The Skunkworks Approach
Using DevOps to Foster Rapid Deployment, Innovation, & Reduce Costs
Innovation@Work!
skunk·works (skəNGkˌwərks)
"A skunkworks project is a project developed by a small and loosely structured group of people who research and develop a project primarily for the sake of radical innovation."
Our Team:
Illinois Institute of Technology
Hinsdale Central HS
Illinois Institute of Technology
NxtGen Learning Lab Server Project
We currently run three production systems since 2012(!) to support innovative instruction and pedagogy for Chicagoland, CPS, and schools in Colorado and Massachusetts while providing a rich platform for technical research on server optimization, deployment, and implementation (e.g. using alternative lightweight web servers such as lighttpd & Nginx, PHP accelerators such as xcache & opcache, and optimized database servers such as Percona and MariaDB).
Open Source Revolution
Open Source Revolution: Literally Saving Lives!
Instructor Testimonials / Feedback
“After trying several different online classroom ideas, I find that ActiveLearning is second to none!”
-Mark Reiss, Tinley Park High School�
“The ActiveLearning platform has completely changed the way I teach. When I think about my course 5 years ago, my classes are unrecognizable compared to today. I am able to reach so many more students, putting the onus of learning on the students and delivering high-level rigor despite the challenges of absenteeism and differing levels of motivation and ability. ��I teach in an urban public school and access to ActiveLearning enables me to put out a high quality course despite the challenges. This year, I took the plunge to the 'Mastery Learning' model with my Chemistry 1 course. I have wrinkles to work out, but I see all my students working, and working at their own level. I am very excited for the possibilities and the future of LMS!”
-Gregory Banks, Urban Science Academy, Boston
Technical Specs (Nerdy Stuff!)
Example Partner Schools (over 10,000+ students supported!)
Site administration / Server / Environment
Site administration / Server / PHP info
Site administration / Reports/ Benchmark
Site administration / Server / Opcache management (PHP accelerator)
Skunkworks Deployment: Open Authentication!
Skunkworks Deployment: Courses & Enrollment�(how to roll out a bunch of classes with thousands of students on a shoestring!)
Sample of Courses Delivered
Instructor Testimonials / Feedback
“One of the things the Active Learning site has allowed me to do is give my students individualized learning experiences. This has allowed me to gather data on student needs and give targeted assistance to students who would have otherwise been left behind. ��I sincerely thank you for this opportunity, and if possible, I look forward to working with you all in the future.”
-James Birrell, Tinley Park High School
“Using Moodle via IIT was a game changer for my course. It provided a place for my students to access notes, videos, and practice questions. Originally I had tried a free moodle site which was slow and would not always work but using the IIT platform was smooth every year. I can not thank you enough for providing this for teachers.”
-Jeremy Meisinger, Glenbard South High School
NxtGen Learning Lab Production Systems
Skunkworks Deployment: Plugin Installation
Skunkworks Labs: Gamification with Stash Plugin
Skunkworks Trick: Flavors Deployment!
Originally developed as a Google Summer of Code project, an experimental plugin that allows you to “package” a Moodle’s admin site settings and plugins as a “flavor” to re-deploy on another site--officially only developed up to version 3.0 but works on 3.1 and 3.2--amazing!!!!
Skunkworks Trick: Cloning Servers!
The Need for DevOps: Avoiding the Flood of HelpDesk tickets!
From: Liaw,Joe �Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2017 12:17 PM�To: Daniak,Andrew <adaniak@hinsdale86.org>
Subject: reset server please? (AGAIN!) :)
Hey Andy:
Thanks for all your help with setting up 2 servers for me…..
Update: I got super close to getting everything working, and then something went wonky when I tried to install MariaDB as a drop-in replacement for MySQL and everything blew up…..
Can you please reset 66.99.232.135 back to the “fresh” version of Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS….I think this was the link to the ISO: http://releases.ubuntu.com/xenial/ ? If you need me to put in another ticket, just let me know….
I signed up for a course on Udemy, so hopefully I can learn what I need to do and nail it this time…..
Thanks for all your help and support!!!
--Joe
DevOps Tool Box
Automation & Scripting @ Work: The “Ghost in the Machine”!
Skunkworks Labs: Advanced Video Engagement Engine for �Blended / Flipped Mastery Learning
Skunkworks Labs: Advanced Video Engagement Engine
Skunkworks Labs: Advanced Video Engagement Engine
Skunkworks Labs: Advanced Video Engagement Engine
Skunkworks Labs: Advanced Video Engagement Engine
Active Quiz Plugin
The Active Quiz plugin was developed by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and Teaching & Research Application Development as way to engage medical students during class in formative assessment, active discussion, and collaboration critical to training our next generation of healthcare practitioners. It was designed based on the principles of Team Based Learning pioneered by Professor Larry Michaelsen’s work at the University of Oklahoma’s School of Business.
H5P.org HTML5 Platform
H5P makes it easy to create, share and reuse HTML5 content and applications. H5P empowers everyone to create rich and interactive web experiences more efficiently - all you need is a web browser and a web site with an H5P plugin.
Skunkworks Plugin: Image Optimiser
Build visually rich content courses, but only load images when scrolled into the viewport (“lazy load”)!��Saves on bandwidth and uses non-destructive image resampling against original