[TOS] Summer efforts (was: Re: Textbook: Getting the Code IRC log)

Asheesh Laroia asheesh at openhatch.org
Fri Apr 16 04:00:38 UTC 2010


Excerpts from Matthew Jadud's message of Thu Apr 15 17:25:19 +0000 2010:
> Hi Asheesh,
> 
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 12:39, Asheesh Laroia <asheesh at openhatch.org> wrote:
> > We'll have a programmatic backend for checking students' work.
> 
> Are you developing this for a specific course or instructor? If not,
> then you might discover you're solving a problem no one has. (Put
> another way, if you're writing an educational app that doesn't solve
> at least one instructor's specific problems, then it might not solve
> anyone's problems.)

Yeah -- I agree! OpenHatch didn't start out as a purely educational
tool, but we do have that concern.

I just woke up from a "nap" from 7:30 PM to 11:45 PM, so I'm a little
discombobulated, but I wanted to make sure I replied quickly.

> I spent some time talking to Mel about an idea in this space while she
> was here, and I haven't had time to write this up. Really, what I want
> is a "portfolio engine" or "portfolio aggregator." It would serve as
> an uber-aggregator, where I could capture all of my FLOSS interactions
> (wiki edits, blog posts, IRC conversations, mailing list interactions)
> with minimal effort. This way, as a student working in FLOSS, my
> instructor can easily see what I've been doing. This naturally ties
> into various "dashboard" concepts that have been discussed before. Put
> simply, I want a way for 1. students to easily (minimal/no overhead)
> have a log of their open contributions, and 2. faculty to easily be
> able to see what they've done for making sure they're
> engaging/prodding if they need help.

That sounds a lot like what "Document your open source contributions"
links to, from the front page. Can you try our tool there and see if it
fits the bill?

One thing we do need is more sources of data to import from. So maybe
we have an okay framework with not enough meat on it, you'll find.

> It might solve problems for others as well, but first and foremost,
> I'm interested in developing this so that I can bring students into a
> community, do an interesting project with them for 10 weeks, and come
> back out with a rich set of logs that can easily be used by the
> students and faculty for reflection---without the students having to
> manage it all themselves. As an example: zodbot, while a very nice
> fellow, does not cut it---the student and faculty member have to do
> too much work to get the log and to find it later.

Interesting. Good to know.

> I can write this up in a wikispace if you'd like me to; I was planning
> on writing it up and putting a prototype together after classes ended,
> but I can sketch it out sooner rather than later if there is interest.

Thing is, I kind of think we built it already. But maybe you'll find that
what we built doesn't mesh with what you were thinking. So I'd really
appreciate it if you'd try out our thing as part of naming what you want.

Groggily,

-- Asheesh.

-- 
You will never know hunger.



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