http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/05/ont-government-bans-facebook.ht

Ont. government workers told to log off Facebook

What a throwback this is - did anyone actually do a study to determine who and how often and what they are doing on these site? This issue is so important that the Premier - the leader of the province -had to make the announcement? It reminds of the 1950's and 60's when you couldn't use a company phone to make a personal call.

Among the things that bothers me about this are:
1.Premier Dalton McGuinty says he doesn't see how Facebook adds value to a workplace environment.
2. Facebook joins YouTube, gambling websites and hard-core sex sites as forbidden fruit in any provincial government office.
3. Lack of respect for employees as responsible, discerning adults.
4. Government deciding on a "site" - why not ban all social networking sites? Why not ban web conferencing?

Can Facebook add value to a workplace? Arguably, it can. It is a social networking site - groups are formed for various reasons, professional and personal. The opportunity to network, connect - and stay in touch with people that may be of assistance to your work activities - why not?

What about messenger services or Skype - do the contacts list always have to be work related? How to define that? Facebook is now equivalent to a porn site? A total lack of respect for employees - what actually prompted this? Did all employees join up to facebook - were they meeting online? Oh, my God! Were they networking and getting things done? Was their productivity diminished?

And finally, if the government wants to start picking sites to block the IT folks will be very busy indeed. Monitoring all employees on a minute by minute basis to see what other social software toolset they are accessing - they'll be blocking Eduspaces, LinkedIn, Guesse, Orkit, Skype - the list goes on and on and change by the hour. Good luck to the IT censors! What a soul sucking job that would be.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/05/look-both-ways.html

Look Both Ways

Linda Criddle, parent and ex Microsoft has a good website (yes she is plugging her book on intenet safety - but that's good) and provides us with some obvious and not so obvious advice about our online activity:

Buy all the safety software you need and use good filtering tools. Keep them current and use them unfailingly-as automatically as locking your door when you leave the house.

Discuss online safety with your family and friends. Decide together how you will help protect each other online and set rules that reflect your personal and family values. Decide what activities are okay, and what information it's fine to give out and to whom. Consider using an Internet Safety Contract For Families.

Be selective about who you interact with online and what information you make public. The risks are relatively low when you stick with people you know—your family, and friends. Going into public chat rooms or opening your blog up to the general public, for example, significantly increases your risk.

Think before you post online any information that can personally identify you, a family member, or friend in public place. (That means in a public blog, in online white pages, on job hunt sites, or in any other place anyone on the Internet can see.) Sensitive information includes birth date, gender, town, e-mail address, school name—even photos. This information can be used to help someone find you or steal your identity.

Pay attention to the risks of e-mail. Think twice before you open attachments or click links in e-mail-even if you know the sender-as these can be used to transmit spam and viruses to your computer.

Never respond to e-mail asking you to provide personal information, especially your account number or password, even if it seems to be from a business you trust. Reputable businesses will not ask you for this information in e-mail.

Put your family computer and Internet-connected game consoles in a central location. A family room or kitchen makes a good place where you can watch over your children’s online activity.

Never, ever meet in person someone you've met online without taking somebody else along. Remember, people are not always who they say they are.

Review the features on your children's cell phones. Can they download images from the Internet, use instant messaging, or access services that allow others to pinpoint their location? All of these features could be a cause for concern, depending on your child’s maturity and situation.

Find out how and where to report abuse. Create an environment that encourages your kids to report abuse to you. Acting as a responsible Internet citizen can help stop the illegal activity, harassment, and predatory behavior of online criminals.

Don’t trade personal information for “freebies.” (Good advice for kids, too.) Just as in the physical world, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Unwanted software like spyware and viruses often piggybacks on software that’s “free.”

Check out the safeguards on computers your child uses outside the home-at his or her school, the public library, and the homes of your child's friends.

Choose a safe online name. Use e-mail addresses, IM names, chat nicknames, and other such names that don't give away too much personal information. Pick a name that doesn't help identify you (your age, for example) or locate you. Avoid flirtatious or provocative names that may cause unwanted attention.

Sit down with your child regularly to review Internet contacts and activity—buddies, blogs, browser history, image files, music downloads, and so on. Let them know you'll do this periodically. Explain that this is not to violate their privacy, but to protect them and the family from risks.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/05/facebooks-viral-plan.html

Facebook's plan to hook up the world - May. 24, 2007

"Imagine that when you shopped online for a digital camera, you could see whether anyone you knew already owned it and ask them what they thought. Imagine that when you searched for a concert ticket you could learn if friends were headed to the same show. Or that you knew which sites - or what news stories - people you trust found useful and which they disliked. Or maybe you could find out where all your friends and relatives are, right now (at least those who want to be found)." Or maybe rumours become fact in the flash of a pixel...

24 million members - growing at 150,000 a day - a ready made audience that connects, prods and advises each other is now available to any application developer. Facebook is aiming to be the social networking platform offering multiple applications and interlinked referrals...I don't know - it just seems the idea of loosely connected is getting tightly connected, and mass is going to impact upon social capital, and localization is going to crash against internationalism, and dominant cultures will prevail...and those in the loop will continue to benefit and a new class (or a continuation of) of disaffected and disenfranchised will appear.

And the idea of everybody in the world (the goal) being connected into the same platform (wait a minute isn't that Microsoft?) seems to bring up some sort of Gibson generated cyber nightmare waiting to happen. Am I missing the desire to connect? To paraphrase Gibson -Maybe the future is already here. It's just not widely distributed yet - to every human being - to me?

