I just recorded a (very) quick and dirty screencast to demo the EduGlu sandbox prototype that was put together in Drupal. It’s a 23 minute session, and clocks in at 28 MB. I probably rambled a bit more than I should have, but you’ll get the idea…
(The Anarchy Media Player displays a smallish video embedded on this post, but you can download the video to view at 640×480 if you want to try to read the tiny text in the screencast)
Download EduGlu Screencast
Very interesting. Obviously lots of potential.
I’d be interested in a list of the modules that you’re using to put this together.
Good job D’Arcy. I do think we need to split this up a bit, because it is a longish narrative that presumes a bit that people are following along with the larger dialogue. But it is as cohesive a story as I think has been produced as to what is EduGlu and how the idea arose.
Nice point around aggregating discussions, that was a new point I had not seen before.
It would be good to get some student testament (and evidence) on the importance of them having control over their blogging environment/why embracing what looks like chaos is a good thing. Many of us “know” that this is an important part in building one’s sense of personal voice and ownership, but I do think more evidence will be demanded that this is not a “nice to have” but an essential part of the experience, and one that improves the student learning experience.
This is a good start. I hope it satisfies whoever “asked” for it (that sounded a bit ominous at the start 😉
This is a really fine document of this point in time. It will be useful as a reference to that oft-posed question “What is EduGlu?” – at least for this particular wrinkle of the McGuffin.
@jim: I’ll work up a recipe for modules that were used to build this prototype, but it’s going to be a few days before I can do that.
@scott: man, there’s just no pleasing you 😉 yeah… it needs to be split up, and maybe a little less rambling, but the idea was to capture a snapshot and quick demo (that turned out to be not so quick) as a basis for discussion, not as an in-depth video manual for how to use the site. I’d LOVE to get student feedback, and have some classes actually try this out – currently it’s all based on intuition and theory, but unless the rubber hits the road at some point, it really doesn’t matter. And there were a few people who asked for the screencast – not sure if this will meet their needs or not, but I’m sure I’ll find out…
@brian: good point, in that this is just the current approximation of the McGuffin. This is not the final “eduglu” but a framework to play and discuss what it means. It’s easier to do that when there’s a semi-working prototype to kick tires on – a lesson I learned from the CAREO days, when we were collectively blabbidyblabbing about LORs but didn’t have one to play with. I’m perfectly willing, even hopeful, to retire this instantiation if/when something better comes along.
And hopefully you understand that my comment is more of an injunction to the rest of us (myself especially) to do a better job documenting this, as you have done more than your fair share so far in spelling out the most cohesive descriptions of eduglu that I have seen so far.
@scott: yeah, I took it that way. it’s hard to formally document something that is by nature so loose and organic, though. If we’re able to manage a face-to-face session to work on it, I think we’ll get there pretty quickly.
D’Arcy,
The “rambling” was perhaps the highlight of this for my viewing pleasure!
Thanks much for this, a great overview, and good treatment in the narrative.
D’Arcy,
I’ve been messing around with some similar stuff – some convergent with, and some inspired by, your postings on the topic.
You might check out my “social learning” sandbox site, at http://sandbox.similibus.org; which is documented (in progress) in my blog at http://wt.similibus.org. I’ve set this up to give folks a place to play with, & help me continue to evolve, the platform I’m setting up for my institution.
Thanks for your inspiration over time –
will taylor
chair, dept. of homeopathic medicine (& resident edu-geek)
national college of natural medicine
portland, oregon
Thanks for this screencast! Very cool!
I’m glad you had to activate the blogs module during the demo. It gave me a chance to see the modules you’re using, and thus enough confidence to try this out on my own.
I think I have it working, but there’s (at least) one piece of your magic I can’t seem to replicate:
How do you get the tags from the original blog post to appear on each drupal node? Is this a setting in Feed API I’ve missed?
Again – great work here – I’d love to compare “recipes” at some point to see if there are other things in your setup that I’ve missed.
Doug
Drupal offers a wealth of possibilities here — we implemented eportfolios for a client at the university level back in the Dark Ages of Drupal 4.7 🙂 — our solution then used both taxonomy and nodereferences, and created the nodeorder module