Scott Leslie :: Blog :: Archives
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000822.html http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/DEC0602.pdf
There's nothing really wrong with this report but also nothing very exciting either - basically a short synopsis of Sakai and Moodle and the state of affairs in LMS adoption in the US. If I were one of the 50 or so other open source learning management system projects out there I might be a bit choked by the continued lack of recognition (and it certainly gives pause to claims I've seen made within the open source CMS community that there's no inherent competition between open source projects) but if you need a short synopsis document on the topic to stick in front of a still skeptical CIO, this is one place to start. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000815.html 
Mark at eClippings recently re-posted this image from Dion Hinchcliffe. The image itself is interesting, but what struck me was that it had the Creative Commons condition icons and the source URL embedded in the image itself at the bottom. I'm calling this a watermark but I may be using the term incorrectly.
When I saw this I was torn. On the one hand my first reaction was - hey, that's a great idea, remove any ambiguity about the rights associated with the image regardless of where it ends up, and also clear up how it is to be attributed by including it's original URL. If you buy into the argument that lack of clarity about rights and the hardship of clearing rights is a major inhibitor to the reuse of digital resources then it seems to make sense, right?
On the other hand, I can see arguments to the effect that such marks could be a hinderance to reuse (if done in an ugly way that mars the original image or if they take away from the re-users contribution to the remix). And if they are such a great idea, why aren't we seeing this more often. There are already lots of scripts out there to automate watermarking of images, and it would be simple to offer these as a service that people could tie into. But is this a good idea?
I have self-interested reasons for asking this question. Within my work on SOL*R I have to advise content authors on how to display either a Creative Commons or BC Commons license in their work. My reply has always been "Hey, they're your rights and it's your content, so if you feel strongly about people respecting these, assert them as often as you like." The funny thing is the issue isn't people wanting to use license tags excessively, its people not wanting to use them at all because they haven't included them up front on a template or the like.
So, is this practice one to encourage? Should we instead use XMP for this (and build apps that automatically just add it in without extra work from the user)? Or leave well enough alone? Feedback (through email, as my overworked butt has still not migrated this to Wordpress as promised) always appreciated. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000808.html http://gong.ust.hk/index.html
During my holidays I received an email from Dr David Rossiter and Gibson Lam from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology inviting me to try out some software they had developed called Gong. I am often hesitant about blogging such invitations and didn't even manage to get around to trying it until today because of the backlog of email etc., from my holiday. But after trying it out I am glad I did.
Free voice recording might not seem like much in the age of Odeo and the like, but this is, to my eye, much more. The Java-based client-server program has been built very much with an eye to teaching languages but looks like it could be useful for anyone wanting to include voice in their online clases. It supports the creation of voice-based message boards and forums, and the client allows users to index their recordings to text, meaning subsequent viewers can see the text 'read' while they hear the message, and jump to specific parts of the message by clicking on that word (for instance on a particularly confusing spelling, as often happens with English). Recorders of messages can also edit the message directly in the client after the fact, easily removing awkward pauses and silences. Additionally, listeners can slow down aqnd speed up the playback of messages on demand.
And if all that isn't enough, it can support synchronous audio chat sessions as well. Did I mention that there is also an existing Moodle module that allows creation of Gong 'boards' directly in Moodle. And that it has an API. Oh, and it's free too (but not 'yet' open source.) Well worth a look for language teachers or for anyone wanting to incorporate voice recording into their online classes for free. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000807.html http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=923465
This is an important new paper by William McGeveran and William Fisher from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. It's not exactly earth shattering content for people regularly working on the issue of sharing and reusing digital resources for education, but it is fairly comprehensive (from a US perspective at least) and done by lawyers, the type of document that can potentially have some legitimacy with politicians and other decision makers (and yes, I believe in faeries too!) The Mellon Foundation is to be commended for funding it. I loved their case studies, especially the one that has a media prof cracking DRM controls with freely available tools so as to be able to create a clips reel for his class. That would never happen ;-) - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000823.html http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2006/10/
the_tyranny_of_.html
The only reason I don't recommend reading Ulises Ali Mejias's Ideant is that you may never get back to work, so deep and thought provoking do I find his essays (calling them posts would seem a slight). But if you have the heart, head and time to have followed some of Stephen's longer posts essays, then you must read these as well. These represent for me the two intellectual views on networks between which I currently vascillate (though careen would likely be the better word).
