Last friday and saturday I was in Trieste to teach a quick course on Java (11 hours). I was invited by Giorgio Pastore and Maria Peressi of the Università di Trieste.
My appox. 20 students were high-school teachers. Their background was some programming in other languages (mostly Delphi-Pascal, someone C, someone FORTRAN).
The challenge was to give them the main concepts of Object Oriented programming, programming with events, and to give them the basic ability to write some Java and hints about how to proceed on their own. Their final goal was to use the language to build applications useful for teaching (e.g. some simulated experiment).
The lectures were video-recorded with the EyA system built by Enrique Canessa and coworkers at the ICTP's Science Dissemination Unit, and were available on the web.
NOTE ADDED LATER: After a few days a student complained because the system had recorded also the breaks, and asked the videos to be removed from on-line access. It's a pity...
Monday, September 24, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Recover lost administrator password on Mac OsX
Easier than I expected...
Use the installation disk, and reboot the machine pressing the the C key whet the machine starts.
Proceed to a new OS installation, but not all the way! just go ahead until you have a menu bar on the top. In the menu bar choose "Utilities" and "Reset password".
Use the installation disk, and reboot the machine pressing the the C key whet the machine starts.
Proceed to a new OS installation, but not all the way! just go ahead until you have a menu bar on the top. In the menu bar choose "Utilities" and "Reset password".
Adding a user to a group on a mac
Mac OsX does not use the usual Unix user and group administration tools. It has it's own application - called netinfo (see man netinfo) and a gui for that, called Netinfo Manager and located in /Applications/Utilities. You need to have administrator privileges to use it for modification.
When you open Netinfo Manager, you can browse a set of items, among which users and groups. When you select a user or a group, you'll see a set of properties and values. Each grup is identified by a gid number, and each user by a uid number - and a gid that refers to its default group.
If you want a user to belong also to other groups (say e.g. to group www), you need to add the name (not the gid) of the user to group www's "users" propertiy. If the "users" property (in groups -> www) does not exist - by default it's not there - , you need to create it by using the "new" icon top left.
If instead you want to do it from command line, take a look here. An example is
dseditgroup -o edit -a username -t user groupname
(you may have to sudo this!)
When you open Netinfo Manager, you can browse a set of items, among which users and groups. When you select a user or a group, you'll see a set of properties and values. Each grup is identified by a gid number, and each user by a uid number - and a gid that refers to its default group.
If you want a user to belong also to other groups (say e.g. to group www), you need to add the name (not the gid) of the user to group www's "users" propertiy. If the "users" property (in groups -> www) does not exist - by default it's not there - , you need to create it by using the "new" icon top left.
If instead you want to do it from command line, take a look here. An example is
dseditgroup -o edit -a username -t user groupname
(you may have to sudo this!)
Friday, September 14, 2007
MySQL, Apache2, PHP5 and Tomcat (with mod_jk) on Mac OsX
For MySQL, Apache and Php5 there are a couple of web pages describing how to do it, and some package does automagically everything (e.g. MAMP). However, in such way you are bound to certain versions - sometimes old.
A better option is to be able to do it yourself, so that you can upgrade when you want and choose the version you want. Avery good description of how to do that is given in Richard Valk's blog.
Here are the links:
For instance, by carefully following step by step the instructions, I was able to successfully install the current versions: httpd 2.2.6, mysql 5.0.45, php 5.2.4 even though his instructions refer to earlier versions.
At the end of the process described in these pages you'll have Apache and MySql starting automatically at boot time.
Delicate points in the process are:
- make sure that you choose the script for the right architecture (ppc or intel)
- make sure that you carefully read and follow the section about the MySQL libraries.
One point not mentioned in Richard's php page is the fact that probably you also want to add index.php as a file automatically used when you access a directory (as index.html is). To do it you have to edit Apache2/conf/httpd.config, and modify the DirectoryIndex statement as follows:
<ifmodule>
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
</ifmodule>
To check that it works, create the file index.php in your deployment directory (default is the Apache's htdocs) with the following content
<html><body><h1>It works!</h1>
<h2><?php
echo("php also works!");
phpinfo();
?></h2>
</body></html>
and then point at http://localhost/index.php.