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/05/star-wars-mash-up.html

STAR WARS TO MAKE HUNDREDS OF CLIPS AVAILABLE FOR MASHUPS Lucasfilm plans to make clips of "Star Wars" available to fans on the Internet to mash up at will. The clips -- about 250 of them, from all six Star Wars movies -- will land on the Starwars.com Web site tomorrow, part of this week's 30th-anniversary celebrations of the release of his hit movie. Working with an easy-to-use editing program from Eyespot Corp. of San Diego, fans can cut, add to and retool the clips. Then they can post their creations to blogs or social-networking sites like MySpace. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117997273760812981.html

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/05/star-trek-scottys-space-ashes-l

Star Trek Scotty’s Space Ashes Lost Up A Hill - A rocket that blasted into suborbital space two weeks ago from a remote area in New Mexico and contained ashes of late Star Trek star James Doohan has fallen back to Earth and landed in a mountainous region of the state that's made it difficult to recover, according to a spokeswoman for the company … "It's not like Mr. Doohan's lost. The rocket did hit its landing target, but it's in a very mountainous and rugged terrain. They can't get to it by foot or by vehicle. They have to take a helicopter up there."

Captain Kirk never did listen to Scotty's plaintiff cry about the ship['s ability - "She can't take anymore cap'n" - and sadly in his last trip technology failed him yet again. Warp drives aren't what they used to be.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/05/pentagon-blocks-websites-from-s

New York Times, May 14 - This is yet another case of institutional censorship that is just not going to work. The Pentagon has banned access to MySpace, YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, live365 and Photobucket. They cited technical and security concerns - “We’ve got to have the networks open to do our mission. They have to be reliable, timely and secure.” Private internet connections still have access, but most troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are limited to Pentagon service, Stars and Stripes notes.

"Today’s Web site ban and last month’s revision of military blogging policy were partly justified by operational security concerns. Howevere in reality this is just a censorsjip issue - seeking to reduce the voices of individual soldiers by making it more difficult to publish their own material and not allowing them to see or hear information that the Pentagon doesn't want them to see or hear.

Oddly, the ban also arrived as the American military started to increase its profile on YouTube, posting official footage that seeks to counter other footage on YouTube that is less than supportive of the Pentagon and US military actions.

Through their blogging policy and this comprehnsive site ban they have muffled free speech, evn free speech in support of their policies and actions. It is a loss for everyone, and will prove to be an example of great folly - many will find a way around this, and many will still find access to these sites.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/05/using-wiki-in-education-blog-ar

Why “computer time” and “cheating” are good for students Stewart Mader is so right in this exhortation of the educational system and its inexplicable banning of Ipods in the classroom because students are "cheating". Students are not cheating when they are using technology to find answers and assistance in responding to questions. "Putting facts at your fingertips" is the sort of skill they will be prized for in the workplace. If educational institutions truly want to fight cheating they would beef up their assessment strategies. Why not develop more challenging assessments - something other than true and false and fact based. Why not try to create application questions, project activities, cases studies. These are the sort of real life assessments that need the sort of skills demonstrated when students use technology to assist them in the determination of appropriate answers.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/05/ont-government-bans-facebook.ht

Ont. government workers told to log off Facebook

What a throwback this is - did anyone actually do a study to determine who and how often and what they are doing on these site? This issue is so important that the Premier - the leader of the province -had to make the announcement? It reminds of the 1950's and 60's when you couldn't use a company phone to make a personal call.

Among the things that bothers me about this are:
1.Premier Dalton McGuinty says he doesn't see how Facebook adds value to a workplace environment.
2. Facebook joins YouTube, gambling websites and hard-core sex sites as forbidden fruit in any provincial government office.
3. Lack of respect for employees as responsible, discerning adults.
4. Government deciding on a "site" - why not ban all social networking sites? Why not ban web conferencing?

Can Facebook add value to a workplace? Arguably, it can. It is a social networking site - groups are formed for various reasons, professional and personal. The opportunity to network, connect - and stay in touch with people that may be of assistance to your work activities - why not?

What about messenger services or Skype - do the contacts list always have to be work related? How to define that? Facebook is now equivalent to a porn site? A total lack of respect for employees - what actually prompted this? Did all employees join up to facebook - were they meeting online? Oh, my God! Were they networking and getting things done? Was their productivity diminished?

And finally, if the government wants to start picking sites to block the IT folks will be very busy indeed. Monitoring all employees on a minute by minute basis to see what other social software toolset they are accessing - they'll be blocking Eduspaces, LinkedIn, Guesse, Orkit, Skype - the list goes on and on and change by the hour. Good luck to the IT censors! What a soul sucking job that would be.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/05/disney-hijacks-social-networkin

globeandmail.com: Disney unveils social networking for kids

Well with MySpace owned by News Corp. and a myriad of other social networking sites being groped by investors it isn't suprising that Disney would want to step in and protect my children. Hmmm. A safe, social nirvanna where preteens create personal mini websites like , with parental controls. A chat feature requiring parental approval for kids to go beyond trading canned messages ("hey Mickey, where's Goofy", Ariel, have you lost your voice?") and preventing users from revealing personal information, or from using profanity ("Holy !#%^ Batman).

And hey, "Kids can gather games, videos and music files from Disney's promotions-rich website and place them on a page that they decorate with a selection of motifs from the company's character library. “There is a weaving together of entertainment and promotion and marketing,” he added. “It's difficult to say where one ends and the other begins.”

