Wednesday, October 21, 2009

New blog location

I've moved this blog over to wordpress: http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/

The feed and blog homepage should redirect there.

at 1:10 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Friday, October 16, 2009

Free Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Education books

The National Academies (of science, engineering...) have produced a number of educational books over the past decades, and it has been harder to keep track of them all, so I'm copying descriptions of some recent ones below. The nice thing is that you can read the full text of any of these books online for free. These are very useful for better understanding the problems of STEM education, especially when preparing grant proposals.

How People Learn (1999) examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system. How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom (2005) builds on the discoveries detailed in the bestselling How People Learn.

Engineering in K-12 Education (2009) reviews the scope and impact of engineering education today and makes several recommendations to address curriculum, policy, and funding issues. The book also analyzes a number of K-12 engineering curricula in depth and discusses what is known from the cognitive sciences about how children learn engineering-related concepts and skills.

Tech Tally: Approaches to Assessing Technological Literacy (2006) determines the most viable approaches to assessing technological literacy for students, teachers, and out-of-school adults. The book examines opportunities and obstacles to developing scientifically valid and broadly applicable assessment instruments for technological literacy in the three target populations. The book offers findings and 12 related recommendations that address five critical areas: instrument development; research on learning; computer-based assessment methods, framework development, and public perceptions of technology.

Educating the Engineer of 2020 (2005) is grounded by the observations, questions, and conclusions presented in the best-selling book The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century. This new book offers recommendations on how to enrich and broaden engineering education so graduates are better prepared to work in a constantly changing global economy. It notes the importance of improving recruitment and retention of students and making the learning experience more meaningful to them. It also discusses the value of considering changes in engineering education in the broader context of enhancing the status of the engineering profession and improving the public understanding of engineering. Although certain basics of engineering will not change in the future, the explosion of knowledge, the global economy, and the way engineers work will reflect an ongoing evolution. If the United States is to maintain its economic leadership and be able to sustain its share of high-technology jobs, it must prepare for this wave of change.

What is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School (2007) provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning.

Learning Science in Informal Environments (2009) draws together disparate literatures, synthesizes the state of knowledge, and articulates a common framework for the next generation of research on learning science in informal environments across a life span. Contributors include recognized experts in a range of disciplines--research and evaluation, exhibit designers, program developers, and educators. They also have experience in a range of settings--museums, after-school programs, science and technology centers, media enterprises, aquariums, zoos, state parks, and botanical gardens.

Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum (2006). Spatial thinking is a cognitive skill that can be used in everyday life, the workplace, and science to structure problems, find answers, and express solutions using the properties of space. It can be learned and taught formally to students using appropriately designed tools, technologies, and curricula. This report explains the nature and functions of spatial thinking and shows how spatial thinking can be supported across the K-12 curriculum through the development of appropriate support systems.

Knowing What Students Know (2001) essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored.

Technically Speaking (2002) provides a blueprint for bringing us all up to speed on the role of technology in our society, including understanding such distinctions as technology versus science and technological literacy versus technical competence. It clearly and decisively explains what it means to be a technologically-literate citizen. The book goes on to explore the context of technological literacy the social, historical, political, and educational environments.

Relying on a comprehensive review of the research, Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood (2009) lays out the critical areas that should be the focus of young children's early mathematics education, explores the extent to which they are currently being incorporated in early childhood settings, and identifies the changes needed to improve the quality of mathematics experiences for young children. This book serves as a call to action to improve the state of early childhood mathematics. It will be especially useful for policy makers and practitioners-those who work directly with children and their families in shaping the policies that affect the education of young children.

America's Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science (2005). Laboratory experiences as a part of most U.S. high science curricula have been taken for granted for decades, but they have rarely been carefully examined. What do they contribute to science learning? What can they contribute to science learning? What is the current status of labs in our nation s high schools as a context for learning science? This book looks at a range of questions about how laboratory experiences fit into U.S. high schools.

They also published the national science education standards in 1996 and a 2003 follow-up report on their influence.

at 10:37 AM 0 comments Links to this post

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Recent Sightings

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Category/Tag Feeds for Blogger/Blogspot blogs

One thing I've been waiting 6 years for is for blogger to allow rss/atom feeds for particular categories (tags) for their blogs. So for example you could subscribe to just the drupal-related posts or java-related posts or so forth.

