(México) Congreso de la plataforma E-learning Chamilo

• Lugar: Cancún – México
• Fecha: 15, 16 y 17 de Julio del 2015
• Mayor información: http://cancun2015.chamilo.org/

Seminario: “Mi primer curso virtual bajo la plataforma e-learning Chamilo”

Conferencia Zend PHP 5 del Fesoli 2010

Las diapositivas de la conferencia sobre la certificación Zend se pueden descargar aquí. Gracias a todos por su participación.

Firma de convenio entre la Asociación chamilo y la Univerdiad de Tocantins – Brazil

El 20 de Agosto del 2010 la Asociación Chamilo – Bélgica y la Universidad de Tocantins – Brazil firmaron el convenio de colaboración, a fin de  contribuir a impulsar el crecimiento de la plataforma e-learning Chamilo.

Firmaron convenio de colaboración el Ing. Yannick Warnier, fundador y líder de desarrollo de chamilo; Geraldo Silva Gomes Vice-Rector de la escuela de postgrado de UNITINS; y el Rector de la Unitins. Gracias al convenio la comunidad de Chamilo se beneficiará de documentación, pruebas y traducciones al portugués.

Del mismo modo en el mes de Agosto la empresa Contidos Dixitais (España) y NoSoloRed (España) también  firmaron convenios de colaboración con la Asociación Chamilo – Bélgica para ser socios oficiales de Chamilo .

La comunidad de Chamilo agradece de manera especial el apoyo y gestiones para estar presentes en Brazil:

• Geraldo Silva Gomes Vice-Rector de la escuela de postgrado de UNITINS
• Igor Yepes, Docente y Coordinador Académico de UNITINS, y esposa
• Marco Sousa, Docente de UNITINS y Contribuidor de traducciones de Chamilo, y esposa
• Luciana Machado Fraga, Coordinadora del Curso de Sistemas de la UNITINS y esposo.

Los miembros oficiales de la asociación esta creciendo  si de manera personal o su empresa desea ser parte puede escribirnos es nuestra sección de contactos para darle toda la información que necesita.

Conferencia Magistral de Chamilo en Palmas, Brazil

Más de 350 asistentes de las principales universidades de Palmas entre estudiantes, profesores y emprendedores participaron en la conferencia magistral “Estado Natural del Software” , organizado por la UNITINS, fundación de universidades de Tocantins – Brazil, el 19 de Agosto del 2010.

El expositor principal de la conferencia magistral fue Yannick Warnier, Jefe de Desarrollo Internacional de la plataforma e-learning Open Source “Chamilo“. Señalo Leonardo Maximiano en la revista Portal Vitrine “Chamilo es un sistema que se adapta a cualquier tipo de proyecto educativo o empresarial“.

“Tener acceso a una computadora no significa que esté en la sociedad de la información y mucho menos dentro de la sociedad del conocimiento. UNITINS trabaja con un enfoque para crear comunidades de aprendizaje con acceso multi-referencial a la información y Chamilo es ejemplo de una nueva ola de aplicaciones educativas que son el puente entre el contenido y el profesor/estudiante virtual” , señalo Geraldo Silva Gomes Vice-Rector de la escuela de postgrado de UNITINS.

Yannick inicia la conferencia magistral “Estado natural del software libre” haciendo una introducción al concepto de Software Libre y sus orígenes resaltando las ventajas de trabajar bajo software libre para el sector público, sector privado y como particular (desarrollador, profesor, alumno)

Motiva a los estudiantes comentando su experiencia personal de líderar proyectos de software libre y finaliza resaltando su trabajo bajo chamilo explicando sus orígenes, filosofía y trabajo organizado por la asociación chamilo.

