NCPEA Conference
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When Rich and I arrived at the conference in the morning, we had a "setting up" meeting with Ted and Angus. Basically, they apprised us of the room and computer situation, when we could get in to set up, etc. Then, after a while, Rich and I met with their Connexions committee. Most of the issues they discussed, however, were more concerns on how to organize themselves, and how to set up their peer review process. We didn't really have much to say on that part. However, I strongly discouraged their idea of having people submit their material to them to put into Connexions. This would only serve to alienate the authors from their work in Connexions, and would lead to static material, which is a Bad Thing (TM).
After this meeting, I got the chance to set up for the workshop right before Rich's talk. The workshop started immediately after the talk, and we had quite a few people who didn't sign up for the workshop looking over the shoulders of people who did.
The most problems we had were with beta being slow, but this was somewhat expected. We also managed to find a bug! When you browse by author and click a name, you get a Unicode Decode error. I talked to Brent about it this morning, though, and that bug was fixed on citadel. The biggest problem, I think, was the amount of time we had. There was so much material to go through, and so little time, I think we may have rushed the groups a bit too much.
However, everyone in attendence seemed very excited about Connexions. I even got the chance to an educator from Puerto Rico about his opinion on translations. I'm going to be in contact with him on this subject, and I'll blog about it when I have more information.
The biggest suggestion on the night, however, was something I wholely approve of. An educator from Florida suggested a printed out manual giving basic how-to instructions, complete with basic, intermediate, and advanced topics. If we could put a course up in Connexions purely about using Connexions, I think we would get a huge response. With our interface being as dynamic as it is, I think this course could also serve as an example of dynamic material, too! The problem is getting the initial copy into Connexions. I think we could get a lot done if we split it up among several people. I'll bring this idea up at the meeting today, but please comment with any ideas, concerns, etc!
