Ubuntu Wiki

(03:00:41 PM) pleia2: Hi everyone, welcome to the Ubuntu Open Week session on the Ubuntu Community Learning Project (UCLP).
(03:01:02 PM) pleia2: My name is Elizabeth Krumbach, I'm a board member of the UCLP, have been involved with technical review of professional coursework, have worked to coordinate classes in #ubuntu-classroom and am involved locally with my LoCo team which seeks to launch classroom training.
(03:01:30 PM) pleia2: As a pretty new project, this session will give details about the UCLP, I will be covering project goals, general project status and how to individuals can get involved, I'll pause for questions throughout.
(03:02:03 PM) pleia2: The goal of this project is to create coursework that can be used by individuals for teaching, for Ubuntu LoCo teams, for Linux Users Groups, for presentations at conferences, for IRC, for Moodle-based teaching - anywhere you're teaching folks about Ubuntu.
(03:02:20 PM) pleia2: Our project page is here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning
(03:02:31 PM) pleia2: We have an IRC channel on this network over at #ubuntu-learning
(03:02:52 PM) pleia2: Our mailing list is here: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-learning
(03:02:55 PM) ara left the room (quit: "Ex-Chat").
(03:03:09 PM) pleia2: And we have a Moodle installation over at http://learn.ufbt.net/ which supports openid logins (so you an use your launchpad account)
(03:03:42 PM) pleia2: < mhall119|work> QUESTION: isn't there a SuSe project to develop open learning material based on moodle?
(03:04:02 PM) pleia2: I don't know, but it would be interesting to find out and perhaps coordinate some things with them material-wise
(03:04:33 PM) pleia2: Moodle isn't our only format though, since our goal is to service a number of different venus
(03:04:37 PM) pleia2: venues
(03:04:41 PM) pleia2: So, to actually achieve this goal, we seek to develop core material for use in 3 major deployment formats:
(03:04:49 PM) pleia2:  * Live classes
(03:04:54 PM) pleia2:  * Moodle
(03:04:55 PM) pleia2:  * IRC
(03:05:09 PM) pleia2: And we've recruited a diverse group of individuals to be on our team board, whose expertise cover various portions of the "Learning" spectrum, including primary education, Moodle deployments, training in IRC and live class training.
(03:05:37 PM) pleia2: < yos> Question: I'm a n00b...what is moodle ?
(03:05:49 PM) pleia2: the main site for Moodle is http://moodle.org/
(03:06:09 PM) pleia2: it's used for online-based training, the site describes it as "Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites."
(03:06:34 PM) pleia2: Now, as far as material goes, we have five core sections we seek to cover:
(03:06:46 PM) pleia2:  * How to Use Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning/UbuntuDesktopTopics
(03:06:57 PM) pleia2:  * How to Maintain Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning/SystemAdminTopics
(03:07:06 PM) pleia2:  * How to Develop Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning/DeveloperTopics
(03:07:14 PM) pleia2:  * How to Spread Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning/AdvocateTopics
(03:07:21 PM) pleia2:  * How to Teach Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning/TeachingTopics
(03:07:53 PM) pleia2: you may want to take a look at those pages now, and they'll give you some idea as to how the informal layouts are for each
(03:08:16 PM) pleia2: As you can see from these pages, we've been developing course outlines and collecting resources for each of these topics - but we need more help!
(03:08:33 PM) pleia2: Before I get into talking about our workflow, are there any questions so far?
(03:09:47 PM) pleia2: < doctormo> QUESTION: Are there people who manage each of those sections? responsbility for editing and keeping things sane?
(03:10:26 PM) pleia2: That'll be talked about some in workflow, but yes - there is a loose collaboration between folks to control who is editing what when, and we hope to have more of it as the project progresses
(03:10:32 PM) pleia2: < openweek1_> QUESTION: The goal is to have materials in help of LOCO teams?
