just a lowly edtech geek, mumble mumble university of calgary
From the monthly archives:
It’s the end of an era. The Learning Commons is no more. It’d be dramatic, if we weren’t just changing the name to the “Teaching and Learning Centre“. It’s a little less pretentious, and should require less explanation about what we do. It’s a shorter web domain name, too – just “tlc.ucalgary.ca“. Maybe we should have thrown a “2.0″ in there for buzzword compliance 
{ 4 comments }
I’m so sick and tired of people and companies slapping “Web 2.0″ stickers on their websites/products/blogs/resumes to show how kewl and innovative they are. I saw a website for a design company that mentions “Web 2.0″ a whopping 5 times on their home page alone, and once more in the title of the page. I get it. You’re innovative. I should worship you.
Here’s an idea. Just do cool stuff. Be innovative. Stop trying to brag your ass off by buzzwordifying everything. It’s starting to come across like some kind of high school clique – jocks, preps, bangers, and the “Web 2.0″ gang. If you’re not in the Web 2.0 Gang, you suck. Whatever. I was an outcast then, and I’m happy to be one now.
Yes, I know “Web 2.0″ is shorthand for a whole suite/syndrome of stuff, and it’s faster to just say three syllables that are buzzword compliant than to have to explain innovation. And “Web 1.0″ is a handy shorthand for the “old web”. But, really, who do these shorthand terms help – other than “Web 2.0″ consultants and design firms?
{ 21 comments }
I just checked in on Josie’s map of Edubloggers, and has it ever grown! There are now 347 people around the world identifying themselves as “edubloggers”. The pattern of distribution is interesting, too. Most of Europe and North America are saturated. Africa is basically unrepresented, and northern Asia (including all of Russia) is blank.
{ 4 comments }
Patrick Feng attended a recent Alberta Ingenuity Media Master Class event on campus aimed at discussing the communication of science and research with the general public and in The Media. He live blogged the session, and has some interesting thoughts on the various presentation styles used by the 5 presenters as they talked with Jay Ingram and the audience about their research.
I’m most interested in what seems like an emphasis on conversational (or at least natural, less formal) presentation styles. I think we need to figure out ways for more professors to take advantage of this style. Many stick to chalk-and-talk (or ppt-and-talk) because it’s an easy, low effort presentation style that feels like they’re accomplishing something (I have 150 bullet points in this ppt! it’s great!).
The conversational style can take more preparation because you may not know exactly where you’re going to wind up. On the other hand, it can take less preparation if you really know your stuff and recognize that the “audience” may know as much (or more) on a topic than you do.
{ 0 comments }
I think everyone that will be “presenting” to a group should have to be familiar with Levine’s Law before they take the podium.
Start with the demo
I tuned into what promised to be an excellent session on flexible, organic, dynamic ePortfolios using social software, only to find myself holding back from screaming “Levine’s law! For the love of God, Levine’s Law!!!” as bullet point after bullet point was dutifully addressed.
The session wasn’t bad, and the back channel discussion in the Elluminate chat room provided some interesting opinions, but a demo (or two) would have brought everyone onto the same page in under a minute, leaving time to discuss implementations, issues, and practical details rather than hashing over bullet points. I would have been much happier to see screenshots (or live demos) of these social-software-driven ePortfolios.
I may be co-presenting a session at Interface 2006, on our ePortfolio project being used by our Faculty of Education, but if the session is accepted, I plan on using exactly 0 bullet points. Probably no PowerPoint either. If I do wind up using a PPT, it will be in the modified-Lessigian style, with no bullets and lots and lots of images to support what I’m saying (rather than just providing a script for me to follow).
Start with the demo. Stay with the demo. Think on your feet. To borrow a quote from D.M. Shaftoe in The Cryptonomicon: “Show some damned adaptability.”
{ 1 comment }
Really hard to tell where my head’s been lately…
{ 2 comments }
I’m just putting some additional refinements to my automated server backup process, and have rolled together a handy script to backup each database into its own backup file (so I can restore a single database, rather than blowing them all away to restore from an --all-databases backup.
I’m going to work on making a fancier / more dynamic script based on MySOL’s show databases command to get all databases backed up individually without having to remember to add them to the backup script. In the meantime, here’s how I’m backing up my databases.
In a script creatively named “backup_databases.sh” – which has been added to the crontab on the server – I have this:
Update: A much better script was provided in the comments for this post. Definitely use that one rather than this one that I cobbled together. I’m leaving this script up in case it comes in handy, but have switched my servers to use the script provided by Jon.
#!/bin/sh
# Customize these variables to match what you have
MYSQL_ACCOUNT=root
MYSQL_PASSWORD=password
BACKUP_DIRECTORY="/Users/Shared/backup/mysql/"
backupdb() {
DATABASE_NAME=$1
FILE_NAME=${2:-$DATABASE_NAME}
echo "dumping database " $DATABASE_NAME " to " $FILE_NAME
/usr/bin/mysqldump -u $MYSQL_ACCOUNT -p$MYSQL_PASSWORD -q $DATABASE_NAME | gzip > $BACKUP_DIRECTORY$FILE_NAME.sql.gz
}
# add lines for each database you want to back up
backupdb "first_database"
backupdb "database2"
# keep adding databases...
# finish up by grabbing the whole works Just In Case
backupdb "--all-databases" "mysqldump" The script has a function that is called for each database you want to back up, passing in the database name, and optionally the name of the output file. I’ll be tweaking the script over the next few days to make it more robust and flexible, but it’s a decent starting point anyway.
