Typedrawing

typedrawingVia the beautiful woman in my life comes Typedrawing.

Allow some pop-ups and have fun, pretty darn funky I reckon!

You can even play back your creative process. About time I learned a bit more Flash I think.

Open source in education – something has got to change

I was really delighted by a few things that cam out of my WebCT & Wiki rants (parts I & II).

First up there were some excellent and insightful comments (including the link to Leigh’s ‘perfect’ reducto LMS), then there was the fact that the co-creator of WebCT (who really needs a blog – one time only free hosting offer from IncSub extended!) as well as the engineer of the ‘WebCT Wiki Integration Toolkit’ left really very reasonable (considering my frothing state) comments and finally there’s posts like Rachel’s (from MMU who have got a seriously cool blog!) make me bring so many things together at once that I end up writing really long, rambling and ultimately paragraph sized sentences far too late at night, like this.

First up considering the WebCT / Wiki thing I guess as long as we’re on the page where”WebCT isn’t assimilating open source, just integrating with it :-)” then that’s not so bad. It could even be a little bit good if we were taking it that one step further where WebCT had a simple to use system for integrating with tools of your choice (please correct me if this is already here and you don’t have to be a powerlinks developer to do this). In other words, if this is WebCT moving towards offering an administrative / content delivery product which spits out multiple streams of data and allows for different levels of authentication on the OSS tools that we want to use, then that’s pretty cool. I don’t want to subvert the backend student admin / digital object management (well, only a bit with the doms :o) but I do want to subvert / make subvertable the teaching and learning components and environment which remains, in Vista or Campus, absolutely horrible.

But having said that Rachel puts forward an interesting contention and asks a very valid question. First up she argues that the OSS reality isn’t particularly efficient or effective:

“We couldn’t do everything we want to do with any of the current OSS offerings and our current staffing levels. Yes, the annual licence is expensive – but so are staffing commitments which would enable us to run Moodle with the same level of features and scalability”

Which is not something I’d necessarily agree with – both in terms of expenses and of using Moodle. Although I host multiple instances of Moodle and although I couldn’t be happier than having an OSS system like this available (as with Sakai) I have a pretty strong suspicion that they are based on flawed models. Also, as I’ll get to, I’m not sure if, to be quite frank, a University should be delighted that their T&L system takes so little work or that you couldn’t replicate that level of scalability with OSS and that if you did really have a look at these systems… I reckon you could chop half the features and walk away quite happy.

But that’s probably another post (or three).

And secondly she asks:

“what have you got to say about my institution’s site licensing of Microsoft products, when there are perfectly good OSS alternatives?”

Probably not more than has frequently been said by Harold Jarche but all the same I’ll have a go.

I contend that our universities, schools and other educational institutions are wasting enormous amounts of money and making huge mistakes using commercial software where open source software could do as good as or better a job.

I’m not arguing for a total ban on proprietary software, not possible (yet) but let’s start by getting rid of MS Office for Open Office, editing our Audio with Audacity, unzipping and more with 7-Zip, FTP-ing with Filezilla, emailing with Thunderbird (we still use paid Eudora… how funny is that :o), drawing with Inkscape, creating pdfs with PDFcreator and more. Heck, roll on over to the OSSWin project to find hundreds of ways that you could save enormous amounts of money.

And to entice teachers with using them, why not take the huge amount you’ll save, divide it in half and give that half to those who’ll take you up on it. Add that to the amount of development, support, feedback and community that that’d add to open source and, well, things would be different.

Let’s put our efforts, belief, time and commitment into products like Moodle, or WordPress MultiUser or any one of the open source online communication platforms out there. True, it might take an extra couple of people, true it might initially not be so earth shatteringly cheap that you feel you can forgo the opportunity of having someone else to blame and all those delightfully located yet content-free conferences. True it is certainly *harder*. But you’re doing a good thing for all concerned.

I *despise* the way education is turning into a cash cow for vendors. We should be spending what little money we have on teachers, genuinely valuable resources and teaching and learning. WebCT, Blackboard etc. can have a role in that but it can’t be at the same cost as it is now and it can’t be as an OS-esque application (we already have that, it’s called the internet).

We have terrible online teaching and learning tools and we’re paying through the nose for them. Something has got to change.

subverted links

Where to put your 28MB Podcast?

Me and a mate were playing around with ourmedia trying to store some 28 Mb podcasts there but there’s a 10Mb limit on uploads and I can’t even get the publisher application to open, yet alone try to edit the settings (I’ve tried it through proxycap too but that’s equally blunt).

I would use IncSub but it’s getting dangerously full at the moment and I don’t want to push it and I would try to upload from home but my DSL upload speed is absolutely dire… it’d take hours.

He emailed it to me using yousendit which is ace but not a hosting solution of course.

Any suggestions or alternative solutions?

Folksonomy as savvy / scurrilous search engine optimisation

Bud Gibson follows up on the tagging / folksonomy discussion that Stephen and him kicked off over here (one of the benefits of subscribe to comments on WordPress I guess!)

In particular Bud points to the impact of tags on search engine results and argues:

“as illustrated by the technorati example, folksonomy tags are more than just tools to add meaning. They in effect act as content aggregation points that can be used by socially entrepreneurial firms like technorati to gain a foothold in web visibility for emerging topics.” [The Community Engine]

This is certainly a fascinating perspective and I as Bud says is more a testament to the brilliance of Technorati et al. than an attack on the malicious use of tags, but as he also argues:

“The question content providers face is whether they want technorati or any other repository to act as an intervening link between them and searchers.”

Which, ironically (possibly), sounds like exactly the kind of question raised frequently by Stephen and others about the use of third party tools.

