Content Sharing And Publishing At SCVi

Overview

We use a variety of methods for content sharing and Publishing at SCVi.  Within the school, Facilitators, Learners, and Staff need to share documents and Media.   Outside the school, we publish content for consumption by Parents, Learners, Staff, and the public.  With the transition to Google apps for education, we have the opportunity to consolidate many of these things under the scvi-k12 domain. We also want to take a close look at which publish methods can be found by web crawlers for search engines.  The purpose of this posting is to give some background and discuss options on how this might work.

What We Do Now 

Internally

Internally, we mostly deal with sharing content.  Here are some of the most common methods.

• Drop Box  : Documents shared between teachers and students
• Flash Drives : Most Learners and Facilitators carry Flash Drives for document and content sharing as well.
• E-Mail : File Attachments and discussions
• Network Attached Storage : Video and picture sharing.
• Google Docs : This is done on an ad-hoc bases using student's own e-mail addresses.

Externally

Externally, we are mostly focused on sharing information with staff, teachers, parents and the public. Here are some of the methods that are used.

• GoDaddy Web Site : The main school web site has a great deal of information
• Ed Line : Student grades, Attendance, and Assignments
• Yammer : Staff Discussions
• Constant Contact : Parent/Staff  E-Mail Notifications (Monday Message)
• BlackBoard Connect : Parent/Staff Email and Phone Notifications
• Google Groups : Discussions and E-Mail Lists
• Wix Web Pages: Communication to Parents and student projects (Example, Example, Example, Example)
• Prezi Web Pages :  Learners sharing content with Parents, Peers, and Facilitators (Example, Example, Example, Example)
• Google Docs : Communication to parents, Student Work 
• Facebook : Discussions, Photo Sharing (Example, Example, Example)
• Picasa Web Albums : Photo Sharing (Example) 
• Shutterfly : Photo Sharing (Example)
• Google You Tube : Video Sharing. (Example)

Focusing On Web Content

If you focus just on the Outward Facing web content,  many publish methods can be grouped into these high level organizations.

• Documents : Information organized by topic.
  
• Blogs : One person speaking to an audience in chronological fashion.
  
• Discussions : Back and forth discussion between people. Can be chat or e-mail.
• Photo/Video Sharing/Albums :  Really, just another  kind of document.
• Tasks, Planning : Calendars, To Do Lists, Events

 Most good social networking sites take pieces of these and tie them together.   There are a TON of different options.  Here are some we have looked at.

Service	Documents	Blogs	Discussions/ E-Mail	Photo/Video Sharing/Albums	Tasks, Planning, Calendar	Custom Web Site	Friends, Networks, Connections
Google	Google Docs	Blogger	Google Groups, GMail	Picasa Albums, YouTube	Google Calendar, Google Tasks	Google Sites	Google+, Google Groups
Facebook	No	Wall Postings	Chat, Postings, Messages	Google Albums	FB Events	No	Yes
Jive SBS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Tasks	No	Yes
MyBigCampus	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Moodle	?	?	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Yammer	No	No	Yes	Pages	No	No	Yes
Edline	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
Joomla	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
GoDaddy	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?
Wix	Sharing	Yes	No	No	No	Almost	No
Word Press	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

 

Looking At Google

With the transition to Google apps for education, we have the opportunity  to consolidate many of these things.  Though, we want to strike a balance between flexibility, searchability and consistency.  It is still yet unclear where things will land. Though, here is a first pass at some of our ideas.

Scenario (Use Case)	Google Solution	Other Solutions We May Use
Facilitator Web Site, School Web Site	Google Sites	Edline, Others TBD ***
Learner, Staff, Facilitator  E-Mail	G-Mail *	-
Mail Lists, E-Mail Notifications, Discussions	Google Groups	Blackboard, Yammer, Constant Contact
Calendar	Google Calendar	-
Generic File Sharing	-	Drop Box, Ubuntu One
Documents	Google Docs	Open Office, MS Office, iWork
Tasks, Planning	Google Tasks	Trello
Photo/Video Sharing	Picasa, YouTube	Facebook
Social Networking	- **	Facebook, My Big Campus
Student grades, Attendance, and Assignments	-	EdLine

* With POP and IMAP support, some folks may not know they are using G-Mail.
** Google Plus is not included in Google Apps For Education
*** We don't want to be too prescriptive.  If someone has a passion for a certain technology, they should be free to try it out.

