Primary Pad is going to be free again!

Last week Primary Pad closed pro registration due to an influx of international schools using the service, this week Primary Pad is asking you how long you want it free for.

Get on board and vote what you think is fair. Personally I will be voting 3-6 months with the hope it's 6 months. Vote here

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Game Based Learning

It looks like 2010 may be the year of Game Based Learning. With new commercial products such as Manga High hitting the shelves and already established community built sites such as Primary Games Arena it is becoming clear to me that educators are climbing over the mountain of scepticism towards using games to learn and embracing it with open arms.

I do wonder how sites like Primary Games Arena will embrace the new curriculum. Currently games are themed and have some strategy/game play built around that theme. IE you could have a Viking counting game but you couldn't turn that game from a Viking counting game to a Tudors counting game.

What are your thoughts on using games to learn?

My thoughts on this is that games could have a new approach, building the logic separate from the theme, allowing users to specify their own style and context but keeping the challenges fun, educational and relevant.

How would you approach this change? Would you begin categorizing games based on a theme?

I expect I will get the usual response of, "Game based learning has been relevant for years". I don't disagree with this but the momentum and availability behind gaming is certainly increasing.

Have you been able to find the right game for your lesson?

My recommendation (because im biased) is to check out:

You can join the Primary Games Arena Google Group here if you want to request a game or contribute to the community.

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Science gets wet!

Great use of engineering :)



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Etherpad with Active Directory (LDAP/AD)

So you want to host your own Etherpad deployment and you want to tie it into your schools AD/LDAP/Active directory? Below are the basic instructions for how to accomplish this. Alternatively you can pay us to do it.

Get the patch

lynx https://gist.github.com/10061b4b213619816db5

Get the etherpad source (warning- may take some time- go make a cuppa tea)

hg clone https://etherpad.googlecode.com/hg/ etherpad

Go to the etherpad folder

cd etherpad

Extract the patch

tar -xvz --strip-components=1 -f ../gist10061b4b213619816db5-e60df95e16c09700b4cf07cd87b9732dd7b15ace.tar.gz

Apply the patch

patch -p1 < ldap_support.patch

Set your superdomain

nano trunk/etherpad/src/etherpad/globals.js

add yourdomain.whatever to the SUPERDOMAINS

Edit pro_accounts.js

nano trunk/etherpad/src/etherpad/pro/pro_accounts.js

Change directory

cd trunk/etherpad

Add the useLdapconf to the config

echo "etherpad.useLdapConfiguration = ./etc/json.config" >> etc/etherpad.localdev-default.properties

Edit json.config

nano etc/json.config

Paste in (you need the {}'s):

{

"url" : "ldap://localhost:10389",

"principal" : "uid=admin,ou=system",

"password" : "secret",

"rootPath" : "ou=users,ou=system",

"userClass" : "person",

"nameAttribute" : "displayname",

"ldapSuffix" : "@ldap"

}

Replacing the above with your settings.

Build your etherpad

bin/rebuildjar.sh

Test your etherpad

bin/run-local.sh

Browse to http://yourdomain.com:9000/ep/pro-account/sign-in

Type in your email address (of the user in ldap) and password

Fin! Credit to Elliot Kroo and Marcio Starke - discussed further in this google group.

Shibboleth integration coming mid 2010 (if anyone wants to fund this please get in touch!)

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Map of Google's aquisitions

I'm doing a talk on Google next week and made this image to try show geographically how google has invested.

Has Google invested in your country?

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Increasing the font size of the time slider pad view (Etherpad)

Changing the font size of the time slider pad view is very simple.

You have to edit

/usr/local/etherpad/trunk/etherpad/src/static/css/broadcast.css

find
#padmain {

in the #padmain style section

replace
font-size: 1.2em;

with
font-size: 1.5em;

or whatever font size you want

Save and exit.

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feed twister bites the bullet

It looks like Feed twisters days may be numbered. Their site just takes you to a godaddy holding page.

Shame :(

Another web2 service waves bye bye to the interworld.

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Yep I've been quiet today

To avoid jumping on the bandwagon.

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Creating a read only pad in Primary Pad

To create a read only pad (can no longer be edited)

1. Click Time Slider

2. Click Link to Read only page

3. Copy the page URL and use that a your read only URL

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Primary Pad restrictions (my personal thoughts)

Primary Pad is only a few months old and the uptake has been huge, not just in the UK but world wide. What sucks is how heavy etherpad is, if it wasn't for the weight of the application then we could serve unlimited pads all day, free.

Getting my head around the Maths..

Basically when 3+ people connect to the same pad then it increases resource usage quicker than if it is lots of users just sharing a pad 2<. The problem makes sense, it has a lot more work to do for that pad. So 15 people on pad a and 15 people on pad b is easier to handle than 30 people on pad c.

Bringing in the sales

Is the only real solution to this problem, we have lots of spare RAM/CPU/BW but it's all tied into the School Email budget so sales of either Primary Pad directly or School Email would be enough to keep providing a free service.

Are we being unreasonable?

We have spent over 200 hours(well documented) now working on Etherpad(oh and all of our work has been published(open source)) and provided over £2000 of hardware, we have just paid for some more RAM to go out to the server which is due next Saturday.

My question to you...

Would you of put £2000 of your money into something and 200 hours work to watch it be abused to the point where it is literally unable to perform under the stress? Consider this a call for help.

Voting for max pad connections is now open, go get em cowboy/girl!

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