Review: Treehouse Training and Badges

Having finished all the available badges on the Treamtreehouse.com website, I thought I would provide an evaluation of what I thought of the website, the learning method, and the delivery.

Website

The website is very well put together, even though there is a feeling of "start-up" on the site. The feeling comes from the three badges (as of this writing) that are incomplete (JavaScript Foundations, Photoshop Foundations, and Ruby Foundations). Also, there is generally a delay in getting to certain pages (like the Profile and Dashboard). When you take the quizzes to get your badge, occasionally some will blank out for no obvious reason, meaning you need to go through the questions again.

But the organization is very well done. It's easy to navigate through the course materials, from one badge to another, and the Dashboard makes it easy to follow up on what your next badges would be. Over all, I really like the website.

Learning Method

The badges are organized by topic, which build upon each other to show which skills you have accomplished. You know you have accomplished the skills, because most badges have challenges and final challenges that require you to show your knowledge by accomplishing a task. It's well built, and equates to a classroom Topic then Quiz learning method to establish skills. I've mentioned the incredible motivating factor that comes from earning a badge.

Straight video lectures with demos are not for everyone. They are great for those who learn in a visual and/or auditory, but those who are tactile in their learning (needing to get hands-on) will find the speed of the videos a little frustrating. Another frustration I experienced was the number of videos or length of videos that will precede a quiz. It requires the student to retain a lot of information. Without more practice for each video, quizzes can get frustrating. In particular I'm thinking about the Introduction to Programming badge and the iOS 4 badge.  Both badges had videos that lasted 11+ minutes, and had several in succession, making it harder to retain information for the quiz.  And I find that it's the test that helps you learn more than just the lecture.

Overall, I think this is a great way to learn. Video lectures can work well when quizzes are appropriately spaced, and most of these badges do really well.

Delivery

I found the most effective learning experiences with Treehouse were those that had videos lasting no more than 7 minutes, badges (modules) that had no more than 4 or 5 videos, and challenges that preceded a small selection of modules. From there the retention was optimal, while also giving me plenty of content on which to work.

Conclusion

Overall, I would definitely recommend using Treehouse, or any similar badge-based learning method. The motivation you get from earning badges that build into more badges is intense, the ability to show your knowledge in such a clear cut form is refreshing, and the knowledge that you know what you know is even better. Overall, badges are looking like a very viable new way to qualify learning at an incremental level.

Badges: Motivating Education

For many years Education has had a big problem:  It's been seen as being boring, tiring, and a chore.  Since the days of "No more Teachers, no more books" to the "Hey Teacher, Leave them Kids Alone", people have been complaining about education.  Everyone from parents to teachers have been looking for some way to make education fun again.  And it seems something has grown from the video game world that can help: badges. 

Badges are, essentially, minor accomplishment trophies, showing a mastery of a skill.  Unlike the old "Gold Star on Forehead" methods used by teachers to reward correct answers, badges can be linked directly to a single skill (or series of skills). Video games use them as a way to modivate the player to continue to play the game by giving them something to work toward that takes perhaps less than 15 to 30 minutes.  Before long, you have a player that has spent hours playing a game just to get a virtual award and feel accomplished.  While many parents have seen these accomplishments as hollow, educators have seen them as a way to keep students interested in learning. 

I have to admit, I was skeptical at first when I saw a number of institutions that apply them.  How can you be sure they show a level of accomplishment?  What is the standard of measurement?  How is the badge a sign of a quality of education, and show a quantative, measured result?  Well, the only way to know for sure would be to test it out.  I found a website, TeamTreeHouse.com, that provided training videos that built the student up with a number of badges.  The rates were reasonable for registration, so I signed up to see what it was like.  

They (currently) have three main badges:  Web Design, Web Development, and iOS 4 Programming.  Looking at the number of videos, the length of each video, I figured if I booked through them I might be able to finish the whole training regime within a month, so I selected every badge path they had.  Then I started on the first badge, which was an Introduction to HTML.  As a learner, you watch a series of short videos (the longest was almost 20 minutes, the shortest was less then 2), and then at the end take a quiz to see how much you learned.  After answering five consecutive questions correctly, you are awarded the "minor" badge, and move on to the next.  After accomplishing all the minor badges in the HTML badge set, you are awarded the HTML badge, and so move on to the next set.  After completing all the Web Design badges, you are awarded the Web Design "super" badge.  

