Utah Open Source Planet

This week, after spending a lot of effort trying to prepare for the Mac OS X 10.5 Advanced System Administration test, I took off the last half of the week to work on a workbook for my son.  As those of you who have followed my blog know, my son Jonathan is within the Autistic Spectrum, at either very high level autism or Asperger’s Syndrome (we find out in February which it is).  As such, trying to work with him has been an adventure, to say the least.  

We found a book that has been a great help.  The Autistic Spectrum Parents’ Daily Helper by Philip Abrams and Leslie Hendriques provides a great insight into teaching in general, and teaching autistic children specifically.  It’s focus is on learning through repetition, Constructivist learning by building upon skills and recognizing associations between skills, and finally learning design.  

Why learning design?  Because autistic children vary across the spectrum, their learning requirements are different.  The only way to teach your autistic children the skills they know is to break them down and teach each part of the skill.  This book tells you what to do, but it does lack in telling someone how to do it.  That means parents may know that they have to do a skills analysis, but they don’t know how to do it.  Luckily the book provides several references for parents that need more help. 

This book is more about doing something, which ultimately is what all students want.  Parents want to be able to do what they can, and this book is perfect for them.  It has a workbook for parents (giving them a teaching skill crash course), and a workbook for the child(ren).  

The students are focused on tactile and visual learning, which is great for autistic children (mostly because their auditory learning is generally challenged).  The workbook is focused on basic skills that most children pick up through imitation.  This includes doing chores, dressing oneself, etc.  It’s a great workbook, and one that I want my son to use.  

Now, the workbook is designed to have tear-out pages, but I have this thing about tearing out portions of books.  That, and it’s a standard 8.5″ by 11″ which is a bit larger than I like.  So, I took a lot of the ideas from the book and a few scans, and started making my own version of the book.  

I started by writing up all the text sections in Pages (which, ironically, I think the workbook was written in originally).  I also broke up the sections into two pages that fit within a compact Franklin planner.  39 pages later I cut out the new workbook sections and laminated them.  Then I punched holes to clip it in the planner.  Now I have a nice and compact workbook for my son that will travel nicely.  

So, that’s the workbook I have.  There are still some small details that need to be finished with it, but all in all it’s a functional workbook.  I can set a schedule for my son, have him match some skills together, and even start to learn how to tell time.  Needless to say, I’m quite happy with this workbook project, and look forward to augmenting it with new skills as we find that my son needs them.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about the new search engine on the block:  Cuil.  It’s rumored to be fast, quick, and index sites better than Google.  I’m all for anything that works well, and I love to test media hype.  So, I thought I would give Cuil a try.  

Cuil is the old Irish word for Wisdom, and that is how they bill their search.  The site is designed well on it’s home page, just like Google.  They provide just a simple search, with no visible advertisements that I can see.  So that brings up the first question:  how do they make money?  Not quite sure on that.  

The results are not as simple, but you do get more information per result than with Google.  I wouldn’t call it “mobile” friendly though, as it posts a large text snippet and images that are relevant to the search.  Google, on the other hand, has a small text snippet and no images.  Personally, I like the larger text snippet because you get a better idea on the relevancy of the search result.  

One thing that takes some getting used to is viewing multiple results.  If searching for names (I did a search for myself to see what comes up), close matches that are ranked higher show up on the first page to the Left under various categories.  But it took me a little while to realize that additional search results could be navigated at the bottom left corner of the page.  Though I could figure it out eventually, it takes the “first page results are the only results” a bit too far.  Perhaps if the navigation was at the bottom right.  After all, the human eye, while reading a web page, will naturally move from the Top Left to the Bottom Right, and stay there.  

Also, my new Blog was not indexed at all, apparently.  I couldn’t find any mention of it, nor of my other recent domains.  This brings up questions regarding the search engine bot being used.  Cuil uses a search engine bot named Twiceler, and you can get your site indexed by sending them an email.  As I tell my students who are interested in Search Engine Optimization, even if they are only 5% of your search, do what you can.  Don’t alienate anyone from your marketing strategy.  

So, do I think Cuil is better than Google at indexing?  Not right away.  I think their web crawler needs a bit more work in following links and such, but with them being so new on the block, perhaps it is just that the crawler just hasn’t had enough time to process everything.  

