Revolution and Education... website proposed

Ro Nagey ro at runrev.com
Tue May 3 12:55:23 EDT 2005


After laying dormant for a very long time, I am happy to announce the  
Education-Revolution list is back and better than ever.

You are enthusiastically invited to be part of this improved list!

To be a part of this list, go to http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/ 
listinfo/education-revolution and scroll down to the bottom of the  
page for subscribe instructions.

This list is specifically designed for teachers, students and those  
with a special interest in using Revolution in an educational  
environment. We are going to share problems, solutions and ideas.  
And, if you're a member of this list, you'll also be eligible for  
special offerings from Runtime Revolution!

In the coming year, we're going to be putting a lot of emphasis on  
education. Please help us and be part of this list!

Ro

On May 3, 2005, at 2:04 PM, Marielle Lange wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> (Many of you will take me for a newcommer... I have bought my  
> license long ago
> and lurked on the list... I hadn't much chance to participate  
> simply because
> the questions usually get answered before I get a chance to give my  
> 5 cents).
>
> A few months ago (back in Oct 2004), there was an interesting  
> thread on
> educational use for revolution.
>
> Several things emerged from this discussion:
>
> 1. A number of metacard or revolution stacks have been produced  
> that cannot be
> found anywhere on the web or in the "user".
> 2. There is a group of enthusiastic teachers on this list who see  
> revolution as
> having the potential to benefit their teaching.
> 3. Most of them have difficulties sharing their enthusiasm with  
> colleagues in
> their institution.
>
> This was for instance, nicely expressed by Gregory [Gregory Lypny  
> gregory.lypny
> at videotron.ca]
>
>
>> I have long stopped evangelizing courseware because the response I  
>> get
>> from colleagues is that they do not want to be involved with its
>> development.  The incentive to do the work is simply not there.  I  
>> make
>> my stuff freely available to my colleagues, but their enthusiasm
>> quickly peters when I explained that some work is required to get  
>> it to
>> do what they want it to do.  They'll only give it a spin if it's  
>> ready
>> to go right off the shelf.  [...]
>>
>
>
> I have similar difficulties. I work in a department (psychology) where
> technnology causes fear and apprehension. As Judy had expressed in  
> some of her
> emails, my skills and my tendency to aim for better than what is  
> achieved by
> current practices leads to isolation rather than admiration. I can  
> see me
> loosing courage, gradually, and I feel the need for a place where I  
> can discuss
> some ideas with like-minded persons.
>
> As Gregory mentioned:
>
>
>> I should leave this with a positive spin:  courseware = cool,
>> untapped potential.  We just need more impressive examples of it in
>> use.
>>
>
> However, if it is left to me alone, in between my teaching,  
> research, admin
> duties, I do not have the time to develop an impressive example of  
> Revolution's
> use for education. Not that I am not trying. To address the problem  
> identified
> by Gregory, I have a project in gestation of a GUI editor for a  
> large range of
> web-based exercises. The idea is to select exercises written in java,
> javascript, Flash, with a content that can be defined in a text  
> file attached
> to the application (see usinaquiz for examples [in French] or  
> formator demo
> [quizz section] for a working demo [enhanced for Safari and  
> Firefox, not tested
> yet with Internet Explorer Windows] and
> http://revolution.lexicall.org/eLearning/AccompanyingDocs-sm.pdf  
> fro textual
> explanations). This will be developed over next summer. (See, John  
> Mathewson
> for a similar project, for a public of school teachers, at
> http://members.maclaunch.com/richmond/default.html). I have another  
> project of
> an revolution application to access an on-line database of learning  
> objects.
> Another one of a database of images, for lecture illustration (I  
> already have
> on my hard disk a well organized archive of 100MB of pictures),  
> where lecturers
> could share and access their resources (see viperlib,
> http://viperlib.york.ac.uk/, for such a project, in the very  
> restricted context
> of visual perception).
>
> Still, alone, there is only so little I can do and it tends to take  
> quite a long
> time to get anything done as I do not have much time to spend on  
> this project. I
> have given a lot of thought to becoming a freelance instructional  
> designer, but
> I really doubt I would be able to make a living from it. So, I will  