Installing Aleks Math on Ubuntu Linux 10.4

Our school uses Aleks Math on Ubuntu Linux.  For those trying to do the same, this can be a bit tricky.  Aleks Math only works with the Sun/Oracle version of Java. It does not work with OpenJDK that ships with Ubuntu.  In order to get it working, you need to do the following.

1. Install the Sun Version of Java
2. Manually install the Aleks plugin
3. Remove OpenJDK

1) Install the Sun Version Of Java
For a long time, I was able to install it directly with 'apt-get' using these instructions. However, things changed recently.  Sun Java is no longer available to be distributed by Ubuntu, because of license issues. This means it has to be manually installed by downloading packages and installing them by hand (ick).  Here is an overview of what needs to be done.

Download the following packages from these URL's.
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/sun-java6-bin/download
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/sun-java6-jre/download
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/sun-java6-plugin/download
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/sun-java6-fonts/download
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/sun-java6-jdk/download
 
Once they are downloaded, you can install them with dpkg -i.

sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-jdk_6-26-0lenny1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-bin_6-26-0lenny1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-plugin_6-26-0lenny1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-fonts_6-26-0lenny1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-jre_6-26-0lenny1_all.deb

2) Manually Install the Aleks Math Plugin
You'll need to download the AleksPack10.jar file from this page. Once you have it downloaded, copy it to /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/ext/. You need to make sure everyone can read it.  Typical commands might be. 

sudo cp ./aleksPack10.jar /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/ext/
sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/ext/aleksPack10.jar

You then need to tell your machine to use Sun Java:

sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun

3) Remove the OpenJDK
This one is a simple command.

sudo apt-get -y remove openjdk-6-jre default-jre default-jre-headless

If there is cleanup to be done,. try the following commands.

sudo apt-get -f install
sudo dpkg -a --configure

4) Test
Make sure Sun java shows up on this page:
http://javatester.org/version.html

Check your java version

java -version

Domain Name Strategy For iLeadSchools

Since its inception in 2008, SCVi Charter school has used GoDaddy hosted services for E-Mail and Web Content under the scvcharterschool.org domain.  All employees of the school receive a First.Last@SCVCharterSchool.org e-mail address.

SCVi is part of a growing organization and is involved in opening a second school in Lancaster California under the "iLead Schools" name. We are also looking at moving to Google Apps For Education. With so much changing, it makes for a perfect time to re-visit our hosting strategy and domain names. We are currently considering the following structure for our web and e-mail presence for the entire organization.

This diagram shows the structure. Each school will have their identity and autonomy but will have brand recognition under the iLeadSchools name.

• SCVi
• All current employees of SCVi will receive a new First.Last@scvi-k12.org e-mail address. which is hosted by Google.
  
• Legacy @scvcharterschool addresses will continue to work and will forward to the @scvi-k12. address.
  
• SCVi will be part of iLeadSchools but will retain its own identity within the organization.
  
• This is for multiple reasons
• There is equity in the SCVi name
• There is a strong school identity with Parents and Students. (SCVi sweatshirts)
  
• We are known as SCVi in several web sites, databases, and publications
• There is a local identity in the "SCV" initials.
• iLeadSchools
• ileadschools.org will be the parent organization and will have a web site that represents all the schools from a high level.
  
• Schools within the organization will optionally have their own web site which is linked to from the ileadschools.org web site.
  
• All employees in the organization will receive a First.Last@ileadschools.org e-mail address hosted by Google. For folks who represent the entire organization, this will be their primary mail address.  For folks working at schools with their own identity, this will simply be a forward to their school based address.
  