Another point is that when you invoke apachectl (to start and stop Apache) probably it still resolves to the preinstalled Apache (try to issue the which apachectl command in a shell, you will probably find out that this points to /usr/sbin/apachectl). This can generate problems. I solved this by renaming /usr/sbin/apachectl to /usr/sbin/apachectl_orig (just to be able to restore the original setting if needed!), and creating a link from /usr/sbin/apachectl to /Library/Apache2/bin/apachectl:
ln -s /Library/Apache2/bin/apachectl /usr/sbin/apachectl
Let's now move on to Tomcat: its installation is very simple, and is well described on the apache wiki: essentially you download, unpack, and set the JAVA_HOME environment variable. I easily installed 5.5.25 ( I unpacked it in /Library/Tomcat - note that later there will be references to this directory - so if yours is different adapt the commands to your configuration).
At this point Tomcat responds on port 8080 while Apache responds on port 80. It would be better to have both of them responding on port 80. This can be done by registering Tomcat as an Apache service, so that Apache recognizes certain URLs and forwards them to Tomcat. Doing so (through the mod_jk module) is a bit more complex - because I was not able to find reliable instructions, and the official documentation page does not describe clearly all steps.
So here is how I did it:
1) define the TOMCAT_HOME environment variable pointing at the place where Tomcat was unpacked;
2) get the mac binary mod_jk.so (the actual name will be something like mod_jk-1.2.25-httpd-2.2.4.so) from the Tomcat site, rename it mod_jk.so and drop it into APACHE2_HOME/modules, where APACHE2_HOME stays for the place where Apache2 was installed.
3) edit conf/server.xml in your TOMCAT_HOME, find the line
</Engine>
and add right before that:
<Listener className="org.apache.jk.config.ApacheConfig" modJk="/Library/Apache2/modules/mod_jk.so" />
(assuming that /Library/Apache2 is your Apache2 home).
4) Create a new file containing the following lines:
# Setup for Mac OS X
# Define the homes
workers.tomcat_home=/Library/Tomcat
workers.java_home=/Library/Java/Home
# Define the file separator
ps=/
# Define the worker's names
worker.list=ajp13
# Definition for worker
#
worker.ajp13.port=8009
worker.ajp13.host=127.0.0.1
worker.ajp13.type=ajp13
and save it with the name workers.properties in the directory TOMCAT_HOME/conf/jk (if the directory does not exist, create it).
5) edit conf/httpd.config in Apache2, adding at the end of the file:
# Tomcat bridge auto configuration
Include /Library/Tomcat/conf/auto/mod_jk.conf
(assuming that your TOMCAT_HOME is /Library/Tomcat)
6) restart Tomcat (sudo $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh an then sudo $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh). At this point the file called /Library/Tomcat/conf/auto/mod_jk.conf is automatically created.
7) restart Apache (sudo $APACHE_HOME/bin/apachectl restart)
8) open a browser, and point it to http://127.0.0.1/servlets-examples/
You should see page coming from your TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/servlets-examples. You can try to execute the hello world, everything should be now fine.
The next problem is what happens if you want all this to work with your machine name instead of localhost.
In fact opening http://your_machine.your.domain/servlets-examples/ in your browser will give a "Not Found". To fix this, you'll have to change in conf/xml the following lines:
<Engine name="Standalone" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="jvm1">
...
<Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">
...
<Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps"
unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">
In all three cases you need to change "localhost" with "your_machine.your.domain" where your_machine.your.domain is of course the name of your machine.
Restart Tomcat first and then restart Apache: point at http://your_machine.your.domain/servlets-examples/ in your browser and it should work. Note that now http://127.0.0.1/servlets-examples/ will give a Not Found!
If you want both localhost (127.0.01) and, you'll have to go though the Virtual Hosts setting - but I'll not cover that here.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: when you deploy a new webapp, always first restart Tomcat and then restart Apache (so that the automatic configuration is first regenerated by Tomcat and then read by Apache).