But the other question is, do I think Cuil is bette at displaying the results?  Yes, I do.  Perhaps it’s because I’m of a Celtic heritage and therefore biased, but I really like the display overall.  I think that Cuil has a lot of potential, once the crawler has time to index enough of the web to make it as large as Google.  

Has anyone else out there tried Cuil?  What do you think?

Today we spent the morning at the Utah Scottish Festival, celebrating my Scottish heritage by listening to bagpipes, watching people by various weapons, wearing a kilt, and eating haggis.  It was a great day, one which I really enjoyed.  

At noon they had the Gathering of the Clans, when the Clan representatives march in a parade, proudly hefting their banners and showing their unity in Scottish culture.  It’s a grand sight, makes one’s Celtic blood heat up in pride.  

But it got me thinking:  Scotland was rarely that unified in it’s focus.  In fact, they were often fragmented against each other regarding alliances to England, cattle lands, etc.  They fought more against each other than against England.  So where did this idea of “Scotland” come from?

First, it came from the idea of Independence.  Not independence from England, though that was a major concern for centuries, but rather independent in their lifestyle.  They loved being responsible for themselves, and would always rebel against any perceived slight to that independence.  

So what is independence?  It’s being able to be completely self-determinate.  You don’t depend on another entity to run your life, or augment your life.  Sadly, this concept is often overlooked when we go about our daily lives.  Are you really independent?  Are you able to take care of your needs, or do you need to rely on external support?

For instance, financial independence is one that we all strive for.  Living without credit cards, bank loans, etc. is perhaps the greatest “American Dream”, though I’m sure all people everywhere would like this same independence.  The quest for financial independence is often troubled by the need for conveniences.  Traveling quickly and freely, being connected through communication in various forms, and bringing in external amusement and entertainment often make us dependent on one service or another.  

Consumptive dependence has become rampant since the creation of the Super Market.  We rely on specialized growers that produce one product, package it, process it, and ship it to us from all over the world.  We don’t see the origins of the product, we don’t know the grower.  We just know that the product is ready for consumption.  

But if something goes wrong, what recourse do we have?  For instance, the nation is currently experiencing a tomato shortage because of a salmonella outbreak.  It’s been weeks, and the FDA only knows that it should be from the crops on the East coast, not the West.  That’s how dependent and disconnected we are from our food production. 

Of course, there is also National Independence, or rather a lack of dependence of the Nation on other nations.  The original Independence Day, July 4th, marks our political independence from England.  We could then decide what was best for our nation without another nation showing influence.  Since then we have become dependent on a global economy, particularly in energy, and as such that dependence highly influences our internal politics.  All I hear now regarding the 3rd District Congressional race here in Utah is focus on “Foreign Oil Dependency”, high gas prices, and illegal immigration.  

Now, I’m not arguing any specific political position.  Lots of people have strong feelings on both sides of any of these issues.  But rather I was focusing on the concept of independence.  At what level can you call yourself independent, whether at a personal, familial, communal, or national level?  What does it mean to be independent, to you?  

It’s a weekend thought, but one by which I have been troubled.  You tell me:  What do you consider independence?  How would you define an Independent nation?  Perhaps it’s something we should think about as we approach the Independence Day holiday on July 4th.  

This post is my 200th post, so I thought I would focus on traffic for my blog.  Since I moved my blog to my own server using WordPress, I’ve noticed that I don’t have nearly as much traffic as I did with Blogger.  At first I thought that it may be a simple case of people not following my link to the new site, or people just not interested in my posts.  Both is quite likely.  

So, I thought I would check out my Google Analytics for both sites and compare the data, just to see what I may be doing wrong in regards to my WordPress site vs. the original Blogger site.  The numbers are really interesting: 

 
As you can see, the numbers are quite different, equaling out in weight.  While the Blogger site still gets more hits over the period of a year, the WordPress site keeps visitors longer, provides a higher likelihood of additional page views, and has a lower bounce rate.  

For me, while I may have lost a lot of visitors, I have gained readership.  How?  By keeping more people on the site and reading my posts.  For me, that is far more valuable and flattering than thousands of people visiting over a month, but no one reading anything I post.  It’s actually pretty exciting!  Now I wonder how the readership will evolve over time.  Will I gain more readers while keeping the bounce rate the same?  Perhaps I will increase the average time on the site with more interesting content.  

I’m glad I moved from Blogger, if for nothing else than having a control specimen to compare my new site against.  Now I can more objectively determine how well my blog is doing, and in what areas.  

