http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/06/04/feed-resyndication

http://www.elearningapplicationbuilder.com/blog/

So this story will be familiar to most bloggers who have been around for awhille; like a good narcissist, you check out your referrer logs and notice a new site bring people to your blog, but when you click on it you discover someone basically syndicating your feed, holus bolus, with no attribution (and no display of the original license), to all extents, as their own.

That was the case when I checked out the above site. What was worse, on the company’s home page (no google juice for you!) they link to this page as “The Official Blog.” Well, that’s, ummm, nice I guess, good to be know as ‘official’ in someone’s books.

So I wrote them this letter:

Hi, I am the owner and author of EdTechPost (http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/).

I noticed that you are syndicating my feed at http://www.elearningapplicationbuilder.com/blog/. While I do publish under a Creative Commons license (specifically http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/legalcode) I feel that your republishing of my feed is infringing on both the spirit and the letter of this license. Specifically, in terms of the letter of the CC license, your use of my feed honours neither the attribution clause (4c) nor the need to re-display the original license under which it was created (clause 4a). In addition, linking to your syndication page of my content under the text “The Official Blog” off of your company’s home page (http://www.elearningapplicationbuilder.com) may violate the non-commercial aspect of the license, and is also misleading in terms of the attribution of the content.

I would appreciate your prompt attention in rectifying these misuses of my content. Please address these concerns by either displaying the proper attribution and license or else not syndicating my blog feed in this manner anymore. I would appreciate a reply to this email indicating what course of action you choose.

I am glad that you find EdTechPost of interest and worthy of syndication on your site for your readers, and by making these changes you may continue to do so.

Sincerely, Scott Leslie”

Part of me really hates doing this, and truly, it’s not about any great loss of commercial potential on my part. This is at least the 20th or so time I have come across someone syndicating my feed on their pages. I have only sent off one other letter before, again in a case where it felt like the person was badly mis-interpreting the freedoms provided for in the CC license I use.

But what about you? Have you had your blog feed re-syndicated in ways you weren’t happy with? Is this an appropriate reaction or just me over-reacting? Is this just par for the course when you publish an RSS feed? Strange words indeed coming from a pirate like me, I know. - SWL

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Edtechpost/~3/124057666/

http://www.elearningapplicationbuilder.com/blog/

So this story will be familiar to most bloggers who have been around for awhille; like a good narcissist, you check out your referrer logs and notice a new site bring people to your blog, but when you click on it you discover someone basically syndicating your feed, holus bolus, with no attribution (and no display of the original license), to all extents, as their own.

That was the case when I checked out the above site. What was worse, on the company’s home page (no google juice for you!) they link to this page as “The Official Blog.” Well, that’s, ummm, nice I guess, good to be know as ‘official’ in someone’s books.

So I wrote them this letter:

Hi, I am the owner and author of EdTechPost (http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/).

I noticed that you are syndicating my feed at http://www.elearningapplicationbuilder.com/blog/. While I do publish under a Creative Commons license (specifically http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/legalcode) I feel that your republishing of my feed is infringing on both the spirit and the letter of this license. Specifically, in terms of the letter of the CC license, your use of my feed honours neither the attribution clause (4c) nor the need to re-display the original license under which it was created (clause 4a). In addition, linking to your syndication page of my content under the text “The Official Blog” off of your company’s home page (http://www.elearningapplicationbuilder.com) may violate the non-commercial aspect of the license, and is also misleading in terms of the attribution of the content.

I would appreciate your prompt attention in rectifying these misuses of my content. Please address these concerns by either displaying the proper attribution and license or else not syndicating my blog feed in this manner anymore. I would appreciate a reply to this email indicating what course of action you choose.

I am glad that you find EdTechPost of interest and worthy of syndication on your site for your readers, and by making these changes you may continue to do so.