Once I saw how it worked, I was impressed.  Evaluation of student knowledge is critical to learning, both before they start to learn, and after.  By using this method of taking a quiz at any time during the badge sessions, the student can evaluate how much they already know about a given topic, and how much more they need to know.  For online learning, this is great, because students have a way to self-evaluate when they need more instruction, how much instruction, and get instruction on targeted skills they seek. Also, as an added bonus, badges show everyone involved in the person's education from the teacher, to the parent, to the student, and even to a potential employer, what skills they truly have beyond having "taken a class".  They may be minor accomplishments, but they represent real skills that have been acquired. 

There is a caveat to this though:  with the automated testing on TeamTreeHouse.com it is possible to continue to try answering questions until you get them right, as the questions repeat from a relatively small subset of questions.  Of course that can be easily remedied by having either a larger question set, a limited amount of time to take the quiz, or both.  Personally I don't think it's too terrible, as even by answering a question wrong it forces you to rethink the answer, and that in and of itself is learning.  

So what about our guilded halls of learning in education, both K-12 and Higher Ed?  How can this be implemented?  Well, it would be both very easy (at least in concept), and extremely complex (in execution).  Most educators have already built a well-ordered lesson plan that breaks down into topics, skills, knowledge, etc. that would directly relate to badges, both minor and regular badges.  Continue to collect them, and you get a certificate with all your accomplishment badges, detailing the skills you have learned while studying.  The real problem would be keeping track of these badges.  An easy way would be to offer quizzes and assign them as each quiz is passed.  But someone would need to manage the badge accomplishments, and provide a way to make them "puiblic", either by having physical badges or digital badges.  

The logistics of the badge question can be worked out, but it will take time to apply it to traditional education.  In the mean time, to illustrate just how addicting learning by badges can be, I started the task of completing all 66 available badges on the site (as of this writing) on Monday and I have just 10 more to go.  It is definitely taking less than the month I thought it would take, and that for me is reason enough to take education with badges seriously.  If you would like to see what these badges look like, you can view my profile.  This is just one very exciting thing I can see coming up for educating a connected generation.  What do you think?

Scripting in Second Life

I've never really gotten into the whole "social networking" thing, mostly because I'm not that sociable to begin with.  There are times when I go into some social environments, like World of Warcraft or Runescape, but that's mostly to check on the platform.  After a while (usually about a month or so), I get bored with it or turned off by some of the people in there.  

Also, I've known about Second Life for a while, but I never really had any thoughts about using it.  After all, what was the point?  And then I heard a report on NPR some time ago about an IV League school hosting some law classes in Second Life because of the lack of real classroom space.  That got the wheels turning for me...  Distance Learning.  

Of course it's perfect for synchronous distance learning, because everyone is represented in the world by their Avatar.  Once there, they can interact either vocally or through chat, they can all have their say.  Also, instructors are able to utilize a more direct classroom approach, because they can read everything everyone is saying.  

So, I thought I would start checking it out.  It's a great platform and has a lot of potential, but there are some objects that are missing.  I'm not going to mention what they are, because I hope to have them scripted here soon.  But, I needed to learn how to script in Second Life.  

The scripting process is pretty straight forward, as it's similar to Java and C, but has it's own special objects.  That means there shouldn't be that much of a learning curve, and I can probably recycle some code in an object.  It's actually pretty fun to work in the environment.  I'm hoping to have some fruits of my labors soon, and it will also answer a huge problem I have had with distance learning for technical classes.  

Stay Tuned!  ^_^

Distance Education Lab Potential: The Mobile Virtual Lab

Recently our department suffered a minor disaster that left our entire building without power for 36+ hours, and effected 45% of the University of Utah campus. For other departments, they were lucky enough to have this happen during Spring Break. For Continuing Ed, unfortunately, we were left with classes that had no power. As my department teaches Tech classes, we were very much in a crisis mode. We ended up moving computer hardware to a new location (from the Annex building on the main campus to the Murray center) in order to accommodate the class (which was Final Cut Pro).

