schooltool-developers team mailing list archive

[Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeff Elkner <jeff@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 5:01 PM
Subject: CanDo Goals ( and getting ready for Fall and Summer)...
To: David Welsh <rdavidw@xxxxxxxxx>, Jason Straw
<jason.straw@xxxxxxxxx>, Henry Grover <henrywgrover@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: caroline@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Kris Martini
<KMartini@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Phyllis Gandy
<pgandy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, joshuageddy@xxxxxxxxx, "Dr. Ann Kennedy"
<a.akennedy@xxxxxxxxx>, Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>, Kevin
Reed <kreed@xxxxxxxx>, Mike Lee <curiouslee@xxxxxxxxx>, Luke Faraone
<luke.faraone@xxxxxxxxx>


Hi Dave, Jason, and Henry!

I'm sitting in the Portland Maine airport having just left the FOSSED
conference.  It was an *incredible* experience!  While I could go on
and on, let me focus on the most important point:

Each of the pieces we talked about in our orginal "let's dream"
discussions five years ago at the beginning of CanDo now exist, and
the work to integrate them is actively underway.  For the benefit of
those who weren't there, we saw three main benefits to student
learning from the CanDo system:

Curricular transparancy through explicit presentation of course
competency goals.
On-line curriculum links to encourage students to engage in self learning.
On-line ePortfolios explicitly linked to course competencies as
evidence of skills mastery.

We have been focusing on the first goal, and we had assumed we would
have to write software for goals 2 and 3 into the system.  I attended
two workshops over the past two days that address both these problems:

Mahara (http://mahara.org) is an ePortfolio platform that could
provide an excellent solution to goal 3.

LAMS (http://www.lamsinternational.com) is a Learning Activity
Management System (I hadn't even heard of this one until the
conference, but it blew me away when I saw it in action!), which could
provide a great solution to goal 2.

One of the highlights of the conference was meeting Caroline Meeks.
Caroline wears two hats, both of which make her a natural partner to
our program:  1. she is one of the driving forces behind Sugar Labs
(http://sugarlabs.org) and 2. She is the owner of SolutionGrove
(http://www.solutiongrove.com), a company which delivers free software
solutions for eEducation, including Moodle and LAMS.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dave, when can we set up a meeting with you, Jason, Henry, Josh, and I
to talk about the computing infrastructure for next Fall.  My thinking
is that we will want to run the following remotely accessible services
(in order of importance):

1. SchoolTool / CanDo
2. LAMS
3. Mahara
4. Moodle

I'm not sure about moodle.  Caroline says she thinks there is an
important role for moodle as your on-line syllabus, and if we can only
expose that part of it then it could be useful, but I would want to
deliver on-line activities with LAMS, store grades and competencies in
SchoolTool, and have students keep ePortfolios using Mahara.

Inside the classroom, we will want to run:

1. LTSP (done)
2. SchoolServer

Since I'm teaching Summer enrichment classes using Sugar, it would be
great if I could get the SchoolServer running in time to use it with
the Summer students.

Thanks!

jeff