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Monday, June 15th, 2009
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7:10 pm - An update on Professor Quest.
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It's been a while since I've posted anything substantive about what I'm doing these days, and given the week I've just had, I figured this was as good a time as any to catch folks up. Those of you that are interested, anyway.
Today I'll focus on our shared quixotic attempt to change the way that computer science education works.
This is one of my big goals for the year, both personally and professionally. It all started with a simple premise: wouldn't it be great if computer science programs around the world could learn computer science by actually *doing* computer science, and helping out the world in the process? Pretty cool idea, right? And also rather obvious, it would seem.
I quickly discovered that it wasn't as obvious as all that. A big chunk of the last year of my life has been spent learning all about how kids study computer science in college.
In short: I'm not a fan.
On Thursday and Friday of last week, I was at Drexel University in Philadelphia, at the Softhum workshop -- an NSF-funded workshop put together by the folks responsible for HFOSS.org. The "H" stands for Humanitarian; the mission of the HFOSS organization is to get kids excited in computer science by giving them project-based learning opportunities in computer science and engineering that have a humanitarian purpose. Learn something, help your fellow man. A simple and awesome idea. Softhum gathered together about 25 professors from around the country, large schools and small schools, all interested in learning more about putting their students to work in the open source world. I was there, along with Frank Hecker from Mozilla, to provide the viewpoint of open source projects.
HFOSS.org and TeachingOpenSource.org are two organizations that share a very similar agenda, and I expect that they will be greatly complementary. TOS.org focuses on identifying and eliminating the barriers that prevent professors from participating in open source; HFOSS.org provides a very specific context in which to put these principles to work. I'm happy to be part of both, and I was delighted to see the people behind Softhum (Ralph Morelli, Heidi Ellis, Greg Hislop) pushing its participants towards TOS.org.
I was gratified to see that one of the biggest questions shared by professors was, "how can I teach open source development practices to my students if I have not myself participated in open source?" It makes me believe that we're on the right track with POSSE, and with The Mel now driving much of the day-to-day work of making the event happen, and Chris and Humph having the teaching end well in hand, I feel confident that at the conclusion of POSSE in late July, I will be standing high atop the Red Hat parking deck in my flight suit, proudly declaring Mission Accomplished, with a steely gaze in my eye and a spring in my step. Ah, what a fine day that will be. And then, of course, we get to figure out how to make that program scale from seven professors to seven hundred -- but one step at a time.
The other big question, though, was a question for which I, personally, am not yet satisfied that there's A Good Answer For. Of the many unanswered questions that remain, it is this particular unanswered question that will, I think, mark the difference between A Good Idea and A Movement.
That question: "what are the small open source projects that my students can work on, right now, and where can I find them?"
Mozilla is definitely working hard on answering this problem. Which is not surprising; they've been out front on this stuff for a while. They've instituted the student-project tag for their bugzilla instance, and to date, there are 80 issues in their bugzilla tagged this way. Maybe not perfect -- but for a professor who's considering throwing kids at the Mozilla project, it's *incredibly* useful. That, combined with the mentoring page for Mozilla at TOS, gives a professor a pretty clear idea of how to get their students involved in the Mozilla project.
We're certainly close to that in Fedora-land, and with Chris Tyler's help, I expect that we'll get closer in a hurry. We need our own project mentoring page on TOS, and that should be pretty straightforward -- but figuring out what Fedora projects are suitable for student development may be somewhat more challenging. Looking at the status quo, I see that we've got a great list of unaccepted feature requests, which are categorized as "FeaturePageIncomplete" on the Fedora wiki, listed on this single page. (gregdek's feature request #1: fix mediawiki to put a horizontal scroll bar on this page so you can actually *see* all of them.) There's very little indication about which of these projects might be suitable for student developers, though, and that's going to be really important. I'd love to hear recommendations about how to do that.
Anyway, we're getting closer all the time. Once we're satisfied that Fedora is Doing It Right, we get to work on all the other projects out there.
Good stuff. I'm excited by our rapid progress in this area in the past few months, and I enjoyed making lots of new friends in Philadelphia. Maybe next summer we'll hold a POSSE there at Drexel; Greg Hislop seemed to like the idea and was ready to volunteer the space. I hope things go well enough that we can take him up on his offer. Philly's a great college town.
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| Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
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1:58 pm - A great day.