When Ulises writes in conclusion that while "self-interest might be a functional principle to organize networks ... it might not be sustainable as the basis for a social ethics, which requires a degree of selfless engagement" he gives word to a fear that has been nagging me since I first heard Stephen disparage "networks of proximity" and have myself tried to give feeble voice to in posts like this one on Canada day and in conversation with other edubloggers. What I appreciate so much about Ulises' piece as I read it was that it was not demonizing networks nor underplaying their power, but instead questioning what we lose in adopting them as a governing metaphor (and more, an actual organizing principle).
What I'm left with, though, is the same question I feel in the face of my children's over-mediatized future, which is not how to make it go away, as I don't think it ever will, but instead if there are ways in which we can adopt the technologies (and ways of being that we can adopt that aren't on the network) to help us, if not evade, at least amend, this 'tyrrany.' Like I said, careening!!! - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000816.html http://www.talis.com/tdn/forum/84
I am currently participating in a cool exercise in prognostication on emerging technologies and learning and one of my votes/pleas for a disruptive technology in the academy is "mashups" (which I realize aren't properly a specific "technology" so much as a technique, but whatever.)
So it was with great pleasure that I stumbled on Jenny Levine's post on the Talis Library Mashup competition. The full list of entries is here, and while it feels a bit tame, it is definitely a start. The library seems definitely like one of the potential on-campus sources to be mashed up. What are the others? Well, to serve as the basis for a mashup, on my read at least, you need to be providing 2 things; some data and a way to get at it (an API, web service/XML feeds, screenscraping, or other mechanism for access, the more public the better). And there's the rub, it seems. While more and more Web2.0 companies (holy cow - 291 on this list) are offering APIs that are being mashed up (arguably often with a still-unknown value proposition) is your IS department publishing the API for your SIS on your campus website? You CMS? Why would they do this? Well, that's the other side of the mashup phenomenom - often-times the companies making their data available don't yet know all the ways it could be used, but appear to be correct in the belief that if you publish it, it will get used, often in unexpected or improved ways.
It's likely the sources on campus that will serve mashups anytime soon aren't the "enterprise" systems but departmental or discipline-based ones (various GIS-based systems seem ripe to combine the Google and Yahoo maps of the world; text collections with things like Yahoo's term extraction service, etc). And I don't want to trivialize the challenges to security and privacy in accessing some of the enterprise data. But right now it feels like a brick wall - ask and you'll get a strong 'No'; not a considered one but the idea just rejected out of hand. But you know the trick; keep asking, eventually you'll wear them down (or they'll retire ;-) - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000824.html BCcampus EdTech PD Report
I'm hoping this is of interest to folks outside the province too - my employers, BCcampus, commissioned a study done by Janice Johnson of UBC to examine professional development needs around educational technology in public post-secondary in British Columbia. Through a combination of surveys, face-to-face meetings and an environmental scan of existing offerings, the report paints a picture of the current practices and potential needs for PD in our province. It also recommends a number of approaches for addressing these needs, including ways to harness existing resources in the province at a larger scale as well as the idea of dedicated 'demo' spaces, places where educators can try out new tech with very low barriers and cost.
We should start to see various activities come out of this soon which I am very excited about. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000817.html http://metasolutions.us/resources/moodle/mods/
ocw_metamod.php
So I usually don't "blog on demand" but when Michael Penney emails me stuff it's almost always worth a post, and this time is no exception (and totally by chance it turns out I have the pleasure of sharing the stage with the developers in November). As it says on the site, "OCW MetaMod for Moodle provides instructors and designers with the ability to mark individual resources or activities in a Moodle course as 'shared' (allowing guest viewing) or 'private' (only visible for registered students). Additionally, the MetaMod tags resources and activities as 'C' (copyright) or 'CC' (Creative Commons/Copyright Cleared)." This is a great step forward in enabling easy sharing of resources, allowing instructors to do it right from where the resource has been used.
As Michael wrote "Despite Mr. Small, the beat goes on...:-)" speaking of whom, the next chapter is slowly unfolding. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000813.html http://ccmixter.org/media/view/media/extras
Kind of a non-sequitar, but I have been working away listening to streams of fully CC-licensed remixes and tracks from the awesome CCMixter site all day, and just wanted to tell someone. What brought me there was the announcement that my old favourite, Freesound, is now integrated into ccMixter via the Sample Pool API. Ahh, CreativeCommons content - think "Organic," but for your brain ;-) - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000812.html http://www.sakaiproject.org/media2/2006/
altidemo06/altidemo06.htm
If you've ever tried to export a course from an existing CMS in a 'specifications-'compliant format you'll know that currently the best you can likely do is get the content as IMS Content Packages and hopefully the quizzes separately in IMS QTI format. Leaving the rest of the course (discussion forums, assignments, etc) embedded in the original location and needing to be recreated from scratch.