Well apparently it is possible in blogger now and it has been for 2 years. It just isn't documented or supported with an interface. You have to go to your blog settings, edit the layout, then click 'edit HTML' then check the 'Expand Widget Templates' checkbox.

Now search for "data:labels" to find the relevant code (this assumes you have the categories widget enabled on your blog layout). It is in 2 sections, one if you have your categories displayed as a list and one if displayed as a cloud.

Now somewhere after this loop part in each section: 

<b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
Add this line for Atom category feeds: (double-click to select whole line) 
<link expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl + "feeds/posts/default/-/" + data:label.name'
expr:title='data:label.name + " Atom Feed"' rel='alternate' type='application/atom+xml'/>
and/or this line for RSS category feeds: 
<link expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl + "feeds/posts/default/-/" + data:label.name + "?alt=rss"' 
expr:title='data:label.name + " RSS Feed"' rel='alternate' type='application/rss+xml'/>

Now if you click the RSS icon in Firefox, it shows the main feed followed by feeds for any category.

You can also add an <a href... tag after each item to display a link to the RSS or atom feed in the categories widget box. (adapted from the instructions here and here)

Here are some category feeds for my blog:

at 9:03 PM 0 comments Links to this post

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Friday, September 11, 2009

Comparing 4 Android Phones

Well this has little to do with education, other than Android is the only smart phone platform that you can quickly and for no cost develop educational software for I suppose. The other platforms such as iPhone and Palm Pre are either not free and open source, and/or take forever to make your app available for others to use and cost money to develop for. There is still the J2ME platform too, but I'm limiting this to newer generation smart phones.

There are now (in the U.S.) 4 Android phones to choose from. Well, 2 of them are not yet released but will be soon. All are basically identical under the hood: processor speed, touchscreen, camera, bluetooth, wireless, GPS, etc. This engadget post compares the technical features of the different Android phones, but I wanted to mention a bit more about these 4 options:

  • T-Mobile G1 (or "Dream", $97 at walmart/amazon + 2 year contract) - This has been out a year now. Features slide out keyboard, 3.2MP camera. No headphone jack, only USB. A little bigger than the newer Android phones below.
  • T-Mobile MyTouch (or "Magic", $99 with Oprah coupon code + 2 year contract) - Released last month, this is the second generation of the G1 but still basically the same software-wise. It is smaller partly because it has no hardware slide out keyboard. Slightly bigger battery. Also no headphone jack, only USB.
  • Sprint Hero ($279 at bestbuy or sprint + 2 year contract - $100 rebate) - To be released October 11th (see announcement). Has more tailored and polished software (HTC Sense). Has a 5MP camera, but no keyboard. Supports Sprint features like Sprint TV. Sprint supposedly has 20x the high speed 3G network coverage as T-Mobile but may add roaming charges.
  • T-Mobile Cliq (?? + 2 year contract) - Due out later this fall. Smaller form factor, has a slide out keyboard and enhanced MOTOBLUR software tailored for folks who use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. See this demo.
For all the phones you have to get a voice plan + a data plan. Starts around $65/month at T-mobile ($85 for family plan) and $69/month or so at Sprint ($129 for family plan).

Some popular third party Android software includes ShopSavvy (scan barcodes to compare prices), Pandora (listen to music online like the Pandora website), and Repligo (read pdfs).

at 11:04 AM 2 comments Links to this post

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Sunday, August 30, 2009

50 Examples of the Need to Improve College Teaching

Three years ago when I started to look for a faculty position I began paying closer attention to research on college teaching. The picture is not so good. I kept a folder filled mostly with negative examples of college teaching and learning. Below is what I have in roughly chronological order, starting with the negative examples (some aren't specifically about college) and followed by some examples of approaches aimed at improving college teaching. This is an expansion of a previous post about the state of college teaching. Some illustrations of the problem:

  1. Minds of Our Own and the A Private Universe video below are great demonstrations of the nature of how students learn and how difficult teaching for understanding is, but also it was a shocking commentary on the quality of college teaching and learning. When a Harvard engineering grad given a bulb, battery and wire cannot make the bulb light (opening example), it makes you rethink how we are teaching our students. Many recommend that every teacher and college instructor watch this video - especially the first 5-10 minutes.
  2. A Private Universe - older video from the same folks who made the one above
  3. Despite a Doctorate and Top Students, Unqualified to Teach - NY Times article
  4. Top Ten No Sympathy Lines - student 'excuses' from a college instructor's point of view
  5. Five Minute University - video by Father Guido Sarducci, who explains how he can teach in 5 minutes what you remember 5 years after you graduate from college. Supply & demand, como esta, etc.
  6. Change Blindness - even when you see something right in front of your eyes you may not perceive it. And novices just don't notice the same fine grained details experts do.
  7. The Math Wars - 1 (pdf), 2, 3 - more a K-12 issue than higher education one, but still relevant
  8. Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master's Thesis - The Onion
  9. Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk - a PBS documentary
  10. Why Johnny librarian can't read code - "the worst-taught courses are the so-called “core” courses"
  11. Just Scoring Points - (Chronicle article no longer available online) "Professors and students are laboring under very different metaphors for education, and neither group is particularly conscious of that fact."
  13. My Students Think I'm a Teacher...The Fools - "This is so wrong it makes you want to laugh and cry. College professors receive no training whatsoever in teaching. We are given no idea at all about the interior workings of our students minds and what would be the best way to present material. We are given poverty wages in graduate school and assigned as teaching assistants to professors who also have no background in teaching."
  14. Transforming Course Management Systems into Effective Learning Environments - a 2002 EDUCAUSE article that I don't think has borne out
  15. Empowering Engineering College Staff to Adopt Active Learning Methods - "Despite research-based evidence of the success of these methods, they are often met by the resistance of the academic staff."
  16. Talking to ourselves - "This absence of curiosity about other points of view is the essence of anti-intellectualism and represents a major departure from the nation's best cultural traditions."
  17. On the reluctance to visualize in mathematics - Great article - unfortunately not publicly accessible
  18. Sustaining educational reforms in introductory physics - "faculty involved in, or informed by physics education research, consistently post higher student learning gains than less-informed faculty"
  19. For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time - This is an article from a conservative think tank, be forewarned
  20. Teaching Engineering: Problems & Possibilities (pdf) "College teaching may be the only skilled profession for which systematic training is neither required nor provided--pizza delivery jobs come with more instruction."
  21. Optimizing Science Education And The Myth Of A Necessary 'Super Teacher' - "Just as there is little or no attention to training faculty for teaching – because there has long been the implicit, though now thoroughly discredited, assumption that if one masters the content, one can teach it effectively – a similar assumption has been made about teaching assistants."
  22. 6 Researchers Take On Science Education - "when college students abandon science as a major, 90 percent of them do so because of what they perceive as poor teaching; and, among those who remain in the sciences, 74 percent lament the poor quality of teaching"
  23. A framework for understanding physics instruction in secondary and college courses - "The continued downward spiral of enrolment in physical sciences in the USA and Europe has science educators concerned on both sides of the Atlantic. Physics has been particularly hard-hit, with the percentage of students choosing to major in the subject at the lowest level in decades. University physics has a reputation as a difficult, abstract subject with little application to the real world and introductory physics has little impact on students' conception of the discipline."
  24. Student Course Evaluations: Research, Models and Trends (pdf) - "there are a variety of issues that persist around the use of student evaluation and prevent their more effective use: myths and misconception about results; unclear definitions of quality teaching; poor user education; poor presentation of results; and inconsistent policies for use"
  25. Improving Educational Research (pdf) - "the U.S. spends approximately $300 billion a year on education and less than $30 million, 0.01 percent of the overall education budget, on education research . . . This minuscule investment suggests a feeble longterm commitment to improving our educational system" & "Just about everybody, having gone to school, thinks he or she is an expert on education"
  26. Ice Machines, Steamboats and Technology in Education - and other writings by Bob Tinker, who directed the Concord Consortium
  27. Education Outrage - column by Roger Schank
  28. Research is Teaching, Learning is Theory - "we put so much emphasis on publishing scholarship as the road to tenure, that junior faculty are often shocked to find that teaching counts"
  29. The Objective of Education Is Learning, Not Teaching - "Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught."
  30. Spreading great ideas in teaching: How does change happen? - "changes adopted by an individual spread more rapidly than those that require an entire institution to sign on"
  31. Charles Henderson has done quite a bit of work on the relationship between physics faculty and educational researchers. "the majority of physics teaching is not consistent with many results supported by educational research, such as the use of instruction that promotes active learning." & "we believe that they are all related to a single underlying issue: the typical dissemination model is to disseminate curricular innovations and have faculty adopt them with minimal changes, while faculty expect researchers to work with them to incorporate research-based knowledge and materials into their unique instructional situations."
  32. La plus ca change: It’s the goals not the data - "None of the teachers I have heard from are saying that our studies are wrong. Media Computation, across multiple schools, does lead to improved success rates and broader participation in computing — women and members of under-represented groups succeed as well as white or Asian males. These teachers are simply deciding that success rates and broadening participation is not their most important priority. "
Some solution-oriented approaches:
  1. National Center for Academic Transformation - techniques for improving the effectiveness of large enrollment courses, by Carol Twigg and others. "Successful course redesign that improves student learning while reducing instructional costs is heavily dependent upon high-quality, interactive learning materials." Therein lies the rub, how to develop all those interactive learning materials, which is why NCAT workshops focus primarily on the core classes where there already is some pre-made software available.
  2. Utilizing Instructional Consultations to Enhance the Teaching Performance of Engineering Faculty - recommended. See also the book below they recommend for training instructional consultants (who work in a real Center for Teaching & Learning and have PhDs in the area they are consulting).
  3. Face to Face: A Source Book of Individual Consultation Techniques for Faculty Instructional Developers
  4. A Way to Enhance Teaching - Instructional consultants can help, especially if they elicit student feedback. - another article on same instructional consultants project
  5. Instructional Consulting Overview
  6. Resources on Instructional Consultation - journal article, not publicly accessible
  7. Using Instructional Consultations in Academic Staff Development (pdf slides)
  8. Task force proposes 'compact' for excellent teaching
  9. Harvard Task Force Calls for New Focus on Teaching and Not Just Research - same as above
  10. A Transactional Model of College Teaching (pdf)
  11. Peer Instruction: Engaging Students One-on-One, All at Once - Eric Mazur and others
  12. The Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) Project
  13. Using Midterm Evaluations and Other Sources of Student Feedback on Teaching
  14. Taking Teaching Seriously: Meeting the Challenge of Instructional Improvement
  15. Project Promote - an online mentoring program to new faculty and links to many resources in research, teaching and other academic interests
  16. A Plan to Develop and Spread Better College Teaching Practices
  17. One Class Increases the Odds of College Graduation for Struggling Students - Bruce Tuckman uses a very tightly structured technique with hundreds of micro-activities for students to complete at their own pace. See his AERA 2009 paper (.doc).
  18. Center on Continuous Instructional Improvement - summarize educational research findings

