Revolution and Education... website proposed

Douglas Westbrook wdesigns at austin.rr.com
Mon May 16 15:03:22 EDT 2005 

Marielle,

I am a newbie in a sense, Doug Westbrook's other half (who has an  
occasional post).  But I am looking for ways to use Revolution to  
empower teachers.  (I want to make a virtual room to showcase educators  
with links to their sites).

> 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. The more I try to persuade my HoD to  
> use existing eLearning tools to remedy some *inefficient* teaching  
> practices they currently have, the more I can feel myself being very  
> negatively noticed (change is a cause of discomfort for some people).

Fortunately, you are not alone!  The feeling of isolation is common for  
'people with a mission' in a crowd of learned helplessness.  Society in  
a sense, glamourizes getting to a point where you 'pay someone' to do  
everything while the person paying sits and eats a muffin.  I have  
found this in a little parent involvement initiative I'm involved in,  
educators are crying for involvement, while many parents (not all, as I  
can see the runtime list is full of learners and many must be parents  
too)  .... many parents are tired and worn out already and think every  
problem is with the teacher.

This Revolution Learning Community however, is its own kind of family.   
Most innovators felt alone and sought out like minded folks though  
writing letters (Galileo, etc.)......And the name even is perfect, it  
takes a 'revolution' to change comfortable, however educated minds.

The runtime folks make learning fun.  All the 'deeking and harping' and  
guys like Andre (who I hope his arm is totally healed by now)......are  
a great example of what a learning community SHOULD be.

I have an example of not so fun list, as I was the list mom/moderator  
for quality improvement initatives for the American Productivity and  
Quality Center (apqc) back in 1996, before our first son was born.   
Most of the posts where about contacting folks for benchmarking,  
looking for ways to cut costs, outsource or eliminate something, but  
you rarely got a chuckle from seeing personality and creativity, like  
the invigorating, enthusiastic up-all-night runtime guys.  I honestly  
don't mind all the messages even though I can't read them all.  I put  
them in a folder and read a little when I have a minute and want to be  
reminded that creativity is alive and well in the world.  Wish I could  
drop everything and go to Monterrey.

Sincerely,

Lisa Westbrook
Editor
Onebranch Interactive Library
www.onebranch.org
512 335-4180
mom of three

Teacher Quotes
"There is no limit to intelligence, or ignorance."
An old Latin Proverb - "When there is no wind, row."



>  On May 2, 2005, at 6:47 PM, Marielle Lange wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> 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  
> most of the staff is, simply put, technologically inept. Whenever I  
> try to advocate the use of Revolution I only cause 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. The more I try to  
> persuade my HoD to use existing eLearning tools to remedy some  
> *inefficient* teaching practices they currently have, the more I can  
> feel myself being very negatively noticed (change is a cause of  
> discomfort for some people). 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.  
> Obviously, my assignment partner and I decided to write this  
> assignment 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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>

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