sudo life

One of the coolest games I’ve ever played is Team Fortress 2.   While it’s tons of fun to play, one issue with it is that it doesn’t come with a manual.  Just over a week ago, reddit user ‘lolard’ posted this to the new to tf2 subreddit, asking us to solve this problem.  The reddit community responded.  We fired up an etherpad clone and got to work.  Here’s what we accomplished:

• In less than 24 hours, we had written nearly 8,000 words.
• Today, we’re close 13,000 words.
• More than 50 people have contributed in some way.
• 28 people have contributed substantially.
• Gone through at least two major transitions in the style of writing: from 2nd person to third person, and from the voice being used.
• 4 different websites (3 etherpad clones and crocodoc.com)
• My copy of the manual is 56 pages long, formatted.
• There is now a website: http://tf2manual.net/
• We were flexible enough to neutralize trolls who deleted all our work.

The list can go on.  The message is clear: this has been a massive collaborative work that has produced something amazing in a very short amount of time.  I’ve been involved throughout the whole process, stepping up soon after lolard made the first post.  From this perspective, I’ve learned several things.

1. The future is live collaboration at the level etherpad (and it’s clones) tried to provide.  Wiki’s are last generation technology that only slow things down.
2. None of the etherpad clones were able to fully function at our level of collaboration, including the new Google Documents.  We used ietherpad, openetherpad, sync.in, and I privately tested Google Documents.  All of them experienced difficulties dealing with both the number of collaborators and the size of the document.  Sync.in functioned the best of the bunch.
3. Crocodoc is awesome, but does not scale up to groups of more than 2-3, especially for a 50 page document.  It’s flash driven, and was extremely slow.  It claims to be ‘live’ in the sense of etherpad, but it really isn’t at the levels we were using it.  I had to refresh the page to make sure I was viewing all of the changes.
4. Do not use the time slider on any of the etherpad clones.  This basically made the document useless for everyone over the next 20 minutes as the website did who knows what.  This feature worked great in the original etherpad, so I’m not sure why these clones have trouble with it.  Even sync.in had this trouble.

I can’t emphasize enough how much this changed my view of collaboration.  This has been collaboration how it’s supposed to be done.  While reflecting upon this experience, I’ve identified several reasons I think this went so well.

1. We’re passionate about the subject.  Of course this is important and must appear on the list.
2. We’re passionate about the community.  This is not necessarily an extension of the first point.
3. There was no barrier of entry.  Once the pad was created, we could simply spread the URL around, and once people arrived on that page, they could start editing.  There was no registration, no waiting.  They could immediately jump in and start writing.  This was true for all the etherpad clones as well as crocodoc, and I applaud all of those websites for that.
4. The latest work was immediately available, down to the keystroke.  We could see exactly what others were typing as they were typing it.  Corrections could be done within seconds, and they were not always done by the person who made the mistake.
5. Version control was transparent.  We didn’t have to think about keeping track of a history; the application did it for us.  Hypothetically, we could even playback that entire history as it played out, but that feature was broken on every website we tried.

The biggest theme is that while we were all very good with technology, the technology was completely transparent.  We didn’t have to think about it (except when it broke, like with the time slider).  We just focused on what we were trying to do, and then we did it.

It’s been an amazing experience so far, and while this project is far from over, our parts are winding down.  Soon, we’ll have a nice manual for team fortress 2 users to go with all this valuable experience we’ve gained.

education collaboration, education, gaming, teaching, technology

The iPad has been making a splash in the gadget world, and I’ve been strongly tempted more than once to go ahead and purchase one.  For now, though, I’ve been able to resist, and I am hoping to hold out for a Notion Ink Adam.  Pixel Qi screen, Rotatable Camera capable of recording HD, HDMI out, Android with Multitouch?  I’m sold.  But this post isn’t about that.  It’s about one of the reasons I want a tablet so bad:  Being able to use it while teaching.

Currently there are a few tablets that are available for use in the classroom.  The problem is “Tablet” is used in a bit of a different sense.  The tablet I have available to me is the Airliner from Smartboard.  This piece of hardware is truly a piece of crap.  Half the time it won’t connect to the computer, and when it does connect, the software fails to function correctly.  There is a better way to handle this type of functionality, and I think I’ve found one.

One issue with using a tablet like this is usability.  You’re controlling the computer through the tablet, but you can’t look at it.  It would be better if you could get a copy of the screen on the tablet itself.  Well, with these new tablet computers, it’s possible to do that.  You just need to setup a VNC server on the computer you want to connect to, and a VNC client on the tablet.