Site Organization

We are expecting that each domain will have a corresponding Google Apps domain. Though, this is still somewhat TBD. It is not yet clear if the ileadshools.org domain will need to be a google instance or not.  Each Google Apps domain has their own instance of the following.

• Google Sites : School Web Site
• Google Mail : Mail for that domain
• Google Docs : Documents and document sharing
• Google Groups : Mail aliases for the domain.
• Google Calendar : Web based calendar. 

There may also be multiple DNS aliases pointing to each domain. 

Free, Cheap, Open Source talk at CCSA

This is the presentation I gave on Wednesday Feb 29th 2012 at  California Chater Schools Conference in Sacramento. It talks about how we use open source software at SCVi Charter school.

The Maker's Schedule Vs. The Manager's Schedule

There is a wonderful article written on Paul Graham's blog  about the different work schedules of Makers and Managers.  Anyone who ever schedules a meeting of any kind should have to read this first.  If you have "Makers" in your organization, you need to understand the price you are paying.  You may be paying for an entire day's worth of work when you only meant to pay for an hour.

Here are a few snippets that I think are especially interesting..

"One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.

There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.

When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you're done.

Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. It's the schedule of command. But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.

When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.

For someone on the maker's schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn't merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there's sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you're a maker, think of your own case. Don't your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don't. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.

Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise when they meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager's schedule, they're in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves, if they know that some of the people working for them need long chunks of time to work in."



"When you're operating on the manager's schedule you can do something you'd never want to do on the maker's: you can have speculative meetings. You can meet someone just to get to know one another. If you have an empty slot in your schedule, why not? Maybe it will turn out you can help one another in some way.

Business people in Silicon Valley (and the whole world, for that matter) have speculative meetings all the time. They're effectively free if you're on the manager's schedule. They're so common that there's distinctive language for proposing them: saying that you want to "grab coffee," for example.

Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you're on the maker's schedule, though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyone assumes that, like other investors, we run on the manager's schedule. So they introduce us to someone they think we ought to meet, or send us an email proposing we grab coffee. At this point we have two options, neither of them good: we can meet with them, and lose half a day's work; or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probably offend them. "

"Those of us on the maker's schedule are willing to compromise. We know we have to have some number of meetings. All we ask from those on the manager's schedule is that they understand the cost."

Setting Up Google Apps For Education

We've been using GoDaddy for our Web Hosting, Mail Hosting, and DNS Services.  We have been using them since the school opened and have been pretty happy with them. Though, there are other services available and we are always looking at options. One option that many schools use is Google Apps For Education.  Since we are a school, Google offers their entire Email, Calendar,  and Apps suite for free.

This blog posting is a cronicle of our process of moving to Google Apps for our school .

1) Step One : Register Your Domain.
We already had an existing domain so we could have moved that to Google. Though, we had been looking at a shorter one for quite some time. We decided to coordinate the two events together.  For our domain services, I used DynDNS. I really like them. They have a nice web interface and reasonable prices.  Registering the domain was pretty straightforward. I also paid for their custom DNS service which I have found to be very helpful with DNS forwarding and sub domains.

2) Step Two: Set Up Your Domain With Google

You can go to the Google K-12 page and click on the Get Apps today button.  The page will have you set up your initial administrator account and then have you verify your domain.  Verifying your domain can be a bit tricky. You have some choices.

1. Add an HTML file to your web server to be downloaded via FTP.
2. Add a meta tag to your site's home page.
3. Add a DNS record to your domain's configuration
4.  Use a Google Analytics tracking code.

Since this was a new domain that did not have a web server or a FTP server set up, I had to go with Option #3.  This wasn't too difficult. I went back to DynDNS and added the record. 