“Chamilo, es un sistema LMS, Learning Management System, que gestiona cursos, alumnos, docentes, ciclos, grados, redes sociales e Interconexión con otros sistemas, es solo 6 meses tiene más de 60 000 usuarios es su campus libre y lo escojen por que es sencillo, ligero, intuitivo, organizado y con fuerte presencia de la comunidad” señalo Yannick Warnier, líder de desarrollo de chamilo y miembro fundador de la asociación chamilo.

Yannick Warnier en Tocantins – Palmas, Brazil

Conferencia certificación Zend PHP5

Las diapositivas de la conferencia sobre la certificación Zend PHP5 dado en la Universidad San Martin de Porres durante el V Freedom Open Source Day se pueden descargar siguiendo este enlace.

Chamilo P@rty 2010, a success

The 7th of July of 2010 will definitely be a date to remember for the Latin American community of Chamilo.

Chamilo P@rty only lasted 2h30, yet we had time to

• discuss open-source tools to manage the education process (by Yannick Warnier, Director, BeezNest) [slides]
• present the challenges we face everyday in e-learning (by Sergio Correa, Director, NO2) [slides]
• explain the Chamilo association and the development projects for 1.8 (Yannick Warnier) [slides]
• present the new tools in Chamilo 1.8.7 (by Carlos Vargas, independent)
• explain the development and usage of the Drupal – Chamilo module (by Fernando P. García, Drupal Association) [slides]

The context of the Expoelearning event, mostly oriented to businesses and private institutions, gave us a great environment and allowed us to meet a lot of corporate representatives, a type of users or potential users that we generally fail to get interested into our software.

BeezNest Latino represented the Chamilo Association (through its secretary) and the Chamilo community of Peru throughout the event with 6 staff members helping all visitors to find relevant information about Chamilo.

The event resulted in an increase in 10% of the website visits and a lot of inquiries about Chamilo.

You can check more pictures of the event on Picasa. Finally, for the Spanish speakers among you, we managed to record one hour of video about the new features in Chamilo 1.8.7.

BeezNest presenting Chamilo at e-learning expo in Elche, Spain

Yesterday I was invited by AcroCampus (through recommendation by AEFOL) to talk about Chamilo in Elche (Elx), Alicante, Spain, to a public of around 40 e-learning-savvy people. I brushed along the lines of open source software and its advantages for Peruvian education, then went on (shortly) about Chamilo and what it offered.

We later discussed the Chamilo platform and a bunch of people told me they were going to try it out this week. Seems like Chamilo actually made it from unknown to popular quite quickly. Most Dokeos users/administrators I’m meeting tell me they’re switching soon (some of them are waiting for 1.8.7, to be released very shortly at the time of writing).

Presentation of open-source software and Chamilo, in Spanish, available on my Slideshare channel:

Chamilo at Ubuntu Developers Summit, Brussels

I will be presenting Chamilo and our intention to make a Chamilo package for Ubuntu this year at the Ubuntu Developers Summit in Brussels, on Friday 14th of May (at the beginning of the afternoon). As a side gift, I will be meeting Jono Bacon (writer of “The Art of Community” and Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu).

You can check the details of the UDS at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS-M

The free software activist game – draft

If you are a free software activist like me and want people you expose free software to in conference, large meetings and other gatherings like that (preferably developer-oriented) to understand what the value of free software is, here is a game proposal for you to try out (please report on the success of this method if you do implement it). It is inspired from a recent SCRUM course we took here at BeezNest Latino.

General considerations

• You will probably need 30 minutes at a minimum to implement the game
• This should work for 30 to 150 people, which should all be in the same room
• You will have to explain the rules to each teams category separately (they can already start working one you’re done explaining, but they will have to stop exactly 10 minutes after starting)

Material

• 1 sheet of paper for each participant (can be a quarter of A4, or even smaller)
• 1 pen for each participant (this might be costly, so you can depend on each participant having one or having minimum 2 pens per team)