Well, I had the opportunity to borrow one of our faculty member’s iPads and go ahead and try this out.  There’s a lot of idiocy in this institution about network security and such, but I was able to finagle (to use a technical term) the server installation such that I didn’t have to go through IT to enable this functionality.  However, the iPad was having trouble connecting.  So I decided to use another computer in to test the connection.

I didn’t have a VNC client on any of the student machines available, but I did have one on my desktop computer upstairs. So I logged into one of the student machines, and used the Microsoft Remote desktop software to connect to my workstation.  Then I was able to use the VNC client on my workstation to remote into the instructor machine at the front of the classroom.  Everything worked perfectly.

Then I had a thought.  We run a piece of software called iTalc that enables us to view the screen of any of the students computers.  This piece of software is amazing, and I use it constantly while teaching, for diagnosing student problems, letting students demo different things from their computer, and proctoring tests, among other things.

So I opened up iTalc to open up the screen of the student’s computer I was on.

The circle was complete.  I was remoting in a complete circle using three different pieces of technology on three different computers.  I got a nice looking mirror effect on my computer, but I was also able to close it all down easily.  Here’s the final picture:

1. Student Machine -> My Workstation (using RDP)
2. My Workstation -> Instructor Machine (using VNC)
3. Instructor machine -> Student Machine (using iTalc)
4. The student machine was already connected to my Workstation.

Just a bit of fun.  Unfortunate the wireless bandwidth around here is so crappy the iPad was practically useless as a VNC client.  I’m going to have to figure out something else.

education apple, Tablets, teaching, technology

I’m now in my second year teaching, and while I’ve learned quite a bit, I’ve still got a ways to go.  Here are a few things I’ve learned so far though.

1. Students won’t do their readings if they’re not going to tested on it immediately.  Solution: require them to fill out worksheets concerning the readings as they do them.
2. Test questions need to explicitly ask for details, otherwise students will not provide them.
3. Nuances should sometimes be left unsaid, as they can confuse students.  There needs to be a balance between the basic required information, and the exceptions to the rule.
4. As a general rule, accepting late work is a bad idea.  Students will abuse it.
5. Bad class performance is most likely due to laziness and not inability to do the work.
6. Sometimes you do have students that really can’t cut it.  I have yet to learn of a good way to deal with that.
7. If you allow your students to be creative, they will blow your mind with their creations.
8. Your actions have the biggest effect on morale.  You need to be able to make jokes and get them to laugh.
9. You cannot be afraid to be wrong.
10. Have discussion questions prepared ahead of time.  These need to be open ended, and force them to bring many different things together.

Lessons I’ve learned from observing other classes.

1. Don’t treat your students as though they are lazy or stupid.
2. A harsh word can completely ruin a semester, and force you to lose all credibility.
3. If morale gets low, you better get creative, because low morale means low learning.
4. If you find yourself ranting about your students more often that praising them, you probably need to reconsider your teaching strategies. And take a break.  Students aren’t actually that bad.
5. Don’t treat your students as though they are lazy or stupid.

It’s an ongoing process, but I think things are progressing pretty well.  I hope to keeping experimenting to see what works best.

education teaching

Beware Mexican Jumping Beans!  More on that at the end.

I’ve been woefully delinquent in blogging over the last few months, mainly because I haven’t had much to say. But now I’m starting to get into the swing of things again, and I’m preparing a post of education research that should be up in the next few days.  The summer has been very mixed so far, but here are some highlights:

• Visited my friend Tara in San Antonio.  I stayed on the River Walk, and it was amazing.  I hope I get to go back sometime, probably in Winter!
• Rented a cabin on a small fishing lake in Eastern Kansas.  It was a nice way to get away for a while.  I spent the time rereading the Dresden Files, and finally read the latest book in the series.
• Had a tire blowout on the interstate.  Not fun, but I got through it, obviously.
• Getting back into the habit of going to the gym.  I hadn’t been in a few months, but now that I’m going again, I’m starting to feel much better.
• My twitter use has exploded from where it was.  I’m starting to see the use, not only as a publishing platform, but also as a resource for information.  search.twitter.com has been extremely helpful in the last few months.
• Bought a new Sony 40 inch LCD television.  It’s incredibly awesome.  Got rid of my old TV.  Thinking about building a PC to connect to the TV to serve as a media center, and do things like stream Netflix and Hulu without using my laptop.
• In case I decide to stay in KC, I’ve started considering building a house instead of buying.  It’s been the fun thing to think about for the last week or so.
• 7 weeks left until I graduate with my Masters degree.  So I’ve started looking at possible Ph.D. programs, grants, and fellowships.
• I’m teaching two sections in the fall, one of them an evening course.
• Will probably upgrade to a new MBP sometime in the fall.
• I’ve gotten into poetry, both reading and writing.  Reading “Leaves of Grass” has been interesting.
• Still thinking about getting a dog. If I do, I’m going to either name it “Darwin” or “Schroedinger” (or “Ding” for short).  If it’s a beagle, then I will definitely name it Darwin.