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Some useful Drupal modules you may not have heard about

We're using many of these modules on our newly upgraded to drupal 6 department website at http://itls.usu.edu/.

Even if you're experienced with Drupal, you may not have heard of some of these modules. I encourage you to check them out to see if they are of use to your site(s). I've marked the ones I consider essential.

If you'd like to know how we did some of the features on our site just contact me, or wait a few weeks and I'll be releasing a generic version of our site (called "Department 2.0"). For example there is a job board, upcoming calendar events block, slideshow, customized listing of people, and our groups have numerous custom views and blocks and features (see my Foundations of Educational Technology class group page for example).

  • FriendFeed - Show other social networking activity via the FriendFeed.com site. I had to make a few patches to this one
  • activity - Show all activity on the site on one page, including comments and profiles edits (stuff that views still can't show together in one view unless you use nodecomment and content_profile which convert comments and profiles to nodes)
  • admin_menu - we're using simplemenu instead actually
  • admin_theme - so you have a clean built-in theme when doing administration work
  • advanced_help
  • ajax - works with logintoboggan and numerous other modules to make forms submit without a page reload
  • alt_login - not using now, but we needed this for ldap support before
  • auto_nodetitle - we use this to auto-title our course nodes and other things
  • autologout - in case many of your users are using shared computers and forget to log out
  • backup_migrate - ESSENTIAL
  • better_formats - ESSENTIAL if you have multiple input formats/filters - so that you don't default to plain text for example
  • block_edit
  • calendar - works with the date module. See alternatively the event module.
  • cck - ESSENTIAL
  • comment_notify
  • commentrss - ESSENTIAL if you want to track all site activity including comments without having to visit administration every time. Alternatively you can create a view of recent comments yourself with an rss feed.
  • contemplate - important if you want site administrators to be able to make changes to the site without shell access
  • context - not using yet
  • creativecommons - not using, but we may switch from the next one
  • creativecommons_lite - a bit buggy but we were using it before in drupal 5
  • custom_pagers - alternative to book
  • date - ESSENTIAL for cck types with date/time info like our job board (expiration date), calendar and so forth
  • devel - useful for debugging issues
  • diff - useful for our wiki and for tracking edits
  • draft - lets users have a 'save as draft' button, plus features autosave
  • drush - ESSENTIAL for easier module/theme installation and upgrading. Also works with features module. This is the only module you'll have to install by hand.
  • ed_readmore - Improve the 'read more' teaser link that nobody clicks.
  • email - for email cck fields
  • extlink - distinguish internal from external links
  • fckeditor - ESSENTIAL for wysiwyg editing. See also the TinyMCE module.
  • filefield - I think this is ESSENTIAL but we aren't using it yet. It puts uploaded files in separate folders rather than having a huge mess of files like we do now.
  • freelinking - for [[wiki links]].
  • globalredirect - ESSENTIAL for making sure you don't have 2 or more paths with identical content. 'node/1234' will redirect to the nicer path for example if you use pathauto.
  • google_analytics - ESSENTIAL for tracking statistics on your site, but piwik is a recommended open source alternative.
  • image - ESSENTIAL unless you are using imagecache instead
  • imce - ESSENTIAL for making it easier for users to insert images in fckeditor. Also gives each user their own personal file space.
  • interwiki - if using a wiki
  • invisimail - obscure any email addresses users might type in a comment or node
  • javascript_aggregator - this is now mostly built-in to drupal 6, but has a few extra features
  • job_queue
  • jq
  • jquery_ui
  • ldap_integration
  • ldap_provisioning
  • link - cck field type
  • linkchecker - haven't tried, but checks for broken links on your site
  • live - live preview of posts/comments - used on the drupal.org site
  • location - cck field type
  • logintoboggan - ESSENTIAL to me anyway - lets people login with email address instead of username among other nice features.
