Open Source Digital Signage - Xibo

I have had a chance over the last few weeks to investigate digital signage for the first time. I'm in the process of putting up a digital display in the UW/CC portion of the hallway to display news and student information related.

I did a great deal of research on this topic before deciding on a product. Xibo in the end seemed to meet my requirements, which were open source, not limited or in any way evaluation grade, and easy to learn to operate. Xibo met these criteria for me.

Installation was fairly easy. To be honest, I would have preferred to use the software on an Ubuntu Linux server, but time was fairly limited, and I had difficulty getting all of the dependencies and permissions dealt with. To be fair, a large part of that is how infrequently I work with the command line anymore. So I built the server on Windows Seven. Since this was to be a dedicated machine, I also installed the Xibo client on the same computer.

The major requirements are simply a LAMP or XAMPP server and the software itself. Check the Xibo documentation on the site listed below for more details. There is some minor configuration to do in order to make sure that the software can access directories needed to read and write files. There are also clients (where the content is displayed) for Windows and a Python-based client that purports to have additional functionality.

So far we have not placed the display in the hallway, so this is really simply an introduction. I expect to have the actual display installed in the next few weeks. I will post again once I have the completed design for the screen output and the display is mounted and activated. I should have some more detailed observations then.

Xibo has so far proven to be fairly easy to install, easy to administer, and especially easy to create layouts that allow the designer to designate screen areas to display everything from video to news to RSS, all with little or no previous knowledge. Check it out: http://xibo.org.uk/

Running OpenSUSE from a USB Stick

I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in Casper, WY waiting for a phone call, and thought I might have a look at the new openSUSE 12.1. More on why I am sitting in a hotel room later. 

At first I had decided to burn the openSUSE ISO file to a CD. After my my first attempt resulting in a particularly attractive coaster resulting from a check sum error, I thought I might try something different. I had a 2GB USB drive (compliments of a Musicians Friend freebie) in the bottom of my bag. So why not try something new? How about a USB based boot of the openSUSE 12.1 Live Disc? While I had been aware of this method of booting an OS, for some reason I had never tried it.

The first step, after downloading the ISO file from openSUSE, was to do a quick search on how to proceed. The search on USB Boot openSUSE yielded this link: http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Live_USB_stick. A quick scroll down on the page and I had my answer to installing.

1. First download the SUSE Studio Image Writer (there are Windows and Linux versions, but no sign of a GUI based OSX version, at least on this page) and start it.
2. Insert your USB drive/stick into a port on your computer. (at least for me this was a critical step, the Image Writer does not recognize the stick if it is inserted before starting the program under Windows 7)
3. Use the Image writer to navigate to the ISO file you downloaded.
4. The USB drive should be available through the lower dropdown in the Image Writer. Make sure that you choose the correct usb device if you have multiple connected, as the Image Writer will overwrite anything on the target USB stick.
5. Click Copy to write your ISO to the USB drive/stick. At this point your probably have enough time to go grab a beverage before the task is completed.
6. If all went well, you should see a simple dialog box that says “success” (how is that for minimalist?) once the process is completed.

Booting from your USB drive

This next is intentionally vague. What worked on my HP laptop may be slightly different on your Lenovo, Compaq, Acer, or what have you. The basic idea is that you want to tell your computer that it needs to boot from a USB device. That particular task is almost always (well, always as far as I know, but must put a caveat in there just in case :-)) handled by the boot menu that you have access to when you boot your computer. In my case, I hit F9 at system startup to get into this menu. You may have to look this up for your computer. Whatever the keystroke, you should see a menu that allows you to boot from the Hard Disc, the DVD-ROM, Network, and USB Drive. Of course at this point you choose USB Drive. After you select this, you will see the openSUSE boot screen.

A couple of observations: First of all, WOW!!! Booting from USB is incredibly fast compared with relying on a CD-based boot. I had the openSUSE KDE desktop up and available in less than a minute. The speed gives you better functionality. Opening applications is almost as fast as with a normal hard drive install.

