Using Drupal
After so much encouragement and comments, I have to say something!
On enforcing the idea that students can only get credit for a post if they leave a comment too, I will probably approach it either by saying that each such assignment is worth 2 points, one for each aspect/ component, or else that you’ll get either zero or 2. That will depend on my mood when I write the syllabus.
Patrick showed me a drupal demo on monday, and by last night I had set up the chapter spaces for 6 chapters I think, and had filled in a little introductory content for each. I’ve found the drupal environment pretty intuitive to work in, but it took me a while to get clear about the parent/ child page stuff in creating pages.
So for instance, I have a page for Categorical Propositions. On that page I’ll have the text I write that presents the basic information I would also present in a lecture. Attached to that will be a “child” page which will list a series of exercises for the students, and attached to that another child page which will have the answers for them to check. So literally, at the stage I’m at, I am writing my own logic book on line, and the students will go from page to page electronically. and it won’t cost them $100 each for the book.
My original intention was to have the exercises be more interactive, which requires software. I’ve found a good quantity of open source software already made up, through the epistemelinks site. I haven’t had time to skim through very much of it yet, but at least some of it looks like I could use it immediately. One is the software for a published, very mainstream, and standard logic book, similar to the one i’ve just abandonned. I was surprised to see it on the web available for use free of charge! I think I can link to it on the drupal page, and for at least some of what I want to do, the software can be just right.
Patrick showed me how to upload powerpoints; it was easy with the “file attachment” button. Two things we need to work on are: how to have a group blog for sets of five students (or whether wikis would be better, like I used this past summer), and how to connect to open source logic software: links to urls? imbed it in the drupal page? I also want to be able to up load photos, and Patrick has suggested that we might be able, with Andy’s help, to convert powerpoints to videos and have them play in Flash right on the page instead of being navigated away from it.
This makes for a good update, info, and report on what’s going on. For me, it helps to know what things are standing out in your mind. That is, after we meet, there’s often a list of many different things in my mind about what we’ve talked about and where to direct attention. One thing that strikes me about reading your post is that this shows me what spontaneously (or not so spontaneously, as the case may be) comes up in your mind. It thus gives an addition filter/refinement to what’s most important to us right now in this stage of the game.
Another striking thing–I wonder if 10 days ago you would have imagined yourself writing knowledgebly about Drupal or the project as a whole. Often when I get in a blogger’s block (as I confess I am right now), I find myself more motivated to write when I imagine that the audience is the me of a week or two ago. That gives a neat new perspetive on what one might blog about–right now, it seems like there’s not much because I’m red-handed in the middle of the act. But when I imagine the myself of two weeks ago, I’d sure think this stuff is important. And if it is important to the myself of two weeks ago, that suggests that there’s some worth to articulating it in writing.
Comment by PatrickGMJ — October 12, 2006 @ 8:41 pm
And after “raising” the issue of blog activity, I should reply! And so I will.
I’m starting to see how the ideas for your course are coming together, and it looks like you’ve made a bit of progress in your thinking. Yesterday, when you said you weren’t sure (I think you said this) how valuable it would be to comment on your process of course development as you were doing it, I found myself agreeing in part. Most of the time, preparing a course is a bit of a solitary enterprise . . . but then, that’s part of the point. Maybe it always shouldn’t be. And maybe, by recording some reflections as the process is unfolding, you get feedback from others that helps (like Patrick’s useful ideas about imagining an audience). At the very least, one has a record of why certain choices were made and that might be useful in the future in determining if something worked out as anticipated.
The idea of writing an online text leads to the “logical” question — is your plan, eventually, to make your text available on the web and for it to become an alternative to the the “standard” logic text you just found? Is your approach going to be different from that found in the “standard” text? It sounds like you have an excellent idea that the technology we’ve been introduced to will help you to develop. Good luck with it.
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