I think this is an absolutely nail on the head interpretation and lets me see clearly for the first time the real problem I’ve had with folksonomies / tagging etc. since the start. Tagging should not be third party facilitated. Out categories, titles, paragraphs, pictures, audio, sentences and words are tags… forming a folksonomy through the web and we need to work on that. Not on pinging Technorati or anyone else.

subverted links

A recipe for implementing blogs in your organisation or institution

Apologies for the cross posting but the latest blogsavvy post might appeal to is readers as well, it’s a recipe for implementing blogs in your organisation or institution and follows on from quite a bit of my earlier stuff in the area… enjoy:

“When you’re implementing or planning on implementing blogs in your organisation or institution there are a few things that one should always be prepared for and a few steps that will ensure your guests are delighted by your suave, sophisticated and thoughtful presentation. Step inside the blogsavvy kitchen for a quick demonstration of how you might do it for very little indeed. Ready, steady, :o)…” [blogsavvy – blog consultant]

WebCT and Open Source – a rather more reasoned approach

I was in a foul mood the other day when I posted the open source robbery article and totally accept the view that it was, to put it mildly, pretty hostile and not particularly constructive… will try to be moreso this time and explain a bit of my gut reaction.

I think that what Michael has to say about the subject is spot on (as is his funky ‘more’ link, how do ya do that??)… we do need powerful, robust and more-than-likely well supported administrative systems for big institutions and it does seem that if WebCT / Blackboard etc. are good at anything then this is probably it. Am not sure about the operating system though… think we’re taking an evil MS metaphor a bit too far there.

What Scott says is also totally valid, there is definitely a move towards interoperability here, well, at least towards a ‘semblance’ of interoperability, but I guess that my concern is that there’s a lot of lip-service there and that really these companies don’t want to, don’t intend to and aren’t really up for becoming interoperable in any sense.

And in that sense I quote the WebCT rep who commented on that post (good on him for doing so BTW… I’m impressed) who said:

“…Our customers can also use the SDK to integrate with either their homegrown applications or potentially open source applications that may be used on campus.

We have created a site called the Vista DevNet, where licensed customers have access to resources, forums, how-tos, etc. all related to the use of the SDK. A key component of DevNet is a contributions area where institutions can share the code that they have developed, so that others can either use it or build upon it.

We are not integrating open source applications into WebCT – for example, the phpWiki integration allows instructors to easily link from Vista to the wiki application and provides some workflow aids. The two products still run on their respective servers, and no phpWiki code is incorporated into Vista….”

[To which I might ask, what exactly is the ‘WebCT Wiki Integration Toolkit 0.1’ then, just out of interest? Can I hack phpwiki to fit my needs in this context? What’s the difference between an independent phpWiki installation and this? How much are you selling it for? And are you offering the authentication / workflow systems in an open sense so I can, for example, integrate them with Elgg, or WordPress or any other tools I choose?]

Here are my issues:

These companies are in a very competitive and very rewarding market. They have big investors or are publicly listed and, let’s face it, are responsible to make as much as they can.

They also have a stranglehold over this market, moreorless… especially in Australia. And they don’t want to lose it. This is based largely in them providing the ‘One Solution’ product and tying it in with other tools which they have lucrative commercial relationships with. They will do anything to maintain this model and their ‘duopoly’. They’re compelled to by the market.

I, however, don’t believe that education should be so much for sale (that there should be so much money able to be made out of it) or that it is in education’s interest to have such dominating market leaders. Also, I am absolutely committed to the vision of online education becoming a sustainable and multi-faceted environment, as affordable and accessible so that any teacher can use it and as varied and subvertable as any classroom or progressive curriculum.

And to me the appropriation of the tools that will help us achieve this by the WebCTs of this world through stuff like the ‘WebCT Wiki Integration Toolkit 0.1’ is bad news. It’s the same approach that gets people to shop at K-Mart for everything even though they can get a much greater range, quality and price just down the road… and they are not doing it out of a philanthropic to help us teach and learn online better. They’re doing it to lock in the $s.

Granted it’s open source, they can do pretty much what they want with it, that’s their right. But it makes my stomach turn to think of what could be and what might be if this ‘integration’ concept picks up like Scott and others are observing.

New version of IncSub Blogs

I wish people would stop knocking WPMU for ‘security flaws’ which don’t exist and ‘bugs’ which also, increasingly so, don’t exist.

As it happens it’s purring along nicely and as a result incsub blogs has now been upgraded too!

Oh, and check this out… you can now, very very simply, pop a little bit ‘o code wherever you want and invite your visitors / readers / whoever to WP up their life (latest version 1.5.1 of course)

For example:

Get a free IncSub Blog:

Blog ID:
(no spaces or punctuation)

Title:

Your Email:

Kickstarting courses through OPML

Great to see some of the Melbourne bloggers engaging with the huge potential of opml, rss and all in education, in particular Cam quotes Michael:

“First day in the class students are provided an OPML file that provides the details for the lecturers for the semester, they will blog and provide course notes, presentations, thoughts and opinions via their blog, the students will receive content automatically via their RSS reader. At the end of each lecture the podcast is also sent out using the same process. [Michael Specht]”

…and asks: “Is anyone aware of this application of OPML already happening?”

Um, yes, try searching for ‘edublog’ :o) Seriously though there’s a huge amount about the use of OPML, blogs in teaching and learning and more, it’s moreorless what I’ve been writing about for the last three years.

For the uninitiated a quick stroll through the OLDaily archive, a peek at some of the Blogtalk Downunder papers to do with education and blogging and maybe a coffee with me in Fairfield and you’ll be straight :D

What’s most interesting though is the question ‘Why the bloody hell isn’t this being done left, right centre and obviously in our Universities already?’… ahem.