Of course, if you don’t need to restore individual databases, you can simply call
mysqldump -u USER -pPASSWORD -q --all-databases | gzip > mysqldump.sql.gz
Update: A much better, more flexible, and robust script was provided by Jon in the comments for this post. I’m using that script now. Thanks!
{ 8 comments }
Just writing down the process so I don’t forget. If anyone else gets some use out of it, that’s cool too…
Here’s how I just set up my Mac to automatically back up 2 servers, as well as my home directory, to an external firewire drive. The process uses stuff that’s included with MacOSX, so won’t cost a dime. And it’s automatable, so I won’t forget to run it.
Following these instructions, boiled down to bare essentials below. Run this stuff from the “client” machine (in my case, my desktop box in my cube) – where all data will wind up.
% .ssh/authorized_keys2
% scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub :~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 repeat scp step for each server
This will allow your account on that client machine to SSH, rsync and SCP without being prompted for a password every time, making it possible to automate the process.
Using rsync to copy directories from the server(s) to a local volume (preferably an external drive). I created a file at ~/bin/backup_servers.sh, but it can live anywhere. Replace [SERVER] with the ip/domain of the server to be backed up. Replace [DIRECTORY] with the directory on the server to be backed up (could be something like /Library/WebServer). Replace [DEST_DIRECTORY] with the directory that will contain the backup (could be something like /Volumes/BackupDrive/[SERVER]/[DIRECTORY]).
#!/bin/sh
echo "Backing up [SERVER] [DIRECTORY] directory"
rsync -rtlzv --ignore-errors -e ssh [USERNAME]@[SERVER]:[DIRECTORY] [DEST_DIRECTORY] > [DEST_DIRECTORY]/backup.logTweak directories as needed, but this should create a backup (without deleting missing files) of the server directory to the external hard drive. If you want to back up more than one server, or more than one directory, just keep repeating the echo/rsync lines as needed (changing values for each server/directory, of course). I have 5 entries in my script, copying a couple of directories from 2 servers, and also backing up my home directory on my Desktop machine.
I have my cron tasks defined in a file at ~/mycrontab, so I just added this to the end of that file:
30 4 * * * ~/bin/backup_servers.sh > /dev/nullSo now, every morning at 4:30AM, the servers and directories that I’ve specified in ~/bin/backup_server.sh will get backed up to my external firewire drive (assuming it’s on and mounted). I’m sure I could be doing fancier things to make this process even smoother, but it seems to be working fine now.
At the moment, I have stuff backed up from the 2 servers, and important stuff from my Powerbook (iPhoto library, iTunes library, Documents, etc…) get copied to the desktop where they get backed up automatically to the external drive.
{ 4 comments }
There are only 2 words to describe the finale. Holy. Frak.
I’m not going to put any spoilers in here, because this finale would be worth watching the miniseries, and all of seasons 1 and 2 just to get to the point that you’re ready to watch this. It’s that amazing. I can’t remember a series that took such a gamble with rethinking the show so completely.
Ronald Moore described the finale as an attempt to roll hard sixes. I think he’s pulled it off. BSG wasn’t stale – yet – but was beginning to fall into the usual
10 print "oh no! run from the bad guys!"
20 pause
30 print "oh no! more bad guys!"
40 run
50 goto 10formula. 2 seasons in, just as the show is really hitting its stride, they decide to be preemptive about it and completely rethink the genre. I said no spoilers, so I won’t say what they did, but I can’t frakking wait to see season 3. This changes everything.
Kudos, Ronald! I’m sure the network guys pushed back a little – not wanting to take a risk with the highest rated show they’ve ever had (IIRC). But being able to do something so radical is pretty amazing by itself. Just be glad that Fox isn’t bankrolling this one!
{ 11 comments }
Helen Chen posted a notice about an upcoming webcast by Jude Higdon for ADCE about the nature of ePortfolios in an environment where people are already using blogs and social software. The session will be a quasi-interactive Elluminate production.
Who needs an ePortfolio? All my coursework is on my blog…
EPortfolios have been defined in various ways by vendors, professional organizations, and institutions of higher education.
With emerging technologies such as social software that include the ability to freetag and syndicate across multiple resources and environments, the need for standalone ePortfolio “software” is perhaps called into question. This discussion will raise issues regarding the NetGen student, and how she is already using technology that has natural affordances that allow her to collect, aggregate, and syndicate content into portfolio views that can be useful to herself, other students, faculty, departments, colleges and universities, accreditation agencies, funding bodies, and potential employers.
I’ll hopefully tune in live, because this is exactly the stuff I’ve been thinking about for our ePortfolio project…
Almost forgot – it’s on Friday, March 17th at 11am MST.
{ 2 comments }