  • menu_block - see also nodehierarchy, submenutree and other related modules
  • messaging - ESSENTIAL along with notifications if using organic groups (og) especially
  • mimemail - we were using this, but now we are using HTMLMail with messaging/notifications instead
  • moduleinfo - ESSENTIAL - gives more info about modules on module list page
  • mollom - ESSENTIAL or else find another spam prevention solution if your site is open to any public contributions such as comments (or for example our job board)
  • nice_menus - not using, but provides suckerfish menus if not provided by your theme directly
  • node_import - importing content
  • nodecomment - turns comments into nodes - I tried this to I could show comments and node updates together in a view block, but I had to make comments og-enabled, too, which wouldn't work for anonymous commenting, so I'm not using it now.
  • nodehierarchy - Integrates the organization of your content with the menu system
  • notifications - works with messaging - overly complicated interface though for end-users to customize their preferences
  • og - organic groups
  • og_forum - makes it easier to set up per group forums
  • og_mandatory_group - nice to force end-users to be in a group before they can contribute stuff
  • path_redirect
  • pathauto - ESSENTIAL for nicer looking, automatically generated URLs
  • permissions_api - easier administration of permissions
  • poormanscron - if you don't have cron or it is unreliable (like on Mac OS X)
  • prepopulate - if you want to use bookmarklets for things like shared links and so forth
  • print - ESSENTIAL for printable versions of your pages
  • quicktabs - we ended up using views_slideshow instead
  • quiz - not using, but nice module
  • realname - we just have people use their real name (First Last) as their regular username, so we didn't require this module.
  • revision_deletion - ESSENTIAL if you are using a wiki or a site with many people editing, so you can occasionally clean up stuff.
  • rules - Much nicer, easier to use alternative to workflow. We use it to do numerous things on our site, for example notifying someone when a job is posted, promoting items in certain groups to the front page, etc. Formerly called workflow_ng in drupal 5 (not upgradeable though)
  • scanner - ESSENTIAL find/replace text on your site. Regex support.
  • scheduler - set your node to be published at a future date
  • securepages - ESSENTIAL if using an SSL server (which you should)
  • similarterms
  • simplemenu - this is our end-users' toolbar for creating content, visiting groups, etc.
  • site_map
  • site_tour
  • smtp - ESSENTIAL if sendmail doesn't work or is restricted from your server. I label it essential because stuff like this is already included in other tools like moodle even though most won't need it (moodle includes built-in ldap support and other things too).
  • submenutree - alternative to book module - displaying child items below a node
  • tagadelic
  • talk - if wanted for wiki pages
  • theme_editor - ESSENTIAL if you want administrators to be able to edit theme files without having shell access
  • token - ESSENTIAL - required by many other modules including pathauto
  • trash - essential but broken? We need a way for end-users to delete stuff like wiki pages in a way that administrators can undo it if they deleted something important. At least drupal 6 finally separated the edit and delete permissions.
  • twitter - if you want to have a site-wide twitter account that announces stuff on twitter
  • upload_replace - ESSENTIAL - should be built-in to drupal. Right now if you upload a new version of a file, it gets a new name, rather than moving the old file.
  • user_import - import users from a spreadsheet - warning, backup everything first - this module created duplicate entries in our profile tables a year ago
  • userplus
  • userprotect - prevent users from changing certain things in their accounts
  • video
  • video_filter - easy linking and displaying of videos from external sites
  • views - ESSENTIAL - works with cck
  • views_bulk_operations - lets you do batch operations on nodes and other things
  • views_calc
  • views_slideshow - see other alternatives for doing slideshows like slider
  • webform - ESSENTIAL if you want to do things like surveys and so forth on your site - 1000x better than the built-in poll module
  • wikitools - for wikis - move protection, etc.
  • I also posted a comparison of drupal modules for uploading large files recently, including swfupload, image_fupload, and others

