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April 29, 2003
Hydra and iStorm
Hydra caused quite a stir at ETCon last week. I thought it very helpful in getting a group to capture thoughts together. iStorm is a similarly positioned product. I looked into it and here's what I thought.
iStorm bills itself as "the worlds most innovative collaboration tool." iStorm is a collaborative editor like Hydra, but also comes with a drawing board and chat client. It can even understand LaTeX which could be really helpful for collaboratively doing math. Here's my one minute review:
- iStorm requires per-user licensing for more than two users. Collaboration takes place between like-licensed instances of the application. This would have made the kind of wild-fire experience that happened at ETCon impossible.
- The blackboard would be nice. iChat with Rendezvous seems to work just fine in most instances. LaTeX is handy if you need formulas.
- Unlike Hydra, iStorm allows only one person to edit the document at a time by means of a glowing ball that changes colors and acts like a semaphore. I think Hydra's free-for-all is much more interesting and more natural. In a conversation with a large group, people frequently step on each other.
Clay Shirky mentioned in his talk that he uses chats and wikis to help manage large conference calls. People use the chat to "get in line" for a turn to speak and do other administrative tasks. They can use the wiki to make notes on the agenda, and keep track of links, references, statistics, etc. Of course the problem there is that wikis don't allow real-time free-for-all editing like Hydra, so everyone can take notes in their own topic, but they can't take notes on the same topic (in the wiki technical sense). Combine these kinds of tools with the web for broadcasting slides and you've got a conferencing facility that is effective and relatively inexpensive.
11:29 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Using Rendezvous with iChat and Hydra
I don't know how many OS X users there are in the class. If there's more than one, I'd encourage you to use Rendezvous to connect in class and make use of some tools to enhance your classroom experience.
- You can use iChat with Rendezvous to open up chat sessions with others in the class. I think this kind of back-channel communication can be helpful.
- Download and install Hydra, a Rendezvous enabled editor. You can use it to create a set of group notes. Once you use it, you'll be hooked.
11:06 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Some Things to Know
Welcome to CS330. If you've made it here, you've found where I'll be posting occasional thoughts on the class. Feel free to take a few minutes to read the blog this is part of. Here are a few places of note:
- The course web site contains useful information including lecture notes, homework assignments, and policies. I encourage you to use it.
- Blackboard will contain grades.
- I've created a wiki for discussion, collaboration, and whatever else suits you. If you don't know anything about wikis, then here are some starting points.
- You'll probably want to get a copy of DrScheme for you computer. Once you download and install Dr. Scheme on your computer, it should ask you to choose a language when you run it for the first time. Make sure you set the language to "Essentials of Programming Languages (2nd ed.)." Ê
- You're going to need to know Scheme and the text no longer has chapters that introduce it. Fortunately, there are some handy online references.