The next step would be to have Tomcat starting automatically at boot time.
An example and some explanation can be found here.
In short, here is what is needed (assuming that you already have Apache starting at boot):
a) create a directory Tomcat in /System/Library/StartupItems/
b) create a file called Tomcat in that directory. This is its content (of course reference to the directory where Tomcat is installed should be modified according to you system):
#!/bin/sh
. /etc/rc.common
StartService ()
{
if [ "${TOMCAT}" = "-YES-" ]; then
ConsoleMessage "Starting Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server"
/Library/Tomcat/bin/startup.sh
fi
}
StopService ()
{
ConsoleMessage "Stopping Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server"
echo "Stopping Apache web server"
/Library/Tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
}
RestartService ()
{
ConsoleMessage "Restarting Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server"
echo "Restarting Apache web server"
/Library/Tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
/Library/Tomcat/bin/startup.sh
}
JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home; export JAVA_HOME
RunService "$1"
and make it executable
(sudo chmod a+x /System/Library/StartupItems/Tomcat/Tomcat)
c) Next create a file called StartupParameters.plist into the same Tomcat directory. The content should be:
{
Description = "Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server";
Provides = ("Tomcat");
Requires = ("Resolver");
OrderPreference = "None";
Messages =
{
start = "Starting Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server";
stop = "Stopping Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server";
};
}
d) The last step is to make sure that Apache will wait for Tomcat to start. We can do that by changing the
StartupParameters.plist in the /System/Library/StartupItems/Apache directory in the following way:
{
Description = "Apache web server";
Provides = ("Web Server");
Requires = ("Tomcat");
Uses = ("Disks", "NFS");
}
(essentially we added the line that declares that Apache "Requires Tomcat").
For further info on Tomcat and on how to deploy servlets and JSPs. see the article on Apple Developer's Connection.
A better option is to be able to do it yourself, so that you can upgrade when you want and choose the version you want. Avery good description of how to do that is given in Richard Valk's blog.
Here are the links:
- Installing MySQL (after that you might also want to install the MySQL GUI Tools for administration and interaction with the DB).
- Compiling and installing Apache 2
- Compiling and installing PHP 5
For instance, by carefully following step by step the instructions, I was able to successfully install the current versions: httpd 2.2.6, mysql 5.0.45, php 5.2.4 even though his instructions refer to earlier versions.
At the end of the process described in these pages you'll have Apache and MySql starting automatically at boot time.
Delicate points in the process are:
- make sure that you choose the script for the right architecture (ppc or intel)
- make sure that you carefully read and follow the section about the MySQL libraries.
One point not mentioned in Richard's php page is the fact that probably you also want to add index.php as a file automatically used when you access a directory (as index.html is). To do it you have to edit Apache2/conf/httpd.config, and modify the DirectoryIndex statement as follows:
<ifmodule>
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
</ifmodule>
To check that it works, create the file index.php in your deployment directory (default is the Apache's htdocs) with the following content
<html><body><h1>It works!</h1>
<h2><?php
echo("php also works!");
phpinfo();
?></h2>
</body></html>
and then point at http://localhost/index.php.
Another point is that when you invoke apachectl (to start and stop Apache) probably it still resolves to the preinstalled Apache (try to issue the which apachectl command in a shell, you will probably find out that this points to /usr/sbin/apachectl). This can generate problems. I solved this by renaming /usr/sbin/apachectl to /usr/sbin/apachectl_orig (just to be able to restore the original setting if needed!), and creating a link from /usr/sbin/apachectl to /Library/Apache2/bin/apachectl:
ln -s /Library/Apache2/bin/apachectl /usr/sbin/apachectl
Let's now move on to Tomcat: its installation is very simple, and is well described on the apache wiki: essentially you download, unpack, and set the JAVA_HOME environment variable. I easily installed 5.5.25 ( I unpacked it in /Library/Tomcat - note that later there will be references to this directory - so if yours is different adapt the commands to your configuration).