Yeh, right. It's also difficult to see where blatant advertising and propoganda stops and a desire to protect my child begins. Why not protect my child from brazen advertising, gluttonous consumerism and sickly cuteness? Good idea - bad execution; wouldn't it be nice if one of these media conglomerates wanted to really contribute to social networking by doing something without expecting more in return? Disney did this for themselves - the kids are just tools for their marketing. No thanks.

I'll keep an eye on my own kids, set my own restrictions and take responsibility for ensuring they have a healthy, beneficial upbringing.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/04/psiphon-creating-cracks-in-wall

To add to my previous posting on Psiphon here's an entry from Scott Leslie's blog that give further info:

"Psiphon, developed by the Citizen’s Lab at U of T, allows individuals to form social networks that proxy web traffic in a way that no central censor will ever keep up with. See an illustration here that helps explain it. Instead of just a few central proxy server sites that authorities can block themselves, this turns any machine with an IP address into a potential proxy, but unlike more anonymous p2p approaches this works through the idea of small trusted networks. "

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/04/whose-pedia-is-best.html

Wikipedia a force for good? Nonsense, says a co-founder-News-Tech & Web-TimesOnline

The British education secretary, speaking to educators, suggested that the internet as “an incredible force for good in education” for teachers and pupils, singling out Wikipedia for praise. Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia counters this claim suggesting that the website’s integrity is in question. Sanger left Wikipedia, and two weeks ago launched an online encyclopaedia called Citizendium.org, which he said would be monitored and edited by academics and experts as well as accepting public contributions.

But our options don't stop there - if you're distressed by the liberal bias in Wikipedia and want to make sure that you're only confronted by conservative factsl, turn to Conservapedia... which has this entry about Harry Potter:

The English "public" schools Hogwarts resembles are Protestant institutions; but at Hogwarts, chapel is conspicuously absent. A failure to mention Christianity, combined with the presence of wizardry, have led some to wonder whether Rowling is substituting paganism for Christianity.

Luckily the education secretary didn't mention Conservapedia as "an incredible force for good in education."

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/04/open-courseware-open-university

LearningSpace - OpenLearn LearningSpace - The Open University

Finally - shared learning content that is structured and pedagogically sound. Unlike the disjointed, unstructured mash of MIT's Open CourseWare project this is what sharable open learning resources is about. Open University's offerings include pedagogically sound preparation, activities and assessment. Open Learning offers complete "lesson plans" complete with interactive multimedia.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/04/can-university-really-refuse-to

learning technology: Can a University really refuse to offer online courses?

This posting by a fellow blogger deserves restatement -

"Is it really possible for an institution of higher learning to refuse to offer or stop offering online courses to its students? Baylor University has taken that position and will no longer offer any online courses.

At first glance, that seems ludicrous and downright unbelievable; what is the leadership at Baylor thinking?

Many institutions, 2-year and 4-year, are literally and still rushing to the web to create and offer online courses; it often increases enrollment for the institution and scheduling flexibility for learners. However, most institutions are and will continue to struggle with the quality issue. Well . . . issues. What does a quality course look like once developed? What constitutes a quality online learning experience? What resources are necessary to develop a quality online course? Can faculty - trained in their content areas - create quality online courses? What sort of and how much training do they need to do so?

Faculty are good at what they do in the classroom, but delivering the same type of quality learning experience in the online environment - no matter how much administrators and faculty may insist otherwise - is a different animal. Teaching online requires using new technologies to develop materials, to present content in a meaningful, accessible and usable manner, and to interact with learners. The pace is fast and furious - from listservs to discussions to wikis to blogs to other social networking tools; and most institutions expect faculty to keep up with that fast pace. And, keeping up isn't as easy as many faculty and administrators would like to think. Emerging from graduate programs over the last five years are educational professionals that have spent their entire academic careers focused on the cognitive impact of technology, and that group is struggling to keep up with the pace. How can we reasonably expect faculty with terminal degrees in English, Mathematics, Political Science etc to keep up with a field - other than their own - that is moving that quickly when those trained in the field are struggling to keep up? Ultimately, a decision, like Baylor's, to focus on what the institution can unquestionably continue to do well, is not a bad one; that's much more desirable than joining a race that can not be won or even sustained . . ."

I agree with what is said here - if an institution is going to offer distance based courses - they MUST build and maintain the instructional and design and evaluations skills necessary to build and maintain the distance learning. Too many institutions are moving into alternative delivery and just adding more resposnibility and expectations on a Faculty that often hasn't even been taught how to teach, let alone how to design learning materials.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/04/main-page-academicblogs.html

Main Page - AcademicBlogs

This website provides a community developed, wiki-style listing of academically related web logs (blogs). The Chronicle of Higher education published an article about academicblogs.org that provides background information and general commentary about the site.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/03/circumventing-internet-censors.

In those countries that monitor internet usage it takes a foreign "friend" and/or filter beating software to allow them to surf the net without Big Brother watching. Researchers and academics in China and Iran for example are using software like Psiphon or Tor to surf the net without being oberved by their governments. Tor works by itself, Psiphon requires someone you trust, outside the monitored area to allow you to use their system by proxy. The drawback to Psiphon is that the "friend" can monitor what the user does, so trust, the basis of social networking, is crucial. How does it work?

HOW SOFTWARE BYPASSES INTERNET CENSORS
Psiphon, a new open-source software program developed at the University of Toronto, allows academics and others in foreign countries to bypass government Internet filters. Here's how:

• A user in a country with censorship tries to access a prohibited site, like Amnesty International's. The government filter blocks him.
• The user locates a friend or family member in a country without government censorship. (For various reasons, connections to personal computers are not generally blocked.)
  
• The uncensored friend installs Psiphon, sets up a Psiphon "node," and passes a Web-site address and password back to the user in the country with censorship, sometimes on paper or via telephone.
  