at 2:00 PM 1 comments Links to this post

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Friday, August 14, 2009

Bash Script to Quickly Create Drupal Sub-sites

I haven't tried this for real yet, only tested it with a local xampp-based drupal site, but here's a shell script that quickly creates drupal sub-sites, say, for students. The sub-sites use the same database as your main drupal site, but each has its own table prefix.

So basically if you already have drupal installed, say at http://your.drupal.host/ , the script below makes it easy to create sub-sites like http://your.drupal.host/student1 and http://your.drupal.host/student2 . This uses drupal's multi-site feature.

You just copy the below script to a file and make it executable (chmod 700 makesite.sh), edit some of the settings in it (like change "nobody" to "www-data" if using debian/ubuntu, and "localhost" to "your.drupal.host" or whatever), and then on the command line change (cd) to your drupal root folder and run: 

sudo /path/to/makesite.sh student1
Of course replacing 'student1' with whatever site name you want to use, and then you or your student/user can visit http://your.drupal.host/student1/install.php to finish the drupal installation.

Of course, backup your main site's database before using this (see the backup and migrate module).

For other related options see aegir, densite (both of which use separate databases per site), and domain (in which multi-sites not only share the same database but the same tables as well).

This script doesn't handle sub-sites with their own domain names (see densite or aegir instead), and it doesn't create cron jobs for each drupal site (see densite or just enable poormanscron on each site). Of course any modules or themes installed under sites/all/modules or sites/all/themes can be shared by all the sub-sites, so you only need to install them once. If you want a module or theme just for one particular subsite, install it under sites/your.drupal.host.student1/modules or sites/your.drupal.host.student1/themes or whatever the names are. Those sub-folders and the files folder are already created for you with the right permissions by the script.

I'll also probably be using modules like theme_editor and zenophile so that students won't need command line or ftp access to edit the look of their sites. 

#makesite.sh

##About this script:
##This script will create a drupal sub-site using table prefixes.
##It assumes you already have a main drupal site running,
##and can be used to create sub-sites, such as:
##   http://yoursite/subsite
##The database tables will have prefix: subsite__
##The script also assumes that your main drupal site has
##no prefix ''.  If that's not the case, edit the sed line below


##To run it:
## -First change the options below (apache user, site host)
## -cd into your root drupal folder (cd /var/www, etc)
## -run: sudo /path/to/makesite.sh subsitename
##    'subsitename' should have only have letters/numbers
##    also it should not duplicate an existing sub-folder
## -then visit http://yoursite/subsitename/install.php
##    to finish the drupal install


##### CHANGE THESE 2 or 3 TO MATCH YOUR CONFIG: #####

#what user does apache2/httpd run under:
APACHEUSER="nobody"  #www-data on debian/ubuntu

#what is the root hostname/url of your main drupal site:
SITEHOST="localhost"  #root hostname for main drupal site

#where to find the settings.php we'll base sub-sites on:
DEFAULTFOLDER="default" #main sites/default/settings.php file