It’s been a long time since I have posted anything on instructional development. But yesterday the power was out in my office for the entire day, giving me a chance to work from home. There I started to focus on the course development process again.

Learning To Cook: A Quick Task Analysis
Let’s take a deceptively simple topic like learning to cook. There are a lot of self-help books out there, recipes, and even websites that give you some general information, and basically throw you into the deep end. Can it really be that simple to learn how to cook? I thought I would run a quick task analysis on the process to see what I could come up with.

I began by tearing down the process of cooking to several jobs. You have the basic understanding of the tools involved, the need for clean environments and fresh food, and the processing techniques to prepare the food. I then looked at the various methods of cooking, depending on the desired outcome. I then ordered them approximately based on the jobs that need to be understood in order to successfully complete the next job. This follows the Constructivist method of instruction, allowing for layered modules that build upon each other.

I ended up with the following breakdown:

1. Equipment
2. Measurements
3. Cleanliness
4. Preparing Food
5. Seasoning Food
6. Heating Food

As actual consumption of the food is not technically part of the cooking process, I left it out of the list. The idea being that once you are done, you can move on to the next job: eating food. ^_^

From these basic jobs expected from a cook, I can then break them down into individual tasks. For example Equipment could be broken down into these sections:
1.1 Cleaning Tools
1.2 Hand Tools
1.3 Preparation Tools
1.4 Cooking Surfaces
1.5 Measurement Tools

These tasks can be broken down even further into sub-tasks, which can be broken down still further into your skills and knowledge. From the eventual breakdown, you get a complete outline of your course, all from the analysis. At this point your instructor can fill in the actual lecture material themselves, either on the fly while teaching or (if in an online environment) with carefully structured lectures.

I could have been quoted as saying that a subject matter expert (SME) isn’t necessarily a good teacher. That’s because (among other things) a SME doesn’t have a concept of task analysis. The second concept that a lot of SME’s have trouble with is Cognitive Load, which will be a topic for another post.

If you are looking to teach anything, it’s a good idea that you focus a lot of your time in analysis. Task Analysis can take a long time to complete, but in the end it makes the rest of the process a lot easier. You can also target specific portions of your analysis after you have evaluated course success.

It's been a long time since I have posted anything on instructional development. But yesterday the power was out in my office for the entire day, giving me a chance to work from home. There I started to focus on the course development process again.

Learning To Cook: A Quick Task Analysis
Let's take a deceptively simple topic like learning to cook. There are a lot of self-help books out there, recipes, and even websites that give you some general information, and basically throw you into the deep end. Can it really be that simple to learn how to cook? I thought I would run a quick task analysis on the process to see what I could come up with.

I began by tearing down the process of cooking to several jobs. You have the basic understanding of the tools involved, the need for clean environments and fresh food, and the processing techniques to prepare the food. I then looked at the various methods of cooking, depending on the desired outcome. I then ordered them approximately based on the jobs that need to be understood in order to successfully complete the next job. This follows the Constructivist method of instruction, allowing for layered modules that build upon each other.

I ended up with the following breakdown:

1. Equipment
2. Measurements
3. Cleanliness
4. Preparing Food
5. Seasoning Food
6. Heating Food

As actual consumption of the food is not technically part of the cooking process, I left it out of the list. The idea being that once you are done, you can move on to the next job: eating food. ^_^

From these basic jobs expected from a cook, I can then break them down into individual tasks. For example Equipment could be broken down into these sections:
1.1 Cleaning Tools
1.2 Hand Tools
1.3 Preparation Tools
1.4 Cooking Surfaces
1.5 Measurement Tools

These tasks can be broken down even further into sub-tasks, which can be broken down still further into your skills and knowledge. From the eventual breakdown, you get a complete outline of your course, all from the analysis. At this point your instructor can fill in the actual lecture material themselves, either on the fly while teaching or (if in an online environment) with carefully structured lectures.

I could have been quoted as saying that a subject matter expert (SME) isn't necessarily a good teacher. That's because (among other things) a SME doesn't have a concept of task analysis. The second concept that a lot of SME's have trouble with is Cognitive Load, which will be a topic for another post.

If you are looking to teach anything, it's a good idea that you focus a lot of your time in analysis. Task Analysis can take a long time to complete, but in the end it makes the rest of the process a lot easier. You can also target specific portions of your analysis after you have evaluated course success.