Monthly Archives: October 2012

Why I Support the Consolidation Of Sakai and Jasig into Apereo

I have been thinking about writing a blog post as to why I am a strong supporter of the consolidation of the two foundations into Apereo. But then Steve Swinsberg did an outstanding job of summarizing the issues and the actions needed. Please read his blog post here:

http://steveswinsburg.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/why-i-support-the-jasig-sakai-consolidation/

In short, Steve’s post points out:

  • Financial savings
  • Coordinated conferences
  • Greater sustainability that comes from less cost across both organizations

I agree with everything Steve says.

The reasons Steve points out in his post would be logic enough to do the consolidaton – but to me as important as those reasons are, there is an even more important reason to do the consolidation.

We as higher education need a foundation that allows for the straightforward expansion and bringing in new projects. For example I would love to see projects like this have an annual conference and solid foundation to insure the long-term ownership of their source code, incubation, and having a community of like minded individuals to help advance their causes. Here are some projects that need a foundation:

P.S. These projects are *just* examples – they may never be part of Apereo – I just list them as efforts that might someday benefit from a foundation to hold the IP. They are *just examples*.

In a sense none of these projects would join the Sakai Foundation because Sakai means a particular LMS. And they would not join Jasig because it is not about learning.

Apereo *is* something they would, could, and should join.

This is why the combination of Sakai and Jasig is far more valuable to us than the two separate organizations. This is not just about saving money and being more efficient – this is about building an amazing portfolio of open source projects that work together under a large tent.

Others feel that this somehow changes the Sakai “brand” – nothing could be further from the truth. Apero is just a foundation – it is not the projects. The Sakai, uPortal, uMobile, Class2Go, CAS, OpenCast, etc etc will be *the* brands. Apereo will always be the background brand / holding organization – much like Jasig is the “background brand” to uPortal already. This does not harm the Sakai brand in any way – to me it enhances it because we can make “Sakai” mean an LMS product and really refine the brand going forward.

Please look at Steve’s post above to understand how to vote and do so *right now*. An abstain vote is a no vote.

While I am very supportive of the consolidation – I want the members to make the decision explicitly – so please vote. Don’t make the decision by inaction.

(sorry for the typos – I am jumping on a plane to Barcelona)

Installing Stanford’s Open Source Class2Go Large-Scale Open Teaching Environment

I have been watching the commits go by on Stanford’s Class2Go software and really liked the high level of activity by Sef, Jason, and the rest of the team. It is fun to watch a project like this even when they are a small team and sprinting forward and don’t have much time to build a community. Starting from day one in the open is simply great – we can learn so much even if all we do is watch.

Of course I tweeted about how cool it was to watch and threatened to write some code and contribute it. Then Jane Manning suggested via Twitter that I actually try to add IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) to it.

I didn’t teach SI502 until 1PM today and I had a full cup of coffee so I figured I would give it a try. About 90 minutes later I have Class2Go running on my laptop.

Along the way I figured out that Class2Go already has IMS LTI built in as its method to integrate Piazza discussion forum. But I still figure I can hack in a nice “External Tool” capability into Class2Go and do LTI 1.1 grade integration since I bet they don’t have that yet. Here are my results so far:

The following are my notes as I went along that adjust what the Stanford documentation told me to do. My step numbers follow their step numbers it is probably best to scroll through their documentation and my steps at the same time.

Update October 15, 2012: I submitted improvements to the Stanford instructions and they are now updated to reflect everything I say below. So ignore my notes below and just look at the new-and-improved Stanford instructions – they should work.


Stanford's Instructions:
https://github.com/Stanford-Online/class2go/blob/master/README_SETUP.md

Chuck's Notes:  Update: My notes below have now been integrated into the above instructions.

1. Upgrade Xcode to 4.5.1 via App Store

2. Within XCode, add the command line tools: 
Preferences -> Downloads -> "Command Line Tools" Install button
(tiny typo in their instructions)

3.  Homebrew URL in their instructions - gives 404

So I went here:   http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

And did this:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSkL raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

Afterwards I ran :

brew doctor

4. I skipped this step did not install Python - I already had 2.7.1 and 
hoped I would be OK.

5. I already had mysql so I skipped this step

6. sudo easy_install pip

7. sudo pip install virtualenv

8. Here is what I saw

csev$ pwd
/Users/csev/dev/class2go

virtualenv sophi-venv --no-site-packages  
New python executable in sophi-venv/bin/python
Installing setuptools............done.
Installing pip...............done.

9. Here is what I saw

 . ./sophi-venv/bin/activate
(sophi-venv):class2go csev$ 

10. Here is what I saw

(sophi-venv):class2go csev$ pip install django
Downloading/unpacking django
  Downloading Django-1.4.1.tar.gz (7.7MB): 7.7MB downloaded
  Running setup.py egg_info for package django
    
Installing collected packages: django
  Running setup.py install for django
    changing mode of build/scripts-2.7/django-admin.py from 644 to 755
    
    changing mode of /Users/csev/dev/class2go/sophi-venv/bin/django-admin.py to 755
Successfully installed django
Cleaning up...
(sophi-venv):class2go csev$ 

11 - 15 - Ran just fine - there were lots of compiler warnings - but no errors so 
I pressed on

16 - ?? I am sure this will bite me much later when I try to 
integrate with Google Apps :)