IMS COmmon Cartridge, recently demonstrated in action between Angel, Sakai, Blackboard and WebCT at the Alt-i-lab 2006 sessions, is the attempt to remedy this problem, to create a common standard for full course import and export between CMS and useful to publishers.
Above you can see a short video describing its promise and the effort that went in around it, and you can find out more about it on the IMS Working Group page. It is a worthy problem to solve because IMS CP just doesn't do the full job. Let's hope some lessons have been learned over the subsequent years since its advent and the support for Common Cartridge is more, let's say, even, than it has been for IMS CP. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000811.html http://www.jorum.ac.uk/docs/pdf/
automated_metadata_report.pdf
If you don't have the pleasure of being a metadata geek in your day job then, move along folks, nothing to see here.
For the 9 and 3/4 people still reading this post, this report from Jorum is worth a read, though not the magic bullet you'd hoped for from the title. The report mainly looks at Jorum's own practices in regards to automating metadata collection for learning resources (sensible enough too, mostly all ones we practice in SOL*R) and near the end surveys 5 other systems out there to consider what lessons are to be learned. Another that could have been included here as potentially useful is Yahoo's Term Extraction Service, but as is the case of the others they look at, it holds no magic solution.
The report ends with a list of recommendations for the Jorum service, all of which seem very sensible as an approach to incremental improvements. I wish I could say more, but I am in such the same boat that I won't. Suffice to say the 'Survivors of LOR' support group is meeting at my house on Wednesday, new members always welcome. And bring beer, it's that kind of support group. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000821.html http://www.notemesh.com/?a=home
Along the same lines as stud.icio.us, which I wrote about last month, NoteMesh is driven by students and creates wikispaces for an entire class to take notes in. I actually much prefer the stu.dicio.us model, in which each student is taking their own notes but the class 'tags' create a collective note space, over this one, where instead students collaborate on one set of notes for the entire class. If I'm understanding correctly, this is partly the distinction Stephen was getting at in his recent whiteboard drawing. Still, encouraging to see the being aimed directly at the student taking control over their own knowledge creation processes rather than having to be always mediated through instituional infrastructure. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000820.html http://www.ithaka.org/strategic-services/oss
This extensive paper funded by the Mellon and Hewlitt foundations (amongst others) is an important read. It looks at the adoption of open source in higher education (in the US) and the need for an organizing body that could address "uncertainty about future support for and improvements in the software" and supply coordination to prevent "wasteful duplication both of development efforts and of governance structures." Sounds sensible enough, right?
The case made here for adoption of open source in higher ed seems strong and unassailable, and the scope is not just 'educational' software like LMS but all aspects of higher ed infrastructure, things like SIS, Library OPACs and Financial Aid systems.
Here's where my wordy wrestling with the issues would usually go. Too busy. Suffice to say - the issue of 'freedom' is as tantamount here as it's been recently noted elsewhwere, and while my first reaction is to bristle against some of the seemingly artificial constructs these organizations would engender, those might be small concessions compared to the freedoms from commercial licensing fees, patents and the like that I think honestly motivate initiatives like this. - SWL
Note: The original reference was from Lorcan Dempsey's always insightful blog. Read his original post for a much better synopsis and questions about the report.
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000819.html http://www.campus2020.ca/EN/411/
It's pretty easy as a Canadian to become jaded about the various reports, commisions and inquiries that our various levels of government sponsor. We've had no end of profound studies and reports that seemed to accurately identify both the ills and possible solutions on things like Aboriginal Self-Government or the Concentration of Media Ownership and yet years later see no real improvement on these matters (and yes, to be fair, those are both Federal examples).
So you'll be excused if you look on this exercise sponsored by the B.C. government to help "shape the vision, mission, goals and objectives of B.C.s post-secondary system for the next 10 to 20 years" with some skepticism. I know it's my first inclination.
And yet I am encouraged in reading some of the first things to come out of the initiative, the Think Pieces on topics like "E-Learning and Beyond" and the truncation found in our institutional landscapes between types of knowing.
The e-learning piece is the one I paid closest attention to so far, and it at least hits all the right notes, urging a move towards 'elearning 2.0,' which they characterize as having an "architecture of participation." I'm sure someone will find fault with this paper, but it seems to me that if we don't move in that direction as a provincial system, it won't be because a picture of what could be wasn't painted, by people officially asked to do so. They even go further than I think many 'think pieces' would in offering a set of 'internal review questions' in Appendix 2 for educators and administrators to use examine their current technology implementation and adoption practices. It's a good read. Let's hope we can all make the follow on a reality. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000814.html http://www.educateinnovate.com/
OK, so at least they did post something back on August 7 about the patent (a staff member posting a letter on behalf of Michael Chasen, the CEO), but otherwise, the Blackboard "blog" has been thunderously silent given the amount of hoopla in the blogosphere over the last month directly concerning them.