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Thanks to everyone who recommended laptops. I ended up going with the Thinkpad X200. I literally picked it up from Red Hat's helpdesk two hours ago, installed F11 from a USB key created by Luke Macken's awesome Windows Live USB creator, and am now running Powertop to optimize power performance and rsyncing a bunch of stuff from my old laptop.
For the first time ever, since I'm installing Fedora on a laptop from this century, I get the full awesomeness of Fedora. Wireless works out of the box. So do hibernate and suspend. I actually see the pretty Fedora Plymouth boot screen! It's sweet and awesome and delicious. Thanks to all the geeks in the backroom who make Fedora ever more continually awesome.
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| Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
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2:52 pm - Dear Lazyweb...
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...I'm looking for a laptop.
Specifically, I'm looking for THE BEST LAPTOP that satisfies the following requirements:
* Runs Fedora well.
* Small. Not necessarily netbook small, but small.
* Crazy long battery life.
* Suspend/resume works out of the box.
* Wireless works out of the box.
Do you use a laptop that satisfies these criteria? I'm thinking I might just go with the latest Thinkpad. Is that a bad idea?
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(18 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, May 14th, 2009
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11:36 pm - Once again, Fedora has nothing to do with hockey.
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Sorry Spot. It's a hell of a thing to lose a series like that, and there, but for the grace of God, go us. The Bruins are a great hockey team, and Tim Thomas well deserves the Vezina that he will surely win. It's a great young team in Boston -- and a real shame that no one pays attention to them.
Sorry Adam. Part of me was hoping to see another Carolina vs. Canada Stanley Cup Final. That would have been great. Maybe next year.
The Carolina Hurricanes win two Game 7s, on the road, in soul crushing fashion. Smells like destiny to me. I love playoff hockey.
Headed to the airport now to meet the team. :)
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| Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
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9:59 am - Community guy interviews
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| Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
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11:15 pm - Hockey still has nothing to do with Fedora.
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So once again, apologies to those who care nothing about the sport.
But if you watched game 7 between the Carolina Hurricanes and the New Jersey Devils, and you didn't think that was an amazing game, then you just don't like sports. We just ripped the heart right out of the chest of the winningest goalie in NHL history. Oh, so sweet. It's kinda sad that everyone fawns over the Ovechkins and the Crosbies of the hockey world, because that series between the Canes and Devils was one of the best 7 game series I've ever seen in any sport -- and most American hockey fans didn't see any of it. To score two goals in the last ninety seconds, against the winningest goalie in NHL history, to first tie and then win a deciding game seven, on their home ice? And it wasn't even on VERSUS? Ridiculous. I hate American hockey coverage. Oh well.
To recap on our wager. First, the losers:
Mr. Cafiero. Sorry, buddy. I've seen too many Presidents Cup winners lose in the first round. Your Sharks need some grit.
Mr. Stanley. Great series for your Rangers, tough to lose in 7, but Avery is still a punk.
Mr. McMartin. Surely you're not surprised that your Habs got swept. They didn't really even deserve to make the playoffs. You know it's true.
And now, to those who continue to fight on:
Mr. Williamson! Luongo is great, but the Blues were hardly a challenge, were they? I suspect the Blackhawks will be a truer test.
Mr. Boyer! I'm sure your Red Wings will have no problem plucking the Ducks.
And Mr. Callaway. It's come to this: Bruins versus Hurricanes. My friend, I don't know if you've been watching the Canes the past week, but you'd better stock up on the Advil, because our boys are going to give you a headache like you wouldn't believe.
I love playoff hockey. The beard -- such as it is -- stays for a while longer. :)
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| Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
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1:39 pm - Hockey has nothing to do with Fedora.
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(Edited to include gratuitous taunting of Josh Boyer, and to appease some of my more sensitive readers. Bless their hearts.)
(Edited again to taunt Kyle McMartin.)
This post has nothing to do with Fedora -- except that I know several members of the Fedora community who are hockey fans, and who are excited now that their teams are in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. (Sorry, Toronto fans. I hope it's now clear to you that Paul Maurice was *not* your biggest problem.)
I am dropping the gauntlet. Hockey Challenge! And I, Hurricanes fan, call out, in particular:
Adam Williamson, Canucks fan! The Sedins... (sensitive phrase redacted), but the Stanley Cup is NOT FOR YOU!
Tom Callaway, Bruins fan! Cam Neely ain't walking through that door! Bobby Orr ain't walking through that door! The Stanley Cup is NOT FOR YOU!
