Educator, Thinker, Consultant

Author: Troy (Page 4 of 31)

Educator, Thinker, Moodler, Podcaster, Open-source advocate. Check out the world's longest running middle school focused podcast at https://middleschoolmatters.com

Reader’s Theater

The wonderful Shawn McGirr sent along the Reader’s Theater activity he created. The activity has students picking a short story and presenting that story to the class.

Students select their script. All students get a question/discussion page after the performances are done. During rehearsals, students in each skit group design questions in the StudentQuiz activity that restricted to their group until the end and students answer student created questions.
Final exam is a pool of all the questions with a random number from each StudentQuiz activity pulled for the final test.

This is a phenomenal activity. The students get to lead the way. They are creating the questions.

Shawn sent along an example of the activity. However, when I imported the activity and tried to use it, I hit an error screen. Shawn utilized StudentQuiz in Moodle. StudentQuiz is a great plug-in that I’ve used before.

Hm. I thought maybe it was due to the original being created from an older version. So, I tried to create a brand-spanking new activity. Drats, same error message. Or maybe not drats. The issue probably isn’t related to the imported activity. So, off to the forums. It is there that I discovered that there is a known issue with StudentQuiz and Moodle version 4.3. The fix is in the pipeline. Hopefully, by mid-January, it will be available.

I do have another Moodle installation though. That one is running Moodle version 4.1 currently. I was able to import the activity there without issue.

The activity is awesome. Shawn has done a great job. The students take the lead. They get to select a piece to be the expert on. The students get to create the questions. The students get to answer the questions created by their peers. The teacher then gets to utilize those student-created questions to create a unique “final exam” for each student. (The teacher can approve the student-created questions. Then, the teacher essentially says, “give each student 20 questions from this bank of 100”.)

Holidays

It’s back to work time as Holiday break is now over. I got to relax and spend a good bit of time with the family. It was great to see the kids. We got the youngest moved to her new apartment. This is the best apartment she’s had in a while. She actually has plenty of space. She has an upper floor, technically two bedrooms, but one is being used as a dining room.

I rented a trailer for the move. I also took some dressers, a futon, and our old kitchen table to the youngest. She now has things that at least go together.

Spent today (January 1st) doing some cleaning and a bit of reading. Also went to the my eldest daughter’s house to watch a bit of Fry and Laurie. I also spent a bit of time upgrading darktable. I updated to version 4.6.0. Everything seemed fine until I went to import some new pictures. Darktable would then hang upon rejecting the request to access other programs. Apparently, this just took a really long time to set. Upon leaving it run for a while (OK, I admit it, I was working on posting a bug report), the import menu showed up and all is right with the world (or at least darktable). I do have pictures on an external hard drive and probably should switch to a faster drive.

I saw that John Gruber posted Merry about being the luckiest person in the world. I hate to break it to him, but I think that I’ll challenge that one. šŸ˜‰ (He actually ends with “I hope you are too”, so really, I tip a pint to him and say, “Yes, Yes, I am too”).

Couch

I used to live in an area where cars were frequently up on “blocks”. Rarely did I see a couch up on blocks. Not sure if this is a step up or not.

A porch with a variety of signs with pithy saying and some concert posters. In front of the porch is a leather couch up on cinder blocks.

MoodleNet Thoughts

I posted on Mastodon about the lack of feedback on Moodle Net. Martin replied asking for feedback. Iā€™ve responded, but I thought that I would flesh out my thoughts a bit here.

I love Moodle and what you can do with it. I love that there isnā€™t a big money-making, data-sucking, privacy-invasive company running it.

A little background. Iā€™m in the US. Specifically, Iā€™m in K-12 education teaching and learning. Moodle is not super popular. There are certainly a few places, but Moodle is much bigger at the University level than K-12. There is much angst over Moodle. Quite simply, teachers find it ā€œtoo hardā€.

There are reasons that Google Classroom has taken over. It really doesnā€™t do much (thus, much less to learn for teachers). Google Classroom is essentially handing out worksheets and getting them back (another bonus, teachers understand the worksheet process).

When COVID hit, there was a rush for two things, video conferencing and an LMS. Zoom quickly captured the video conferencing mindshare. So much so, that even now it is pretty much the only game in town. Google Classroom captured the LMS market (note that it not an LMS but that doesnā€™t matter). It doesnā€™t even matter that it is not an LMS. The District that I was in at the time evaluated Canvas, Schoology, and Moodle (we had Moodle installed and were known internationally for our work in Moodle – due to Chris Kenniburg). The District chose to go with Schoology. It was ā€œeasierā€.

MoodleNet

So this is one reason I was (still am) hopeful for MoodleNet. MoodleNet should be a great way to share resources, activities, etc. This means teachers wouldnā€™t have to create all their own material. This alone would make Moodle ā€œeasierā€. Teachers could get started.

However, I do not find MoodleNet engaging. Iā€™ve posted some things there, but I donā€™t get any feedback. There is currently no way to provide feedback. I canā€™t tell someone that I liked their materials or that I used it with changes. Hence. I reached out to Martin.