(03:11:05 PM) pleia2: yes, one of our goals is to have materials for loco teams to teach, doctormo is already teaching several of the courses he's developed for "How to Maintain Ubuntu" at his loco tea m:)
(03:11:36 PM) pleia2: and the Pennsylvania team will be using some of the desktop courses for our outreach to a local non-profit
(03:12:06 PM) pleia2: < mhall119|work> QUESTION: is Edubuntu involved in this project?
(03:12:47 PM) pleia2: yes, I'm in contact with LaserJock about the project, but they've been very busy with polishing up Edubuntu these past few months
(03:13:31 PM) pleia2: hopefully we'll expand our partnership with them moving forward, along with other teams like the Doc team, Ubuntu Classroom and others
(03:13:52 PM) pleia2: on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning if you go down to "Affiliates & Key People" you can see some of the contacts we've already made with existing teams
(03:14:01 PM) pleia2: < mhall119|work> QUESTION: can I contribute instructional material for ubuntu derivatives like Qimo?
(03:14:27 PM) pleia2: absolutely! we'd just need to define it as such on our wiki so people know where it belongs
(03:15:01 PM) pleia2:  < sebsebseb> QUESTION:  Unfortunately these days most computer courses are Windows only or mainly, especially at low levels.  Would this be one of the projects goals,  provideing  exams and coursework  for  Educational  Establishments who are then teaching students/pupils about
(03:15:13 PM) pleia2: Ubuntu and opensource/freesoftware in general.  With the people passing the course gaining a qualification that in the future many employers, at least in the computer industry, would be interested in.
(03:15:49 PM) pleia2: yes, but our coursework is not at all related to getting any kind of certification
(03:16:23 PM) pleia2: if you're looking for a program to get some formal qualifications you probably want to check out Canonical's training options: http://www.ubuntu.com/training
(03:16:34 PM) pleia2: < openweek1_> QUESTION: What is the policy about using these materials in university courses about Linux?
(03:17:02 PM) pleia2: it's perfectly fine as long as they abide by the CC-BY-SA license we're releasing them under
(03:17:11 PM) pleia2: < kennethvenken> QUESTION: which versions of ubuntu will be covered by this project? Supported versions? Newest version? LTS version?
(03:17:43 PM) pleia2: great question, we're focusing on LTS version, but that's up for discussion
(03:18:16 PM) pleia2: ok, I'm going to move on and talk a little bit about workflow
(03:18:33 PM) pleia2: The workflow for course development is essentially:
(03:18:39 PM) pleia2: Step 1: Collaborative discussion and outlining on the wiki
(03:18:54 PM) pleia2: For instance, if you take a look at our "How to Use Ubuntu" wiki page, you'll see that I've taken "ownership" of the Introduction: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning/UbuntuDesktopTopics
(03:19:21 PM) pleia2: As people want to write classes, they update the wiki page so others know they're working on it.
(03:19:39 PM) pleia2: You'll also see links on that page to existing documentation - we leverage this as much as possible
(03:20:15 PM) pleia2: straight wiki pages aren't great for teaching people from, so we take this material, reference it, and build a framework around it so a teacher can teach it (in real life or irc), or it can be put into moodle
(03:20:29 PM) pleia2: Step 2: Further development and fleshing out in bzr+asciidoc
(03:20:43 PM) pleia2: We track core cores material in Bazaar and the asciidoc format. While it's not required for people to write in this format (.odt is fine if that's all you can do!) this is the preferred method for the team due to the ability to easily transform it into other formats.
(03:20:52 PM) pleia2: s/cores/course
(03:21:13 PM) pleia2: This portion of the development process will be the real meat of the course, putting it into a format that people can learn from, linking to the raw documentation from the wiki and other online resources, and essentially turning raw wiki documentation into a teachable format.
(03:21:31 PM) pleia2: To have a peek at the Sysadmin courses currently in bzr check out: https://code.launchpad.net/ubuntu-learning-materials
(03:21:46 PM) pleia2: Step 3: Putting material from B into our 3 major deployment formats - live classes, irc, moodle
(03:21:53 PM) pleia2: s/B/Step 2
(03:22:06 PM) pleia2: In this section we hand it off to our experts in live classes, irc and moodle for them to put it into their respective formats.