Larry Cafiero, Sharks fan! When you win the President's Cup, it means that your division was full of (sensitive phrase redacted)! If my neighborhood kids played roller hockey against the Coyotes ten times a year, they'd win the President's Cup too! The Stanley Cup is NOT FOR YOU!
Jon Stanley, Rangers fan! Sean Avery? Really? I'm afraid your only chance of seeing Stanley's Cup is by (sensitive phrase redacted), sir! The REAL Stanley Cup is NOT FOR YOU!
Josh Boyer, Red Wings fan! Bring it on, you *unbelievable* front runner! An Avs fan who changes loyalty to the WINGS? Rooting for the Red Wings is like rooting for GM... it used to be a pretty sure bet, but not anymore! The Stanley Cup is NOT FOR YOU!
Kyle McMartin, Habs fan! It's a sad time when the team of Guy Lafleur and Rocket Richard is beholden to the Russian mob. Maybe you could ask to be transferred to the KHL next season. Those 26 cups are ancient history now. The Stanley Cup is NOT FOR YOU!
So here's the bet I propose.
Of the above-listed teams, the supporter whose team wins the most games in this postseason shall receive, from all other participants, a fine locally produced alcoholic beverage, of the loser's choice.
Furthermore, if any of the above teams shall find themselves hoisting Lord Stanley's Cup, all participants in the wager shall find a ballcap, and shall change their hackergotchis to reflect the wearing of aforementioned ballcap, for a period of no less than one month.
Who will accept my wager? Who stands ready to pay tribute to the Category 5 Hurricanes?
Oh, also, I'm growing my playoff beard, starting now.
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| Sunday, April 5th, 2009
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12:02 pm - Waterloo -- couldn't escape if I wanted to
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I visited the University of Waterloo last week to keynote a small conference at their Accelerator Centre, which is their technology incubator. The topic of the conference: "open or closed, which should you choose with your new project?" I posed my keynote as a set of questions that every software innovator should ask themselves when making this decision -- and, of course, the questions I chose were quite leading. :)
Sometimes I've got the mojo and sometimes I don't, and for this speech, on this day, I felt like I had the mojo. It was a good day. It was a great crowd, very engaged. Mad props to Chris Tyler of Seneca for attending with me, and ferrying me to and from YYZ, and all of the great discussions that we had on those long rides. (And also for the roasted chicken at Swiss Chalet. Yum.)
But the *real* reason I wanted to attend was because one of the hosts of the event was C4, a technology transfer organization counting ten Canadian members, university and industry, from Southwest Ontario. When pushing the open source agenda at the university level, one of the many hurdles we hit repeatedly (and particularly in the US) is the intransigence of TT folks, and their inability to appreciate, or even understand, the value of open source software. After the conference concluded, I had the opportunity to sit down at lunch with a roomful of open source friendly TT professionals, to pick their brains about why, exactly, it's so hard for TT folks to "get" open source, and what we can do to help change their minds.
Following are some of the key insights I gleaned about the business of TT from this discussion -- and if I've misunderstood, please feel free to comment, since I'm still new to all this.
* TT orgs differ by mission largely by how the university itself treats IP. In universities where IP is institutionally-owned -- which describes the vast majority of large American universities -- the mission of TT orgs tends strongly to be generating revenue for the institution. In orgs in which the IP is researcher-owned, which describes a significant percentage of Canadian universities, near as I can tell, and a handful of US schools -- the goal of the TT office is much more a facilitator to help the researcher get that technology out into the world, in whatever way the researcher sees fit.
* Most TT folks aren't generally good at software; it's not their sweet spot. They are more accustomed to dealing with technology from industries that involve the creation of physical goods. Therefore, their first question is *always* "what defensible IP have you created?" It's not just that TT orgs are uncomfortable with open source software; frequently, they are uncomfortable with *any* software.
* In those cases where TT is seen as a money-maker, the role of the TT office is very much like the role of a venture capitalist. Unfortunately, the savvy that some VCs have picked up when it comes to dealing with open source has not yet rubbed off on TT folks -- and let's face it, TT orgs doesn't have the wherewithal, the time, or the inclination to gain that degree of knowledge. VCs look at a whole range of variables in assessing the potential success of a project. TT orgs look at the one thing they can most easily quantify and protect: "what's the IP?" It might be worthwhile to hook up the smart VCs who "get" open source with some of the larger TT orgs who don't. Seems like it could be a win-win: VCs get an inside track on cool technology; TT orgs get a more reliable set of indicators about what makes open source profitable.