I donā€™t think that this needs to be overly complicated. I thought about ratings, 1-5 stars, adding how it was used, tags, and more. Really though, I think a simple comment box would be the way to go. Let users decide how to use it. Let users make comments. Provide a link back to the profile of the user, what date the comment was made, but otherwise, just free-form comments.

I am hopeful that that would provide a bit of social connections. It would provide the opportunity to provide feedback. It may encourage more people to submit resources.

Ownership, Anti-Ownership, and Deleting “Your” Stuff

ā€¦or why you “bought” it, but don’t own it.

In the “good old days”, one went to a bookstore and bought a physical copy of the book (this also applied to movies). Once one had read the book, one was free to give that to a friend. Or, you put it on your bookshelf. Or donate it to a library. You also have/had the legal right to sell the book (in order to get money to buy more books – šŸ™‚ ). The ability to sell the book is known as First Sale Doctrine.

In the digital age, that has all changed. Legally, when you “buy” a book (again, same for movies) through an online site, you are really just acquiring permission to access it. That permission to access the “book” (or movie) will have limitations. These resources are for your “personal, non-commercial” use only (i.e. you can’t share it, or in the case of movies, show it to a group).

The landscape has changed, but the expectations of many people haven’t. Yet, this is important to note.

There are a couple of recent posts that highlight this.

The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy

This is a lengthy read that has lots of great information. The article points out that not only do you not have the right to sell the book that you “bought”, but that your behavior can also be tracked while you are reading that book.

The article points out the additional attacks on public libraries as well. Specifically, publishers are fighting online lending.

PlayStation is erasing 1,318 seasons of Discovery shows from customer libraries

This is a pretty easy to understand write up. People bought movies through Playstation. Those that did so will lose access to them. Here is the notification:

As of 31 December 2023, due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library.
We sincerely thank you for your continued support.

Discovery would like people to subscribe to MAX or Discovery+.

Between the two articles, it is very clear that the rights to media have changed. If you don’t like this and would like to see different rules, reach out to your Congressperson.

Week Note 2023-12

Blog Photos

I usually use Labnol as a great way to leverage Google Photos as a blog post image. However, occasionally, the service just doesn’t work. It’s a free service, so there is no real concern. This was the case with the last blog post.

I try to watch the space that I use with WordPress (a habit developed long ago). I also post several of my pictures to be freely shared (usually CC-SA-NC-BY). I had a picture that I wanted to use as the featured image, so I shared that image on Unsplash.

I also shared the image on PixelFed. PixelFed is a free, no-advertising site for sharing pictures. There are lots of great pictures shared on the site.

So, I have at least a few ways to share images. There are lots of wonderful images out there that can be used. (Please remember to attribute images and thank those who post.)

Dinner with the Family

I had a great dinner with the whole family. It is so wonderful to sit down and eat with my wife and kids.

Clocks

I’ve dropped off a couple of clocks for repair. One is actually a timer. The other is a clock with sentimental value.

The clock repair person was wonderfully typical Mainer. She is passionate about clock repair, and a wonderful person. We had a nice chat about the clocks and life in general.

Target

My wife and I headed out to Target for a bit of shopping. I was pretty gobsmacked by the number of empty shelves. This was on general stuff too.

Dog Showers

Hazel got the “zoomies” and with the rain, her backyard is pretty muddy. Thus, Hazel received a record three baths.

Christmas Lights

I put up Christmas lights right after Thanksgiving. I was thinking that maybe that was a little bit early. Then the temperature hit a high of 12 degrees on the next day that I would’ve been putting up lights. So, yeah, not too early.

Email

My favorite email that I received this week started like this:

“I apologize for the delay in my response as our team has been understaffed, and my time and focus has been limited to the most urgent tasks.”

Subtext, your email wasn’t that important.

Week Note 2023-11

Snowy Morning

Well, we had our first real snow this morning. That meant a little bit of shoveling this morning. It was really beautiful though.

The drive to work was incredibly beautiful.

However, the power also went out (later found out it was tree-related). Not only the power, but the cable went out as well.

Christmas Decorations

We got the tree up and decorated this weekend. The first task ended up un “pre-lighting” the artificial tree as the lights that are (uh, were) tightly wrapped around the branches failed to actually light up.

Cookies

Rm and D1 had a cookie-making session. Much fun and many good cookies were baked.

A1

We ended up going out to lunch at A1 on Saturday. This meant there was no need for dinner that night (save for a bit of cheese and crackers while decorating).

Flu Shots

I had a nice long call with our insurance as I was trying to get a flu shot. It turns out that our insurance covers Flu shots. However, they cover Flu shots through medical insurance. Most common places to get Flu Shots bill through prescriptions. So, I’ve made an appointment, but it will be a while before I can get my Flu shot.

Clocks

We have a couple of clocks that need to be fixed. I had tried to fix one, but it proved beyond my capabilities. Finally, we have found a clock repair shop. I’ll be taking the clocks this week to get repaired.

Thanks

I take inspiration from Doug Belshaw, whom I’ve met but I’m sure wouldn’t remember me, and Alan Levine for their blogging, sharing, and presence. I appreciate their work and sharing so very much.

