Just a short blog, as I really want to get on with putting my research together. All going well AFAICS, with positive feedback from facilitator and appreciative messages from students. I'm learning bits and pieces about research, about technology, about other people's roles and getting a better understanding of the tasks I'm supposed to be doing. This is enjoyable, and I'm hoping to stick at it most of the week, with a couple of days break at the end perhaps.
The only slight reservations I have are that I should have paid more attention to the required learning outcomes, and planned more activities to do at work, but hopefully this is just because of the situation I'm in, catching up on activities I would have done during the first half term during the break.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Sunday, October 26, 2003
getting stuck in, and choosing HTML for presenting coursework
Yesterday was the first day of half term and I had decided to stay in and rest, so I ended up spending quite a few hours on the computer, mostly dealing with Ultraversity stuff. JellyOS is a terrible time waster, although it feels rewarding when you do manage some kind of communication after lots of repeated faffing about. I've built a page of links to links and links to current discussions which should help with slightly more direct access. The discussion which I created and linked to from the learning support page is starting to pick up, and I created a quality new piece of jellyART work.
That's all very well, but i can't afford to spend all my time messing about there when there is coursework to be done!
I've re-read the brief for activity one and realised that I have a problem finishing it off, since I'm required to interview a line manager and now it's half term I won't be able to do that for ages, if at all. So I came up with two other ways of researching the Coordinator Role. I posted a short question to the newsgroup uk.education.schools-it and within 20 minutes had a useful reply from an ICT Coordinator in a primary school. That may even break out into a more lengthy discussion, as can easily happen in an unregulated environment using simple and well established technology.
In addition, I was looking at fellow student Denise Binks website and realised that as a technician who takes a lot under her wing, she still works with a Coord, so I asked a question in Denise's guestbook and soon there was a new section in her activity one coursework about the two roles. This is useful to both of us.
I've now got rather a lot of gathered material for activity one, but that's OK because it is a substantial activity compared to some of the later ones. I looked at the work in progress 'simpletext' document I'd brought home on my pen drive and found it hard to work with in a Windows environment, and appleworks documents are unreadable so what format should I use to write up my coursework?
I had previously discounted the idea of presenting it as a website, for two reasons - it seems a bit OTT, takes a bit longer to load up a big package like dreamweaver than a text editor, and I don't feel I want to be writing for a world-wide audience "hullo this is me, here's my picture, here's my cat " sort of thing.
But when it comes down to it, HTML is the best tool I have for the job. It is afterall, a
(hypertext) Markup Language, which is quick and easy to create headings, subheadings, lists and bullet points. it's platform independent, universally deployed and I'll be able to incorporate multimedia elements later if I really have to. I don't have to put it online if I don't want to, I can transport it on my keyring pen drive, and email pages to my facilitator as attachments.
So that's the decision made, I've made a good start, and I'm happy that I know what I'm doing at last. Now I should be able to concentrate more on getting on with it, and finding it enjoyable. By the end of half term I'll be well up to date.
That's all very well, but i can't afford to spend all my time messing about there when there is coursework to be done!
I've re-read the brief for activity one and realised that I have a problem finishing it off, since I'm required to interview a line manager and now it's half term I won't be able to do that for ages, if at all. So I came up with two other ways of researching the Coordinator Role. I posted a short question to the newsgroup uk.education.schools-it and within 20 minutes had a useful reply from an ICT Coordinator in a primary school. That may even break out into a more lengthy discussion, as can easily happen in an unregulated environment using simple and well established technology.
In addition, I was looking at fellow student Denise Binks website and realised that as a technician who takes a lot under her wing, she still works with a Coord, so I asked a question in Denise's guestbook and soon there was a new section in her activity one coursework about the two roles. This is useful to both of us.
I've now got rather a lot of gathered material for activity one, but that's OK because it is a substantial activity compared to some of the later ones. I looked at the work in progress 'simpletext' document I'd brought home on my pen drive and found it hard to work with in a Windows environment, and appleworks documents are unreadable so what format should I use to write up my coursework?
I had previously discounted the idea of presenting it as a website, for two reasons - it seems a bit OTT, takes a bit longer to load up a big package like dreamweaver than a text editor, and I don't feel I want to be writing for a world-wide audience "hullo this is me, here's my picture, here's my cat " sort of thing.
But when it comes down to it, HTML is the best tool I have for the job. It is afterall, a
(hypertext) Markup Language, which is quick and easy to create headings, subheadings, lists and bullet points. it's platform independent, universally deployed and I'll be able to incorporate multimedia elements later if I really have to. I don't have to put it online if I don't want to, I can transport it on my keyring pen drive, and email pages to my facilitator as attachments.