* Because TT is seen as a revenue stream, university policies make it difficult/impossible to go around them. TT orgs don't have to "kill" open source projects, and generally they don't; they just never give permission. Allow me to explain by way of a brief skit: "Hi, Dr. Doom, can I release this work from my thesis as an open source project? Yes, you say, I just have to get clearance through the TT office? Okay, great! Hello, TT office? I've got this software project I'd like to release as an open source project. You'll look it over and get back to me? Great! When can I expect to hear back from you? Hello? Hello?" (Exeunt omnes, laughing.)
* Some professors just release their work anyway, and the ones who do often use the guise of "publication" to do so. Which reinforces the importance of creating a journal for this purpose; not only will it help solve the publish-or-perish issue, it may also help with the TT issue. I'm glad that it's one of the key focuses (foci?) of the TOS group.
* There is *zero* information for TT orgs to look at when it comes to open source. This was the message that the C4 folks left me with: how will TT folks learn if someone doesn't produce guidelines for them to follow? The C4 folks vowed to work with us on this problem, if we could help give them some direction. I hope we can figure out how to take them up on that offer.
A very useful meeting for me; I learned a lot. And Chabriol, thank you so much for my speaker's gift. The dogs absolutely loved the treats. Definitely the most thoughtful gift I've ever received as a speaker.
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| Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
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11:42 am - 4th grade math: an update
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As with all new projects, uptake is slow but steady. The mailing list traffic looks pretty good for its first month of life; we've got a few people who are working on various math-related activities; there are nibbles of interest.
Pulling all of this interest into a coordinated effort will be a continually ongoing exercise.
The next real milestone, I think, is to really flesh out the Math4 teams. Putting together a few strong teams that consist of at least one developer and one teacher will really help move us forward.
Another important goal for me personally is to ramp up my recruiting efforts -- which means refining the pitch and finding as many opportunities as possible to make the pitch to interested people. There are only so many hours in the day, and I'm pulled in a ton of different directions, but pitching the vision is probably the most important activity I can be engaged in right now. Which means that my time for hacking Mongo is somewhat curtailed. Alas. I suck as a coder anyway. :)
Anyway. There's lots of efforts out there to "help kids" using free software. I sincerely believe that helping to fill out the 4th grade math curriculum is one of the most immediately actionable things we can do as a community. Tell your friends -- especially your teacher friends. Join the fight.
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| Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
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12:40 pm - Calls for radical transparency are everywhere.
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Even in the sports world.
Anywhere you have:
1. Massive amounts of data that is publicly visible;
2. Enough geeks who care about collecting that data;
3. Enough geeks who care about manipulating that data;
...then you have the prospect of a data-driven revolution based on radical transparency.
Bill Simmons says "hey, Houston Rockets ownership, I know you're collecting proprietary data about 'how many blocked shots actually create a change in possession'. Why not open that data?"
There is a follow-up question that Mr. Simmons does not ask, but it is an obvious question, especially to us in the open source world. And that question is, "why aren't stat geeks watching the games, recording these stats themselves, and sharing this data?"
The fact that these sports stats geeks are now gathering to hold these discussions at MIT is fascinating to me.
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| Monday, March 23rd, 2009
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3:39 pm - Dear Lazyweb...
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...I'd love to keep some of my daily task info on my local machine, so that I can keep track of it all offline -- but then update corresponding pages on the Fedora wiki with a simple script. Can anyone point me to some dead easy scripts in Python/Perl/PHP that takes local content, logs into the wiki, and shoves that content into the right place?
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, March 20th, 2009
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3:09 pm - Still looking for professors: tell your friends!
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Red Hat wants professors to participate in open source projects for a week this summer, and we're willing to put our money where our mouth is.
We are accepting applications for this program right now. There have been some nibbles, but no formal applications yet.
The deadline for professors to apply is Friday, April 3rd, 2009. If you know any professors who would like to participate in an open source project for a week this summer, please tell them about this program. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask me.
That is all. :)
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| Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
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12:42 am - Mongo 0.000001 is in git.
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Yaaay! Now I can pretend I'm a developer!
The code is a straight up hack of Mines of Elderlore, as I talk about in more detail here.