17 - Ran just fine

This is missing prior to step 18

In Mysql:

create database class2go;
grant all on class2go.* to class2go@'localhost' identified by 'class2gopw';
grant all on class2go.* to class2go@'127.0.0.1' identified by 'class2gopw';

As root:

sudo mkdir /var/log/django/
sudo chmod 777 /var/log/django/

mkdir /Users/csev/dev/class2go/sqlite3/

Must setup databases.py from databases_example.py

cd main

databases.py:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql', 
        'NAME': 'class2go',                      
        'USER': 'class2go',                    
        'PASSWORD': 'class2gopw',        
        'HOST': '',                 
        'PORT': '',       
    },
    'celery': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': '/Users/csev/dev/class2go/sqlite3/celerydb.sqlite',
    },
}

18. Set up initial db.

./manage.py syncdb 

This failed the first time I ran it and I ran it again and it 
did not fail - not sure if it worked really - but pressed on - 
this is the output I saw the second time it ran:

(sophi-venv):main csev$ ./manage.py syncdb
Syncing...
Creating tables ...
Installing custom SQL ...
Installing indexes ...
Installed 0 object(s) from 0 fixture(s)

Synced:
 > django.contrib.auth
 > django.contrib.contenttypes
 > django.contrib.sessions
 > django.contrib.sites
 > django.contrib.messages
 > django.contrib.staticfiles
 > django.contrib.admin
 > django.contrib.admindocs
 > registration
 > south
 > courses
 > courses.forums
 > courses.announcements
 > courses.videos
 > courses.video_exercises
 > courses.email_members
 > khan
 > problemsets
 > django.contrib.flatpages
 > storages
 > celerytest
 > convenience_redirect
 > exception_snippet
 > db_test_data

Not synced (use migrations):
 - djcelery
 - c2g

These worked:

    ./manage.py syncdb --database=celery
    ./manage.py migrate --database=celery

This is that I saw in my MySql

mysql> show tables;
+----------------------------------+
| Tables_in_class2go               |
+----------------------------------+
| auth_group                       |
| auth_group_permissions           |
| auth_permission                  |
| auth_user                        |
| auth_user_groups                 |
| auth_user_user_permissions       |
| c2g_additional_pages             |
| c2g_announcements                |
| c2g_content_sections             |
| c2g_course_emails                |
| c2g_courses                      |
| c2g_courses_share_to             |
| c2g_emailaddr                    |
| c2g_exercises                    |
| c2g_files                        |
| c2g_institutions                 |
| c2g_listemail                    |
| c2g_mailinglist                  |
| c2g_mailinglist_members          |
| c2g_news_events                  |
| c2g_page_visit_log               |
| c2g_problem_activity             |
| c2g_problem_sets                 |
| c2g_problemset_to_exercise       |
| c2g_sections                     |
| c2g_sections_members             |
| c2g_user_profiles                |
| c2g_user_profiles_institutions   |
| c2g_video_activity               |
| c2g_video_to_exercise            |
| c2g_video_view_traces            |
| c2g_videos                       |
| celery_taskmeta                  |
| celery_tasksetmeta               |
| django_admin_log                 |
| django_content_type              |
| django_flatpage                  |
| django_flatpage_sites            |
| django_session                   |
| django_site                      |
| djcelery_crontabschedule         |
| djcelery_intervalschedule        |
| djcelery_periodictask            |
| djcelery_periodictasks           |
| djcelery_taskstate               |
| djcelery_workerstate             |
| registration_registrationprofile |
| south_migrationhistory           |
+----------------------------------+
48 rows in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> 

(sophi-venv): csev$  cd main
(sophi-venv):main csev$ python manage.py runserver 8100

Validating models...

0 errors found
Django version 1.4.1, using settings 'settings'
Development server is running at http://127.0.0.1:8100/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

Navigate to http://localhost:8100 in a browser and start hacking :)

Abstract: Emerging connections between content, SW and platform – Learning Tools Interoperability

This is an abstract for a keynote speech I will be giving in Korea October 24 – Smart on ICT International Open Forum 2012

The IMS Learning Tools Interoperability standard (www.imsglobal.org/lti) greatly reduces the effort required to integrate an externally hosted learning tool into nearly all of the mainstream learning management systems (Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle, Canvas, Sakai, OLAT, and others). IMS Learning Tools Interoperability uses the OAuth protocol to send identity, course, user, and role data to the external tools. LTI allows those who would build innovative tools for teaching and learning an unprecedented simplicity in plugging their tool into any number of different learning management systems. We will look at the LTI standard, how it is implemented and look at the next steps in the evolution of the capabilities of LTI.

Grand Finale Lecture: Internet History, Technology, and Security on Coursera

I like the tradition of having Coursera instructors to some kind of post-class wrap up reflecting on their courses. I saw some of the materials from the wrap up presentation from Scott Klemmer’s Stanford HCI course on Coursera and based on his comments changed how I approached my my Internet History, Technology, and Security class. I figured that my job is like Scott to “pay it forward” and share my insights and thoughts with the next round of Coursera courses or other experiments in teaching MOOCs.

In his lecture I go through survey data taken during the course, student performance throughout the course, maps of student locations around the world as well as where the students went to school. The lecture also reflects on what worked well and what could be improved, takes a peek toward the future including possible new courses, as well as a bit of fun and few little surprises. There were 4595 certificates of completion awarded in the course.


Taped October 1, 2012 after the course was completed. Comments welcome.