At this point Tomcat responds on port 8080 while Apache responds on port 80. It would be better to have both of them responding on port 80. This can be done by registering Tomcat as an Apache service, so that Apache recognizes certain URLs and forwards them to Tomcat. Doing so (through the mod_jk module) is a bit more complex - because I was not able to find reliable instructions, and the official documentation page does not describe clearly all steps.
So here is how I did it:
1) define the TOMCAT_HOME environment variable pointing at the place where Tomcat was unpacked;
2) get the mac binary mod_jk.so (the actual name will be something like mod_jk-1.2.25-httpd-2.2.4.so) from the Tomcat site, rename it mod_jk.so and drop it into APACHE2_HOME/modules, where APACHE2_HOME stays for the place where Apache2 was installed.
3) edit conf/server.xml in your TOMCAT_HOME, find the line
</Engine>
and add right before that:
<Listener className="org.apache.jk.config.ApacheConfig" modJk="/Library/Apache2/modules/mod_jk.so" />
(assuming that /Library/Apache2 is your Apache2 home).
4) Create a new file containing the following lines:
# Setup for Mac OS X
# Define the homes
workers.tomcat_home=/Library/Tomcat
workers.java_home=/Library/Java/Home
# Define the file separator
ps=/
# Define the worker's names
worker.list=ajp13
# Definition for worker
#
worker.ajp13.port=8009
worker.ajp13.host=127.0.0.1
worker.ajp13.type=ajp13
and save it with the name workers.properties in the directory TOMCAT_HOME/conf/jk (if the directory does not exist, create it).
5) edit conf/httpd.config in Apache2, adding at the end of the file:
# Tomcat bridge auto configuration
Include /Library/Tomcat/conf/auto/mod_jk.conf
(assuming that your TOMCAT_HOME is /Library/Tomcat)
6) restart Tomcat (sudo $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh an then sudo $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh). At this point the file called /Library/Tomcat/conf/auto/mod_jk.conf is automatically created.
7) restart Apache (sudo $APACHE_HOME/bin/apachectl restart)
8) open a browser, and point it to http://127.0.0.1/servlets-examples/
You should see page coming from your TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/servlets-examples. You can try to execute the hello world, everything should be now fine.
The next problem is what happens if you want all this to work with your machine name instead of localhost.
In fact opening http://your_machine.your.domain/servlets-examples/ in your browser will give a "Not Found". To fix this, you'll have to change in conf/xml the following lines:
<Engine name="Standalone" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="jvm1">
...
<Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">
...
<Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps"
unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">
In all three cases you need to change "localhost" with "your_machine.your.domain" where your_machine.your.domain is of course the name of your machine.
Restart Tomcat first and then restart Apache: point at http://your_machine.your.domain/servlets-examples/ in your browser and it should work. Note that now http://127.0.0.1/servlets-examples/ will give a Not Found!
If you want both localhost (127.0.01) and
IMPORTANT NOTICE: when you deploy a new webapp, always first restart Tomcat and then restart Apache (so that the automatic configuration is first regenerated by Tomcat and then read by Apache).
The next step would be to have Tomcat starting automatically at boot time.
An example and some explanation can be found here.
In short, here is what is needed (assuming that you already have Apache starting at boot):
a) create a directory Tomcat in /System/Library/StartupItems/
b) create a file called Tomcat in that directory. This is its content (of course reference to the directory where Tomcat is installed should be modified according to you system):
#!/bin/sh
. /etc/rc.common
StartService ()
{
if [ "${TOMCAT}" = "-YES-" ]; then
ConsoleMessage "Starting Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server"
/Library/Tomcat/bin/startup.sh
fi
}
StopService ()
{
ConsoleMessage "Stopping Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server"
echo "Stopping Apache web server"
/Library/Tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
}
RestartService ()
{
ConsoleMessage "Restarting Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server"
echo "Restarting Apache web server"
/Library/Tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
/Library/Tomcat/bin/startup.sh
}
JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home; export JAVA_HOME
RunService "$1"
and make it executable
(sudo chmod a+x /System/Library/StartupItems/Tomcat/Tomcat)
c) Next create a file called StartupParameters.plist into the same Tomcat directory. The content should be:
{
Description = "Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server";
Provides = ("Tomcat");
Requires = ("Resolver");
OrderPreference = "None";
Messages =
{
start = "Starting Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server";
stop = "Stopping Tomcat Servlet/JSP Server";
};
}
d) The last step is to make sure that Apache will wait for Tomcat to start. We can do that by changing the
StartupParameters.plist in the /System/Library/StartupItems/Apache directory in the following way:
{
Description = "Apache web server";
Provides = ("Web Server");
Requires = ("Tomcat");
Uses = ("Disks", "NFS");
}
(essentially we added the line that declares that Apache "Requires Tomcat").
