Category Archives: catalyst

You are among geeks when…

Posted on by
Reply

One of our developers is going to be a dad real soon. His waiting stirred the creative juices among the other developers. Brett came up with the following “from conception to birth” scenario à la version control system (used with permission):

mkdir baby
cd baby
git init .
awk 'BEGIN { s="ACGT"; genes=""; srand(); for (i=1;i<=1024;i++) {genes
= genes""substr(s,int(rand()*4)+1,1)} print genes}' > seed
git add seed
git commit -m 'conception'
git remote add mother mother
git push -u mother baby
sleep 23667694.5
git pull mother baby

git is a very popular open source version control system that we use for I guess all our proejcts. I also started using it for reviewing Mahara code and for writing the Mahara user manual.

The Mahara 1.4 Release Crew Mug

Posted on by
Reply

Mahara 1.4 was released a little over 1 month ago. And now our Mahara 1.4 Release Crew mugs arrived in New Zealand. Contributors in the UK have already received them earlier, but ours took a bit longer to make the long journey from the CafePress workshop.

These mugs are a limited edition and are only presented to contributors to the open source ePortfolio system Mahara who worked on version 1.4.

I love the little Mahara guys that one of our designers at Catalyst IT created for the various jobs in the production of the software. And the construction site as theme is just perfect.
The most awesome mug - 2011-07-22

eq.org.nz

Posted on by
Reply

Christchurch was hit by a devastating earthquake on February 22, 2011, that was much more destructive than the September 4 quake. The quake happened during the lunch hour and again surprised everybody. I had not heard about the earthquake until two hours later as I had been working in my hotel room and not watched TV or been online. Seeing the pictures later and listening to the reports on TV was horrific and I am grateful for everybody who is doing OK.

The state of emergency was declared very soon, the crisis centers started its work and volunteers got together to help in any way they could. One of these volunteer groups use eq.org.nz as their web site to gather information about the state of things à la “Where are you and what do you see?” It must be noted that this is not an official crisis center page, but crowd-gathered information. The volunteers are in touch with officials to check on certain messages before they get posted to the site.

Colleagues of mine who are in Wellington set up a volunteer training center in our training room at Catalyst to be able to provide the service continuously and have enough people at hand who can help sort the incoming messages. People can email or send a free TXT to contribute information. It then gets categorized and mapped for easy retrieval. As many people in Christchurch only have cell phone access, there is also a mobile interface and apps for both iPhone and Android phones available.

Although I still hope that such data gathering will not be necessary in the future, I am realistic to know that earthquakes or any other catastrophe can happen any minute. The web site that was set up using Ushahidi can be used for other disaster relief purposes in the future as the infrastructure has been set up. The technology used is open source. :-)

Featured on Slideshare

Posted on by
1

When I opened my email inbox today, I had an email from Slideshare saying that my recently uploaded presentation slides “E-portfolios: Just for students?” were featured on the homepage. Apparently, an editorial team chooses the presentations that appear on the homepage. I was happy about these news and had to take a screenshot before some other presentation replaced mine.

Featured on Slideshare

Featured on Slideshare

E-portfolios and tech angels

Posted on by
Reply

Summer is in full swing – outside of Wellington.

After a very sunny day in Nelson which I spent giving two Mahara / MyPortfolio Taster Sessions for teachers of Nelson schools at Waimea College, I flew to Auckland for the Digital Technologies Symposium for secondary school teachers. I had another very sunny and very warm day. It also looks like it’s going to be really nice tomorrow.

Today I presented on the topic “E-portfolios: Just for students?” Approximately 30 teachers attended the session. Throughout the day I was then approached by teachers who had either been to the presentation or who had heard about Mahara / MyPortfolio before. It was good that I wore my Catalyst – Mahara – Moodle -  T-shirt thus being easily recognizable. ;-) They either wanted to know more about Mahara or had already thought about implementing it in their schools and wanted to know how to best go about it.

After tonight’s dinner at which Stuart Middleton from MIT (not the one in the USA, but the home-grown one from NZ) gave a great keynote that was filled with anecdotes from his childhood and a number of jokes (he also managed to bring in the engagement of Prince William to Catherine Middleton that had just been announced), I had a chat with Justin Scott from Otago Girls’ High School. They have already looked into Mahara and had run a trial as well. The girls liked the software because it was easy to handle (which is always nice to hear).

During our chat I learned how they support teachers and students in the adaption of technology. It is done through “Tech Angels”. These are girls who help teachers when they have a tech issue to solve. But they also help their peers. “Tech Angels” is a great metaphor for the work they do. The girls are very proud of their work, especially about the badge they get to put on their uniform. It is a great way for them to learn something new and help others understand it (learning by teaching). Teachers also realize that they do not necessarily know everything there is to know. This is a fundamental shift that is not always easy to cope with when teachers have always been the ones who were in control. Suddenly, they have to relinquish part of their power and have students help them.

A number of metaphors have been introduced to talk about the shifting role of a teacher. Ones that I encountered are for example “from sage on the stage to guide on the side”, curator, facilitator, gardener. Sui Fai John Mak put together a long list of roles that teachers can take. That also shown nicely how different these roles and their implied meaning can be. There is no “one size fits all”.

E-portfolios: Just for students?