• The user logs in to the node, connecting him with the friend's computer. Psiphon encrypts the information with a secure connection known as "https."
  
• The friend's computer transmits unrestricted Internet access back to the user, circumventing the filter.

But lest we get smug and believe our freedoms are inviolate - take heed. "Western universities control Internet use, too. Students and faculty members, forget about legalistic "responsible-use agreements" that suspend their right to, say, download music or run businesses on university computers. Vague clauses in those agreements give colleges latitude to ban other activities, says Paul A. Cesarini,... Bowling Green officials confronted Mr. Cesarini for using Tor in his office to prepare for classes on cybersecurity. They said Tor violated the university's computer-use policy and asked him to stop - he refused. But not before entertaining the stone visage and stern demands of the tech police.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/waraku-education-podmo.html

Waraku Education: PODMO

Another move ahead for free and open learning - a new network technology called PODMO - it works with bluetooth mobile phone devices. Content is free when e within the bluetooth communication range of a PODMO server. It establishes a network within the internet with free data to users -what can be done with it? - think instant messaging, fill in online forms (data acquisition tasks), access maps, RSS feeds, and soon free VOIP calls.

Free phone calls from a mobile phone - PODMO gets its money via advertising but the advertising model is absolutely non intrusive. The user chooses to access this material via menu items.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/students-punished-for-facebook-

A student council president of a Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School in Toronto asked a very pertinent question after being suspended for "online bullying" for negative comments made about the school Principal in Facebook, "When does the school's jurisdiction end?" said Sultana, 17, , adding as far as he knows none of the 19 students was accessing Facebook during school time or on school computers. Since Sultana says he only viewed the comments but did not take part - yet suffered a suspension - where does guilt begin? By association? By viewing comments? By opposing the principal? By voicing free will? By using Facebook to vent? Having an opinion at 17?

The students involved in this online discussion, not able to plead their case or discuss the suspension, are naturally concerned and confused. But what it really signifies is that there is something wrong with the administration of this school - and the students in their frustration were venting about that. Not only is there concern about how they were treated by the principal before this Facebook discussion, but also why they are denied opportunities to discuss the issues when punsihment is meted out.

The long arm of totalitarian control, denying opportunities to face the charges, denial of freedoms - exercised by a principal who obviously has some organizational problems to deal with. This is not what we should be teaching our students.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/waraku-education-crickee-and-po

Waraku Education: Crickee and PODMO

Announcing cheap SMS thanks to Crickee a Java program that allows the mobile phone to SMS but have the data transmitted and received via the Mobiles Internet data connection.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/blackboard-strategy.html

Blackboard knows that their patent action is unconscionable and is open to challenge. But they didn't do it to becuse they thought it had merit - prior art demonstrates that the patent is not applicable. But they don't need to have the patent honoured -they can succeed at what they really wanted this action to do - scare the market and keep prospective proprietary systems at bay.

Institutions are naturally leary of litigation, and would choose to have sand kicked in their face rather than maybe, just maybe be involved in a legal fight with Blackboard. Blackboard may succeed in putting desire2learn out of business (a Canadian company) , and will succeed in scaring off any other company that is drawing up plans to enter the ed tech software arena. But I think Blackboard is going to lose on two fronts. The first is that some forward thinking institutions will think twice about tying into any proprietary system and will take a serious look at Moodle or sakai or Elgg (eg. Open University and Athabasca University already use Moodle). And the second is that Blackboard has through their actions, galvanized an opposition consisting of the educational blogosphere, educause and the open systems folks, and many fence sitting educators who now see open source as a possibility.

If Blackboard continues to push this patent action they will lose the respect and goodwill they have developed over the years. Blackboard would do well to settle out of court with d2l and let this patent action drift off into the twilight zone. Then maybe they can start acting as the leaders they could be rather than trying to stifle competition and innovation.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/connectivism-online-conference-

I'm just now coming down from the heights of chaotic thought provoked by George Siemens' presentation via Elluminate on Connectivism. So there we were, 190 of us, worldwide, linked via web and focussed on listening to George - a trusted member of our network - share his thoughts and ideas with the connectees. And we were all exploring the same questions. Where are we in learning now, where are we going and how will we get there? What skills, provisions do we need on the journey?

Synaptic learning...moments of lucidity...sparks of recognition..a second of how it all fits then fading into ambiguity...excuse me while I kiss the sky; this is learning as it should be - shared, chaotic, questioned, reshared, ideation in process, not product "knowledge in stasis".

Riding through the connective pathways...fast and frugal heuristics, trying to deal with the demanding complexity of our world today, where our linear approach to learning is just not meeting the need. We need to change our interaction patterns, our definition of learning spaces, our focus on product not process - higher education has a lot of changes to make and it is one slow moving beast. But then again climate change drove us all to take a holistic look at our environmental reality and as a result it seems we are prepared to change our behaviour. Changes in higher learning may also be forthcoming - as crisis looms.

Knowledge today is complex, ever changing, and information is overabundant. Knowledge no longer resides in a place, in a brain, in one person or a cadre of experts - it is in the connections we make, our networks of learning. Technology is evolving and affords us the opportunity to connect and share. As our network grows it impacts upon our assumptions about learning infrastructures, about authority, and certainty of "knowing". We'll recognize that a textbook, a professor is a node not a touchstone. Textbooks and professors should not position themselves as experts who can claim to keep pace with the changing face of knowledge - but they can guide us, can provide trusted nodes, a framework, a foundation and skill set that enables and maximizes our learning journey.