(03:22:32 PM) pleia2: so someone familiar with moodle will take the raw documents produced and put it into a moodle course
(03:22:53 PM) pleia2: a live classroom teacher may export the lesson plan as PDF directly and follow that for teaching
(03:23:04 PM) pleia2: ...but this is our workflow in a perfect world, and we don't live in one :)
(03:23:12 PM) pleia2: To account for this, the project is very flexbile with this workflow.
(03:23:26 PM) pleia2: Want to join the project and just do an IRC session? Great! Update the wiki to show the class you're covering and link to the session logs so we can gain from your expertise.
(03:23:42 PM) pleia2: Want to join the project and just do development directly in Moodle? Excellent! Update the wiki to show what you'll be covering in your Moodle course and link to your progress.
(03:24:20 PM) pleia2: This is a pretty preliminary view of how we're doing things now and it'll be worked through in the coming months, but are there any questions before I move on to how to get involved?
(03:24:57 PM) pleia2: < axisys> how do I pull this https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-learning-board/ubuntu-learning-materials/trunk
(03:25:12 PM) mode (+v doctormo ) by pleia2
(03:25:34 PM) pleia2: doctormo is the bzr expert on the team, so I'll let him answer this one :)
(03:25:57 PM) doctormo: OK so there are a few old branches you should ignore, one is trunk, which is filled with odfs.
(03:26:07 PM) doctormo: the best thing to do is to pull from the development focus
(03:26:22 PM) doctormo: bzr branch lp:ubuntu-learning-materials
(03:27:12 PM) pleia2: thanks doctormo
(03:27:14 PM) doctormo: Make sure you keep your branches up to date, and then commit your branches when you've made changes.
(03:27:28 PM) pleia2: we're going to be writing some documentation specifically targeted toward contributors to help with this
(03:27:42 PM) doctormo: We'll do merge requests and variosu thijngs, to be taught.
(03:28:03 PM) pleia2: < mhall119|work> QUESTION: going back to linux-for-education.org, which uses moodle, can we put out moddle versions there ?  Is there any objection to that?
(03:28:08 PM) pleia2: < mhall119|work> if we want to translate asciidocs into moodle, can we do it there and link to them?
(03:28:13 PM) pleia2: < mhall119|work> or is there a moodle site for this project we can put them into?
(03:28:34 PM) pleia2: so, Moodle is not actually my forte, but the license allows us to share this material and contribute it to any other moodle deployments
(03:28:51 PM) pleia2: asciidoc can be exported into html, and that would be put into moodle
(03:29:02 PM) pleia2: and our moodle site is here: http://learn.ufbt.net/ :)
(03:29:39 PM) pleia2: we've already imported at least one course from another source since the license was friendly
(03:30:20 PM) pleia2: Now... how do you get involved? How do you benefit from our resources?
(03:30:30 PM) pleia2: We've made it pretty easy to join the project, as outlined in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning/Structure:
(03:30:51 PM) pleia2:  1. Get a launchpad account and sign the Code of Conduct (see: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GnuPrivacyGuardHowto#Validation%20on%20Launchpad)
(03:31:13 PM) pleia2:  2. Introduce yourself to the team and give us an idea of your interests, skills, and how you see yourself working with the team (introductions can happen via mailing list or in IRC, in public or to a team board member)
(03:31:43 PM) pleia2: we like introductions because then we know what kind of talent we have on the team, those of us organizing course material can know who to ask about certain things
(03:32:12 PM) pleia2: for instance, I know dinda is a Moodle wizard :) so we've been able to ask her when we get stumped on moodle, if she doesn't know she tends to know who to ask!