So. The code is here. And there's a bunch of TODOs, which I'll be working on in whatever spare time I have.
Patches welcome. For real! Now I can say that and actually mean it!
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| Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
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4:31 pm - Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
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Look, the mechanisms that are used to derive Fedora's usage statistics may not be perfect -- but they are completely transparent.
Simply put, I fail to understand why other Linux distributions cannot provide the same data. It's just not that tough.
I guess it's easier to say "we've got a jillion users". Math is hard.
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9:19 am - HUP HOLLAND!
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All right, since Adam gets to talk Dutch baseball, now I can. :)
Because the game between the Dutch and the Dominicans was on ESPN Deportes and therefore not available in my area, I was forced to "watch" the last two innings on the internet. As a longtime follower of the Baltimore Orioles ("fan" would be a bit strong, but let's say I have contacts), I've long been familiar with both Eugene Kingsale and Sidney Ponson -- two of the three ballplayers on the Dutch team with MLB experience. Neither of them were that good. So to see the Dutch beat the mighty Dominicans -- not once, but *twice* -- was an amazing thing. I wonder if the Dutch even know they have a national baseball team. I myself was jumping up and down in my living room when the little blip on the webcast representing Kingsale moved from third to home for the game winning run in the bottom of the 11th.
My big question: why isn't Andruw Jones on this team? I mean, I know he's not been great the last couple of years, but still, he's pretty much the greatest Dutch player in the history of baseball.
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| Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
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4:09 pm - Thanks, Armen. Now I'm totally famous!
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Thanks to Armen Zambrano, who conducted this video interview with me at SIGSCE in Chattanooga, along with a whole bunch of others. Seven interviews in all, and well worth your time to watch them. Together, I think they give a pretty good overview of what we're trying to accomplish by bringing together the worlds of open source and higher education.
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Thursday, March 5th, 2009
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5:09 pm - Hello, friends from TeachingOpenSource!
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Chris Tyler, you are the man.
Now we've got a great bit of infrastructure for educators who are trying to teach open source to their students. What are we going to do with it?
Funny, I just spent a day with friends in Chattanooga at SIGSCE. A room full of professors and industry folks, all of whom care about exposing students to open source. We had some amazing discussions. My agenda was to find out why, exactly, more professors aren't already engaging their students in open source. Some big obstacles, and some ideas about what we might be able to do about them:
1. Tenure. Wow, is this a big one. The way tenure works at universities really makes it difficult for junior professors to engage in any open source activities at all, and I've heard enough excited professors hammer this point, again and again, over and over, that it's starting to sink in. We really need to figure out how to help profs solve this problem.
Some ideas here, briefly. One, create an academic-oriented open source conference with peer-reviewed, juried papers. Two, create an academic-oriented open source journal with peer-reviewed, juried papers. Three, work to convince professors that "peers" in computer science don't have to be professors -- that when Alan Cox says "yes, this paper at OLS is good," it should have as much clout as the opinion of any professor. Four, focus on bringing research money to the actual creation of open source projects; nothing sells tenure boards like cash in the university's hands.
2. Having bite-sized projects. This is a huge problem. Every time a professor thinks "gee, I'd like to find a project suitable to have my kids work on" and then goes to Sourceforge to find this project, a kitten dies and a professor loses his/her mind.
This is actually a very broad problem. Every sizeable open source project faces this problem -- the problem of identifying on-ramp mini-projects that (a) are not so critical that they will harm the project if they Do It Wrong, (b) are small enough to be easily handled in several weekends of hard work, and (c) have artifacts like, oh, use cases -- artifacts that professors need because they're trying to teach this stuff.
Google Summer of Code does the open source community the great favor of *forcing* open source projects to articulate these kinds of mini-projects. For every project that Google approves, they turn down two. (More or less.) Figuring out how to leverage this work so that professors can pick up the projects that Google leaves on the table could be *tremendously* useful -- and Leslie is thinking about it, so that's good. :)
3. Having course materials. Lots of professors are doing lots of good stuff, but it's spread out all over creation. Identifying all the CC-licensed CS curriculum stuff in the world and aggregating it somewhere would be great. Like, say, at teachingopensource.org. That would be awesome.
So. A productive couple of days, and lots of good ideas. Now comes the hard work of turning these ideas into reality -- but the establishment of TeachingOpenSource.org is an important step down this road.