So that's the decision made, I've made a good start, and I'm happy that I know what I'm doing at last. Now I should be able to concentrate more on getting on with it, and finding it enjoyable. By the end of half term I'll be well up to date.
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Online Inset
Yesterday, I discovered that the NGFL had organised an 'online Inset' for ICT coordinators that began the day before. I had enough time to read the transcript of the opening speech, which I saved because it gives another point of view of what ICT Coodinators are supposed to do.
The video link didn't work, even after installing the free version of RealPLayer One which the government site recommended. With luck, I'll have time to look at this in more depth over the half term.
The video link didn't work, even after installing the free version of RealPLayer One which the government site recommended. With luck, I'll have time to look at this in more depth over the half term.
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Drains
Yesterday I sorted out two problems.
At work, I was called down to the office where they had installed a new laser printer on the network, but they couldn't print to it from the other office PC. Despite never having dirtied my hands with windows 2000 before, after messing about for half an hour I managed to get them talking.
At home, my downstairs toilet, when flushed, was filling up but not draining away. I emptied the sump directly outside but this didn't help, then I opened up a manhole cover halfway down the garden and cleared a smelly blockage there. Still no joy at the toilet end. Not knowing exactly what I was doing, but suspecting some sort of air-lock, I pushed a plastic bag down the toilet bowl and swooshed it back and fore a couple of times. With a glug glug glug, the bowl emptied and is now functioning perfectly.
Out of the two problem solving excercises the second was by far the most satisfying!
At work, I was called down to the office where they had installed a new laser printer on the network, but they couldn't print to it from the other office PC. Despite never having dirtied my hands with windows 2000 before, after messing about for half an hour I managed to get them talking.
At home, my downstairs toilet, when flushed, was filling up but not draining away. I emptied the sump directly outside but this didn't help, then I opened up a manhole cover halfway down the garden and cleared a smelly blockage there. Still no joy at the toilet end. Not knowing exactly what I was doing, but suspecting some sort of air-lock, I pushed a plastic bag down the toilet bowl and swooshed it back and fore a couple of times. With a glug glug glug, the bowl emptied and is now functioning perfectly.
Out of the two problem solving excercises the second was by far the most satisfying!
Monday, October 20, 2003
On JellyOS, after a few days
Last night I spent more than an hour or two looking around the community for new contributions and adding a couple of pages into "my stuff" At the end, I felt that a lot of time and effort had passed with little acheived really. So now I have a page of 'useful' links and a new piece of jellyART ;-)
I'm still not exactly sure who is in 'my group' and who isn't, but that's not so important.
There are several fundamental problems with the use of Flash for a web board and community like this, but the process which seems to be happening now is that people who are getting very frustrated with the poor functionality of the discussion boards and the page editing, are finding out work arounds and requesting short cuts which can make them happy in the short term, simply because the problem is then not quite so bad as it appeared to be.
I shall list the problems as I see it in two categories
1. Problems of the specific
a) Speed of typing, editing and browsing discussions is unacceptably slow.
b) Lack of a functions, eg 'your recent discussions' 'view unread messages' 'go to latest discussions' , that sort of thing.
c) Need to use the mouse too much, and too heavily.
d) When editing a page, there are some intermittant faults, such as the disappearing pallette, text boxes zooming off to the right hand side and strange things happening with the scaled vector graphics when you make a large object and rotate it.
e) Double clicking on a discussion icon sometimes brings up the page requested, but sometimes doesn't.
f) You can't tell how many pages or how many posts there are in any particular discussion without paging and scrolling all the way through. ( see b)
2. Problems of the Fundamental
1) JellyOS appears to have been specialy commissioned by ultralab, and the decision to build it on Macromedia Flash means that it doesn't build on any existing tried and tested community software. Everything has be designed and programmed in from scratch, so what we have now is an extremely immature system, lacking even the basic functionality which an internet discussion taking place in 1985 would have had.
2) Running in the Flash Player plugin within a Browser page and attempting to simulate a windowing operating system seems to place places a massive processing burden on the client computer, which is one element of the slow response problem. The other aspects may be caused by using Flash actionscript to communicate with the host server, or problems with the contention ratio at the server itself, it's difficult to say from here.
3) For the users, learning to use JellyOS is a heavy investment, since we cannot use existing techniques we already know from existing similar technologies, and the knowlege we gain is virtually untransferrable to anything else.
