http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000827.html

http://community.uaf.edu/~cde/wiki/SSW

I am sitting in a session at the WCET 2006 conference in Portland listening to a really fabulous presentation by Chris Lott and Terry Anderson, amongst others. Chris is presenting with the above wiki, and offered up this tagcloud of affordences for education by social software as a new rubric to organize examples of social software use. Have a good example, add it in, we're live right now (1:42 PM Friday November 3). - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000830.html

http://openomystatus.blogspot.com/

The link above is just an example, but doesn't this one seem obvious to anyone else? Blogs to inform your users about a server/services status - hosted SOMEWHERE ELSE if you've got a clue. Yet, I still get these interminable emails about planned server outtages, upgrades, etc., and NO communication after unplanned outtages actually do happen. I guess there's no faith that the RSS feed would get read (and lots more, perhaps misplaced, faith that the spam-like emails will). - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000829.html

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_10/duguid/

So at least 5 weeks ago, First Monday publishes this article by the co-author of The Social Life of Information, Paul Duguid, that asks questions about the oft-asserted transferability of "laws of quality" from open source software projects to the peer production of 'knowledge' in sites like Wikipedia, and literally almost no one replies (well at least one well read blogger did)?

Maybe everyone just read this already and went on with their business. But this smells like the fart in the crowded room of social software acolytes that nobody wants to acknowledge (jeez, somebody crack the window already!) Duguid can easily be faulted, as he does himself, for the anecdotal examples, but his article doesn't read like one from the establishment "enemy" camp trying to argue for the quality of existing authorities, but instead a call for a thoughtful examination of some assumptions that enthusiasts of the peer production of knowledge (and I count myself as one) continue to make but which, if questioned, might actually improve these processes. Not that the examples he cites, like Wikipedia, aren't always trying to grapple with these issues. Still, the silence is deafening. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000828.html

So last Friday I gave a talk at the WCET conference titled "The Future CMS." A flash version (13Mb) with both audio and slides is available, but if you'd prefer you can just grab the slides on their own (7Mb) (if you view them in 'Notes' mode you can pretty well see the full text of the talk.) Be warned, I have a hard time taking myself seriously as a prognosticator (as likely will you by the end of the presentation.)

A little context; the crowd at this conference is mostly policy and admin folks - very few techies and faculty in the crowd. While there were certainly more people who had heard of the social software/Web 2.0 explosion than in previous years, it's still a crowd that I hope finds value out of this kind of presentation. This year was notable for the marked increase in both Web 2.0/e-learninig 2.0 topics and blog-savvy presenters. I had the pleasure of co-presenting with Jaren Stein and John Krutsch, the two lads responsible for the recently announced Moodle OCW module. In addition, I got to hang out and see present both Terry Anderson and Chris Lott, and finally meet the indomitable patent battlers Al Essa and Barry Dahl. Rather than being one of the self-congratulatory post-conference blog posts Terry mentioned that he hates, I actually mention all of these folks, as well as the number of blog and wiki-savy attendees in the audience, as proof of the every growing awareness and practice; at this conference I I have seen through the last 3 years the topics and practices of Web 2.0/elearning 2.0 slowly moving into what I'd consider the 'early adopters' and even the start of the 'early majority.' - 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/000831.html

http://www.blackperl.com/javascript/greasemonkey/ft/

So after about the 100th time of trying to tag a site in del.icio.us that I'd already tagged before (early onset alzheimer's?!? More likely the effects of my misspent youth), I thought to myself "Someone has got to have already built something that queries del.icio.us in the background and lets you know if you've already tagged a page." And sure enough, someone had, using Greasemonkey.

This script (great name!) displays a small piece of text on the screen with the tags you used (and optionally, how many other folks have tagged it to) on any page you visit that is already in your del.icio.us links and then gently fades away (the fade time can be configured). I use the del.icio.us extension for Firefox already, and this would seem like a natural addition they could build into it, but until then, this script does exactly what I want. - 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/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/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/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/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/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/000835.html

http://www.dlcms.ethz.ch/

Ahhhh, love those Google searches. Whilst searching (and still seeking) information about the standards compliance of WebCT CE 6 content exports, I stumbled across this find, the dynamic Learning Content Management System. Built as an extension of the open source CMS called Silva, dLCMS bills itself as a "content management system for web based learning materials" built on top of Zope and released under a BSD license. It stores resources in XML format and has created packages which have been successfully imported into OLAT, ILIAS, Moodle and WebCT. It looks to have been produced by ETH Zurich (and possibly on soft money that's now run out) but possibly worth a look. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000836.html

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~cczjrt/Editor/

Wow, I feel really torn about posting about this at all. When I stumbled across this today I was quite excited; while the promise of content interoperability has been there for quite a while now, the availability of easy to use tools for producing such content outside of the CMS delivery environments has been scarce. So any time I see a tool like this I am anxious to check it out. more...

http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000837.html

"All men are caught in a network of inescapable mutuality."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000838.html

Now while in parts of Canada this image would seem commonplace, not so much in Victoria, B.C. where I live. If we get snow 1 day a year we're usually lucky.