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| Sunday, March 1st, 2009
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9:53 pm - 4gm: Getting down to it
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Having presented fourth grade maths as a rallying cry, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to discover that Karlie and David have taken me up on it -- to spectacular effect. David has XOs at the ready to hand out to the faithful, and Karlie has convinced a professor in Rochester to connect students to the project.
Guess it's time to figure out what that project looks like, in a bit more detail than we've heretofore offered.
First order of business, though: if the notion of creating Sugar activities that connect directly to a larger educational framework and offer content, activity and skill assessment, all in self-contained modules that can be used for self-directed and self-paced learning, then join the Sugar mailing list for fourth grade maths.
Now that we've got that out of the way: what should we be *doing*, exactly?
Let me tell you what I'm doing, and why.
* * *
I'm working on a Sugar activity I call "Dungeons of Mongo".
See, I'm a sucker for Rogue-like dungeon games. Always have been. Dungeons of Mongo will be a fork of a game called "Mines of Elderlore," which is a Python-based Rogue-like. I'm just getting started, and it's slow going, because for one thing I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like, and for another, I don't know Python nearly as well as I'd like.
So what's the point of this fork, then, anyway? Simple. Unlike MOE, Mongo will have an educational twist (albeit an admittedly corny one): you fight monsters with knowledge. Aw, yeah! BRING THE KNOWLEDGE! "You dare to attack the domain of the Fraction Troll, puny weakling human child? Well, riddle me this: in the fraction 3/4, what is the DENOMINATOR? 4, you say? Ack, that's correct! Fie, I am stricken! Woe unto me, now I die!"
Brilliant, right? I know! Okay, maybe not. But it's a start. One thing I do like about the dungeon metaphor is that it's got that immersive, exploratory element to it -- which is why I played so much Rogue and Nethack and Larn when I was younger. Sure, it's no Second Life or WoW, but it hardly needs to be -- and to run on a cheap netbook, couldn't be anyway.
Somehow, I've got to fit the following four elements into this activity.
1. Content. One can imagine the Six Tomes of Fractions. ("What's a tome? Oh, it's a fancy word for book? Cool.") Each tome has content that teaches a lesson, and each tome builds on the lessons taught in previous tomes. Maybe it's words, maybe it's pictures, maybe it even spins off an Ogg player -- but I'm sure we will start simple. This is obviously where we'll need the most help from teachers.
2. Drill. Practice, practice. Level grinding in an RPG can be pretty boring, but you do it because you want to see what comes next. What's the next monster? What's the next treasure? What cool thing is waiting on the next level? You've just got to know, so you fight enough monsters to get to that next level -- and if you're anything like me, you stay up until 3am to do it. Why shouldn't drilling math concepts work the same way?
3. Assessment. In the end, does the kid know what 3/4 + 3/8 is, and does he know how to get there? In the classroom, that's what tests tell us. Now, the thing about a pen-and-paper test in the classroom is that you give the same test to 25 kids exactly once, and the overhead of creating that test, administering that test, and grading that test is what takes a significant chunk of any teacher's time. Doing it repeatedly is all but impossible, so if a kid falls behind, there's no time to help him catch back up. But for certain classes of tests -- especially math tests -- the questions can be infinitely variable, administered by the Boss monster, and instantly graded pass/fail. If you slay the Big Boss at the end, you win! And if you don't understand how fractions work, the Boss kills you, and you start over. What kid wants that?
4. Alignment. Remember: all of this stuff should align with a useful curriculum framework, or educators won't have any incentive to use it. We've chosen to work with a derivative of the Massachusetts 4th grade math framework, so dungeon level one could be all about 4.N.1 and 4.N.2, and dungeon level two could handle 4.N.3 and 4.N.4, and so on.
5. Customizability. Ultimately, Mongo should be a simple game to model some simple ideas. If they are good ideas, then people will either customize Mongo or build their own games with similar ideas. If we do it right, it should be a trivial matter to plug in different content, different drills, and different assessments. Of course, because all content and code is open source -- that's the point, after all -- people are free to rip off these ideas and move forward with them. And boy, do I hope that people do exactly that.
Needless to say, patches welcome. I've got a hosting request in the pipeline with fedorahosted.org to host Mongo; as soon as that goes through, I will upload what I've got so far. (Which, fair warning, isn't much.)
