Thursday, October 16, 2008
David Grogan (Tufts) speaking on SPARK.
I've seen a SPARK presentation before, but I suspect this will be more thorough.
Nine developers in the group. Wow! I'm not sure we have nine developers on campus.
SPARK -- suite of flexible tools for communication and collaboration to support teaching, learning, research, co-curricular.
History: Would send RFPs to university, and winning proposals would get developed, but were boutique projects. If an instructor left, or the teacher moved on to a different topic, there was no room for follow-ups or evaluations.
In 2006, web2.0 got mature enough that they started to explore tools that could apply to lots of folks.
Current toolset (free, self-service to entire Tufts community):
Wiki (Confluence)
Blogs (MoveableType)
Podcast (homegrown)
Forums (jforum)
Maps (Google mashup)
Media Annotator (homegrown, mashup)
SParkMeetings (AdobeConnect)
Launched in 8/06, started with blogs, wikis, forums. Core team: Project manager, lead developer, interactive media designer, support roles.
REquirements: Must allow LDAP integration (Cosign for us), must allow customization of interface (allowing some Tufts identity), must have robust API, must have access to source code and database.
Common features: Single-sign-on, one-click creation of new items, Tufts directory integrated for setting permissions, permissioning at many levels (world, Tufts, private), tagging.
Demo time. Intro page is http://spark.uit.tufts.edu/
Showing Wikis, blogs. One-click is pretty consistant for all of them, but the tools themselves take different levels of work.
Vision: "A Tufts-based localized network of people and ideas."
Common theme (tying to previous sessions): The ability of these tools to tie folks from multiple campuses and abroad together.
Guest accounts: Admin for wiki, blog, etc has to be a current Tufts member, ldap allows guest accounts that are limited.
Any student, staff, etc can create items.
LMS isn't from the Academic Tech department. Blackboard on undergrad, Health Sciences has homegrown LMS, other campus has Angel.
Hunh. He mentioned Moodle as a possible LMS for the campus.
At the time, Movable Type was the best blog tool. Now considering Wordpress. As to upgrading or changing tools, Confluence has been upgraded (but is a point release behind the official one). Might simply add Wordpress, but not get rid of Movable Type.
Question about moderation. Speaker notes that there's a tech use policy which basically says, "don't do anything illegal." No complaints yet.
Framework not going to be licenced (or at least, not in current plans).
Any limits (i.e., if a student goes and creates twelve blogs a day)? Hasn't come up yet.
Biggest problem so far is if someone switches a wiki to anonymous editing, and gets spammed.
Use examples:
Wiki:
Digital Portfolios and Communities of Practice. Department of Education wiki. Using Confluence (has a themebuilding plug-in). Gives each student a website that allows them to basically build e-portfolio.
Digital Toolboxes. Each student given their own toolbox, but students can completely customize them. Tags are used, allowing similar items to be pulled together (video blogs, etc).
Very slick-looking tool.
Activities across entire student body are shared. Tags allow filtering, etc. activ
Using tagging capability of wiki to create workflow. Says that Confluence brought them 80% of the way there, and required only a few custom macros to be built.
Blog demo: Anthropology of Media course. Had each student create blogs analyzing media. Uses blogroll on the side, and a widget showing all new entries. Not as compelling as the wiki, as most of this could be done on blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc.
Also uses rss feed to build tag clouds (wordle, etc). Nice, but again, nothing that can't be done anywhere (that said, worth remembering that just because it can be done, doesn't mean that faculty always remember to do it; that's our job).
Sproutbuilder: Free tool for building flash widgets. Nifty!
Markup: Created a very basic tool that did what their faculty needed (not trying to do it all). Idea: Video a performance, load it to SPARK, make comments at certain time spots, and permission it properly. Youtube allows comments and annotations, but not the proper permissioning.
Very nice tool. Teacher simply hits one button to place a comment at the appropriate point. Won't let them use copyrighted material (why? If it's private and fair use?).
I just asked about licencing the video software (more specifically, releasing it as open source), and he says they're friendly to the idea, but need the time. He says that the more folks who email, the better the chances. So email him folks! This tool is very slick!
Google Maps GIS mashup: Released first, not based on requirements, not a lot of folks using it. Nice markups, although again it's stuff I've seen out there.
Podcast: They didn't like the copyright issues with iTunes, so they built a separate tool.
General permissions question: Wikis support groups (only manually created). LDAP currently doesn't support groups, but they're looking at this.
Default permissions: private until students open up the blogs (good!).
Backend stuff:
Uses VMware for each server. Stick to central resources (shared storage, authentication, etc).
Typical tool integration effort: 5 pages on SPARK, 3500 lines of code (mostly JSP, some servlet, database, javascript). 1.5 programmers, designer, manager, 2 calendar months. Trying to stick to YUI for Ajax, also used MySQL, JIRA for bugtracking, SVN for versioning. Dev/Prod servers. Secret unlinked launches on prod to get pre-beta testing.
New tools: Mediamarkup uses Adobe Flex, Sparkmaps uses Google Map API. New Javascript libraries, etc.
Future directions: More Ajax, reducing LOC for tools. Automated testing.
What's next?
New front-end interface. Bring some activity to the front. Start connecting people and content. Better communication and outreach.
Question from audience: Workshops for faculty, who promotes, etc? How is this funded?
Answer: Yes, they do workshops (reminds me a lot of ECIT at Emory), and one-on-one sessions. As for funding, they get a budget from the university as a whole.