This got me thinking though, what if it happened again, but this time in a class that was in a specific lab for a reason (such as Cisco or Linux). Would we be able to do the same thing? Not really. Our Mac lab is entirely mobile, being comprised of laptops (including the classroom server). But our PC's are Dell towers, and not very mobile.

Also, as has become a concern with our Linux offerings, many students want open lab time to work on exercises that were just not available to work on during class time. Our labs are not open labs because of that very reason, and once you make a change in a physical class, you can't really sit down at another computer and use it.

With these two issues in mind, I started looking at potential replacement options. The best thing that I could find was versions of virtualization, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The four that I'm going to talk about here are MojoPac, Xen, VMWare, and LivePC. By the way, should I not be getting something on any of these deployments, please let me know!

What Do I Need?
What I need is a way to deploy a virtual environment to any platform in any location through a network or internet, while still having full control over those virtual environments. This means controlling access to the virtual machines as they are deployed, and access to the software within the virtual machines once they are deployed. And all this needs to work through a common denominator, namely home internet speeds. Normally this would be dial-up, but I think I would be even willing to push for DSL speeds. Also, it needs to be able to run without a network connection.

MojoPac
This wasn't the first solution that I checked out, but it is one of the most mobile. The idea behind MojoPac is to provide a software virtualization solution, which allows the user to store software on a jump drive, plug it in, and work on any Windows machine. it's a great idea for Windows (they need something like this desperately), as both Linux and Mac have applications that can run from anywhere based on their UNIX resource model (i.e., no registry).

This solution is perfect for a disaster scenario where entire lab software deployments can be quickly and easily moved into a new lab without moving physical machines. But what about taking it home? Now you have licensing issues, because it's highly likely that someone will want a "free" copy of the software to use for their home/business use. Now you have a major legal issue because security becomes a concern. Of course a simple solution would be to include the cost of the software in the tuition, which students already complain is too high. So, I started to look elsewhere.

Xen
I have seen few virtualization utilities that are as versatile as Xen. From imaging to virtual servers running on the same machine, it's no surprise that they were purchased by Citrix. Here you can create virtual environments akin to VMWare, or create virtual desktops that are served off of a central server. Both work well within a Network environment with large pipelines or as a stand alone virtual machine within a machine, and would again be perfect for a disaster scenario (assuming the Server were still functioning).

The problem? Well, the same as MojoPac really: students wanting to work on software at home. While the virtual desktop would be possible with VPN settings, it becomes more of a support hassle for the students and the network team than if they make the students come to an open lab on campus. So while Xen is a wonderful product, it's inability to stream the virtual machine to the student in their environment and run without network access becomes a missing cog. But, because it's Open Source, I'm still leaning heavily to it.

VMWare
VMWare and it's many options is perhaps the most likely competitor to Xen. Primarily though, I looked at the Player environment, where VMWare is able to deploy local images to the machine. This is perfect for students who want to take home an environment (provided they have an external hard drive), and they can run it on Windows and Linux for free (free player). Mac requires the purchase of VMWare Fusion. It's faster then other virtual environments that I've experienced on the Mac, and is pretty much universal.

The problem here is security and real deployment. Once the student has the image, what is keeping them from copying the image, and using it when the class is over? Nothing, so we are back to licensing issues. Also, it requires a lot of hard drive space for large images, which becomes a hardware problem. It's great for one or two images, but what if you want a specific image for each piece of software, so as to remove any potential compatibility issues? Do you have the hard drive space? So, I kept searching.

MokaFive LivePC
Then I found MokaFive's LivePC (before their change this week). Here was an environment that would basically stream from their servers or from your own a VMWare image that would allow a user to access their machine when online, and once it was cached they could even run it offline. So, we have a virtual environment that is streamed (not quite a Streaming Virtual Machine, but getting close) from any HTTP website using Apache and has continual HTTP access turned on, and it could be deployed from anywhere to anyone. Maintenance also becomes almost trivial, because instead of replacing the image, you just update it and it will dynamically write only the changes.