For further info on Tomcat and on how to deploy servlets and JSPs. see the article on Apple Developer's Connection.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Some Mac tricks
Changing the default app on a Mac
I needed to change the default app for a certain file type on Mac. Found a good guide here.
Changing the default mail reader/writer on a Mac
see here (Google notifier) and here (changing e-mail preferences on the Mac)
Lots of hint
in dave taylor's site.
I needed to change the default app for a certain file type on Mac. Found a good guide here.
Changing the default mail reader/writer on a Mac
see here (Google notifier) and here (changing e-mail preferences on the Mac)
Lots of hint
in dave taylor's site.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
ED-MEDIA 2007, final day
Today's keynote was also excellent. Bebo White from Stanford (alias Santa Claus :-) ) presented a view on the so-called Web 2.0. Very nice! (I'll point here to his slides when they'll be available).
It was nice to hear the talk by Miriam Judge (Dublin City University) on the Interactive Whiteboards (IWB - Clair Bhana Idirghniomhacha in Gaelic...)
The work by the Leuven group (Erik Duval, Michael Meire, Xavier Ochoa presenter ) on their SAmgI system for automatic metadata generation for LOs was damn good! Exactly what I wanted to do - made in a better way than I had probably done it!
It was nice to hear the talk by Miriam Judge (Dublin City University) on the Interactive Whiteboards (IWB - Clair Bhana Idirghniomhacha in Gaelic...)
The work by the Leuven group (Erik Duval, Michael Meire, Xavier Ochoa presenter ) on their SAmgI system for automatic metadata generation for LOs was damn good! Exactly what I wanted to do - made in a better way than I had probably done it!
ED-MEDIA 2007, act III
June 28, 2007
The keynote speech by Terry Anderson, Athabasca University was quite good: Teaching and learning in a networked world. He made it available on slideshare.com, so here it is. Main concept: the taxonomy of the many, with transition from group to network to collective - see also communities of inquiry.
Interesting the Avanoo idea of asking info to the user as a return for users inquiries.
Among other examples of networking sites he mentioned
The rest of the day I was busy with my talks:
- Searching information in a collection of video-lectures,
- C3PO: a domain-aware course planning and publishing tool, presented by Joe Sant
- Case study: evaluation of a tool for searching inside a collection of multimodal e-lectures.
So I missed the talk by Li-Ling Chen on IWB and the one by Sandy Schuck and Matthew Kearney on the same topic.
Joe pointed me to the S5 system: a set of CSS for running a PPT-like presentation out of XHTML - cool. Thanks Joe!
The keynote speech by Terry Anderson, Athabasca University was quite good: Teaching and learning in a networked world. He made it available on slideshare.com, so here it is. Main concept: the taxonomy of the many, with transition from group to network to collective - see also communities of inquiry.
Interesting the Avanoo idea of asking info to the user as a return for users inquiries.
Among other examples of networking sites he mentioned
- citeulike (A free online service to organise references to academic papers of interest and share them with others),
- technorati (Real-time search for user-generated media (including weblogs) by tag or keyword),
- slashdot (Source for technology related news with a heavy slant towards Linux and Open Source issues),
- meeting wizard (Online meeting and event invitation hosted software program).
- Facebook (a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them).