Where does knowledge reside in institutions? When is it made available? Journals that few people read, that few people can access. Articles that get refereed by a few experts then disseminated to a small audience usually bound by the blinkers of their discipline. This is not ideation - a fast response to the changing face of knowledge and a recognition of worldwide realities and contextualities.

Institutional approaches are not in line with the rapidity of knowledge development. Containers of learning - courses, professors, textbooks - confined to a space - university - and bounded by time and pace restrictions are not appropriate for this journey.

This learning journey will be troubling, chaotic, fraught with cognitive dangers - and we need to teach new skills to prepare our students, and our professors. We need to have them understand that learning is not a product but a process. That learning is not a place it is a journey. That we have to move from knowing to knowing where, to sense making, and need to learn to apply what we learn to actually learn. The power of the web, the social networking available, and the filtering, tagging, bookmarking tools will help us connect and increase the pace of our sense making .

The chaos and messiness of global networking is seeping into the classroom and higher education is in denial. Guess what? It's going to bite them soon enough thanks to the pace that the lower grade teachers are moving at -using blogs and social networking with their students - the future attendees of universities. These kids will be coming to university with expectations -and skills most professors will not recognize. These kids will have had years of pattern recognition, network formation and evaluation, have exercised critical/creative thinking (collaborate, create and recreate) and learned to accept uncertainty/ambiguity of holistic learning and a recognition that contextually, there is no right answer, their is only the formulation of new ways of thinking.

Is the space, place, pace and minds of the university ready for these kids? Not by a long shot. But maybe, like global warming, higher education will have a crisis to respond to and they might just change. Or perhaps the kids won't care - they'll have other opportunities for their learning journey.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/blackboard-pledge-fear-factor.h

Educause and Sakai - strong opponents of Blackboard's patent claims on the LMS and more aren't wholehearted about their support of Blackboard's patent pledge - although Blackboard has included in the pledge many named open source initiatives (Elgg being one of them), regardless of whether they incorporate proprietary elements in their applications, Blackboard has also reserved rights to assert its patents against other providers of such systems that are "bundled" with proprietary code. Is that wiggle room or what?

This bundling language could be construed in any number of ways - introducing "legal and technical complexity and uncertainty which will be inhibitive in this arena of development."
And that. after all, was Blackboatd's intent from the beginning. They were not after a patent - they were after scaring away the new development, scaring away institutions from pursuing open source actions - because maybe, just maybe, Blackboard would try to take them to task.

In fact EDUCAUSE and Sakai worked to gain a pledge that Blackboard would never take legal action for infringement against a college or university using another competing product. Blackboard could not agree for reasons related to its existing legal case.

Fear, sadly, is often more effective than the rule of law.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/connectivism-online-conference-

George Siemens is creating a learning space, populated by great presenters, over 1,000 attendees representing over 40 countries, to virtually explore connectivism and social software from February 2-9, 2007. The conference is online and free but already oversubscribed so...follow me in this blog as I report on the presentations from a higher education perspective.

Here's the blurb about the conference intent...."The evolution of teaching and learning is accelerated with technology. After several decades of duplicating classroom functionality with technology, new opportunities now exist to alter the spaces and structures of knowledge to align with both needs of learners today, and affordances of new tools and processes. Yet our understanding of the impact on teaching and learning trails behind rapidly forming trends. What are critical trends? How does technology influence learning? Is learning fundamentally different today than when most prominent views of learning were first formulated (under the broad umbrellas of cognitivism, behaviourism, and constructivsm)? Have the last 15 years of web, technology, and social trends altered the act of learning? How is knowledge itself, in a digital era, related to learning?"

Key themes will include: trends in K-12 sector, trends in higher education, research and net pedagogy, technological and societal trends, and connective knowledge and connectivism.

Confirmed presenters include: Stephen Downes , Will Richardson , Terry Anderson , George Siemens , Bill Kerr and Diana G. Oblinger, Ph.D.

Stay tuned - I'll be posting some filtering comments on the conference.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/blackboard-backs-off.html

Chalk up a win for the educational community against the unwarranted and altogether ridiculous attempt by Blackboard to claim the history of educational technology for itself. The doors to open learning are now open once more.

Announcing the Blackboard Patent Pledge - a promise to never assert its issued or pending course management system software patents against open source software or home-grown course management systems. This Blackboard Pledge is legally binding, irrevocable and worldwide in scope.

As part of the Pledge, Blackboard promises never to pursue patent actions against anyone using such systems including professors contributing to open source projects, open source initiatives, commercially developed open source add-on applications to proprietary products and vendors hosting and supporting open source applications.

Blackboard is also extending its pledge to many specifically identified open source initiatives within the course management system space whether or not they may include proprietary elements within their applications, such as Sakai, Moodle, ATutor, Elgg and Bodington.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/01/field-trips-to-second-life-and-

Interested in immersive worlds? Don't have the time to explore it on your own? How about a field trip moderated by knowledgebale guides? Synthravels is the first organization to offer a complete guide service to all the people who want to make a tour in virtual worlds without knowing these new realities, even if they have never put their feet in these strange, synthetic grounds. The tours and the destinations are chosen by the staff of Synthravels, composed by programmers, architects, experienced video gamers.

The concept of Synthravels is by Mario Gerosa and by Matteo Esposito of Imille.
Mario is a journalist who has a long experience in travel. He has been organizing in-world meetings with famous Second Life residents for a project of the Indiana University. In July 2006 he launched the project for the preservation of Virtual Architectural Heritage.

