Several people have written to ask me for a copy of the paper I allude to in Dimdim vs. Elluminate: Fight!

Well, the status of that paper has been “in press” since it was accepted by TechTrends in December 2009. I was hoping to wait until it was “officially” published in TechTrends before publishing it here, but that journal does not seem to have a grasp on the time-sensitivity of the information it publishes – despite its name. The journal editors also have not responded to my emails inquiring about when we can expect to see our manuscript in print. *Sigh*

So, without further ado, here is a preprint version in PDF format:

Lavolette, E., Venable, M., Gose, E., & Huang, P. (in press). Comparing synchronous virtual classrooms: Student, instructor and course designer perspectives. Tech Trends.

When I try a web-conferencing product, I expect to find myself in a sterile demo room – alone and left to my own devices.

When I tried BigBlueButton, I was momentarily confused.

Many people were in the demo room. They were talking, text-chatting, pointing at slides – and one of the developers, Fred Dixon, starting giving me the run down on the features! When I explained my interest in the product, he called me on the phone to give me more information. Fred, thanks for the great work and personal attention!

BigBlueButton worked extremely smoothly in the demo. If you’ve used a web-conferencing system like Elluminate Live! or Dimdim, it’s highly intuitive. Although it does not have as many features as either of those systems, Fred told me that they are coming in future releases. And yes, the developers DO hang out in the demo room all day, and they are happy to tell you more about their product!

For me, the icing on the cake is that BigBlueButton is open source!

(h/t to Free Technology for Teachers)

Hello, Ruby on Rails!

I know – the above app isn’t much, but oh, the time it took me to get it working!

I’ve been trying to follow a Lynda.com video tutorial on Ruby on Rails – just the part about getting started! – for a couple of weeks now. The first stumbling block is that the tutorial was done on a Mac, and it doesn’t give very detailed advice for Windows users. (I am running Windows Vista, not as a lifestyle choice, but because I am poor. Don’t judge!) Here is what I tried:

• Downloaded InstantRails. (Go ahead – just try to find their download page! I dare you!) Although everything seemed to be working here, commands like “script/generate controller say” didn’t work. Well, if that doesn’t work, it’s a wash.
• Installed Ubuntu as a virtual machine. Followed several tutorials on how to install RoR, but all seemed to leave me with database connection problems.
• Installed Turnkey Rails as a virtual machine. Oh, the joy I felt when I realized that to view my RoR app, I needed to use the browser on my non-virtual machine (i.e., Vista)! Why isn’t that made explicit anywhere? Once you figure that out, the GUI for Turnkey is really great – and the documentation is crap. I could not connect properly to the database with this one either.
• Installed Bitnami as a virtual machine. Ugh, this is one is frustrating. I don’t even want to talk about it. The documentation is worse than for Turnkey.

So, one InstantRails and three virtual machines later, I was about ready to give up. However, I was feeling a bit better informed about how RoR functions because of all my failed interactions with it, so I decided to give InstantRails one more try. For anyone out there who is struggling and Googling vainly, here is what you do:

1. You’re starting with a Windows Vista system.
2. Download InstantRails. Choose the .zip file closest to the top of the page.
3. Extract InstantRails somewhere convenient, such as a folder on the desktop. It’ll be staying there, rather than installing itself somewhere else. Get yourself a beverage because the extraction will take some time.
4. Open the extracted folder and double-click “InstantRails.exe.”
5. A dialog box will pop up. Just agree to let it do its thing.
6. The program will look like this:
   
7. If MySQL doesn’t say “Started” after a few seconds, click “MySQL” and choose “kill.” That should fix it!
8. Now, to build your very own “Hello World” app, click the “I” button on the far left.
9. Choose “Rails Applications” -> “Manage Rails Applications.”
10. There are some prebuilt applications here that you can play with, but let’s face it – that’s not why you’ve installed RoR. Click “Create New Rails App…”
11. A command prompt will pop up. Type the command below, where “myapp” is the name of the app you are going to create:

    rails myapp

12. A list of lines should be spat out, each starting with “create.” Go back to the “Rails Applications” window and click “Refresh” at the bottom. “myapp” should now appear in the list.
13. Go back to the command prompt and type the following command to change into the directory of your new app:

    cd myapp

14. Type the following command to generate a controller called “say.” Note that you need to start the command with “ruby” or it won’t work! The direction of the slash doesn’t seem to matter, however. (Both \ and / worked for me.)