The only thing missing at that time was security. It still had the same problem as VMWare, and would have to be addressed the same way. Well, I left a post on the Forum to see if anyone had any plans for this particular issue. I thought about it all weekend, and came in on Monday, and checked the website again. It changed drastically, and provided a now paid-for Professional solution as well as a free solution.

The Professional solution allows for "revocation", which after contacting sales a couple of times I found out does exactly what Licensing would want: allow for revoking access to the machine regardless of how much has been cached. So, the other question I had was bandwidth usage, which is a huge concern. They replied back by saying that it uses very little bandwidth. What is very little? I'm not sure, but they are going to set me up with a 30 day free trial so I can test it out and find out what the HTTP load is on the machine.

So here is a solution that answers all my issues, as far as I can see. Is it perfect? No, because you need to host the link from your web server to their system which gives the security they promise. Perhaps in a few years they will provide a packaged solution that will allow the customer to install their image and engine software locally, but for now you lose control of your access by having it funneled through their system.

The Verdict
From what I currently can find and understand from the various virtualization programs out there, MokaFive's LivePC product seems to be the solution for which I have been looking. The potential is there not only for the disaster deployment or regular lab deployment, but also as a potential distance education platform.

Distance Education and Technology: The Cyber City

Not long ago I read a story about the "Cyber City", a concept where students would learn completely within an online environment, with learning centers that were wired to the hilt as the central hubs. As a result of that story, I wrote the following opinion paper. I hope you enjoy it. ^_^


The Cyber City paper is an interesting take on the future of education within an ideal, almost utopian, environment. One can almost hear the “Star Trek” theme in the background. The basic concepts of these envisioned goals are not particularly new, as all educators throughout the ages have likewise seen a similar goal of global access to learning. So what makes this view unique? Mostly, it’s the technology that is integrated with a motivated willingness to learn that changes this vision from all others.

And Old Concept
I say that all educators have so envisioned such an environment because you can see evidence of it back to Socrates’ Academy, and the teachings of many of the ancient Greek philosophers (Plato translation, 1993). Even then, the idea of universal education and learning was thought of, though learning material was restricted to the local personal libraries of Homer and other ancient writings.

This concept continued to evolve through the development of the Great Library in Alexandria, and it’s rival in Pergamon. This developed the first globally declared monopoly on intellectual material by Alexandria and their policy not to export pyprus, the only writing material then known, and the first backlash with the development of parchment from lambskin in Pergamon (Nagle, 1999).

These ancient citations merely point out that the ideal educational environment is not new, and schools had originally began as learning groups guided by a knowledgeable
instructor, and a learning group motivated to learn. Much the same idea is presented in the Cyber City article, but with different technology, and more cross-generational motivation for learning.

Old or New?
So, if this idea isn’t so radical, why does it require such a radical change? Well, as we look back at the gradual institutionalization of the learning process, we see it was developed to keep students motivated when they were more likely to be preoccupied with other endeavors, be it adult or child. Hence, the success or failure of the Cyber City scenario doesn’t depend on the methods of delivering the learning material, or the care in which the learning environment is developed, it relies on the fundamental motivation of the learner and their desire to be educated.

The success of the distance education program relies heavily on the motivation of the student, and not on the actual program itself. While new technologies and educational material can better prepare the student for that motivation, it still comes down to the student’s personal commitment to the learning process.


This makes the Learning Centers of Cyber City (Gooler, 1994) little better than what the Great Library was to the ancient Greeks. There, students can find all the known information in a single location, with access to it’s many secrets. The only difference would be the technology that these materials can be viewed and interacted with. Should students in ancient times decline to visit the library, they miss out in their educational endeavors. The same would be for those students that chose not to go to the Learning Centers, whether in the Central Dome, or in the local neighborhood.

Couldn’t we just make them learn?
Now, granted, local governments can require students of a given age to participate in a given learning environment, but that makes each learning environment instantly a “school”, where students are required to study a given amount of time on a subject, or a specific subject for any amount of time. That is the main problem I see with this Utopian form of education, it will eventually become institutionalized just as the ancient forms of education has for centuries before. This would all be done in order to install a form of motivation, whether intrinsic, or extrinsic.