4) It could also be said that jellyOS breaks the existing internet protocols and flies in the face of carefully contructed conventions. This can only lead to a fragmentation and weakening of the wider community.
And now for some positive points :-)
1) Being a closed private community, the atmosphere is more open and trusting than out in the wild world. This means people are happy to talk about themselves, their jobs, families and hobbies and so on, and will even upload photos. ( This would happen anyway, within a community isolated through login mechanisms and hidden from search engines no matter what technology was used. A private newsserver, linked to web based email and a simple online webpage builder would do the trick for a fraction of the cost with a massive increase in efficiency and functionality)
2) It's fairly easy to upload files. This last one was pointed out by Denise Binks, whose webpage holds many useful tips and links as well as providing a model for displaying the coursework
http://www.denisebinks.com/
I'm still not exactly sure who is in 'my group' and who isn't, but that's not so important.
There are several fundamental problems with the use of Flash for a web board and community like this, but the process which seems to be happening now is that people who are getting very frustrated with the poor functionality of the discussion boards and the page editing, are finding out work arounds and requesting short cuts which can make them happy in the short term, simply because the problem is then not quite so bad as it appeared to be.
I shall list the problems as I see it in two categories
1. Problems of the specific
a) Speed of typing, editing and browsing discussions is unacceptably slow.
b) Lack of a functions, eg 'your recent discussions' 'view unread messages' 'go to latest discussions' , that sort of thing.
c) Need to use the mouse too much, and too heavily.
d) When editing a page, there are some intermittant faults, such as the disappearing pallette, text boxes zooming off to the right hand side and strange things happening with the scaled vector graphics when you make a large object and rotate it.
e) Double clicking on a discussion icon sometimes brings up the page requested, but sometimes doesn't.
f) You can't tell how many pages or how many posts there are in any particular discussion without paging and scrolling all the way through. ( see b)
2. Problems of the Fundamental
1) JellyOS appears to have been specialy commissioned by ultralab, and the decision to build it on Macromedia Flash means that it doesn't build on any existing tried and tested community software. Everything has be designed and programmed in from scratch, so what we have now is an extremely immature system, lacking even the basic functionality which an internet discussion taking place in 1985 would have had.
2) Running in the Flash Player plugin within a Browser page and attempting to simulate a windowing operating system seems to place places a massive processing burden on the client computer, which is one element of the slow response problem. The other aspects may be caused by using Flash actionscript to communicate with the host server, or problems with the contention ratio at the server itself, it's difficult to say from here.
3) For the users, learning to use JellyOS is a heavy investment, since we cannot use existing techniques we already know from existing similar technologies, and the knowlege we gain is virtually untransferrable to anything else.
4) It could also be said that jellyOS breaks the existing internet protocols and flies in the face of carefully contructed conventions. This can only lead to a fragmentation and weakening of the wider community.
And now for some positive points :-)
1) Being a closed private community, the atmosphere is more open and trusting than out in the wild world. This means people are happy to talk about themselves, their jobs, families and hobbies and so on, and will even upload photos. ( This would happen anyway, within a community isolated through login mechanisms and hidden from search engines no matter what technology was used. A private newsserver, linked to web based email and a simple online webpage builder would do the trick for a fraction of the cost with a massive increase in efficiency and functionality)
2) It's fairly easy to upload files. This last one was pointed out by Denise Binks, whose webpage holds many useful tips and links as well as providing a model for displaying the coursework
http://www.denisebinks.com/
2 books for the train
I have two technical books which I'm reading on the train to help me get up to speed with the new operating system, mac OS X and X server.
Mac OSX v10.2 Jaguar
Little Black Book
paraglyph press
isbn 1-932111-72-7
The Mac OS X.2 Power User's Book
paraglyph press
isbn 1-932111-80-8
Although there are chunks in each book which aren't strictly relevent, I am picking up a few concepts and tips here and there which will help me in my attempt to configure and maintain a sophisticated industrial strength network system with no training.
Mac OSX v10.2 Jaguar
Little Black Book
paraglyph press
isbn 1-932111-72-7
The Mac OS X.2 Power User's Book
paraglyph press
isbn 1-932111-80-8
Although there are chunks in each book which aren't strictly relevent, I am picking up a few concepts and tips here and there which will help me in my attempt to configure and maintain a sophisticated industrial strength network system with no training.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
I tried out JellyOS from the MACs at work, to see how it goes.