Synthtravels currently support travel/tours to/of the following:
Albatross18
Anarchy Online
City of Heroes
City of Villains
Dark Age of Camelot
Entropia Universe
Eve Online
Everquest
EverQuest II
Final Fantasy XI
Guild Wars
Horizons
Lineage
Lineage II
Neocron 2
ROSE Online
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The Matrix Online
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World of Warcraft

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/01/learning-development-fast-cheap

For the last twenty some years I have been involved in the development of learning materials for training and educational purposes. Whether serving the demand s of a corporate client or an academic client the same mantra is heard - can you do it fast, good and cheap? I always tell them to pick one.

I wonder if any other profession is continually asked (even demanded) to offer their services fast, good and cheap. And how many other professions have a plethora of tools and methodologies - like rapid e-learning - that "promise" to deliver good results fast and cheaply? Now the Learning Circuits Blog has posed the January Big Question to the ed tech blogosphere -What are the trade offs between quality learning programs and rapid e-learning and how do you decide?

My career has been to act primarily as an advocate for the learner - corporate and academic. I seek to design appropriate and effective learning materials that meet the learning needs of the real client - the student or employee.

This role often puts me in conflict with the demands of the secondary client - he/she who foots the bill. It's a tense stand off - and I am always in a negotiation mode. "yes, we can do it cheaply, but we can't meet all the objectives." "Fast? OK, - are your subject matter experts available when we need them? Can you review the materials and get back to us on schedule?"

Good? Well that depends on your definition of good. If good means fast and cheap - I can meet it - but I don't want my name associated with it and I can't vouch for how effective it will be, and heck, I won't do it. If good means identify the performance problem, develop an effective solution and measure the results - well that takes time. And if the results say we must reevaluate our expectations or design -well that will take more time and money. well spent money and time in pursuit of an end goal."

But wait a second - I think I can offer you my cut rate service - at least I can give you some consulting advice - on how to achieve that mantra -fast, good and cheap - all in one package!

Let's look at the development process and see where the trade offs are possible:
1. Don't do a proper needs analysis - assume the problem is already well defined. We might be on the wrong track here and build something irrelevant - but heck we can still go ahead!

2. Don't do an environmental analysis - treat all learners the same, don't recognize learning styles, learning readiness, language or cultural considerations, or time or resource restraints.
Don't worry that some learners have grade 10 reading level, English is their second language, they have never used and have no access to computers, and they have to learn on their lunch hour. Hey - the learning will be there if they want it bad enough!

3. Cut the team size and skill set. Just give some instructional guidelines to the subject matter expert and have him/her create the course in their spare time. Get rid of the instructional designer. Or keep the ID but give them more to do - course authoring, graphics design, programming, even teaching! Great idea - diminish the worth of instructional design and the quality will remain the same or be enhanced!

4. Cut out pilot testing, prototype development and formative evaluation - just do it, results be damned! Sure it might save time and money and enhance quality. But we want it cheap and fast!
And we want to do it the same way every time!

5. Best of all - do incomplete and and inappropriate evaluation of the process and the results - a smile sheet is all we need - or better yet, just count the number of people signed up for the course. That way we will never know if it was a quality effort or not - and we can keep cutting corners over and over again. If we don't evaluate, we will never have negative results!

6. Now that is a truly rapid e-learning model!

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/open-content-alliance-expands-r

Open Content Alliance Expands Rapidly; Reveals Operational Details: "October 31, 2005 — Just a few weeks after its launch, the Open Content Alliance (http://www.opencontentalliance.org) has already added dozens of new members to its Open Library project (http://www.openlibrary.org). (For background on OCA, see the NewsBreak “Open Content Alliance Rises to the Challenge of Google Print” at http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb051003-2.shtml.) Twenty-four new participants have joined the initial 10 founding members. All contributors have committed to donating services, facilities, tools, and/or funding. Microsoft Corp. has joined the effort with the announcement of MSN Book Search, a new mass book digitization project. (For coverage, see the companion NewsBreak, “Microsoft Launches Book Digitization Project—MSN Book Search” at http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb051031-2.shtml.) The Research Libraries Group (RLG; http://www.rlg.org), a major library bibliographic utility, has also joined OCA, contributing its bibliographic metadata. In contrast with Google Print’s close-mouthed policy toward its proprietary digitization equipment, the Open Content Alliance has released extensive details on its Scribe system, as well as other options for participants and users. "

To see an example of a scanned book, the interface and process and explanation of the aliiance see this link.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/gary-stager-whats-difference-be

Gary Stager : What's the Difference Between School and Prison?

In addition to that previous posting on the cvonfiscation of ipods and cellphones in new York, Gary has done such a good job just pulling items out of headlines that make schools look a lot like prison - here are a few - follow link for more (these are the U.S. but most ring true for Canada too):

Criminalizing the Classrom: The Over-policing of the New York City Schools, raise serious concerns whose consequences are "significant and consequential damage to the learning environment."

Students remain grouped by age while increasingly segregated by race (here and here) and gender in single-sex classes (more here).

Student speech rights and press freedom continue to decline. (resources from the ACLU & Rutherford Institute )

We have long accepted the practice of seeking permission to use a toilet in school.

School security costs are through the roof.

A school banned conversation between boys and girls.

The Supreme Court of the United States is actually entertaining the notion that a principal may punish a student at any time for what they do outside of school or school events. The issue at stake is if a school principal may do any action that "disrupts its mission."

School officials continue to assert jurisdiction over what students do with their home computers despite constant rulings on behalf of students.

This school and others are requiring students to remain silent during lunch. Another school claims that the silent lunches they deny exist are for "safety purposes."