    ruby script\generate controller say

15. Now you can edit the “say” controller to define an action called “hello.” Inside the InstantRails folder on your desktop, use a text editor to open “rails_apps” -> “myapp” -> “app” ->  “controllers” -> “say_controller.rb.”
16. Add two lines to make it look like this:

    class SayController < ApplicationController
       def hello

       end
    end

17. Save the file and navigate to “rails_apps” -> “myapp” -> “app” ->  “views” -> “say.” Make a new file here called “hello.html.erb” that contains the following text:

    <html>

        <head>

           <title>Hello, World!</title>

       </head>

        <body>

           <p>Hello, World!</p>

        </body>

    </html>

18. Back in the “Rails Applications” window, check the box next to your app, and click “Start with Mongrel.”
19. Your app is now running, but how to view it? Click “Configure Startup Mode” to find the address to put into your browser. Mine is http://127.0.0.1:3000. Put that address in to get the standard “Welcome Aboard” page. Append to it the name of your controller and view to see your app in action:

    http://127.0.0.1:3000/say/hello

20. That’s it! You’ve got InstantRails working, and it’s time to actually learn RoR now. At least, that’s my plan!

A short article (plus slideshow) that I wrote about Google Reader is currently the monthly feature on the Distance Course Design and Consulting Group website. Of course, it’s my job to write them, but you could check it out anyway.

Those are my hands in the pictures, by the way – and you can see more of them if you check out the origami frog instructable.

(Can anyone guess why the glow on my hands is red instead of green? I’ll give you a free DCDC frog template if you get it right!)

Click on the screenshot to check out an example game show. You'll need the latest Flash player to see it.

I finished making my second Flash application for the DCDC! (My first is here.) My goals were as follows:

1. Create a Jeopardy-style game that instructors could use in a synchronous environment (such as Elluminate, Dimdim, or a face-to-face classroom).
2. Make the application accessible to instructors. This means that instructors shouldn’t need to know how to use Adobe Flash or even own a copy of Flash to be able to create a quiz and customize its appearance. I achieved this by linking all text and colors to an XML file, which can be edited using any text editor.
3. Make the application open and freely available. The application is published under the BSD, and the accompanying instructions are published under a Creative Commons license (BY/NC/SA).

All three goals accomplished! And here is the DCDC Game Show Maker as a .zip file. The file includes instructions on how to use it, which I hope are clear. Please comment below on how the application and the instructions could be improved! Or email me, or send me a tweet.

I learned a lot from the first application that I applied to this one, so I think this second one is much more cleanly written. And I know I can do an even better job on my next try. Any suggestions for what to tackle? What kinds of games do you wish you could play in your online classes (as a student, teacher, or whatever)?

A caveat and a request: I tested this, of course, and everything seems to work fine for me. But I am a new programmer, and I probably didn’t anticipate what YOU are about to do with it. Please let me know about the problems you run into so that I can fix them. Or even better, send me a new version that includes the fixes and improvements you’ve made. That’s one of the great things about open source, right? (I will probably be updating the .zip file as my colleagues work with it, too – check back here!)

I was surprised and honored to find that The Web Laureate had linked to my post about Dimdim vs. Elluminate within a lovely poem. Apparently, this is what the Web Laureate does. I’ll describe it as Web 2.0 through the eyes of a poet. But you should check it out for yourself.

In tribute, here is a haiku by yours truly. You can guess your own title.

"Fairy Ring Champignons" by polandeze, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.

Toadstools: alone are
dull, worthless; but together
round a fairy ring

The tale of my HP 2133 Mini-Note is long and frustrating. I love it because it is small and light – it’s a netbook, and weighs less than 3 pounds, including the battery and AC adapter. I hate it because it is constantly breaking. I bought it in May of 2008, and during the 9 months since then, it has needed to have its main board (HP-speak for motherboard?) replaced twice.

However, I’m not writing this post to complain about the quality of my HP hardware. My point is to explain how to install Ubuntu 8.10 on the HP 2133 Mini-Note.

The first and second main boards of my Mini-Note allowed you to make a very simple addition to the boot options line when you boot the normal Ubuntu image CD. Oh, those were the days!

The machine that I got back from HP last week was different. When I tried the usual fix, it spat out a psychedelic array of colors and symbols, like a thing possessed. Clearly, the graphics driver wasn’t working.