Sincerely, Scott Leslie”

Part of me really hates doing this, and truly, it’s not about any great loss of commercial potential on my part. This is at least the 20th or so time I have come across someone syndicating my feed on their pages. I have only sent off one other letter before, again in a case where it felt like the person was badly mis-interpreting the freedoms provided for in the CC license I use.

But what about you? Have you had your blog feed re-syndicated in ways you weren’t happy with? Is this an appropriate reaction or just me over-reacting? Is this just par for the course when you publish an RSS feed? Strange words indeed coming from a pirate like me, I know. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/06/11/2007-opdf-innovati

http://www.bccampus.ca/EducatorServices/CourseDevelopment/

OPDF/CallForProposals.htm

So while this may be of interest mostly to local readers, I thought I’d post on it because I think there’s a few things we are doing in this round that may be of wider interest.

This is the 5th round of BC’s Online Program Development Fund (OPDF), a province-wide fund that BCcampus (my employers) administer on behalf of the provincial Ministry of Advanced Education.

This year’s $750K call is notable, I think, first off for it’s inclusion of “Co-created Content” as one of the funding categories. This is an effort to acknowledge this phenomenom and support the co-creation of learning resources by students and faculty under a license that seeks to offer these for successive groups of students to build on.

The second thing possibly of more general interest is a new inclusion which asks the proponents to describe their strategy for seeking out existing freely reusable learning resources that could be leveraged in their project. This is an effort to promote one of the values underlying the fund, that good, free content should be reused where appropriate. The call does not dictate that existing content must be reused, but instead simply asks proponents what efforts they have made in this direction. It also does not stipulate where this content might come from - sure, we’d love people to look in SOL*R for suitable reusable content, but we hope they’ll bring in pieces from the thousands of other places you can find free learninng resources online.

Finally, another small innovation in the call is around how to promote interoperability practices. Like it or not, the majority of the content that’s been produced through past funds has been done in one of the course management systems supported in our province (WebCT 4, 6 and Vista, Blackboard, Desire2Learn and Moodle and a few home-grown ones are the current crop). While it is seductive to think one could simply specify a “standard” for content, this is for me problematic because a) it would be a top down approach that would likely not reflect the actual practices in the province and b) almost certainly wouldn’t simply “just work” anyways because of the uneven support across the CMS for even basic specs like Content Packaging. Instead, this call is an attempt to get people to at least factor the issue into their planning and describe how they plan to address it. From my perspective there is not ONE way to get content to work across these systems, nor does it have to even be in any of these systems at all. What it does need to be is as useful as possible to other faculty in the province (and ideally out of it too, but the funds’ mandate is specifically to foster content development in the province) regardless of the choices they make on their own, and the call simply asks people to describe their strategy to achieve this.

Blogging about “official” work stuff always makes me uncomfortable - not only have I been known to cock up before, it’s not an “official” part of my job. As is always the case, the words here represent my personal views and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer. If you want to know more about the OPDF, then read the call directly, don’t just take my word on it! - SWL

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Edtechpost/~3/124057665/

http://www.bccampus.ca/EducatorServices/CourseDevelopment/

OPDF/CallForProposals.htm

So while this may be of interest mostly to local readers, I thought I’d post on it because I think there’s a few things we are doing in this round that may be of wider interest.

This is the 5th round of BC’s Online Program Development Fund (OPDF), a province-wide fund that BCcampus (my employers) administer on behalf of the provincial Ministry of Advanced Education.

This year’s $750K call is notable, I think, first off for it’s inclusion of “Co-created Content” as one of the funding categories. This is an effort to acknowledge this phenomenom and support the co-creation of learning resources by students and faculty under a license that seeks to offer these for successive groups of students to build on.