This school requires "silent transitions" between classes. If students talk between classes, they must attend "silent lunch."

Special paint is being purchased by schools to jam cell phone use. This continues the desire to treat cell phone use or possession as a crime.

Art, music, foreign languages and even physical education (social studies and science too) are being eliminated from school days as a response to calls for academic accountability.

Collective punishment (prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949) is a hallmark of NCLB with all teachers and students held "accountable" for the test results of a few.

A Santa Fe elementary school student was duct-taped to his chair by a teaching intern. Here is a similar story from Oregon. Here's one from California. Even the Aussies are doing it!

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/drop-that-ipod-kid-now.html

What an incredibly ridiculous, stupid, inadequate, repulsive, expletive response to the evolution of learning and personal communication. As reported by Will Richardson New York city police and school administrators set up metal detectors at a middle school on the Upper West Side of New York City and confiscated “404 cellphones, 69 iPods, 23 other electronic devices, two knives and one imitation gun”.

"Out of 900 plus students, 404 cell phones were “confiscated” from the kids, some of whom were put to tears over the incident. About 70 iPods and a couple dozen other assorted devices were nabbed as well, all causing some parents to threaten lawsuits and the building principal to avoid questions at the end of the day."

What are we teaching these kids? Is it okay for us to have cell phones and Ipods but that they can't have them? Why not? Maybe we just don't trust them. This isn't about safety, it's about control. And fear that they will misuse the technology. Odd, the appropriate response might be to teach them how to use these tools, incorporate them into their learning, empower them! Instead there'll be a them against us ethos established, and the walls will go up - the walls the school builds to control the kids and the walls the kids will put up to block access to their facebook accounts where they will network and smolder about yet another time when they were made to feel disenfranchised, disempowered and just plain angry.

If this continued we won't have made us of the information revolution, and students will not trust institutions and suspect every attempt we make to integrate web2.0 tools and methodologies into our learning environment.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/its-not-technology.html

2 Cents Worth: David Warlick is always intriguing and provocative. I like that in a person, or even a thing. And in one of his musing moments (he has lots of those) he ponders what the NES standards coming from the ISTE might look like in the classroom. He is so right when he contends that "for quite some time, have been complaining about an over emphasis with the technology, that it’s actually the information revolution that we should be focused on." This is a page out of my book as well - and we can never tire from focussing people on this distinction. But, the kicker is, “What does this look like in the classroom?” “What are students and teachers doing that affects the outcomes of: creativity and innovation, communications and collaboration, research and information fluency, critical thinking, problems-solving, and decision-making, digital citizenship, and technology operations and concepts.”

David has created a slide show to demonstrate the ideas roiling around in his mind - and it is a good set of ideas - and a beginning to how we should be making use of technology and teaching our kids how to effectively integrate into their academic and personal and eventually professional worlds - see his Slideshare presentation where he walks through the process of his thoughts...

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/pageflakes-get-it-together.html

Pageflakes - Get it Together

Get it together? My life is like a locust storm and here comes the opportunity to minimize the chaos. Instead of jumping all over the web I can feed all my favourite areas into one personal web page - bringing it all to me rather than me to the all - I can see this becoming a very big thing - or err set of things -anyway pageflakes is your personalized startpage on the Internet. Your address book, local weather information, to-do-list, news, blogs and much more – all on one page that you can access from anywhere.

Dave Cormier demonstrated this aggergator use at the Future of Education Conference sponsored by the U of Manitoba. Dave suggests that this is something we will be integrating into education 5 years from now - whicch of course with the pace of change could be 3 (or 10yrs) - I can see many savvy educators now teaching through blogs turning to this as a "learning spaces aggregator". Now if a pageflake base can be built but students/users can then modify as desired and dock with formal learning tools as required and Elgg gets tied in as the community tool - the learning ecologies we could envision...

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/future-of-education-conference-

George Siemens and his compatriots at the U of Mnitoba are doing an excellent job in running another virtual conference - The Future of Education includes a number of insightful presenters (via elluminate) and the ongoing discussion among the attendees on the sessions Moodle site and a link to all resources through a Pageflakes Portal I've missed most of the live sessions but have been taking part in much of the discussions (because the presentations are available via the podcast feed I can bone up pretty fast) . George has done a great job.... some thoughts: suggestions:

1. You would think that on-line conferences can be more easily accessed than face to face BUT only if you allot your time and close your door (if you have one) otherwise work demands seep in...
2. interesting how the text dialogue in Elluminate sometimes takes a different series of routes than the actual presentation being made. Listening in and taking part in the text chat is a great study in multiple modalities - more of the continuous partial attention
3. Moodle is a nice tool, but it is an LMS - I'd like to see Elgg used
4. Elluminate recordings - force you on a path through the whole recorded presentation - I like to speed up, slow down, pick a slide - no can do. Give me the freedom...

Commenst aside this was another great educational experience - another opportunity to share perceptions and experience and move towards change...

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/school-to-prison-pipeline.html

The U.S schools system is becoming a fast track to prison. Can ours be fra behind? What happens in the U.S. often insidiously finds it's way into our system at some point. It's all a reaction to the fear that has been pervading our atmosphers since 9/11. Everything is a risk, everyone is suspect. And the fist of punishment precedes the hand of help.

But this is beyond the pale - student behavior that in my time would have resulted in a trip to the principal's office is now resulting in a trip to the police station.

Exhibit A.: a 6-year-old girl in Florida who was handcuffed by the police and taken off to the county jail after she threw a tantrum in her kindergarten class.