Luckily, I found a blog post that laid out the basics of what I needed to do: get the alternate Ubuntu installer image, install it, boot into recovery mode, drop to a root shell, and compile and install the latest OpenChrome snapshot. Okay, sure, sounds simple enough…

So, for anyone who finds that adding

xforcevesa

to the boot options line does NOT allow you to successfully install Ubuntu on your Mini-Note, here are the steps that I followed to get it to work. You’ll need an external optical drive if you want to play along. I’m also assuming that you have a working operating system already installed on the Mini-Note.

1. Download a bit torrent client. I was using Vista, and I grabbed BitTorrent (easy enough to remember!). It’s free and open source!
2. Click this link to the ubuntu-8.10-alternate-i386.iso.torrent. It should open in your bit torrent client and start downloading.
3. After the download has finished, burn the image to a CD. (It’s not just a data CD – it must be an ISO image.)
4. Before you reboot, record your IP address and the list of related numbers. In Vista, you can find them by following steps 1-3 in this article. You’ll need them if you don’t know how to configure your network, like I didn’t.
5. Put the CD in your external optical drive and boot up the Mini-Note. Hit F9 to enter the boot options menu and choose the optical drive. Ubuntu should load a text-based installer. Answer the questions as they come. The only question I had trouble with was the one about networking. I ended up skipping that step, which was probably a mistake. If you know how to correctly handle it, please leave me a comment below!
6. Ubuntu will take its sweet time partitioning your drive and installing. Be patient.
7. When it’s finished, the machine will reboot. Choose “recovery mode” from the options. You’ll get to enjoy watching some scrolling text for a while.
8. When the scrolling text ends, you will have a list of recovery options. Nothing will help, but feel free to try them. The option that you really want is “drop to a root shell.” Choose it.
9. Now, you’re at a root prompt. You have no GUI to protect you from the raw OS. Enjoy it. You’re a hacker now. If you need some commands, the Ubuntu Cheat Sheet may be useful.
10. The first order of business is to get the networking going. Don’t even think about wireless – just bit the bullet and plug that Mini-Note into the router. I used the information in Ubuntu Networking Configuration Using Command Line. But this information will not help you if you cannot figure out where in the file structure you are supposed to be when you enter the commands. So, enter

    cd ..
    ls

    if you see a directory named

    etc

    in the list, you are in the right place. If you don’t, repeat the two above commands. You should see it now.

11. Type the following command:

    vi /etc/network/interfaces

12. Oh noes! Now you are in a new, even more hostile environment than the command line. This is vi, and it is the text editor from hell. Use these commands to fight back. You will need the IP address and those other numbers you copied from Vista. Plug them into the file where they make sense, following this pattern:

    # The primary network interface
    auto eth0
    iface eth0 inet static
    address 192.168.3.90
    gateway 192.168.3.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    network 192.168.3.0
    broadcast 192.168.3.255

13. Save the file, then enter the following on the command line to restart networking:

    /etc/init.d/networking restart

14. In theory, you are now networking. At this point, I tested it out by entering

    apt-get update

    and watching the pretty lines scrolling by, telling me that everything was working properly. What a rush! When it’s done, you can enter

    apt-get upgrade

    to install updates. I don’t think that these steps are necessary to the process at hand, but you’re going to need to stall updates later, anyway. So why not get started?

15. Now, you need to get that pesky OpenChrome driver. But don’t be fooled into thinking that you can simply download it. Oh, no. We’ll be following the instructions available here. First, you need a bunch of tools. Get them by entering the following commands:

    apt-get install build-essential subversion autoconf automake1.9 libtool
    apt-get build-dep xserver-xorg-video-openchrome

16. Next, get the OpenChrome files that you’ll use to compile the driver:

    svn checkout http://svn.openchrome.org/svn/trunk openchrome

17. Change to the openchrome directory that you just created:

    cd openchrome

18. Enter this command:

    ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr

    What is it doing as those lines scroll by? Oh, what a mystery!

19. Compile and install OpenChrome with the following commands:

    make
    make install

20. Now, you’ve got this awesome graphics driver that is going to work! But Ubuntu doesn’t know it yet. To tell Ubuntu about OpenChrome, you’re going to have to brave the hell of vi again. Take a deep breath, and enter

    cd ..
    ls

    until you are back in the directory that contains

    etc

    Now, enter

    vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

21. This file has sections, and in the section labeled “Device”, you need to add the following line:

    Driver             "openchrome"

    Save and quit vi. And smile because you won’t need vi again!

