The last post ended up with the basics of the student controller and views functioning to produce some simple output. The aim here is to get the entire student interface up and actually reading data from the database. It won't be completely finished. There will be some additional extra features to add. The aim here is to iron our the design of the whole model/view/controller set of classes....more...
In a couple of weeks I'm off to Canberra to talk PhD, potential ALTC grants and promote the use of BIM. As part of the latter task, I'm giving a quick talk at the University of Canberra as part of their Stuff the works lunches. The title of the talk is "Reducing the aggravation of student blogging: The story of BIM"....more...
The last couple of months have resulted in an absence from work on BIM (BAM into Moodle). This post is meant to be a summary of where I had gotten up to and a restatement of what I need to do. The latter part is somewhat uncertain due to limited communication within my local context. Somewhat disappointing....more...
BAM is a little project of mine playing at the edges of post-industrial e-learning. Since 2006 it's been relying on students creating and using blogs provided by external service provides - mostly Wordpress.com....more...
In the last bit of work I did on BIM, I got to the stage of having some initial working code for BIM module that allow someone to create a BIM activity and have that data saved to the database. The activity wouldn't do anything, but it's a start....more...
The last post in this series saw me struggling - the long way around - to the realisation that the implementation model I had in my head wasn't going to work. At least not with the constraints of the model adopted by Moodle....more...
The story of trying to get BAM into Moodle (BIM) continues, today's saga continues on from the last post which had progress stalled. The NEWMODULE template module was put in place, I had thought most of the necessary steps were being taken, however, the module name is not showing up as expected....more...
As outlined in the last BIM post the aim here is to take the "template" NEWMODULE and start creating a BIM module. Initially, this will contain hard-coded HTML or perhaps some initial non-functioning forms, we might progress onto some canned examples and finally to the real thing....more...
Over the last few weeks I've slowly been getting into Moodle/PHP as part of need to put the BAM project into Moodle. I've decided today to abbreviate this project into BIM - BAM into Moodle. It'll do for now....more...
The last post finalised some bits of knowledge I needed, now it is time to put it into action and complete the eStudyGuide block to a barely useful level....more...
The last post in this series described the start of a little project to learn more about PHP/Moodle programming in order to get BAM into Moodle. Essentially everything is done, there are two main tasks left:...more...
The last post provided an overview of what is required to put BAM into Moodle and generated a list of things I have to learn in order to implement it....more...
The previous post in this series started me along the lines of actually coding something in Moodle. It was only a pretend thing but indicated that blocks are fairly simple to implement. That previous post also pondered about the need to do some planning. Which brings me to the two main tasks for today...more...
I continue to have a high level of skepticism around the concept of universities investing in ePortfolios. I feel that it is another example of how people within universities tend to over-emphasize their importance in the scheme of things, extend the university role into areas it where it should never have been and subsequently waste resources and more importantly the time and energy of academic staff that would be better spent focusing on other aspects of improving learning and teaching. In particular, I see ePortfolios being another approach that is being over-run by the technologists alliance....more...
Up to Unit 7 of the introduction to Moodle programming course, this one is titled "Replicating a moodle block". So the programming begins....more...
In the previous step I got to know a bit more about the Moodle code base, libraries and idioms. Even got to modify a bit of code - nothing much more complex than hello world. Time to continue that journey....more...
Okay, so Moodle is installed, configured and working. The next step, I believe, will be playing a bit with Moodle development and trying to get my head around how it works, what the abstractions are and anything else I need to know in order to actually start the design and development of "Moodle BAM"....more...
It's Tuesday, so must be time to take the next step in getting BAM into Moodle. Last time I got up to having Moodle checked out from CVS and PHP/Apache and MySQL all working nicely together....more...
Having received approval to port BAM into Moodle, the first step is to get a Moodle development environment installed on my laptop. I'm meant to be getting a new one this week, however, local IT hasn't been forthcoming in when this is going to be available. Can't wait, I only have two days a week to work on this, and today is the last one this week....more...
Received formal institutional approval yesterday to commence the process of porting BAM into Moodle. This has two implications that spring to mind:...more...
BAM (blog aggregation management) is a tool used by a number of CQU courses. It's mainly used to help staff observe and mark individual student reflective journals. The journals are hosted on freely available blogs that the students set up and then register with BAM. Normally, we advise students to use Wordpress.com for their blog, but there's now a small problem. Any suggestions?...more...
Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) is a little project of mine that's been going since 2006. It's an example of, what I think, is a more appropriate product model for e-learning systems - essentially small pieces loosely joined/best of breed/PLE. Currently BAM is based on the infrastructure provided by Webfuse, another project of mine (which embodies and enables the better product model)....more...
As part of my new position/ I have an accountability that involves "facilitating the teaching/research nexus across the university". The notion of a teaching/research nexus is still a fairly opaque term for me (something I'll remedy in the future). While I can see the rationale behind the idea, I have my cynical doubts about whether it will end up being a term that has a meaningful impact or becomes as abused and misused as some other "terms" - e.g. generic attributes, lifelong learning etc....more...
Following on from yesterday's start of using the blog to record fixes to software, here comes another one....more...
Trying out a new approach to documentation of coding changes to BAM - i.e. writing it up in a post....more...
BAM - Blog Aggregation Management is a project I started in early 2006 to play around with two sets of ideas:...more...
In a previous post I talked about the rationale and need for thinking about a taxonomy of educational aggregation projects. Something that I haven't really given a lot of thought to, just yet....more...
The following is floating an idea that might be useful in my local context....more...
The Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) project is an attempt to be a bit more Web 2.0/SaaS in the implementation of e-learning within a University. BAM works by students creating and using their own blog on one of a number of freely available external blogging services and registering it with BAM. BAM provides some management infrastructure that integrates these external services with university information and also offers support for staff to mark and track student posts. The staff interface is primarily via a web interface....more...
The initial design and use of the Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) system was, in part, designed to try out approaches that leverage the protean nature of information technology. A major part of this is a move to something different, and hopefully better, than the current, broken e-learning orthodoxy within universities that is stuck on the idea of course management systems (CMS - aka learning management systems) as the only possible solution....more...
Part of the rationale for developing and using BAM had its origins in this unpublished paper (Jones, 2005). A part of the paper talks about minute papers, that content is reproduced below....more...
The Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) Project is a 3 year old project to extend some of the ideas (especially small pieces loosely joined) behind my thesis into the brave new world of "Web 2.0" (circa 2006). It was also intended to help solve a set of immediate problems in a particular course I was teaching through appropriate assessment and activities implemented by each student having their own blog. BAM provided the essential management and institutional wrapper around the use of these blogs to enable us to track and mark student progress....more...
In a post yesterday I talked about how most applications of e-learning within universities seems to actively prevent students and staff leveraging the protean nature of information technology. That is the nature of computer software to be flexible, malleable and customisable....more...
Working with Bernie Walker-Gibbs, CD&DU has helped produce CQU's first "web2.0 course site" for the course EDED11448, Creative Futuring. It's been talked about previously. This post talks briefly about the purpose and initial experience....more...
blogs for learning is an "online resource about instructional blogging being set up by Michigan State University. I've volunteered/been asked to write an article about the use of blogs in COIS20025 and BAM....more...
It's almost the end of term. We've started marking the blogs using BAM and not surprisingly some rough edges are showing. Things to look at...more...
A long time ago I identified "reducing meaningless freedom" as a key design principle for elearning type apps - basically anything web-based and possible broader. It ties in with ideas others have identified, it's even discussed in the sad textbook we're using in COIS20025 this term....more...
Stephen Downes has a paper titled "Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge" that is currently being discussed on the ITForum. He blogs about the paper and includes links to ITForum and the paper....more...
A post from Simon Fraser University talks about use of Google Calendar with some PHP code to manage calendars and bookings....more...
A nice quote to support the approach taken with BAM and to some extent Webfuse...more...
Have had a report from one of the students...more...
Part of a project for "Embracing blogs" for information literacy. Based on a paper that I think I've seen before....more...
The "Gantt chart" question in week 3 has caused students some problems....more...
Thought it would be a grand idea to get the students, in week 3, to prepare a Gantt chart planning out their study for the term. They get to apply some content knowledge and think actively about planning their study....more...
It's now the end of week 2 of CQU's Term 2 for 2006. This is the first attempt at a log entry for the first test of the BAM project in the CQU course COIS20025, Systems Development Overview...more...