Staff Development Workshop: Tech Value & Bubbl.us

Below is an example of the sort of mind-map one can create using the tool at www.bubbl.us. It summarizes my view of how to measure the value contributed to student learning by any given piece of technology.

Ubuntu Project: The Final Briefing

What I Learned:

After several months of consultation and troubleshooting with Max, the student who volunteered to live on an Ubuntu laptop (see intro), I'm going to pronounce the Ubuntu project a qualified failure -- and by qualified, I mean that this is a failure out of which we both learned a lot.

Ubuntu failed to meet Max's day-to-day needs without extensive intervention which, owing to both of our schedules, we didn't always have room for. Here are the particulars:

1. If any college student is going to switch to Ubuntu, they'll need intensive, hands-on introduction at the beginning and professional support throughout the early stages.
2. Ubuntu does not integrate seamlessly (or sometimes at all) with the mobile devices on which Max's generation relies (as do plenty of his elders), and that's a huge drawback.
3. On a campus in which desktops running Microsoft Windows and Office are everywhere and freely available, most college students will not use an Ubuntu laptop, even if it's free. Microsoft has an abiding commercial interest in making sure of this.
   

Here are some more particulars from Max:

Last year, I didn't have a functioning living place. I was using public space a lot more. This year, I have a very organized house; I came back early from break. I can sit and study in my house instead of driving to the library every day.

I also wasn't as comfortable with Ubuntu, so when I really, really needed to get stuff done, I went to a public computer so I wouldn't have to worry about losing documents or not being able to do stuff. I hate doing stuff over again.

But I made a conscious decision back in November. I realized that I really wished I used the computer for everything, so over the break, I decided to organize my folders so that I could do literally everything through the computer. I also had problems with my old computer and so I was forced to use the Ubuntu machine. I took some time to get more comfortable with it, and now I am.

I've been taking all of my notes on the laptop, so at the end of the semester, I can just go and print out all of my notes for every single course. I made a template that has terms, concepts, everything I need.

Word documents and PowerPoint slides work really well on OpenOffice. I haven't encountered anything like formatting issues or stuff not displaying properly.

The problem with peripherals...

The only problem is that anything that isn't online has been difficult to put in here. I thought it would be a breeze to get a handout that the instructor didn't put on Telesis. The problem is that when I tried to hook the laptop up to a scanner, it wouldn't retrieve the scan. I ended up going to the ArtSci lab to scan stuff and putting it on a zip drive or e-mailing it to myself.

I've also never been able to get my Lexmark printer to work with Ubuntu. On campus, I put it on my zip drive or e-mail it to myself, but that's the same for people with Windows laptops, at least in the ArtSci lab.

Here are some of Max's observations on his reliance on mobile devices:

I figured out a way to get my music collection to work the way I wanted to, but I haven't gotten around to it. I also don't have a way to synch it with my phone.

My Sprint phone has stopped working twice now. They've had to reset the phone and that leads to me losing my contacts. If I had a Windows machine, I'd have all my contacts and could just synch them onto the phone, so if I wanted to do that, I'd have to save them onto some other Windows computer.

I don't use the calendar on here. I use my phone and my planner.

Thank you, Max, for your patience, forbearance, and willingness to try out new things that might (eventually, maybe!) benefit other students.

It's unclear what the next step in this exploration should be. I think I'll just keep it in the oven on warm...

Project Ubuntu: Report #3 - A Star Is Born

Here's the latest report from Max, which shows a common pattern in the experiences of Ubuntu users.

For people who aren't afraid of a command-line interface -- where you actually type in a command that, in the usual graphic interface, would be a point-and-click of some kind -- Ubuntu is a dream.

Here' is Max's report:

This past week has been full of linux learning. In an effort to download tersus I learned that
.deb files are the default file that linux uses for efficient installation. furthermore I learned how to use the terminal, I used the terminal to update gimp the linux photoshop equivalent, I typed sudo get update, then used the command prompt for the password then added the gimp update that would allow me to save pictures in the "png" format. I have been thinking about installing another browser in case mozilla ever disfunctions, so I will be researching which other internet browsers work best on linux/ubuntu.

For clarity, here's is what Wikipedia has to say about "sudo" ...

The sudo (super user do, officially pronounced /ˈsuːduː/,^[2] though /ˈsuːdoʊ/ is also common) command is a program for Unix-like computer operating systems that allows users to run programs with the security privileges of another user (normally the superuser, aka. root). It is much like the "Administrator" status on Windows systems. By default, sudo will prompt for a user password but it may be configured to require the root password or no password at all.^[3] sudo is able to log each command run and in some cases has completely supplanted the superuser login for administrative tasks, most notably in Ubuntu Linux and Apple's Mac OS X

I'm not sure what Max's experiences so far tell us about how well the strictly point-and-click crowd would take to an Ubuntu-centered world. More to follow!

Project Ubuntu: Report #2 - Bumps in the Road

So it seems our intrepid explorer, who I'll start calling "Max," spent the first full week of Project Ubuntu hobbled by software glitches.

In last week's episode, we learned that the system upgrades Max undertook to be able to listen to his music collection killed off his sound playback entirely.

The root of the issue turns out to be that because of legal restrictions, Ubuntu can't play common media formats out of the box. Max and I didn't know this starting out; if we had, we could have avoided the situation entirely by installing a third-party freeware player like VLC media player.

As it was, it seems like there was a conflict between the Ubuntu installation that came with the laptop, courtesy of Dell, and the device drivers Max downloaded in the course of trying to solve his music playback issue.