Preparations

• Try to use maximum 10 minutes for the whole preparation process, so max 2 minutes to get team leaders to line up in front of you, max 2 minutes for you to explain the rules to all categories, and max 2 minutes for them to get back to their seats and start working.
• Try to plan for enough space to give each team its own round-circle
• Plan to distribute pens and papers quickly and efficiently
• Assistants will have to form teams of 5 (minimum 5 per team, can be up to 8 but you’d better ask for 5)
• Teams will be split in three “types”: type A, type B, type C
• Give one paper and one pen to each participant
• In each team, there will be: 1 team leader, 1 salesman, 1 developer, 1 designer, 1 quality assurance guy (software tester)
• You (and ideally a few other guys) will represent the Product Owner: that is, you will receive the work done by each team, through the salesmen, and decide which is best for your company. The price is considered equal for each feature.
• If there are more people than what makes an equal number of teams in the three categories, assign more teams to category C

Rules

You will have to explain the rules to each category of teams at a time: first, teams A*, second, teams B*, third, teams C*. Try to give each team a number (A1, B5, C3, …)

The following rules are true for all teams, but there are a few rules specific to each team category:

All

• Will have 10 minutes to complete the game (develop one feature – you can imagine something appropriate to the circumstances here, or you can use the list of features suggestions below)
• The salesman will have to present his product to all product owner in 30 seconds
• The product owner will decide (secretely) which team won for each category, and will ask the other categories to vote as well (on the back of their paper, or by folding the paper in a specific way)
• All members of the group must write something on his paper
• Team leaders help the other members of the team who are having difficulties (they are the scrummasters)
• Salesmen make sure they understand the product and all its goodness (including quality and design)
• Developers make sure they describe the feature in many details
• Designers make sure they draw a set of screenshots for the salesmen to present at the end
• Testers make sure they test every detail of the system (including the user interface) and confirm with the developer and designer that every feature works
• Teams can choose whether to sell their software or the fruit of their work

Teams A

• Will be considered as representing companies being located in the same city, so they will actually compete very closely with the other teams in category A
• All of A teams will develop the *same*, proprietary, feature
• Team leaders and salesmen can “spy” on other teams

Teams B

• Will be considered as representing companies being located in different countries/states of your continent, so they will have to compete if they have a very competitive product
• All of B teams will develop different, proprietary, features
• Team leaders and salesmen can “spy” on other teams

Teams C

• Will be considered as representing companies worldwide which already have a competitive product based on open-source software
• All of C teams can decide to work with other teams in order to get several features back to their customer
• They can only sell what they developed directly, they are forced to “give away” the rest

Features list suggestion

• Store contacts
• Send an e-mail to a contacts
• Store an invoice
• Request the status of a stock of products
• Request information about a company
• Chat
• Find an address
• Show a street on a map
• Show a translation
• Find an image
• Find the definition of a word
• …

Ending the game

The assistants have to put their sheets in the hands of the salesmen and the salesmen will stand-up and go line-up in front of the stage, once the time is up for their category. Teams not sending their salesmen in line will be eliminated (they delivered behind schedule).

Each salesman comes in a line to present his product (30 seconds max). He says his team number (e.g. A3) and starts describing his solution. He stays on stage until all salesmen have given their description (should be 2.5 minutes max for 5 teams)

At the end of each category, the other categories vote for the best team. You count the vote (“Put your hand in the air, all people voting for team A3”) and declare the winner.

Note that categories A and B should not know that category C was able to share their work. This is why categories A and B will actually understand better the point of free software.

Conclusions

Whatever the results are, they should always tend to these conclusions

• a majority of teams of category C have performed better, because they were allowed to share, and they made an effort to learn from each other, while concentrating on its own customer’s satisfaction
• the salesmen are necessary because they are the ones through which the work of the team is presented. The best salesmen give a considerable advantage to its team
• sharing, in the same environment (which is a competitive international market), leads to better solutions than the equivalent non-sharing mode
• all assistants will have spent a good time

These rules are to be considered licensed as Creative Commons BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)