A couple of other wrinkles I'm thinking about:
* I don't know nearly enough about Moodle, but I should. The quiz data formats are especially interesting. Standards make life easier for everyone, and it would be nice to be able to take content from Moodle, or any LMS, and drop it into Mongo. My first targeted question format for Mongo will, in fact, be the Aiken format used by Moodle for simplified multiple choice questions. Human readable, easily parsed, somewhat brittle. I can live with that for now.
* I haven't even bothered to Sugarize my work on Mongo yet, and because I haven't tried to write a Sugar activity in, oh, two years, I don't even know where I'd start. I hope that the instructions for Sugarizing a simple Pygame-based activity are clear and easy to follow. And if they aren't, that's obviously a worthy project for someone to undertake.
Anyway. That's what I'm working on.
* * *
Now, what should *other people* be working on? There are basically two options. Option 1: help me with Dungeons of Mongo. Option 2: start another activity project aimed at fourth grade math, maybe with a completely different approach.
Notably, Mongo does not yet align directly with any of the fourth grade math framework objectives. The questions and content, for now, are placeholders. Someone could certainly work the content side in parallel.
If some enterprising people want to start another project, that's great. The principles should be the same: modular activities that encapsulate content, drill and assessment, that allow a self-directed learner to demonstrate mastery of a particular unit of knowledge that is aligned to the 4gm (that's my acronym for fourth grade math) curriculum framework. With a strong preference for Python, since that's the heart of the Sugar principle of hackability. Python activities can be brought up in Pippy right now. Java applets can't, and neither can Flash activities.
Whatever you do, potential contributor, don't overthink it. It doesn't have to be perfect. Working code and loose consensus: that's what moves open source software projects forward. Let's get out there and screw something up. It is very dark, and if we don't move forward, we are all likely to be eaten by grues.
(Don't forget to join the list, where will be talking more about this in detail, and soon.)
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, February 27th, 2009
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9:18 am - Fedora 11 and OLPC
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As the release date for Fedora 11 gets ever closer, it's time for those of us Fedorans who have XOs in our possession to keep our eyes on the nightly builds.
To be clear: our ultimate goal is to get as close as possible to running stock Fedora on the XO, including Sugar. But in the meantime, there are some gaps that we know about. Some things just don't work. And because of those gaps, Chris Ball of OLPC is putting together nightly builds that are mostly Fedora, with whatever tweaks are necessary to get us over the hump.
Chris is doing a great job with these nightlies. He's got all the latest builds, and instructions for getting them installed, here.
So if you have an XO, and especially if you received one for the purpose of doing testing, please find a few hours to download the latest nightly you can find to SD or USB, and give it a spin.
We suspect that some of these bugs are fixed -- so have a look. If you find that the bugs persist in your build, say so in the bug: "yeah, as of build 20090226, this is still busted for me." Or, if it's fixed, note that it's fixed and close it!
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
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4:36 pm - The Year of the Linux Desktop
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<bob_dylan_voice>
I dreamed I saw the ghost of Havoc Pennington last night,
with chains upon his hands and upon his feet...
sentenced to ninety-nine years on the GNOME Foundation Board,
he was the saddest soul you'd ever hope to meet.
</bob_dylan_voice>
A little ditty I'm working on, called "The Year of the Linux Desktop". I don't know how the rest of the song goes yet, but the tune comes to mind every time I see a Slashdot article like this one.
It surprises me that smart people can't put these pieces together. Red Hat has never left the Linux desktop space; we're just interested in making it, y'know, actually profitable for us. And that means corporate deployments, where Big Companies deploy and manage thousands and thousands of systems.
So what bothers these Big Companies, when it comes to Linux? Mostly, they're just bothered by the fact that they still need to run Windows applications. Increasingly, they love Linux, but that crazy VB application that Accounts Receivable uses just doesn't work under Linux.
How does one solve that problem? Simple -- by putting Windows in a corner.
Here's the thing: those funky apps that only run on Windows are not required by everyone, for everything, at all times. They are required occasionally, by select people, some of the time. Which makes them a perfect target for virtualization.
Imagine that you are a Big Company, and that you have 50,000 desktop computers in your organization. Would you rather pay for 50,000 Windows licenses, or would you rather pay for 50,000 Red Hat Desktop licenses at a substantially cheaper price, and then pay for 1000 Windows licenses that can be summoned on-demand by anyone in the organization when they really need that crazy VB app?
Funny that we just signed a deal with Microsoft to make that possible. Funnier still that people actually wonder who got the better end of that deal.
Interesting times ahead.
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