I asked Max to leave the laptop with me, and I resolved the issue, but I'm not sure how. I found some reports of Max's issue and attempted a fix other people had tried. The fix was only partially successful, but when, in a semi-desperate moment, I had the system perform another upgrade, the sound suddently started working again. Maybe the partial fix was enough, maybe today's kernel fixed the bug at the root of the problem. I just don't know.

In the end, it seems, all is well, but Max lost a lot of time to the issue, which was not one of the goals of this enterprise. And it took about an hour away from a technology support specialist and his knowledge of Linux, such as it is, to resolve.

I had known that for all its virtues, Ubuntu lacks the seamlessness of, say, Mac OSX, and I suppose that'll be out of reach for a while in the jumble of hardware and software from so many different sources.

Project Ubuntu: Report #1 - 48 hours

Here's the first field report from our intrepid Ubuntu explorer:

I immediately tried to import all of my files from my zip drive onto the computer, as soon as o put the zip drive in the computer recognized the extra drive and I moved my documents to the desktop. My music mp3 files however did not work on the new ubuntu system. I connected the wireless network at the loop lofts and played music on youtube to ensure that media played, which it did. So the volume was audible, however the new computer was unable to play my music files.

I decided to update the computer and ubuntu recommended over 800 updates most of which were language translation tools I did not need. The interface did not have a fast way to only install the tools I wanted, so I had to unclick all of the tools I did not need and then press install list, in the end I installed 225 items, and it took about an hour.

After the new updates however, the volume stopped working and when I tried to open up the volume control, a pop up appeared notifying me that the gstreamer volume device and or plugin was missing. I looked for the plugin online and on the ubuntu website, but I couldn't find a credible enough location to download from. So I called the 1800 number and the associate directed me to the terminal where we searched for the missing gstreamer volume plugin, the terminal could not find it, which was weird because the volume was definitely working earlier when I was listening to youtube. The associate then advised me to re install ubuntu using the cd package, I am currently in the process of completing that task.

The organization of the ubuntu is actually much more succinct than both Macintosh and windows. The security options are more extending as well. I also like the fact that ubuntu brings a lot of the best savvy addons and plugins right to the desktop right with the add/erase applications bar.

Ubuntu has a lot more applications for database storage and web development which especially excites me, and specifically the control the user has is either greater tan the control on a pc or much more transparent. For example I changed the size of the cursor from average size to biggest in a matter of seconds, I have never experienced that degree of control on other computers. The computer is really nice, just seems as if this particular one did not have ubuntu installed on it properly at buildup, but I'll reprogram it afresh and give it another try.

The run option that is available on windows the start menu is not available on ubuntu.
Nothing I have used this far works less efficiently than it would on windows but as I begin to work more with open office and programming capabilities of the computer through jedit and gedit I am sure I will see more discrepancies.

Project Ubuntu is Afoot!

An enterprising young TRiO student has agreed to undertake a run of using a laptop running Ubuntu to meet all his computing needs for the next six months.

I'll be getting regular reports on the qustionnaire below, weekly at first and then monthly, and will post them here:

1. What new tasks did you try to perform with the Ubuntu laptop this week/month, and what was the outcome? Please give as much in the way of detail as possible along the following lines

a) Description of Task
b) Comments on the experience, outcome, issues that arose

2a. What, if anything, has worked better than on a Windows PC?

2b. Have you discovered any capabilities you never experienced on a Windows PC?

3a. What, if anything, works less well than on a Windows PC?

3b. Have you discovered any capabilities you are used to on a Windows PC that are unavailable on Ubuntu?

LISTEN2READ: Text-to-Speech Tools for Accessibility and Enrichment

For all its power, the printed word can be a barrier -- sometimes a large one -- for lots and lots of people. With ever more weight being put on reading and writing performance in higher ed, the pressure on people with language challenges has never been greater.

But even aside from limited vision or dyslexia and other language-specific issues, many of us come to the task of reading with cognitive traits that make for moments more difficult than people face.

For lots of people, in other words, the spoken word just sticks better. And for pretty much everyone, having the same text delivered by print and through our ears is bound to increase our capacity to understand and remember over print-only consumption.

Cornerstone has resources for any student who wants more than ink on a page or pixels on a screen.

We have Kurzweil 3000 running in the Tech Lab, which can take in text that's already in electronic form or, with a handy scanner, turn just about anything electronic. It has some really sophisticated character recognition and image cleanup capabilities that can take a lot of manual labor out of turning letters into bits.

Kurzweil is very expensive, about $1000, and only runs on one dedicated PC in the Lab.

But it also has the ability to output audio not just live to the person sitting in front of it but as high-quality MP3 files, which one can then save onto a portable media player such as the ubiquitous iPod.

Freeware Alternatives

The ability to read from formats like PDF or Word is pretty much limited to expensive desktop applications like Kurzweil. But there are some free applications out there that each offer a piece of Kurzweil's capability.

Adobe Reader 9, the ubiquitous PDF reader, has a live text-to-speech reader that serves well if you're sitting in front of a computer. The voice and pronunciation qualities have been getting better and better -- it's a perfect tool for the multitasker who wants to listen to a printed text while doing the laundry, say.

Text2Speech is a freeware application available via SourceForge that can take raw text -- in other words, anything you can select, copy, and paste -- and read live or export a WAV file. The sound and pronunciation are a bit rough.

VozMe is a web-based text-to-speech product if you need something truly on the go. It does what Text2Speech does minus the desktop application. Just paste text into the blank at vozme.com, and the page will spit out an MP3 file -- though with much lower quality than Kurzweil, Adobe, or even Text2Speech.

Come by the Cornerstone Tech Lab to try out any of these tools. Dr. Getty or any of the Tech Lab Assistants would be happy to give you the cook's tour.