#########Stuff below shouldn't need editing:########

if [ $# -ne 1 ]
then
  echo "Usage: sudo $0 directoryname"
  exit 1
fi

if [ $(whoami) != "root" ]; then
  echo "You need to run this script as root."
  echo "Use sudo $0 directoryname"
  exit 1
fi

if [ -d $1 ]
then
  echo "$1 already exists, please use a different name"
  exit 1
fi

echo "Creating symlink from $1 to ."
ln -s . $1

NEWSITEDIR="sites/$SITEHOST.$1"

echo "Creating sub-site folders at $NEWSITEDIR"
mkdir $NEWSITEDIR
mkdir $NEWSITEDIR/files
mkdir $NEWSITEDIR/themes
mkdir $NEWSITEDIR/modules
chown -R $APACHEUSER $NEWSITEDIR

echo "Copying settings.php"
OLDSETTINGS="sites/$DEFAULTFOLDER/settings.php";
if [ ! -f $OLDSETTINGS ]
then
  echo "Cannot find default settings.php file: $OLDSETTINGS"
  exit 1
fi

NEWSETTINGS="$NEWSITEDIR/settings.php"
cp $OLDSETTINGS $NEWSETTINGS
chown $APACHEUSER $NEWSETTINGS

PREFIX="$1__"
echo "Using table prefix: $PREFIX"
sed -i "s/\$db_prefix = '';/\$db_prefix = '$PREFIX';/" $NEWSETTINGS

echo "FINISHED: Visit http://$SITEHOST/$1/install.php to finish"

at 10:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

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Friday, August 07, 2009

Recent Books on Conceptual Change, Engineering Education, Embodied Cognition...

I was emailing our library about purchasing some recent books and thought I'd cc the list here, along with some other recent books our library does have but you may not be aware of.

Education, Conceptual Change, Constructivism

  • Creative Model Construction in Scientists and Students (Paperback) by John J. Clement (Author) [amazon]
  • Creating Scientific Concepts (Bradford Books) (Hardcover) by Nancy Nersessian (Author) [amazon]
  • Constructivist Instructional Design (C-ID) Foundations, Models, and Examples (HC) (Research in the Epistemologies of Practice: Theories That Guide Practice) - Jerry W Willis [amazon]
  • Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (Bradford Books) (Hardcover) by Gary L. Drescher [amazon]
  • Optimizing Teaching and Learning: Practicing Pedagogical Research (Hardcover) by Regan A. R. Gurung [amazon]
  • Model Based Learning and Instruction in Science (Models and Modeling in Science Education) (Hardcover) by John J. Clement (Editor), Mary Anne Rea-Ramirez (Editor) [amazon]
  • Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and Delivering E-Learning (Hardcover) by Helen Beetham (Author), Rhona Sharpe (Author) [amazon]
  • Digital Simulations for Improving Education: Learning Through Artificial Teaching Environments (Hardcover) by David Gibson (Author, Editor), Youngkyun Baek (Editor) [amazon]
  • International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change (Educational Psychology Handbook) (Paperback) by S. Vosniadou (Author) [amazon]
  • Handbook of International Research in Mathematics Education (Paperback) by English (Author) [amazon]

Engineering & Technology Education

  • Designing Better Engineering Education Through Assessment: A Practical Resource for Faculty and Department Chairs on Using Assessment and ABET Criteria to Improve Student Learning (Paperback) by Joni Spurlin (Editor), Sarah A. Rajala (Editor), Jerome P. Lavelle (Editor) [amazon]
  • Defining Technological Literacy: Towards an Epistemological Framework (Hardcover) by John R. Dakers (Editor) [amazon]
  • Educating Engineers: Designing for the Future of the Field (Hardcover) [amazon]

Embodied Cognition, Perception

  • Handbook of Cognitive Science: An Embodied Approach (Perspectives on Cognitive Science) (Hardcover) by Paco Calvo (Editor), Toni Gomila (Editor) [amazon]
  • Beyond the Brain: Embodied, Situated and Distributed Cognition (Hardcover) by Nicolas Payette [amazon]
  • Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness (Hardcover) by Alva Noe (Author) [amazon]
  • Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Philosophy of the Mind) (Hardcover) by Andy Clark [amazon]
  • Symbols and Embodiment: Debates on meaning and cognition (Hardcover) by Manuel de Vega (Editor), Arthur Glenberg (Editor), Arthur Graesser (Editor) [amazon]
  • Understanding Events: From Perception to Action (Oxford Series in Visual Congnition) (Hardcover) by Thomas F. Shipley (Editor), Jeffrey M. Zacks (Editor) [amazon]

at 4:38 PM 1 comments Links to this post

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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Problems with Test Prep, Related to "Disaggregating Education"?