Conclusion
So, while a utopian view of technology, business, and society looks great in an academic world, we can see that these same ideas have been previously tried, and

continually fall back into a structured, institutionalized form of education that will again become the source of scrutiny by the educational community, over and over again.




Resources
Ancient:
Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, Penguin Classics, Translated by Tredennick, Hugh, 1993

Modern:
Nagle, D. Brendan, The Ancient World: A Social and Cultural History, Prentice Hall, 1999
Gooler, Dennis and Stegman, Charles, A Scenario of Education in Cyber City, Japan-United States Teacher Education Consortium, July 12, 1994

Technology Advances since starting my Master's Degree

There were a lot of updates to technology since I started my Master's degree, and the changes have influenced the way distance education can and may be implemented. These are fairly dated, as I originally wrote this entry back in 2005, so please bare with me. ^_^

Technological Advances
The most important technological advances that have been made in the past year and a half are the creation of WiMax wireless communication, the release of Firefox as a browser, the increased development of 64-bit processors, and the release of Mac OS X Tiger. These advances bring distance education closer to each student and instructor with increased speed, security, and performance.

WiMax Wireless Communication
WiMax wireless is a new protocol that allows for wireless speeds of up to 70 Megabits per second. That, of course, isn’t too impressive. Wired networks through a Gigabit connection is at 1,000 Megabits per second. What’s truly amazing about WiMax is that the range of the connection is up to 30 miles, while still maintaining a connection speed of 1 Megabit per second (WiMax Technology article, 2005). This is roughly the same speed of a T-1 connection, which many businesses run off of now.

So what are the implications of this? It means that a reliable, strong wireless connection can be made in even the most remote locations, allowing for broadband Internet access to be brought to even rural areas. As a major limitation for online students in those rural areas, the new availability of wireless broadband Internet increases potential distance learning students. Schools, both secondary and university level, will have the potential and ability to increase their student body without needing to increase the physical campus.

Firefox Browser
The Mozilla group, an open-source organization that had worked on browsers and web rendering in various forms, released Firefox. For a long time, the main complaint amongst users of the Internet were either the bulky performance of complex and all-inclusive browsers like Netscape or Mozilla, or the security concerns that came with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Because of the proliferation of Windows, the largest market share had gone to Internet Explorer.

With the release of Firefox, there was finally a browser that had a small imprint, had the speed off Internet Explorer, but yet was amazingly secure and safe to use. Bugs and issues were quickly found and fixed, maintaining the safety and security that the general user had looked for in an Internet experience. In fact, since it’s release, Internet Explorer’s market share has dropped from over 95% to under 90%. Websites, such as eBay, have realized that they need to cater to additional browsers, instead of just Internet Explorer (Mozilla.org article, 2005).

So how does this effect distance education? Most learning management systems require browser access, and as Internet Explorer loses market share, it’s necessary to design courses to work with all browsers, and not just one. This requires more work on the instructor’s side, in order to cater to each of the browsers that are likely to be used. This means designing the courses for Internet Explorer and Firefox, as well as Mac’s Safari. Ultimately, it would mean simplifying the HTML code to basic code, instead of using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. This is because your WYSIWYG web page editors like Front Page or Netscape Composer tend to include additional code that is specific to their platforms they cater to.

64-Bit Processor
The 64-bit processor is an innovation that increases software productivity, provided that the software has been designed for it. Generally, it means that software or program rendering is done with additional speed, such as rendering video or processing database entries. Servers benefit the most, allowing for increased database performance, server response time, and therefore more number-crunching power (Langberg, 2005).

How does this benefit distance learning? Students are able to access their material faster and with better response times while using a server with a 64-bit processor. But it doesn’t stop at the server level. Instructors using a computer with 64-bit processing power can render video in real time, stream video and audio from their system. For example, Apple has built in 64-bit software for High Definition imaging and video processing. It also allows for better software clustering, increasing the processing power by adding additional Macintosh computers together.
Macintosh OS X: Tiger

When Apple and released their Unix-based OS, many thought that it would be the doom of the company. Instead it gave the Macintosh, which was already well designed through the user interface, a stable and versatile basis that became very popular with the growth of Linux and Linux programmers. With the release of Tiger, their latest version of the Mac OS, systems are more easily clustered, provide better security, and allow server systems to be installed on a desktop for easy offline development (Apple website article, 2005).