 3) Step Three: Configure Google Apps
This part is pretty straightforward.  We were able to do it all from the Google apps Dashboard for our domain. The only part that was slightly tricky was setting up mail in DNS.  By default, your users will get to e-mail under the google domain. For example, in our case that would have been http://mail.google.com/a/scvi-k12.org.  We wanted our users to see their mail under our own domain, i.e. http://mail.scvi-k12.org. To fix this, you need to add a "MX" record to our DNS settings.  With DynDNS, this was not difficult.  I simply went to the DNS settings and added the servers that google suggested.

This allows our users to get to mail under http://mail.scvi-k12.org instead of http://mail.google.com/a/scvi-k12.org.

4) Step Four: Request NonProfit/Educational Status

The standard Google Apps domain only allows you to add 10 users.  You'll need to request to have your domain upgraded to Google Apps For Education.  This is done by using the Application Form on Google's Web Site.

5) Step Five: Add Users

In the long term, we'd like to have an internal LDAP server that stores all school accounts. This would include logins, passwords, and e-mail addresses for all staff and students. We could then drive Google from the LDAP logins.  However, this is beyond the scope of what we want to bite off right now.

For now, we will add users manually. For Facilitators, Staff, and Admin this will mean creating the account from the Google admin console.  For students, we are going to import users using a CSV file. We currently use Rediker to keep track of our student population. We can dump users out of Rediker and then process the information with a python script which creates a CSV file for Google. Here is the basic strategy of how the accounts will be named.

• Facilitators, Staff, and Admin : Google ID/ E-Mail name will be First.Last@scvi-k12.org  
• This is the same as we have now under the scvcharterschool.org domain.
  
• Google will replace our Go Daddy accounts, it will not be second account.  The legacy scvcharter accounts will be re-directed to Google.
  
• Learners: We have a few choices
• Short Unix name. i.e  John Doe -> jdoe@scvi-k12.org
• User chosen EdLine Screen Name : i.e John Doe -> ILikeLegos@scvi-k12.org
• Same algorithm as Staff i.e. John Doe -> John.Doe@scvi-k12.org 

 We are currently leaning towards Short Unix Names.  This is gives a visible distinction between staff and students and is consistent with what other schools are doing. We are still investigating how these will be grouped and what permissions will be allowed at each level. For example, we may not want all grades to be able to send e-mail from their Google ID.  When this is worked out, I'll put the details in a future posting.

Using A Rosewill RNX-N250 on Ubuntu Linux

I was given an opportunity to speak at the California Charter School Conference in Sacramento about using Open Source Software in Education.  I wanted to bring some Linux boxes to demo and show folks how they work. However, I had a problem.  I was told that there may be no wired network at the conference. Since most of our Linux boxes at SCVi are older, donated machines, they don't have a wireless interface.

I needed to pick up some aftermarket wireless adapters so that I'd be able to demo from the machines I planned to bring.  Though, getting devices that work properly on Linux can get interesting at times.  After a little research, I decided to go with the Rosewill RNX-N250 wireless adapter. Fortunately, Newegg was having a "Shell Shocker" deal at the time so I was able to pick them up for $16 each.

When they arrived, I put the CD in the drive and saw drivers for Mac and Windows, but nothing for Linux.  Checking the details on Newegg showed that these devices should work on Linux and that they use the Realtek RTL8192CU chipset.  After some searching around. I was able to find drivers on the Realtech Web Site.

Description	Version	Update Time	File Size	Download
				Site 1	Site 2	Site 3	Site 4	Site 5	Site 6
Linux Kernel 2.6.18~2.6.38 and Kernel 3.0.2 Android 1.6~2.3 and 4.x	3.3.2_3192	2012/1/9	8322k	HK	CN	US2	US3	US1	UK1

The driver only works with Linux Kernel 2.6.18~2.6.38 and Kernel 3.0.2 so you  need to make sure yours is within this range. This can be done in the terminal with the 'uname' command.

$ uname -a

Linux LOGOS 2.6.32-38-generic #83-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jan 4 11:13:04 UTC 2012 i686 GNU/Linux

Once you download the package, you can run the install.sh script and install it. (I had to change permissions on mine).  Once the installation is done, reboot your computer and your wireless adapter should be working.