(03:32:20 PM) pleia2:  3. Apply for or have one of the board members add you to the launchpad team: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-learning
(03:32:24 PM) pleia2: that's it! very simple :)
(03:32:33 PM) pleia2: < mhall119|work> QUESTION: how small can a contribution be?  I've written a couple of short "hacklets" for ubuntu-fl.org that are really more of the tips and tricks nature, would you want those?
(03:32:38 PM) pleia2: < mhall119|work> example: http://www.ubuntu-fl.org/2009/08/27/hacklet-apt-cache-redirect/
(03:33:03 PM) pleia2: These are great! In the case of these I'd link them to the wiki page they're related to
(03:33:38 PM) pleia2: so maybe that would go under our "maintaining ubuntu" course, so add it to the wiki and when the person writing the course gets to it, they may decide it's a great resource and to teach it in the course
(03:34:20 PM) pleia2: our course writers will tend to be experts in what they're writing, but having resources written by dozens of other brilliant minds will help a lot, so links to the wiki, links to docs like this
(03:35:04 PM) pleia2: So, we're looking for folks to help out the project in a variety of ways:
(03:35:14 PM) pleia2:  * Folks who will help fleshing out outlines and getting links to great material that exists so we can link to it as reference material
(03:35:32 PM) pleia2: (so jump right in! thanks already mhall119|work!)
(03:37:12 PM) pleia2:  * Course writers either using the set workflow, or developing directly for Moodle, IRC or Live sessions
(03:37:48 PM) pleia2: we already have cprofitt with some great plans for moodle, doctormo doing live sessions, and Ubuntu Classroom chugging along with IRC sessions but we need a lot more help
(03:38:02 PM) pleia2: so...
(03:38:03 PM) pleia2:  * Moodle experts who can help others with Moodle development
(03:38:27 PM) pleia2: we had a great session with an educator that dinda put us in touch with several weeks ago
(03:38:31 PM) pleia2:  * IRC teachers who will lead courses in IRC (related to http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Classroom)
(03:38:43 PM) pleia2: we'd love to see this channel active again for more than just Ubuntu Open Week :)
(03:38:49 PM) pleia2:  * Real Life session teachers who are seeking to teach course material
(03:39:01 PM) pleia2: so again, folks looking to teach things for their LoCo teams, using our materials
(03:39:18 PM) pleia2: we want people doing this, giving us feedback, helping us improve our documents
(03:39:27 PM) pleia2:  * Material reviewers
(03:39:43 PM) pleia2: doctormo tends to post his finished courses on his blog and the comments are great! we need more folks doing this
(03:40:00 PM) pleia2: And how can you benefit from this project? As courses are released, you can take them and start teaching them!
(03:40:06 PM) pleia2: Already, Martin Owens has already released 10 courses in PDF that he's been teaching for the US-MA LoCo for the "How to Maintain Ubuntu" section, which can be found at the bottom of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning/SystemAdminTopics under "System Administration Basics Course"
(03:40:55 PM) pleia2: and as I mentioned before, the Pennsylvania team is planning on doing some intro classes for a local non-profit that refurbishes computers
(03:41:04 PM) pleia2: < openweek1_> QUESTION: how will be handled other than english languages in the materials/courses
(03:41:41 PM) pleia2: the great thing about asciidoc is the ability to port it into different formats - I am not intimately familiar with translations, but I'm told it can be exported into translation friendly formats
(03:42:09 PM) pleia2: < artopal> QUESTION: What was the rationale behind choosing asciidoc instead of some other lightweight markup language like, e.g. txt2tags (which is also very feature full), or the more common (and complex) alternative: docbook?
