer
• 3. Professional Reviewers
• 4. Video Syndication, RSS, Photo, VoIP, Consultants
• 5. Clothing Label Crafter
• 6. Senior Interface Hacker
• 7. Micro Investor
• 8. Community Curator
• 9. Ruby on Rails Developer
• 10. PHP Ninja

shoutouts (references)

webworkerdaily.com
technologyevangelist.com
fastcompany.com
oreillynet.com

..And where can you get started training for one of these positions?

more later

What about finding a position?

• jobs.37signals.com
• crunchboard.com
• weblog.rubyonrails.org/jobs
• craigslist.org/

more later

Interesting Snippets - a photoset on Flickr This is a fantastic set of images related to the state of the web, communications, and new media. Each image is accompanied by a thought provoking quote. I thought this would be perfect for an anticipatory set for a new media presentation, or an introductory visual for a shared discussion on topics related to new media or web 2.0. Enjoy!

I've been watching the growing number of universities adopting drupal for their content management, podcasting, blogging and wiki integration needs. Here's my current list.

• UT at Austin - Department of Rhetoric and Writing - http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/
• Rice University - http://sa.rice.edu/
• Arizona State University - http://www.asu.edu/
• UNC Charlotte University Center Information Technology - http://ucit01.uncc.edu
• Brigham Young University (BYU) – Computer Science Department http://cs.byu.edu/
• Bradley University - http://slane.bradley.edu/
• Washington University in St. Louis - http://artsci.wustl.edu/
• University of Calgary - http://www.ucalgary.ca/
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) http://fab.cba.mit.edu/central/
• Purdue University - http://www.digitalparlor.org/pwenglish/
• Michigan State University - Nondestructive Evaluation Laboratory - http://www.egr.msu.edu/ndel/home

Other Drupal Sites related to Innovation in Education include:

• connect.educause.edu - http://connect.educause.edu/
• The International Center for Integrative Studies (ICIS) - http://www.icisonline.org/
• IDEAL (Integrated Data Enhancing Arizona's Learning) - https://www.ideal.azed.gov
• Texas Digital Library - http://www.tdl.org/

If you know of any others - give us a shout.

Open Culture: The Hottest Course on iTunes (and the Future of Digital Education)

I'll be using this podcast, the Understanding Computers course from Harvard in my Computer Systems inservice. This will serve a number of purposes...to enhance my own instruction, and to open educators to the value of podcasting in education.

Linux's Education Push
When it comes to desktop PCs, schools could be the first, real place where Linux grabs hold.

"So Dad," he asked. "What is the difference between Linux and Windows?" I tried to explain but it was a waste of breath. "What difference do you see?" I asked back.

"Nothing, really."

Is College Worth It?

This article takes a look at the decision of investing in an education. It doesn't consider the social aspect of the college experience, but simply the return on the investment.

The analysis begins by assessing a college education purely as a
monetary investment. Undoubtedly, there are other benefits beyond money
to attend college, but it's such an enormous economic decision that it
seems foolish to not fully understand the financial ramifications and
use that as a primary factor in the decision process.

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I'm definitely into the hybrid thing lately. Hybrid instruction not only in the sense of implementation: online and face to face learning through moodle (http://moodle.org) and short class lectures/discussions, but also philosophically in a sense of allowing students to have some type of control over the curriculum, and direction of their own study. Every moodle assignment I offer, is open to interpretation and creativity. This is why I believe that rubrics can potentially take the fun out of learning. They limit learners to the parameters made by the teacher. Especially when we are teaching technoloies that are more native to the learner than the educator.

This article takes a neutral approach to - what I will call the Sudbury model, but really applies to many other free, democratic school models. I agree with both sides of the argument, and I have settled on balance and moderation of both freedom and standardization. This combined with a balance between face to face and elearning and I think we might make some real progress in my classroom.
Free Radicals

In the country's most alternative classrooms, there's no such thing as a report card.

Sudbury schools are only one variety of so-called free, or democratic, schools, which eschew most conventions of traditional education in favor of a much more radical program. At most free schools, literally every decision, from those about staff hiring and firing to determinations concerning rules, facilities, and budget issues, is made by the entire school community in a one-person, one-vote process. There are no tests, no report cards, no requirements, and no classes -- and no curriculum, other than what students set for themselves.

It is a philosophy that may strike the uninitiated as far-fetched, if not irresponsible, but it seems to be working.......

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Congratulations to my students for their great work on iBoerne.com. Our submission for Student Showcase
has been accepted for the 2007 TCEA Convention !

iBoerne.com: an Interactive Online Game for Programming Students | jessecravens.com