Internet Explorer 5 on MacOS 9 - doesn't work - shockwave incompatible
Safari on MacOS X - doesn't work
Internet Explorer 5.2 on mac OS X - This works so I am typing now on one of the new eMacs.
I managed to extract the post I made last night about initial impressions of the technology, since this sort of stuff is meant to go in my learning Journal, here it is...
=================
Only just managed to get through, so this is my first post - Hi all.
email has several advantages
* you don't have to actively check for new additions to a discussion, they just arrive in your inbox
*You can choose which email program you want to use to read them with.
* You can sort emails by author, date sent, subject or threaded.
* you can reply to the whole group or privately to the author.
* Spellchecker!
*Quoted replies
Disadvantages
* Spam!
Jellyos, my first impressions:
It is interesting, since it tries to be amorpeous with lots of cross linking, although it must still be centrally controlled.
It's slow, typing into the flash text input boxes is unacceptable for editing.
Mouse heavy - you have to double click things, and you can't use the keyboard to scroll down or anything. This will stop me using it extensively, I don't want RSI thanks.
Has anybody suggested an ultraversity meetup yet? It's always good to put faces to names, and then the community gets going faster.
=========
end quote
Internet Explorer 5 on MacOS 9 - doesn't work - shockwave incompatible
Safari on MacOS X - doesn't work
Internet Explorer 5.2 on mac OS X - This works so I am typing now on one of the new eMacs.
I managed to extract the post I made last night about initial impressions of the technology, since this sort of stuff is meant to go in my learning Journal, here it is...
=================
Only just managed to get through, so this is my first post - Hi all.
email has several advantages
* you don't have to actively check for new additions to a discussion, they just arrive in your inbox
*You can choose which email program you want to use to read them with.
* You can sort emails by author, date sent, subject or threaded.
* you can reply to the whole group or privately to the author.
* Spellchecker!
*Quoted replies
Disadvantages
* Spam!
Jellyos, my first impressions:
It is interesting, since it tries to be amorpeous with lots of cross linking, although it must still be centrally controlled.
It's slow, typing into the flash text input boxes is unacceptable for editing.
Mouse heavy - you have to double click things, and you can't use the keyboard to scroll down or anything. This will stop me using it extensively, I don't want RSI thanks.
Has anybody suggested an ultraversity meetup yet? It's always good to put faces to names, and then the community gets going faster.
=========
end quote
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
I was pleased to receive a circular email from my learning mentor ( Hi Lydia ) this morning. From this, I gathered that the jellyOS community was actually up and running and had been for some time, although I had failed to access it properly.
Worried that I was getting left behind, I replied straight away, bringing Lydia up to date on my activities, and asking how the online community works.
When I came home tonight, there was a reply with full instructions which I managed to follow.
So in one session this evening I managed to:
Visit facilitators pages and leave a message.
learn how to create a home page, add a photo and text box.
Join in a discussion about the JellyOS software itself, and post a list of advantages of email by comparison.
Suggest a meet up.
Renew aquaintance with fellow student Maureen Slack, (we exchanged emails in September)
I still need to learn:
How to include links to http addresses
How to include a link to a guestbook/discussion area of my own.
If I can access the community from work ( Flash player may need updating on old macs )
Worried that I was getting left behind, I replied straight away, bringing Lydia up to date on my activities, and asking how the online community works.
When I came home tonight, there was a reply with full instructions which I managed to follow.
So in one session this evening I managed to:
Visit facilitators pages and leave a message.
learn how to create a home page, add a photo and text box.
Join in a discussion about the JellyOS software itself, and post a list of advantages of email by comparison.
Suggest a meet up.
Renew aquaintance with fellow student Maureen Slack, (we exchanged emails in September)
I still need to learn:
How to include links to http addresses
How to include a link to a guestbook/discussion area of my own.
If I can access the community from work ( Flash player may need updating on old macs )
I've been investigating the education minister's speech at labour party conference announcing "e-skills passports".
"We are creating an 'e-skills passport' to enable every student to improve their computer skills at their own pace."
'e-skills passport' is terminology used by e-skills UK the Sector Skills Council for IT, Telecoms and Contact Centres in the UK -
eskills.com
e-skills UK is uniting employers, educators and government on a common, employer-led agenda for skills-improvement action, and delivering programmes designed to improve productivity and business performance in the UK.
So the implication is that ICT teaching in schools is to become firmly led by business requirements rather than education objectives, right from an early age.
here's the full text of the speech
speech
see also
>e-skills passport
"We are creating an 'e-skills passport' to enable every student to improve their computer skills at their own pace."