The rest of the day I was busy with my talks:
- Searching information in a collection of video-lectures,
- C3PO: a domain-aware course planning and publishing tool, presented by Joe Sant
- Case study: evaluation of a tool for searching inside a collection of multimodal e-lectures.
So I missed the talk by Li-Ling Chen on IWB and the one by Sandy Schuck and Matthew Kearney on the same topic.
Joe pointed me to the S5 system: a set of CSS for running a PPT-like presentation out of XHTML - cool. Thanks Joe!
ED-MEDIA 2007 - part II
June 27, 2007
Not a great day at the conference.
A few things to be remembered.
The CD-LOR project aims at identifying and analysing the factors that influence practical uptake and implementation of learning object (LO) repositories within a range of different learning communities.
Had a nice talk with Mike Wald, who had a presentation on using Speech Recognition to caption multimedia.
Not a great day at the conference.
A few things to be remembered.
The CD-LOR project aims at identifying and analysing the factors that influence practical uptake and implementation of learning object (LO) repositories within a range of different learning communities.
Had a nice talk with Mike Wald, who had a presentation on using Speech Recognition to caption multimedia.
ED-MEDIA 2007
June 26, 2007
So I'm in Vancouver now. Beautiful surroundings - for what I've seen from the airplane. Unfortunately no time to visit them. Thanks to Joe Sant, I found an incredibly nice, good and inexpensive sushi place, called Tsunami (it's at Burrard and Robson). Joe also showed me downtown Vancouver. We had a nice walk on the west part.
I'm here for a conference - ED-MEDIA 2007.
First impression: lot of emphasis on Blogs and Podcasts as educational tools.
Best thing was a two-hours symposium on "Getting beyond centralized technologies in higher education", organized by Sebastian Fiedler.
The main issue was the death of Learning Management Systems (LMS), since they replicate functionalities that already exist on the web in a clumsly and closed way. The idea was that students should be able to use whatever tool they like. No more university-provided e-mail accounts and sites, but aggregation of several heterogeneous sources - see e.g. the concept of mesh-ups in the presentation by ??.
George Siemens made several good points: among them "the LMS should explode into a L + MS" separating the administrative management from the learning.
I learned about ManyEyes, Worldmapper, Quintura, Tagclouds, Elgg, Teqlo. Following that up I found a nice Web 2.0 tools list, and then a second one, then a third... how many are out there?
Learned the concept of "advance organizer" (Ausubel, D.P. (1960). The use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of meaningful verbal material. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51, 267-272.)
Other things:
- Found a neat tool for creating educatonal podcasts: Profcast (shareware for mac). Camstudio can be useful on Windows for recording whatever happens on screen and replay it later, or cerate a podcast out of it.
- A symposium on creating podcasts in courses was held by Li-Ling Chen. It was informative. Tools suggested were Audacity and Garageband to create audio mp3, movieMaker or iMovie to create .mov or .avi, xilisoft (shareware) to convert into mp4 (ffmpegX might do the same). Quicktime professional was also used. feedburn might be useful in the process. During the symposium Damien Koemans mentioned a new service by Amazon to create a transcript of a speech. It is done by a mix of machine and human processing (castingwords.com).
- I also went to a symposium on Second Life as educational tool: too many people, too blah blah. Did not like it.
- Had a chat with German Nemirovskij - he has a project on using Semantic Web techniques to extract info from study module description (Bologna-agreement compliant description of university courses) for automatic comparison. Interesting, maybe overly ambitious?
So I'm in Vancouver now. Beautiful surroundings - for what I've seen from the airplane. Unfortunately no time to visit them. Thanks to Joe Sant, I found an incredibly nice, good and inexpensive sushi place, called Tsunami (it's at Burrard and Robson). Joe also showed me downtown Vancouver. We had a nice walk on the west part.
I'm here for a conference - ED-MEDIA 2007.
First impression: lot of emphasis on Blogs and Podcasts as educational tools.
Best thing was a two-hours symposium on "Getting beyond centralized technologies in higher education", organized by Sebastian Fiedler.