> probably
> have to keep my revolution coding as a captivating hobby, to do  
> outside of my
> (already long) working hours.
>
> Recently, in the context of a course on "teaching in digital  
> environment" I had
> been enrolled in, this time as a student, I got to write an  
> assignment,  on
> using Wiki-web for collaborative learning (my own choosing).  
> Obviously, my
> assignment partner and I decided to write it collaboratively, on a  
> wiki-web
> medium. I really enjoyed the experience. There is so much more in 2  
> brains than
> in one... there is so much benefit of having another person's  
> perspective on the
> issue. This got me thinking... why not try something similar with  
> the nice
> people from the revolution community, this time on the use of  
> revolution for
> student-centered learning?
>
> It happens that I recently created a website, that I use in a  
> research context.
> I could easily create a revolution subdomain to host a "revolution- 
> education"
> resource center with : (1) an archive of stacks relevant to  
> education ( I can
> provide up to 200MB), (2) a forum or even better, a wiki for the  
> discussion of
> ideas and guidelines (I have recently set-up a wiki to support one  
> of my course
> and it wouldn't be difficult to set-up another one for discussion  
> on the them of
> revolution-education). I really believe that Wikis are better than  
> forums to
> organize thoughts.
>
> Who knows, this could lead to a book "Instructional Design with  
> Revolution"...
> with the word order that suggests that reaching teaching goals and the
> provision of well-thought exercises would be more important than  
> technical
> aspects (though, both could probably be reconciled with a section  
> on teaching
> (to teachers) programming with revolution).  After all, the  
> reluctance of
> colleagues to be involved in e-Learning does not come from the fact  
> that they
> do not care about the quality of their teaching. It rather has for  
> origin the
> lack of resource printed or digital resource that would let them  
> realize
> something useful without having to spend too much time acquiring  
> new skills. If
> we want to encourage our colleagues to adopt better practices,  
> maybe we need to
> be concerned about creating resources that facilitate their efforts.
>
>
> In fact, I already gave it a start:
>
>     http://revolution.lexicall.org/
>
> You will find there a list of links and information related to  
> eLearning
> (http://revolution.lexicall.org/eLearning/) as well as a listing of  
> the stacks
> I have already produced (under a share alike license), at
> http://revolution.lexicall.org/listing.php. I will add a wiki next  
> week-end.
>
> Educators and non educators alike may be interested to know that  
> this listing is
> automatically produced thanks to the provision of a text file  
> joined to the
> revolution file, with the following metadata.
>
> <resource_description>
>     <name>RSS reader</name>
>     <description>Still another exploration of widgets. Simple RSS
> reader.</description>
>      <author>Marielle Lange</author>
>      <author_contact_details>N/A</author_contact_details>
>      <license>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/</ 
> license>
>     <url_image>mystacks/rss_reader.gif</url_image>
>     <url_information>N/A</url_information>
>
> <url_download>http://revolution.lexicall.org/mystacks/ 
> rss_reader.rev</url_download>
> </resource_description>
>
> This means that information about the file is separate from the  
> file itself...
> It is possible to create a directory that lists stacks  hosted in  
> the archive
> as well as stacks hosted elsewhere. I can give away the php script  
> to anybody
> interested (written so to understand any metadata, organized in any  
> number of
> sections (details at: http://lexicall.org/repository/standards.php,  
> when used
> in another context).
>
>
> Let me know if you are interested in taking advantage of any of  
> this... but
> please, be patient, my day job does not involve programming with  
> revolution, I
> may take a few days (i.e., next week-end) to answer your emails.
>
> Best,
> Marielle
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ---------
> Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguistics, Lecturer in Psychology  
> and Informatics
> University of Edinburgh, UK
> Email:        M.Lange at ed.ac.uk
> Homepage:  http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/mlange/
>
>
>
>
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>

Ro Nagey ~ Evangelist ~ ro at runrev.com
Runtime Revolution - User-Centric Development Tools ~ http:// 
www.runrev.com/




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