[ale] [OT] Software and file formats for on-line/correspondence chemical education

[Tom Freeman]

Jim

At first blush, xournal looks to be wonderful. Let me find the
girl friend's camera with her Christmas pictures on it so she
doesn't skin me for shoe leather first, then xournal...

Thanks vastly

On Fri, 20 Jan 2012, Jim Kinney wrote:

> 
> Use pdf and the annotations tool xournal. It does an overlay of
> the pdf.
> OOo does versions if activated. It also supports comment boxes
> tha don't print.
> 
> On Jan 20, 2012 10:09 AM, "Tom Freeman"
> <tfreeman at intel.digichem.net> wrote:
>       I have accepted the job of teaching an on-line
>       chemistry course for majors
>       next fall, with the requirement that the course be
>       written this spring.
>       I for see an issue which I could use a whole heaping
>       bunch of help with,
>       specifically ensuring that the students engage in
>       using/generating the
>       visual aspects of chemical "language" and formally
>       engage in showing
>       (documenting and defending) numeric problem solving.
>       I am not being paid
>       enough to accept just showing a picture to the
>       student, and accepting a
>       multiple guess regurgitation. I expect details given
>       without hints from
>       me.
>
>       The education technology types at the school have
>       ideas which partially
>       get the problem solved, if we only accept Windows on
>       all sides. Since I
>       use Linux (Ubuntu and Fedora mostly), with a little
>       Mac work to help my
>       own children, setting a requirement to use Microsoft
>       products only
>       _really_ has my back up, and heels dug in. Plus, I
>       need to avoid more cost
>       to the student, as it looks like budgeting for this
>       course is potentially
>       headed north of $600. Achieving sufficient
>       interactivity to accommodate
>       online office hours in Moodle using Eluminate is a
>       real positive here.
>
>       What then am I looking for? Software which
>       reads/writes a useful,
>       well defined file format which will support a work
>       flow pattern which I
>       will attempt to describe below. Obviously cross
>       platform availability; at
>       least including Linux/Unix, Mac, and Windows having
>       software available,
>       with IOS and Android availability a plus. I'm open to
>       commercial software,
>       but in the interest of holding costs down and
>       personal values, I really
>       want open-source, with zero-cost ("free beer?")
>       running a close second.
>       Plus I want it robust as a get out, since the
>       students I've had so far in
>       class can break just about anything just by walking
>       past it.
>
>       With respect to the work flow, the current idea is
>       that the student will
>       perform some task any way that they can. Unless it is
>       already in an
>       appropriate form, the student will then scan their
>       work, and upload the
>       resulting file to me. Using a tablet & stylus, I then
>       annotate the
>       student's work with circles, arrows, and indications
>       of doom and dispare,
>       followed by returning the file to the student. At
>       which time the cycle
>       will repeat until exhaustion or learning occurs, or a
>       grade is assigned.
>       If possible, and it may not be, within the file being
>       transferred, I would
>       like to keep the individual entries separate, such
>       that the teacher's
>       notes can be easily obscured in order to view just
>       the student's work. (In
>       my seated classes, any work performed in red gets a
>       zero, since _all_ my
>       comments/notes/grading gets done in red. As a result,
>       both the student and
>       myself have a chance of determining got what
>       right/wrong and where. I want
>       to retain this ability.)
>
>       So far, I _think_ the Adobe pdf format has the
>       capability to handle my
>       needs, but I haven't proven it by discovering which
>       software used how will
>       cause this to happen, especially happen reliably.
>
>       If anybody on this list can make sense of the above
>       word salad and suggest
>       a possible solution approach, I'd love to hear it.
>
>       I thank everybody here for the use of their bandwidth
>       and their patience
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> 
>