'e-skills passport' is terminology used by e-skills UK the Sector Skills Council for IT, Telecoms and Contact Centres in the UK -
eskills.com
e-skills UK is uniting employers, educators and government on a common, employer-led agenda for skills-improvement action, and delivering programmes designed to improve productivity and business performance in the UK.
So the implication is that ICT teaching in schools is to become firmly led by business requirements rather than education objectives, right from an early age.
here's the full text of the speech
speech
see also
>e-skills passport
Subscribed to uk.comp.sys.mac newsgroup and bookmarked
href=http://www.macosxhints.com
and
macupdate.com
( test post using lofi interface)
href=http://www.macosxhints.com
and
macupdate.com
( test post using lofi interface)
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Visiting Engineer
Matt from Toucan arrived and spent the day setting up the new mac OSX server, transferring users and data across from the old one and configuring clients.
It was exhausting and I only learned a fraction of what he was doing, and not yet enough even to be able to administer the new system yet.
The colourful upgrade management plan which I had drawn up was completely ignored, as he pushed ahead to try and get everything up and working on the new server in one day.
At the end of the day, we have the old iMacs running OS9 and Mac Manager 2 to log in to the new osX server, some users and passwords have been changed and shared directories work a bit differently. So it's business as usual tomorrow, fingers crossed. The one new eMac ( osX )is also configured to log in to the server and should share the same user data, but this doesn't seem quite right at the moment.
At least I have Matt's email address and I asked for another visit to be booked soon.
While it's nice to have a decent operating system underneath it all ( osX is based on FreeBSD, in turn a flavour of UNIX ), which is great having that sort of power and reliability back again, I feel that extremely technical work is something that necessarily belongs to my past and I much prefer to concentrate on the education side of things at this point in my life.
Matt from Toucan arrived and spent the day setting up the new mac OSX server, transferring users and data across from the old one and configuring clients.
It was exhausting and I only learned a fraction of what he was doing, and not yet enough even to be able to administer the new system yet.
The colourful upgrade management plan which I had drawn up was completely ignored, as he pushed ahead to try and get everything up and working on the new server in one day.
At the end of the day, we have the old iMacs running OS9 and Mac Manager 2 to log in to the new osX server, some users and passwords have been changed and shared directories work a bit differently. So it's business as usual tomorrow, fingers crossed. The one new eMac ( osX )is also configured to log in to the server and should share the same user data, but this doesn't seem quite right at the moment.
At least I have Matt's email address and I asked for another visit to be booked soon.
While it's nice to have a decent operating system underneath it all ( osX is based on FreeBSD, in turn a flavour of UNIX ), which is great having that sort of power and reliability back again, I feel that extremely technical work is something that necessarily belongs to my past and I much prefer to concentrate on the education side of things at this point in my life.
Sunday, October 05, 2003
I came across this article about ICT teaching in Primary schools
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,505751,00.html
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,505751,00.html
I started up, (or rather piggybacked onto), a thread in the MAC LEARNING COMMUNITY email list about converting from OS9 to OSX SERVER. Through this I've made contact with another ICT coordinator in London who is going through the same process, so we can compare notes.
I've learned that there are serious problems with the Workgroup Manager program in OSX, which is what I need to use to replace Mac Manager which runs under the old system.
I shall try to write a plan for managing the whole conversion on Monday, with some sort of critical path analysis.
Now I'm going out for a walk to make the most of the lovely autumn sunshine.
I've learned that there are serious problems with the Workgroup Manager program in OSX, which is what I need to use to replace Mac Manager which runs under the old system.
I shall try to write a plan for managing the whole conversion on Monday, with some sort of critical path analysis.
Now I'm going out for a walk to make the most of the lovely autumn sunshine.
Saturday, October 04, 2003
I created this weblog today, and I'll access it from home and from school for recording my learing Journal.
After a while, I'll assess the system and decide whether to carry on with "Blogger" or migrate all the posts to another system, possibly my son's own one at frankieroberto.com if he ever gets around to sorting it out!
This Weblog is not listed in the Blogger index, so it's relatively private in that people will only be able to read it if I tell them about it, (probably).
After a while, I'll assess the system and decide whether to carry on with "Blogger" or migrate all the posts to another system, possibly my son's own one at frankieroberto.com if he ever gets around to sorting it out!
This Weblog is not listed in the Blogger index, so it's relatively private in that people will only be able to read it if I tell them about it, (probably).
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