Well, that’s basically been my life for the last few months.  I wrapped up teaching, and all my students passed, something I’m very proud of.  Now I’m anxious to see the student evaluations of my teaching.  I have no idea when those will appear.

I’m starting to get back into the home science swing of things too.  Hopefully will have something to post about my experimentations involving mexican jumping beans and the moth-like creatures that hatch from them in the coming days.

Personal summer, teaching

As I work through my Educational Technology Masters Degree, one of the things I’m very interested in is the use of video games for educational purposes.  So when I saw this article (pdf) entitled “Scientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds” a few months ago, I couldn’t wait to read it.

This particular study focused on the users of the popular massive multiplayer online role playing game (mmorpg) World of Warcraft, and specifically an online discussion forum used by players to communicate.  The abstract sums up their findings:

Eighty-six percent of the forum discussions were posts engaged in “social knowledge construction” rather than social banter. Over half of the posts evidenced systems based reasoning, one in ten evidenced model-based reasoning, and 65% displayed an evaluative epistemology in which knowledge is treated as an open-ended process of evaluation and argument.

The paper itself it very accessible, and doesn’t take long to read.  The findings are surprising, and I think important for educators to be aware of.  Since I’m not much of a gamer, I was unaware of the level of detail and care gamers put into playing this game, although after reading “Everything Bad is Good For You” last fall, this really shouldn’t have been much of a surprise.  From the paper, here is an example of what I’m talking about:

The calculations correctly show that mind flay [spell]
receives just as much +damage percentage as mind
blast. However mind blast has a 1.5 second cast time,
and mind flay has a 3 second cast time. And therefore
mind flay receives half the dps [damage per second]
boost it should. (post #2609.43)

There are two things about this kind of thinking that really demonstrates something I hope I can foster in my own classroom: the depth of analysis, and social knowledge construction.  The user in this case, wasn’t satisfied by the damages given by a particular attack; they took it a step further and came up with their own method of identifying what kind attack is better (damage per second).  While this particular example seems simple, since it only involves one issue (a single tactical decision), it’s important to realize that this is just a piece of a much larger discussion that involved many more variables. From later in the paper, here is an example of a more complicated, user generated equation:

For Mindflay, SW:P, and presumpably VT [3 priest spells]:

Damage = (base_spell_damage + modifier * damage_gear) *darkness * weaving * shadowform *misery

The second thing they did was post their analysis in a forum, generating discussion and debate.

It was this paper that inspired me last semester, when I was assigned to create a lesson plan that integrated some form of technology, to use Schorched3D as a way for students to create models for learning about trajectory and range.  While I wasn’t able to give this lesson to actual students, and it’s outside the field I actually teach, I think this kind of integration will be necessary in the classrooms of today and tomorrow.

For further reading, there is a wealth of information to be found in the citations of this article.  I also recommend the book “Everything Bad is Good for You.”  Finally, check out Constance Steinkuehler’s website.  She’s done a lot of great work in this area.

References

1. Steinkeuhler, Constance & Duncan, Sean (2008). Scientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds Journal of Science Education and Technology, 17 (6), 530-543

Uncategorized education, Philosophy, Science, teaching, thinking

photo credit: TheArtGuy

This post contains BREAKING NEWS.

I haven’t been blogging lately, or keeping up with all my blog subscriptions.  While my Google Reader is telling my I merely have 37 unread posts, this is at least partly due to the judicious use of “mark all as read” button.  But why is this so?  Well, I have my final two grad courses for this semester to finish up this week and the next, and I”m also putting the “finishing” touches on the CMS I’ve written for my School.  But yesterday something was offered to me, and today it was confirmed that has thrown a huge load of work on my shoulders.  I don’t mind one bit, however, because this is something I am *really* looking forward to.  What is it?

*I* am teaching a class here at the University next semester.  My *own* class!  It’s in the catalog.  Students are registering for classes.  I keep pinching myself.  This is *actually happening*.

So what class is it that has my heart thumping in equal parts fear and excitement?  TE385, also known as “Teaching and Learning with Technology.”  Basically I’m going to teach future teachers how to be more effective students and teachers (and people in general) by utilizing technology.

I have many ideas about what I want to cover in this class.  I’m not the only person teaching this course; there are other sections, so there is a basic set of things I need to cover, and then we can move beyond that.  I’ve started the process of creating the syllabus, and the collosal size of this task is starting to set in.  I have a lot of work to do in the next month if this class is going to be successful.

Personal education, teaching