[IIAB] [XSCE] Massive -Offline- Open Courses

[Anish Mangal]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 6:55 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:

>
> On Jul 25, 2013 8:16 AM, "Anish Mangal" <anish at activitycentral.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 5:44 PM, Anish Mangal <anish at activitycentral.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> FWIW, I played around with the edx source code a bit yesterday night,
> and was able to get the edX studio (for course creation) and edX platform
> (for students) up in a VM fairly easily... Some thoughts...
> >>
> >> * It looked like quite the resource hog. I'm not sure how many users
> can a decently fast ARM support simultaneously.
> >> * It uses youtube videos for the "video part". This is a blocker. I
> hope we could find another way around this, but would require digging into
> the codebase.
> >> * Installing it on an XSCE would probably be a fairly complex endeavor
> because of all the dependencies and configurations.
> >>
> >> OTOH
> >> * "Better classroom integration" has been a big demand with XS and XO's
> over the years. Teachers want the technology fit to their way of teaching
> might find MOOCs beneficial.
> >> * Teachers want easier content creation capabilities. (for reference,
> easier than Moodle).
>
> I think there's a fair but of myth around the "difficulty of moodle" in
> the OLPC/Sugar context. I use moodle at work every semester, and it's still
> hard to beat when it comes to learning management systems. Honestly, I
> don't think projects and people have put a sincere effort into using moodle
> beyond the usual XS admin. Sadly, this includes staff on OLPC's payroll as
> well.
>
Your assessment could perhaps be true (re: "put a sincere effort into using
moodle beyond the usual XS admin.")

I was just summarizing what I've heard through various conversations with
folks who have been at or been involved in deployments, and whenever I
asked them to be specific (in the context of lack of classroom
integration), they mentioned Moodle. So, it's not just ranting on my part
(I've never ever used moodle before), but based on a pattern I observed.

> My opinion is that going the edx route will only satisfy the "not invented
> here" problem.
>
My support for edX, on the other hand is very much a personal hunch :-) ...
So I will make it a point of asking people what they think of MOOCs in
future conversations. Eg. Ceibal is already using KA videos if I'm not
wrong.

My interest in EdX is also because,
* Like it or not, MOOC's are very rapidly becoming the industry standard
when it comes to online learning.
* Nearly every major university (including premier Indian ones [1]) is
dedicating resources to be part of this new wave/fad/call-it-what-you-may.
Is it because they see MOOC's as an existential threat, I dont know (and
probably dont care)
* Most of the content being created is open-licensed
* There is a sincere effort to put emphasis on collaboration

It may be NIH, but I'd still want to give it some serious thought.

- - - -

Moving aside from the Moodle-EdX discussion, there was another request
which came up (again in Classroom Integration context). I think they want a
solution which makes it easy for Deployments to work with Publishers. They
say, wikipedia is great, but they also want content which is relevant to
their curriculum. Publishers usually use standardized (archaic) methods to
create that content. Apparently the XO/S doesn't lend itself well to that.

I'd like to articulate what I said above in a better way, but I only have
limited info so far :-/

[1] https://www.edx.org/school/iitbombayx/<https://www.edx.org/school/iitbombayx/allcourses>

--
Anish

> Sameer
>
> The edX platform is pretty intuitive when it comes to that (and much more
> dynamic).
> >> * Anyone who's used edX before will know that it's pretty awesome at
> fostering collaboration, discussion, and not just dumb video delivery. (and
> it's getting better at it day by day).
> >>
> >> So,
> >> * Need a careful analysis of whether edX can really run on low power,
> ARM servers (and how many users can the realistically support).
> >> * Need a rough analysis of how much work would it be to install it on
> an XSCE. Can we get around the youtube issue.
> >> * I feel the value being added by having such a platform justifies
> atleast a reasonable effort to find the answers to the above two questions.
> >> * If anyone wants to tag along in this adventure, please let me know!
> :-)
> >
> > * I didn't actually test whether the portal runs well on an
> XO-1/1.5/1.75 (as a client).. oops... will do that today.
> >>
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Anish
> >>
> >> On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 12:19 AM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Braddock Gaskill <
> braddock at braddock.com> wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >> On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 6:19 PM, Seth Woodworth <seth at sethish.com>
> wrote:
> >>> >>> If the decision is non-constructivist or do it all yourself, I
> would go
> >>> >>> with non-constructivist curriculum.
> >>> >
> >>> > I am very interested in bulk distribution of online course material
> with
> >>> > Internet-in-a-Box, in addition to the 4,000 Khan Academy videos we
> already
> >>> > provide.
> >>> >
> >>> > The Internet-in-a-Box project is focused on useful resource curation
> and
> >>> > distribution and not collaborative or constructivist activities.  If
> our
> >>> > distribution of bulk materials can be combined with, for example, a
> School
> >>> > Server module which allows a more interactive experience with the
> course
> >>> > material that would suit us well.
> >>> >
> >>> > -braddock
> >>> > http://internet-in-a-box.org
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>>
> >>> For all the TED videos that we have in Bhagmalpur
> >>> (http://bhagmalpur.wordpress.com), we used metaTED. Here's a
> >>> description. http://www.olpcsf.org/node/120
> >>>
> >>> For IIAB, MP4 -> OGV may be optional, although most major browsers now
> >>> play OGV (Theora codec) natively
> >>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video).
> >>>
> >>> cheers,
> >>> Sameer
> >>> --
> >>> Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> >>> Professor, Information Systems
> >>> San Francisco State University
> >>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> >>> http://commons.sfsu.edu/
> >>> http://olpcsf.org/
> >>> http://olpcjamaica.org.jm/
> >>
> >>
> >
>
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