The second thing possibly of more general interest is a new inclusion which asks the proponents to describe their strategy for seeking out existing freely reusable learning resources that could be leveraged in their project. This is an effort to promote one of the values underlying the fund, that good, free content should be reused where appropriate. The call does not dictate that existing content must be reused, but instead simply asks proponents what efforts they have made in this direction. It also does not stipulate where this content might come from - sure, we’d love people to look in SOL*R for suitable reusable content, but we hope they’ll bring in pieces from the thousands of other places you can find free learninng resources online.

Finally, another small innovation in the call is around how to promote interoperability practices. Like it or not, the majority of the content that’s been produced through past funds has been done in one of the course management systems supported in our province (WebCT 4, 6 and Vista, Blackboard, Desire2Learn and Moodle and a few home-grown ones are the current crop). While it is seductive to think one could simply specify a “standard” for content, this is for me problematic because a) it would be a top down approach that would likely not reflect the actual practices in the province and b) almost certainly wouldn’t simply “just work” anyways because of the uneven support across the CMS for even basic specs like Content Packaging. Instead, this call is an attempt to get people to at least factor the issue into their planning and describe how they plan to address it. From my perspective there is not ONE way to get content to work across these systems, nor does it have to even be in any of these systems at all. What it does need to be is as useful as possible to other faculty in the province (and ideally out of it too, but the funds’ mandate is specifically to foster content development in the province) regardless of the choices they make on their own, and the call simply asks people to describe their strategy to achieve this.

Blogging about “official” work stuff always makes me uncomfortable - not only have I been known to cock up before, it’s not an “official” part of my job. As is always the case, the words here represent my personal views and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer. If you want to know more about the OPDF, then read the call directly, don’t just take my word on it! - SWL

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Edtechpost/~3/125129660/

http://connect.educause.edu/library/abstract/BetwixtandBetweenThe/44446

So I am still waiting to hear the results of Brian’s foray into the lion’s den at IT4BC, but that’s only one of a number of things that have had me thinking on a perennial topic of mine, how to engender innovation in higher ed, specifically with conservative IT departments, or to frame it differently, how to improve my management ‘kung fu’ and make change happen within the political landscape on a typical campus.

Which is why I found this presentation by Matthew Braaten of Lander University on The Emerging and Necessary Role of the IT Liaison so interesting. The sections I found particularly helpful were the discussion of the “political framing” of organizations (”scarce resources and enduring differences make conflict central to organizational dynamics“) and the technique for mapping the political terrain. Even if the maps seem too simplistic to you, the very act of considering these dynamics before you engage strikes me as another step towards cultivating awareness and intent, which is to say, better kung fu!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Edtechpost/~3/127117272/

http://www.sitmo.com/latex/

Another sweet little hack to throw into your small pieces loosely joined toolkit - this little widget (which you can add to any webpage) allows users to create LaTeX math equations that they can either paste into any LaTeX enabled app or else use the image file that it also helpfully generates. While there are more and more editors that support math equations, the ability to use a widget like this anywhere means this needn’t become a “blocker” requirement that ends up deciding the game in favour of a monolithic system simply because of it’s editor. - SWL

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Edtechpost/~3/127121135/

You know the kind I mean…sat down at my computer this morning and not only is the new server the IT folks are supposed to deliver still not working properly, but the SOL*R server was down, AND EdTechPost had inexplicably blown up. And my first hour of trying to fix things seemed to only make matters worse.

I left IT because I got frustrated spending so much time on things which, while they were necessary to make the systems work, felt like they added so little actual value to people’s lives, my own included. Seems like I cannot get away from it though.

If you work someplace where the servers don’t inexplicably go down all the time and where you don’t have to wait 6 weeks for someone to edit a configuration file for you, go give someone in your IT staff a hug. If you have this AND they actually allow you do what you want to do, go buy them a case of beer. And if they let you do all this AND continually delight you by actually improving the service, and smile at the same time, then please, please, call me and offer me a job I’ll tweak widgets and find the missing semi-colon when I know the result is something that adds value. But so much fiddling to just get simple infrastructural issues solved - lord, give me strength! - SWL