How does this benefit distance learning? The first benefit would be the server side. Showing the versatility and power of the Unix format, Mac OS X Tiger integrates many of the strengths of an open source environment that otherwise would be associated with the Linux movement that is constantly being attacked by Microsoft. Mac OS X brings apparent legitimacy to the open source movement, and sets a level of performance that needs to be met. This means that future educational environments can be developed and implemented on a Mac OS system. An excellent example would be my implementation of Moodle, an open source learning management system, on my Powerbook. This makes it easier to develop course material offline.

Conclusion
There are a number of technology advancements that have made, or will make, distance learning easier and more effective. That being said, there are also a number of innovations that will make designing a course more complicated, or more specialized. Learning at a distance requires keeping up with the latest technology releases, because so much can change in such a little time. Here, with the release of new wireless technology, new browser technology, processing power, and innovations in server-side technology, learning management and course design becomes an exercise in organization.












Resources
Anonymous, WiMax Technology WiMax Forum website, found at HYPERLINK "http://www.wimaxforum.org/technology" http://www.wimaxforum.org/technology on 5/30/2005

Anonymous, Firefox: Rediscover the Web, Mozilla.org website, found at HYPERLINK "http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/" http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ on 5/30/2005

Langberg, Mike 64-bit upgrade is right move for Microsoft, The Seattle Times, Business and Technology section May 30th, 2005, found at HYPERLINK "http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002292806_btsoho30.html" http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002292806_btsoho30.html on 5/30/2005

Anonymous, Mac OS X Tiger Overview, Apple website found at HYPERLINK "http://www.apple.com/macosx/overview/" http://www.apple.com/macosx/overview/ on 5/30/2005

Weekend Post: Implementing a Distance Learning Course

The implementation of a Distance Education program can seem daunting to various school institutions, particularly when it comes to funding. In the article posted by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, they explore the implementation of K-12 cyber charter schools that are becoming more and more available to parents that would like to keep their children at home while they attend school.

The Program
Students have the opportunity to take courses that are generally not offered at any one school through online courses. Currently, there are 12 cyber-schools that are available in the Pittsburgh area with nearly 3,000 students attending (Chute, 2005). This is still a fraction of the total 1.8 million students in Pennsylvania, yet the program is becoming more popular. Parents choose to send their children for a number of reasons, mainly because they are looking for something that they can’t get in a traditional public school. Whether it’s a mobile classroom, alternative to spending hours on a school bus in rural areas, or just being able to find a program that is tailor-made, the cyber-classroom is a nice alternative (Chute, 2005).

Implementation Problems
There are several problems with implementation of a cyber-classroom, many of which the article touches on. The first is the lack of course diversity in many programs. One mother has all but one of her children in cyber schools, each of them having tried at least three during their school programs (Chute, 2005). She has the same concern, namely that not very school has the program that she and her children want to have available. So, they go to different courses as they become available and interested in different subjects.

The next problem would be funding. In Pennsylvania, there is a state law that requires a course program to provide a home computer and printer to a student that is without such equipment and the parents do not have to pay tuition, which is paid for by the state (Chute, 2005). This means that the schools need to balance their funding with the price of equipment for the students, material designed for the online delivery, equipment to deliver the material, and instructors to teach a variety of topics.

The final concern is commitment. Many of the students end up dropping out of their cyber-schools because they have lost the motivation to continue on with the demands for online learning (Chute, 2005). It’s often up to the instructor and the parents to work together, in order to keep their children motivated and participate in the courses.

Conclusion
The article covered many of the concerns of distance education that all institutions have, namely funding, availability, and motivation to keep the student throughout the course. What hadn’t been covered, and could have been, were the methods used to keep students, particularly K-12 students, interested and motivated through the online course. Otherwise, it was a well-written article.

Reference
Chute, Eleanor Cyber Schools Spring up in State, Post-Gazette.com, Pittsburgh, PA May 8th 2005. Found online at HYPERLINK "http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05128/500990.stm" http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05128/500990.stm on 05/14/2005.