Pixel Fed Feed

I’ve finally been able to subscribe through Mastodon to my PixelFed feed. It’s little things like this that end up bringing joy. It also points to the power of open-source and Activity Pub.

Weekly Update 2023-10

CMTC23

I’m attending (and presenting at) Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference.

Presentation

My presentation was on H5P & Me (you can see it with the link).

I like where the presentation is at this point. I’ve presented this a few times with lots of changes. It is now at a point where there is enough flexibility with solid content.

AI

Well, if there was any question at all, AI is THE topic in education. I really should’ve presented on AI at this conference.

So, naturally, I attended a session on AI. It was fine. Nothing earth-shattering, but some good perspectives.

Of course, this is why AI sessions are so popular. There is more that we don’t know than we do. At least we think so. We’re really

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The offspring were both in the house. We had a great time.

Holiday Season

The Holiday season has kind of officially begun. That is, I decided to put up the outside lights before a full frost, frozen ground situation.

Search Creative Commons

Thanks to the wonderful Alan Levine (@cogdog), I can now type gcc in my URL bar (then hit the tab key) in Chrome to invoke a search of CC licensed images.

You can too.

https://cogdogblog.com/2021/12/forcing-google-image-search-cc/

(Please head over to Alan Levine’s site to read his write up. For me, I’m posting the actual search engine code needed.)

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbm=isch&tbs=il%3Acl

H5P Presentation

Check out my presentation: “Open Source H5P and Me” from the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference.

Description

Learn how to find, create, and share FREE interactive digital activities using the open-source project H5P. Interactive video, Word completion, Choose your own adventure, Cornell Notes, Dictation, Put images into order, Students identifying words, Students answering verbally, and more are possible.

Below is a quick movie of the slides. This will definitely make more sense if you’ve seen the presentation as I tend to use images and talk about things.

If you’d like to check out some of the examples of H5P, you can head over to the MasterMoodle Moodle site. Click the login button in the top right. You can create an account. Use the enrollment key of CMTC23.

Weekly Update 2023-09

AI Art

I started another AI Art session. This one is with a “challenging” class of all 8th grade boys. We’ve had a minute to come to grips with my expectations.

Bronco

The Bronco had a voluntary recall. I scheduled the service a couple of weeks ago. We arrived to drop off the Bronco on the night before. Upon arriving at the dealer to drop it off, my wife waved me over to let me know that there was still cold air coming out of the vents (we’d driven far enough for the air to have warmed up). So, I left a note on the drop-off slip about the cold air.
I got a call at the end of the day. The recall was all set, but the cold air was the issue of the water pump failing. Bad news, the water pump is on backorder and not available until the end of the month. Then, we just did one last week under an “emergency” and got the part in two days (uh oh, now it sounds like a more common issue). The timing couldn’t have been better in one respect. Apparently, the water pump led to the loss of anti-freeze. So, because of the recall, I was able to get the issue addressed without major damage.

Battery

Since the Bronco is still in the shop, a spot is open in the garage. So, out I went to move my little old Focus into the garage for a nice warm overnight stay (yea, no scrapping windows). Er, except the Focus wasn’t starting. Being old and having experience, I knew immediately that the battery needed replacement. I pulled out the Mustang and gave the Focus a jump (confirming the battery issue).

In the morning, I jumped the Focus again and headed off the fix-it shop. Upon arriving, I asked if they had time to replace a battery. (Why not replace it myself you ask? I’ve had the battery replaced once and it is tucked under the vents and crammed in.)

Winterize

I took a day to prepare for winter. The patio table has been put away. The flower pots on the deck have been relocated to the shed. Markers to line the driveway for snow removal have been put into place. Heat mats for the steps out the back door have been installed.

Kennebunkport

Every once in a while, we like to head off to somewhere we haven’t been. Kennebunkport was the choice this week.
Kennebunkport was a nice visit. We found some nice shops and a wonderful beach. Since it is after Labor Day, there were several dogs running around the beach. There was a nice coffee shop, a vinegar shop, and more.
Kennebunkport will be on our return list.

Vault

The Vault was this weekend. Since it is after Halloween, the focus was Christmas (insert eye roll here). We ended up purchasing a bi-level tray for the kitchen and a serving tray.

Kitchen

The kitchen is finally tiled. After waiting overnight for the tile to fully dry, I reinstalled the appliances:

  • Dishwasher
  • Stove
  • Refrigerator
    D1 swung by to help me relocate and “nail” down the island. After having the island up on dollys for quite a long time, the island now seems low. I’ll get used to it, probably pretty quickly, but right now it just seems low.

I still need to clean up the cabinets and refinish at least one.

Voting

This November 7th was voting day for Maine. On the ballot were eight citizen initiatives. I made sure that I voted.

Shoeshine

Since my wonderful wife and I enjoy movies, I’ve subscribed to Delphi’s Screening Room. The latest movie available was Shoeshine (1946). This is an Italian movie with subtitles.

Snow

First bit of snow this morning. Not enough to “stick”, but counts as first snow.

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