I've already commented on this before here and elsewhere, but I'd be a bit cautious about separating certification assessments from learning support ("disaggregating education"). The example I gave before was programming certifications, which some people just cram for (test preparation), and it has devalued the worth of those certifications to the detriment of the people (with a CS degree or not) who need these jobs and the employers who need those people.

This is already happening in other areas of K-12 and higher education to some degree, however. Dan Hickey (professor at Indiana) explains why test preparation in K-12 schools is "is educational malpractice, because that knowledge is useless for any other purpose" in his post What participatory assessment is NOT on a new "re-mediating assessment" blog devoted to assessment issues:
Test prep programs raise achievement scores by training students to recognize hundreds or even thousands of specific associations that might appear on tests. Because of the way our brain works, we don’t need to “understand” an association to recognize it. All test prep programs have to do is help students recognize a few more associations as being “less wrong” or “more correct” to raise scores. Because of the way tests are designed, getting even a handful of the more difficult items correct can raise scores. A lot. And this is the root of the problem this blog is dedicated to solving. We believe that the way knowledge is remediated for tests makes that knowledge entirely worthless for teaching, and mostly worthless for classroom assessment. Specifically, we believe that training kids to recognize a bunch of isolated associations is mostly worthless for anything other than raising scores on the targeted tests. Test preparation practices and the politically motivated lowering of passing scores (“criteria”) on state achievement tests is why scores on state tests have gone up dramatically under No Child Left Behind, while scores on non-targeted tests (like the National Assessment of Educational Progress) and lots of other educational outcomes (like college readiness) have declined. Here is an article referencing some of the earlier studies. We are particularly distressed the so many schools find their computer laboratories locked up and their technology budgets locked down by computer based test preparation and interim “formative” testing. Despite a decade of e-rate funding, many students in many schools still don’t have access to networked computers to engage in networked technology practices that are actually useful.

There is a lot of debate about consequences of test preparation for achievement and its impact on other outcomes. We think that any programs that directly train students in specific associations on targeted tests is educational malpractice, because that knowledge is useless for any other purpose. This is because we think that knowledge is more about successful participation in social practices. And these practices have very little to do with tests scores. So, in summary, test preparation is the epitome of what participatory assessment is not. Our next post will try to explain what it is.
That's not to say 'disaggregating education' is wrong or a bad idea, necessarily, but there are some tough issues such as these. One solution might be to include performance assessments in the disaggregated certification and assessment services, but I'm not sure how to formalize performance assessments in all areas of K-12 and higher education (or perhaps formalizing is itself part of the difficulty). Another issue is that most recent research is showing that assessment works best for students when it is integrated with instruction and is a part of learning support, as in formative assessment. Perhaps formal certification PLUS for example a portfolio of work related to one's learning is a step towards solving that issue. As the Carnegie Foundation and Lee Schulman have stated, the first step toward improving teaching is making it public (creating a 'teaching commons'), and perhaps the same is true for learning and instruction as well.

Alfred Thompson struggled with a related issue on his blog, too, in regards to AP tests in high school computer science education:
I see a lot of great success in the computer science field on the part of students who did not even pass the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam. The students who did get 4s and 5s on the exam have also done well. So what does the APCS exam tell me about my students future success? Nothing.
....for the teachers who are not readers and for the teachers who worry about the multiple choice questions I’m not sure they get a lot of value from their students taking the exam. And there is that nagging problem of “teaching to the test” that gets to some of us.
I’ll leave you with one more thought. Real life is an open book test. I strongly believe that. It is one of the great lessons I have learned in my life. Some people never do well on the “read and regurgitate” sort of test that makes up so much of standardized testing. It is just not the way their minds work. They learn well. They know how to find things out. They are willing to work hard to find a way. They’re just not test takers. On the other hand the kids who do well on standardized tests so what? If the real world is really an open book tests how do standardized closed book tests reflect how the test takers will do in real life?

Also on the re-mediating assessment blog is a post by Jenna McWilliams about mediation and re-mediation. Mediation "refers to communication technologies that we use to mediate, frame, and scaffold our social relations with one another and with our material worlds," and re-mediation "is a complete reorganization of thinking--new ideas that are mediated in new ways."

at 7:05 PM 0 comments Links to this post

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