Time for the general Q&A. Will post that in a separate post,
I've seen a SPARK presentation before, but I suspect this will be more thorough.
Nine developers in the group. Wow! I'm not sure we have nine developers on campus.
SPARK -- suite of flexible tools for communication and collaboration to support teaching, learning, research, co-curricular.
History: Would send RFPs to university, and winning proposals would get developed, but were boutique projects. If an instructor left, or the teacher moved on to a different topic, there was no room for follow-ups or evaluations.
In 2006, web2.0 got mature enough that they started to explore tools that could apply to lots of folks.
Current toolset (free, self-service to entire Tufts community):
Wiki (Confluence)
Blogs (MoveableType)
Podcast (homegrown)
Forums (jforum)
Maps (Google mashup)
Media Annotator (homegrown, mashup)
SParkMeetings (AdobeConnect)
Launched in 8/06, started with blogs, wikis, forums. Core team: Project manager, lead developer, interactive media designer, support roles.
REquirements: Must allow LDAP integration (Cosign for us), must allow customization of interface (allowing some Tufts identity), must have robust API, must have access to source code and database.
Common features: Single-sign-on, one-click creation of new items, Tufts directory integrated for setting permissions, permissioning at many levels (world, Tufts, private), tagging.
Demo time. Intro page is http://spark.uit.tufts.edu/
Showing Wikis, blogs. One-click is pretty consistant for all of them, but the tools themselves take different levels of work.
Vision: "A Tufts-based localized network of people and ideas."
Common theme (tying to previous sessions): The ability of these tools to tie folks from multiple campuses and abroad together.
Guest accounts: Admin for wiki, blog, etc has to be a current Tufts member, ldap allows guest accounts that are limited.
Any student, staff, etc can create items.
LMS isn't from the Academic Tech department. Blackboard on undergrad, Health Sciences has homegrown LMS, other campus has Angel.
Hunh. He mentioned Moodle as a possible LMS for the campus.
At the time, Movable Type was the best blog tool. Now considering Wordpress. As to upgrading or changing tools, Confluence has been upgraded (but is a point release behind the official one). Might simply add Wordpress, but not get rid of Movable Type.
Question about moderation. Speaker notes that there's a tech use policy which basically says, "don't do anything illegal." No complaints yet.
Framework not going to be licenced (or at least, not in current plans).
Any limits (i.e., if a student goes and creates twelve blogs a day)? Hasn't come up yet.
Biggest problem so far is if someone switches a wiki to anonymous editing, and gets spammed.
Use examples:
Wiki:
Digital Portfolios and Communities of Practice. Department of Education wiki. Using Confluence (has a themebuilding plug-in). Gives each student a website that allows them to basically build e-portfolio.
Digital Toolboxes. Each student given their own toolbox, but students can completely customize them. Tags are used, allowing similar items to be pulled together (video blogs, etc).
Very slick-looking tool.
Activities across entire student body are shared. Tags allow filtering, etc. activ
Using tagging capability of wiki to create workflow. Says that Confluence brought them 80% of the way there, and required only a few custom macros to be built.
Blog demo: Anthropology of Media course. Had each student create blogs analyzing media. Uses blogroll on the side, and a widget showing all new entries. Not as compelling as the wiki, as most of this could be done on blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc.
Also uses rss feed to build tag clouds (wordle, etc). Nice, but again, nothing that can't be done anywhere (that said, worth remembering that just because it can be done, doesn't mean that faculty always remember to do it; that's our job).
Sproutbuilder: Free tool for building flash widgets. Nifty!
Markup: Created a very basic tool that did what their faculty needed (not trying to do it all). Idea: Video a performance, load it to SPARK, make comments at certain time spots, and permission it properly. Youtube allows comments and annotations, but not the proper permissioning.
Very nice tool. Teacher simply hits one button to place a comment at the appropriate point. Won't let them use copyrighted material (why? If it's private and fair use?).
I just asked about licencing the video software (more specifically, releasing it as open source), and he says they're friendly to the idea, but need the time. He says that the more folks who email, the better the chances. So email him folks! This tool is very slick!
Google Maps GIS mashup: Released first, not based on requirements, not a lot of folks using it. Nice markups, although again it's stuff I've seen out there.
Podcast: They didn't like the copyright issues with iTunes, so they built a separate tool.
General permissions question: Wikis support groups (only manually created). LDAP currently doesn't support groups, but they're looking at this.
Default permissions: private until students open up the blogs (good!).
Backend stuff:
Uses VMware for each server. Stick to central resources (shared storage, authentication, etc).
Typical tool integration effort: 5 pages on SPARK, 3500 lines of code (mostly JSP, some servlet, database, javascript). 1.5 programmers, designer, manager, 2 calendar months. Trying to stick to YUI for Ajax, also used MySQL, JIRA for bugtracking, SVN for versioning. Dev/Prod servers. Secret unlinked launches on prod to get pre-beta testing.
New tools: Mediamarkup uses Adobe Flex, Sparkmaps uses Google Map API. New Javascript libraries, etc.
Future directions: More Ajax, reducing LOC for tools. Automated testing.
What's next?
New front-end interface. Bring some activity to the front. Start connecting people and content. Better communication and outreach.
Question from audience: Workshops for faculty, who promotes, etc? How is this funded?
Answer: Yes, they do workshops (reminds me a lot of ECIT at Emory), and one-on-one sessions. As for funding, they get a budget from the university as a whole.
Time for the general Q&A. Will post that in a separate post,
Labels: Nercomp
# posted by Adam Smith @ 7:31 AM 