(03:42:30 PM) pleia2: We hashed this out during meetings, docbook was decided to be too hard to learn - the barrier to entry was too high
(03:43:01 PM) pleia2: I don't recall why we didn't go with txt2tags, but team member BiosElement spent several weeks researching a whole pile of formats
(03:44:01 PM) pleia2: asciidoc has a format very similar to wiki, so we figured most people could catch on quickly
(03:44:27 PM) pleia2: and although it's not quite as easy as writing things in odt (which we'll accept too, if we need to), aciidoc's ability to be exported into loads of formats is great
(03:44:36 PM) pleia2: < openweek1_> QUESTION: I dont get it, how is asciidoc related to Moodle? Is it its native format? Because I have some expiriance with moodle, but no export/import
(03:44:50 PM) pleia2: asciidoc can be exported into .html, which you can import into moodle
(03:45:31 PM) pleia2: < kennethvenken> QUESTION: do you have a roadmap? When will the first courses be ready?
(03:45:46 PM) pleia2: the first 10 courses are completed and we're actively developing several more
(03:45:59 PM) pleia2: we don't actually have a roadmap with specific goals, we should :)
(03:46:12 PM) pleia2: < doctormo> QUESTION: are courses peer reviewed at all?
(03:46:37 PM) pleia2: as I mentioned earlier - one of the things we need volunteers for is review, thus far they've been reviewed on blogs and by posting raw material to the mailing list
(03:46:50 PM) pleia2: so yes, they are peer reviewed
(03:48:59 PM) pleia2: This pretty much wraps up my summary of the project, are there other questions?
(03:49:55 PM) pleia2: < mhall119|work> QUESTION: are you reaching out to LoCo teams to contribute?  we're always looking for something to do for Ubuntu
(03:50:29 PM) pleia2: we'd like to do more of this, thus far we've reached out to some of the leaders in the community (popey with locoteams is aware)
(03:51:00 PM) pleia2: and there are several loco teams who have already approached the project to say that they're ready for material when it comes out - very inspiring for us :)
(03:51:07 PM) pleia2: < doctormo> QUESTION: Does this project compete with the Canonical courses?
(03:51:45 PM) pleia2: not directly, we're all community based, have no certifications tied to our programs are are more geared toward grass roots teaching in locos and things
(03:51:54 PM) pleia2: s/are are/and are
(03:54:48 PM) pleia2: < duanedesign> QUESTION: if you start working on a paticular topic what is the best way to communicate this so their is no duplication
(03:54:56 PM) pleia2: you'll want to update the wiki page to say that
(03:55:06 PM) #ubuntu-classroom: mode (+v kees ) by jcastro
(03:55:11 PM) pleia2: for instance, if you check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Learning/UbuntuDesktopTopics
(03:55:21 PM) pleia2: you'll see a line which says: Ubuntu Desktop Introduction -- Log of this course outline from doctormo, pleia2 developing
(03:55:48 PM) pleia2: just a note like this next to an item is sufficient, and perhaps a link to your in-progress work (whether it's in bzr, moodle, etc)
(03:56:13 PM) pleia2: that way people know you're working on it, and if they want to pitch in they can contact you
(03:56:21 PM) pleia2: < mhall119|work> QUESTION: can you pull existing content from the Ubuntu Pocket Guide of Official Ubuntu Book?
(03:56:-- PM) pleia2: if the license allows for it
(03:58:-- PM) pleia2: if the license doesn't allow for any of it to be duplicated, it can be referenced though
(03:58:-- PM) pleia2: we can say "for more reading - check out $awesome_resource"
(03:58:-- PM) pleia2: < yos> question: I'm new to ubuntu and I don't have any special skills however, I have a lot of free time on my hands...is there anything I can do to contribute?
(03:59:-- PM) pleia2: great question! one of the things we need is reviewers for some of the material who will actually learn from it
(03:59:-- PM) pleia2: you can review it and tell us if it makes sense to you, as someone new to the material :)
(03:59:-- PM) pleia2: you can also help flesh out our outlines, link to documentat that you love and find helpful
(03:59:-- PM) pleia2: and now I have to wrap up this session
(03:59:-- PM) pleia2: thank you everyone! hope to see some new faces over in #ubuntu-learning :)

Ubuntu Wiki

Learning

Ubuntu Open Week - Learning Project - Elizabeth Krumbach - Tue, Nov 3, 2009

Links from the Session