Finally, the speed, at least on this older HP 6510B 2.0GHz with 4gig of RAM, and a USB 2.0 stick was more than acceptable. In fact I'm writing this while running from the stick. I can see this as a real option if you want to run an alternative OS, let's say for instance Skolelinux or Edubuntu, in a school computer lab currently using Windows.

Virtualbox is amazing

I've finally broken free from Mac and Windows for the most part. I'm still using Windows 7 primarily because of Expression Web 4. The mini is now long enough in the tooth that I don't enjoy using it. Far too slow being a core duo 1.66.

I am now using Suse Linux 11.4 on my notebook. I decided that it might be nice to maintain some compatibility with Windows, especially the older games, so I downloaded Virtualbox and installed it on Linux. I then installed Windows 2k in a virtual session. After everything was said and done, it worked very well, and is simple enough for most with a passing understanding of an operating system to install.

I can see a use for this on Windows 7 as well. I have a version of W7 that does not contain backward compatibility with XP. Using Virtualbox, one could install XP without losing the extra functionality of W7, and still have access to software that will not run well (if at all) on W7. Altyernately, it is a means of allowing Mac users who own a copy of Windows to have access to Windows software without having to invest in Parallels other proprietary products. I'm a believer.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

Changing Education Paradigms - RSA Animate

From a discussion by Sir Ken Robinson. For me the most amazing part being the discussion of anesthetization versus stimulation and the model of education as industrial production. This is a marvelous find! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

2010 New Horizons report for K-12

I just got around to reading this report. I have a great deal of enthusiasm for several of the technologies that the report sees as being on the horizon, but probably the most relevant for me personally is the section on collaborative environments. The links to examples and further readings are a very good compendium of sources for self-education in this area. Many of the current experts in this area are represented, including Steve Hargadon and Wes Fryer.

I have been looking at Moodle as a nearly ideal K-12 application for collaboration in and out of the classroom for several years, however this report gathers a number of different resources that point toward many other platforms and approaches than the conventional classroom or hybrid environments.

Part of my interest area overlaps with what they are reporting here, but I personally feel as though caution in implementation is warranted. Without some comprehensive survey of the student body effected in any given district, there is no real means of knowing exactly what the access to technology overall. Though the tech is there, and it is very promising, access is the real limiting factor in low income, transient, and remote areas.

Check it out:

New Media Consortium 2010 Horizon Report K-12 Edition

Facebook as a course management system?

There is a lot of buzz right now about inclusion of social networking features in online courses. In terms of building communities of practice and promoting a constructivist application in building greater understanding through the group, this does make sense. But is Facebook the place to build a program?

Here is an article about Boston U trying to work through the question:

http://dailyfreepress.com/2010/12/07/students-faculty-torn-over-idea-of-facebook-courses/



My own thoughts are that eventually schools will need to include social networking as part of the overall university experience. But does it make sense to farm this out to a private provider with very different goals, such as Facebook, or does it make sense to include some sort of in-house solution that is attached to the LMS? Either way, I believe that eventually this will be a feature of all higher education.

Becoming curious about MOOCs

A couple of years ago, Stephen Downes mentioned in a blog being involved in a project to create a MOOC, a Massive Open Online Course. It was an exercise in connectivism, which was a new theory to me at the time, but has become more familiar the more that I use social networking sites. The course ran, and I promptly let the idea fall off of my intellectual radar. I stumbled across a blog post that described the experience of a participant in another MOOC a few days ago, and this has prompted new interest for me. The post can be found here: http://sleve.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/why-mooc-engagement-is-so-hard/

The description of the experience left me wondering how I might construct my own MOOC. How would I assess? How, or should I, use participation as a measure? How does one promote interaction and participation? Or do you? How do I make it easier for people like Steve without recreating in some way the standard course layout on larger scale? This is a fascinating area of education that really has not been explored in detail by academia, probably because of the same questions that I have.


Not many traditional instructors are immediately comfortable working without a safety net, and the safety net is the structure of the course. That syllabus, linear events orchestrated in such a fashion as to create time constraints for the participants, and assuring the instructor that the learning objectives are really being met. Or not.


MOOCs throw this structure out of the window. It is a very squishy approach to education. I like the idea.