Exhibit B: Police in Brooklyn recently arrested more than 30 young people, ages 13 to 22, as they walked toward a subway station, on their way to a wake for a teenage friend who had been murdered. No evidence of misbehaviour, no drugs or weapons. They were accused of gathering unlawfully and of disorderly conduct.

Exhibit C: Police in Baltimore handcuffed a 7-year-old boy and took him into custody for riding a dirt bike on the sidewalk.

Exhibit D: a middle school student in Palm Beach County who was caught throwing rocks at a soda can was arrested and charged with a felony - hurling a "deadly missile."

Exhibit E: a 14-year-old high school freshman in Paris, Tex. was arrested for shoving a hall monitor, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced to 7 year prison term.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/welcome-irrepressibleinfo.html

Be irrepressible
"Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for simply posting and sharing information. The Internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Governments – with the help of some of the biggest IT companies in the world – are cracking down on freedom of expression ...get your own feed and post to your blog"

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/u.html

U.S Military wants high school student data

Student rights continue to be eroded - now in support of military action - In 2001 the federal No Child Left Behind law passed - it requires school districts to hand over personal contact information for all juniors and seniors to military recruiters. The law also allows students to opt out.

Berkeley High remains the only high school in the nation that has failed to comply with the military's request for students' data, a Department of Defense spokesman said.

The Berkeley Unified School District board has a strict policy against releasing students' personal information. Instead of adopting an opt out policy, it used an "opt in" procedure in which students and parents could sign a form only if they wanted their information released to the military. A month ago, the school - under pressure from the government to release the data or lose funding - changed its policy that blocked the release of students' personal information. The new policy allows students and parents who do not wish to be contacted by military recruiters to opt out by signing a form.

But the school did not immediately release the data to the government. Instead, a group of parents have been on a campaign to ask each and every student whether they want to opt out.
Thus far, 90 percent of the students at Berkeley High have refused to have their names released to miliary recruiters. Berkeley High risked losing $10 million in federal funding, and possibly faced legal action, if it did not change its policy regarding military recruitment.

Time will only tell when Canada's actions in Afghanistan start to breed similar erosions of civil rights here in Canada.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/one-week-job.html

One Week Job

Sean Aiken has taken his own path - a path with many stops - on his way not to finding a job, or a career, but something to do that he is passionate about.

His website oneweekjob.com states his mission - "My name is Sean Aiken, and like many others in my generation, I can't tell you what it is that I want to do with my life. Help me figure it out by offering me a 'One Week Job.' I am traveling week to week throughout the country working different jobs offered to me with all my wages donated to the Make Poverty History campaign."

Sean's journey is one that we should all be able to take - through formal and informal means, explore the world a bit at a time and revel in the moment as we experience it. Instead we stay with one position, or a similar series of, waiting for an upward move when so much movement is lateral or down. And we suffer, often faslling into depression or erupting in anger. I remember my father judging his worth by the job he held and how he broke when the company he was with for 24 years laid him off. None of us should see a job as an answer, a career as an affirmation of self, even a hobby or sport as a statement of our worth. We need to enjoy life, and hopefully find those things that make life enjoyable for us. I commend Sean in his serach and welcome the opportunity that the web affords him to document his experiences and take us along with him - close to real time, as it happens.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/just-completing-my-spotty-atten

Just completing my spotty attendance at the Canadian E-Learning Conference here in Edmonton. I gave a pre-conference workshop on Creating Virtual Communities and Connections using the Elgg environment. Aside from 30 minutes of network crash time the event went very well. I rather wished I had opened the floor up for more discussion, but my nerves and enthusiasm got in the way. Good grist for a reveiew of my presentation style. But I do believe the reception was positive, and may have actually generated some work for our unit from the Family Medical service here at the University. There is definite interest in creating and maintaining online communities - having a space like Elgg where those who are geographically dispersed can gather and connect.

Speaking of connecting this conference was also fertile for the face to face connections I made. I met Brian Lamb from BC, D'Arcy Norman from Calgary, and Peter Tittenberger from U of Manitoba. (Aside from Saskatchewan we had the Western provinces tippling at the same table) Thanks to Peter, who hired George Siemens as a Research Associate, we now have George steadily employed and able to get his message out to the worldwide audience. Peter and George have also brought us some excellent virtual conferences on ed tech.

Brian and D'Arcy entertained the conference with a compilation of video clips that generated guffaws, groans and laughter from the crowd. See D'Arcy's post on the presentation (and his visible appreciation of the WesteEd mall). Highlight of the movie entrails was the mash up of the nature documentary on spiders/crack spiders, the drift of Pooh into Apocalypse Now and the Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk that so pleasantly speared us for our continued dismissal and destruction of the innate desire in all children to be creative. His talk is particularly pertinent to us today because we have the tools through social software to bring creativity and connectiveness back to the forefront of learning. Maybe. At least Brian and D"Arcy brought some moments of creativity to the conference.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/university-of-alberta.html

University of Alberta
Originally uploaded by mastermaq

Always under construction - the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, continues to grow - as does our need to seek alternative means of designing and delivering learning. The University sees itself as primariliy a research institute, and to differentiate from the University of Athabasca just north of here - (Canada's "open univerisity" - don't get me started on the definition of that moniker!) - the U of A likes to see itself as a proponent of "blended" learning, not distance learning.

I suggest that we could also see ourselves as the "lifelong learning" institute, where research informs learning, and learning is activity based, flexible and open. And we build "learning and research communities" rather than cohorts, and establish learning connections that link into and out of public life, worklife and distant academia.

This is my reason to push the agenda on social software - a lonely calling at times.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-is-evdo-evdoinfocom.html