Well Sunday the weather conspired to bring us well over a foot of snow, which fairly paralyzed the city. Lucky for me I work at home; not so lucky when the power goes out, and with it the internet connection.

So it was with a bit of trepedation that I got up at 4:30am this morning to catch a flight to Cranbrook to visit some colleagues at the College of the Rockies. If the streets around my neighborhood were any indication, the drive to the airport was going to be treacherous.

But low and behold, the road cleared when I got to the highway, and I made it to the airport and then on to Vancouver to catch my connecting flight. Only to be thwarted by Air Canada, the bane of all Canadian travellers. Apparently no one told Air Canada that the temperature on the West Coast does occassionally drop below 0 Celsius, and so I am stuck on the end of an expensive Telus wifi connection (but at least a wifi connection, hallelujah!) with the Airport Lounge Blues (I now know the title for DJ Nessman's next recording!) - SWL

<p><span class="blog_post_source">http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000839.html</span> <p><a title="StatCounter" href="http://www.statcounter.com/">http://www.statcounter.com/"></a></p><br /> <br /> <p>As Stephen <a href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=36380">pointed out</a>, a little while ago this blog began launching annoying pop-up windows on visitors' browsers. Unbeknowst to me, the <a href="http://www.webstats4u.com">free stats program that I had used</a> had a little clause in its user agreement that stated at any time it could choose to use the tracking image and code embedded in your page to launch advertising. Whoa. Not nice. As soon as I realized what was going on, I ditched the tracking code and I believe the problem resolved.</p><br /> <br /> <p>So the downside of that (on top of tarnishing my reputation with annoying pop-up ads) is loosing a few years of stats, but the upside was finding a better solution. I like the web-based model, a simple program that I can check once in a while online and not have to worry about web log analysis. So off I went in search.</p><br /> <br /> <p>I knew a lot of people I read used <a href="http://www.sitemeter.com/">Sitemeter</a> so I quickly installed it. It worked fine, but the major drawback for me was that the free version did not aggregate the referrer stats, which is for me a primary reason for looking at these numbers in the first place. </p><br /> <br /> <p>I had been running <a href="https://www.google.com/analytics/">Google Analytics</a> for some time too in the background, mostly to get a feel for how it worked and if it was useful on other sites I deal with, so it didn't require me to do anything other than see if the reports it produced were to my liking. I can see how Google Analytics could be really useful if you are using Adwords and are trying to analyze and improve how you drive traffic to your site, but I found the reports overkill for what I was wanting. So off to other options.</p><br /> <br /> <p>Which led me finally to <a href="http://www.statcounter.com/">StatCounter</a> which is what I've settled on. Why? Well, the tracking code is invisible. It does a good job of giving me one click access to aggregated referrer data and gives the option of showing these by URL or Title. And it gives you some <a href="http://my7.statcounter.com/project/standard/path.php?project_id=20">"Path" data</a>. Nice. But the icing on the cake was its <a href="http://my7.statcounter.com/project/standard/visitor_map.php?projec">Recent Visitor map</a>. Sure, this looks at first like the kind of thing you get with <a href="http://www.gvisit.com/map.php?sid=75d6725ecdb44374e655fdccb27">GVisit</a>, but click on any of the map pointers and you realize that it is actually mashing up the IP geolocation data with the referrer info, session length and search term data. Sweet!</p><br /> <br /> <p>So lots of the function of these free web trackers can be relegated to a service like Technorati, and I know that is how some bloggers get some of this data. What's interesting to me, though, is how little I've seen written on the use of web stats to build your social network. I see lots of people introducing blogging to newbies, but I also see lots of puzzlement on those newcomers faces about why blogging is essentially a social process, and how they can become embedded in existing networks. To me, web trackers (and services like Technorati) represent one side of the equation - how to find out who is reading you and how people are finding you. The other side seems obvious, and yet many fail to grasp - point to others, as they are looking at their referrer logs too! While some might look on this as evidence of the essential vanity of bloggers, I'd argue that it is instead a critical aspect to becoming a good (read "connected" or "social") blogger and an emerging online 'social' skill. </p><br /> <br /> <p>So please, someone, tell me if I ever start popping up annoying ads on your browser again. I promise, this is something I would never do intentionally! Ick! Luckily, it seems like it's as <a href="http://www.statcounter.com/why_is_it_free.html">anathema to StatCounter's creator</a> as it is to me. - <em>SWL</em> </p>

http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000827.html

http://community.uaf.edu/~cde/wiki/SSW

I am sitting in a session at the WCET 2006 conference in Portland listening to a really fabulous presentation by Chris Lott and Terry Anderson, amongst others. Chris is presenting with the above wiki, and offered up this tagcloud of affordences for education by social software as a new rubric to organize examples of social software use. Have a good example, add it in, we're live right now (1:42 PM Friday November 3). - SWL