The main issue was the death of Learning Management Systems (LMS), since they replicate functionalities that already exist on the web in a clumsly and closed way. The idea was that students should be able to use whatever tool they like. No more university-provided e-mail accounts and sites, but aggregation of several heterogeneous sources - see e.g. the concept of mesh-ups in the presentation by ??.
George Siemens made several good points: among them "the LMS should explode into a L + MS" separating the administrative management from the learning.
I learned about ManyEyes, Worldmapper, Quintura, Tagclouds, Elgg, Teqlo. Following that up I found a nice Web 2.0 tools list, and then a second one, then a third... how many are out there?
Learned the concept of "advance organizer" (Ausubel, D.P. (1960). The use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of meaningful verbal material. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51, 267-272.)
Other things:
- Found a neat tool for creating educatonal podcasts: Profcast (shareware for mac). Camstudio can be useful on Windows for recording whatever happens on screen and replay it later, or cerate a podcast out of it.
- A symposium on creating podcasts in courses was held by Li-Ling Chen. It was informative. Tools suggested were Audacity and Garageband to create audio mp3, movieMaker or iMovie to create .mov or .avi, xilisoft (shareware) to convert into mp4 (ffmpegX might do the same). Quicktime professional was also used. feedburn might be useful in the process. During the symposium Damien Koemans mentioned a new service by Amazon to create a transcript of a speech. It is done by a mix of machine and human processing (castingwords.com).
- I also went to a symposium on Second Life as educational tool: too many people, too blah blah. Did not like it.
- Had a chat with German Nemirovskij - he has a project on using Semantic Web techniques to extract info from study module description (Bologna-agreement compliant description of university courses) for automatic comparison. Interesting, maybe overly ambitious?
AJAX frameworks
Got an e-mail from the Server Side with a list of Ajax frameworks - I'll keep a note here since they might be useful for some student projects in near future.
================================================================
** Dojo 0.9 - Get an overview of the recently released, leaner, faster version of the Ajax powerhouse framework directly from the co-creator;
** DWR - Hear about advanced features for Reverse Ajax programming in the new release and more from creator Joe Walker;
** jQuery - Get information on how jQuery can specifically assist designers, and get both an introductory overview and an advanced session from creator John Resig;
** Prototype - Hear an overview on Prototype, and learn how to take full advantage of Prototype's unique features;
** Scriptaculous - See first hand how this framework can be used to help build larger Ajax applications;
** qooxdoo - Not ringing a bell? Only TAE features a session on this innovative new open source - and well documented - framework;
** Google Web Toolkit - Learn about one of the most popular frameworks for developers looking to build Ajax applications with Java - yes, Java;
** sympfony - Learn about rapid application development with this PHP5 platform;
** jMaki - Sun's Ajax architect dives into this client-server framework and how it can help build more extensible applications that are easier to integrate with your current environment;
** Xaja - Get insight into the first PHP Reverse Ajax framework from Xaja's lead developer;
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** Dojo 0.9 - Get an overview of the recently released, leaner, faster version of the Ajax powerhouse framework directly from the co-creator;
** DWR - Hear about advanced features for Reverse Ajax programming in the new release and more from creator Joe Walker;
** jQuery - Get information on how jQuery can specifically assist designers, and get both an introductory overview and an advanced session from creator John Resig;
** Prototype - Hear an overview on Prototype, and learn how to take full advantage of Prototype's unique features;
** Scriptaculous - See first hand how this framework can be used to help build larger Ajax applications;
** qooxdoo - Not ringing a bell? Only TAE features a session on this innovative new open source - and well documented - framework;
** Google Web Toolkit - Learn about one of the most popular frameworks for developers looking to build Ajax applications with Java - yes, Java;
** sympfony - Learn about rapid application development with this PHP5 platform;
** jMaki - Sun's Ajax architect dives into this client-server framework and how it can help build more extensible applications that are easier to integrate with your current environment;
** Xaja - Get insight into the first PHP Reverse Ajax framework from Xaja's lead developer;
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