22. You’re done! Reboot the Mini-Note and start Ubuntu normally. Listen…do you hear drums? That’s the sound of sweet, sweet success.
23. You might now have weird networking problems. I did. My solution was to clean out

    /etc/network/interfaces

    Now that you have the GUI working, you can use gedit instead of vi. (Joy!) Open a terminal window and type this command:

    sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces

24. Edit the file to look like this:

    # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
    # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
    
    # The loopback network interface

25. You probably need to restart. Listen for those drums again! And let me know if it worked for you.

Update [3/3/09]: The file /etc/network/interfaces should look like this in the end:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Update [3/7/09]: Forget everything I wrote about fixing the networking. I’m still not sure what’s up with it. I ended up installing wicd to replace Network Manager. I think that it’s working better, but time will tell.

Click on the screenshot to check out an example quiz. You'll need the latest Flash player to see it.

Over the past several months, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to devote part of my working hours to learning to use Adobe Flash (CS4). Because I was a complete beginner, I worked through some basic Lynda.com tutorials about Flash and ActionScript 3.0 before striking out on my own. I set the following four goals for my output.

1. Reproduce the functionality of the quiz template that came with older (CS 3) versions of Flash. This template allows you to make drag-and-drop, multiple-choice (single- and multiple-answer), short-answer (text input), and true-or-false questions.
2. Improve upon the pedagogical value of the functionality by allowing more individualized feedback. For example, if the user chose the wrong answer in a multiple choice question, I wanted to be able to give feedback that explained why that answer was wrong. My inspiration for this came from the Hot Potatoes suite.
3. Make the application accessible to instructors. This means that instructors shouldn’t need to know how to use Flash or even own a copy of Adobe Flash to be able to create a quiz and customize its appearance. I achieved this by linking all text, colors, and images to an XML file, which can be edited using any text editor.
4. Make the application open and freely available. This was easy to accomplish thanks to the open-mindedness of my boss, Melissa, who is a fellow supporter of open source. The way she saw the situation, our group (the Distance Course Design & Consulting Group, aka DCDC) is funded by a federal grant – so the work that we produce should be shared with the taxpayers who ultimately fund the grant. (Yes! How true!) The quiz-maker application is published under the BSD, and the accompanying instructions are published under a Creative Commons license (BY/NC/SA).

I was able to accomplish all four of these goals! So, here is the DCDC Flash Quiz Maker as a .zip file. The file includes instructions on how to use it, which I hope are clear. Please comment below on how the application and the instructions could be improved! Or email me, or send me a tweet.

Some caveats:

• I envision this as an application to create teaching/learning tools, rather than assessing knowledge. That is why a range of individualized feedback is possible. This individualized feedback means that answers are not necessarily 100% right or wrong. This fact, combined with controls that allow the user to try a given question an unlimited number of times and freely move back and forth among the questions, means that a final score would be meaningless. So, no score can be recorded or reported to the user or anyone else.
• Bugs are guaranteed! I tested this, of course, and everything seems to work fine for me. But this is my first attempt at programming, and I probably didn’t anticipate what YOU are about to do with it. Please let me know about the problems you run into so that I can fix them. Or even better, send me a new version that includes the fixes and improvements you’ve made. That’s one of the great things about open source, right?

My colleagues and I at the Distance Course Design & Consulting Group presented some research at the Hawaii Educational Research Association conference earlier this month, and based on that, I put together the VoiceThread presentation embedded below. (By the way, “Elizabeth Lavolette”? Yeah, that’s my alter-ego.)

The research is a comparison of two virtual classroom setups: Elluminate Live! and Dimdim. Both Elluminate and Dimdim offer free and paid versions, but we are comparing the paid version of Elluminate with the free version of Dimdim. One purpose is to explore the feasibility of a free product replacing a paid one. Another purpose is to explore the potential of open-source software. (Dimdim has an open-source version that can be hosted on your own server. We haven’t tried that yet, but we plan to!) We are still doing research, but our preliminary results are in the presentation below, also available here.

Update (4/23/2010): You can now find a PDF of the paper related to this presentation in the post Dimdim vs. Elluminate: Round 2.

Oh, that’s right. No need to adjust your set. What you see above is Windows XP running in a little window on Ubuntu 8.10. And yes, that’s iTunes running in XP. If you squint, you can just barely make out the words up there at the top of iTunes: “iPhone sync is complete.” Oh, yes. I have successfully synced (sunk?) my iPhone within booting into Windows. The key piece of magic to do this is VirtualBox (PUEL, not OSE).

Next? Let’s see if I can completely rid my computer of the beast-that-is-Vista.