Not really surprising, but also not what I'd call an "authentic" engagement with the concerns of their readers/customers. (And my reaction to the notes from their conference call with ALT in the UK is the same as Stephen's - apparently I've found another use for our stockpiled baby wipes now that our kids are out of diapers).
I did say that I was reserving judgement on the BB 'blog' until there was more to judge. Looks like the evidence is in, though, and on the charge of "falsely impersonating a blog" the evidence is based on the omissions as much as what is there. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000822.html http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/DEC0602.pdf
There's nothing really wrong with this report but also nothing very exciting either - basically a short synopsis of Sakai and Moodle and the state of affairs in LMS adoption in the US. If I were one of the 50 or so other open source learning management system projects out there I might be a bit choked by the continued lack of recognition (and it certainly gives pause to claims I've seen made within the open source CMS community that there's no inherent competition between open source projects) but if you need a short synopsis document on the topic to stick in front of a still skeptical CIO, this is one place to start. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000815.html
Mark at eClippings recently re-posted this image from Dion Hinchcliffe. The image itself is interesting, but what struck me was that it had the Creative Commons condition icons and the source URL embedded in the image itself at the bottom. I'm calling this a watermark but I may be using the term incorrectly.
When I saw this I was torn. On the one hand my first reaction was - hey, that's a great idea, remove any ambiguity about the rights associated with the image regardless of where it ends up, and also clear up how it is to be attributed by including it's original URL. If you buy into the argument that lack of clarity about rights and the hardship of clearing rights is a major inhibitor to the reuse of digital resources then it seems to make sense, right?
On the other hand, I can see arguments to the effect that such marks could be a hinderance to reuse (if done in an ugly way that mars the original image or if they take away from the re-users contribution to the remix). And if they are such a great idea, why aren't we seeing this more often. There are already lots of scripts out there to automate watermarking of images, and it would be simple to offer these as a service that people could tie into. But is this a good idea?
I have self-interested reasons for asking this question. Within my work on SOL*R I have to advise content authors on how to display either a Creative Commons or BC Commons license in their work. My reply has always been "Hey, they're your rights and it's your content, so if you feel strongly about people respecting these, assert them as often as you like." The funny thing is the issue isn't people wanting to use license tags excessively, its people not wanting to use them at all because they haven't included them up front on a template or the like.
So, is this practice one to encourage? Should we instead use XMP for this (and build apps that automatically just add it in without extra work from the user)? Or leave well enough alone? Feedback (through email, as my overworked butt has still not migrated this to Wordpress as promised) always appreciated. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000808.html http://gong.ust.hk/index.html
During my holidays I received an email from Dr David Rossiter and Gibson Lam from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology inviting me to try out some software they had developed called Gong. I am often hesitant about blogging such invitations and didn't even manage to get around to trying it until today because of the backlog of email etc., from my holiday. But after trying it out I am glad I did.
Free voice recording might not seem like much in the age of Odeo and the like, but this is, to my eye, much more. The Java-based client-server program has been built very much with an eye to teaching languages but looks like it could be useful for anyone wanting to include voice in their online clases. It supports the creation of voice-based message boards and forums, and the client allows users to index their recordings to text, meaning subsequent viewers can see the text 'read' while they hear the message, and jump to specific parts of the message by clicking on that word (for instance on a particularly confusing spelling, as often happens with English). Recorders of messages can also edit the message directly in the client after the fact, easily removing awkward pauses and silences. Additionally, listeners can slow down aqnd speed up the playback of messages on demand.
And if all that isn't enough, it can support synchronous audio chat sessions as well. Did I mention that there is also an existing Moodle module that allows creation of Gong 'boards' directly in Moodle. And that it has an API. Oh, and it's free too (but not 'yet' open source.) Well worth a look for language teachers or for anyone wanting to incorporate voice recording into their online classes for free. - SWL
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000807.html http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=923465
This is an important new paper by William McGeveran and William Fisher from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. It's not exactly earth shattering content for people regularly working on the issue of sharing and reusing digital resources for education, but it is fairly comprehensive (from a US perspective at least) and done by lawyers, the type of document that can potentially have some legitimacy with politicians and other decision makers (and yes, I believe in faeries too!) The Mellon Foundation is to be commended for funding it. I loved their case studies, especially the one that has a media prof cracking DRM controls with freely available tools so as to be able to create a clips reel for his class. That would never happen ;-) - SWL
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