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By host on Monday, 15 December 2008
From time-to-time we have the requirement that we need to change all of the permissions on all of our DNN pages. This can be a real pain, going through each page, and changing the permissions one by one.
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| By host on Monday, 15 December 2008
So how do you write a Blog article?A blog article for the most part is a fact-based article(or recount) that aims to provide the reader information. When writing a blog article, you must aim to answer the questions: What? Who? When? Where? How? - and possibly, Why?
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| By host on Thursday, 4 December 2008
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.
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| By host on Friday, 12 September 2008
Many websites have public pages they'd rather not see in web search results, e.g., coupons, expired offers, style sheets and pages not fully functional. Private data should always require login/password authentication, but any public page could be read by a search bot and added to an index. You can keep pages hidden from major search engines using a simple text file named robots.txt. You can see any site's robots.txt (if it exists) by typing the web domain address plus /robots.txt. For instance http://www.google.com/robots.txt lists content directories that Google wants to exclude from search results. Do you have public pages you don't want broadcast by the bi
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| By host on Friday, 5 September 2008
Many companies are using the internet for marketing, lead generation and client fulfillment purposes. Increasing your website's visibility to potential customers can therefore be quite important. Certain SEO improvements are easily accomplished and you can raise your website's visibility by applying search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the adjustment of web page content so that pages are ranked higher in results at web search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Most people consider organic (non-paid) search results as more reliable than advertised listings. Hence, businesses will benefit when their websites have been optimized for search engine listing. Here are a few simple rules: |
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[video] The History of the Internet
Melih Bilgil erzählt im Rahmen seiner Diplomarbeit die Geschichte des Internet - sehr gelungen wie ich finde:“History of the internet” is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to file-sharing, from arpanet to internet.
The history is told with help of the PICOL icons, which are also a part of my diploma.(via Basic Thinking)<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310492826" />
Serialised OpenLearn Daily RSS Feeds via WordPress
Regular readers will know that I’ve been posting about daily - or serialised - RSS feeds for several years now, so here’s a quick recap of what serialised feeds actually are, and then a bit of news about my latest attempt at OpenLearn Daily feeds.
If you’re reading this via an RSS feed, then I’m assuming [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310238364" />
List of Top Webdesigns 2008
Dass das Design auch bei e-Learning Angeboten eine große Rolle spielt, ist so denk ich zumindest ein offenes Geheimnis. Demnach schaue ich mir auch immer wieder gerne Webseiten von Topdesigner an um zu sehen, was möglich ist.
Hier eine sehr schöne Liste der “The 10 Prettiest Web Designs of 2008″ und gleich auch noch mein Lieblingsbild:<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310492827" />
2008 Access Statistics
<p>Late December, 2007, I set up an access log function. And then forgot about it. It is now 55 million lines long and more than 500 megabytes. I have to delete it. But not before parsing it to find out what people were reading last year. <i>Note</i> that this list under-reports hits on posts, because most reads from OLDaily are directly to the article in question, and not via the website.</p>
<p>Top 10 Articles</p><p><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/56">How to Create an RSS Feed With Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer</a> (46420) <br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/33034">An Introduction to Connective Knowledge</a> (20777) <br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/41750/">Resource Profiles</a> (12995) <br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/31741">E-Learning 2.0</a> (9973) <br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/33401">Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources</a> (9533) <br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/4">Principles for Evaluating Websites</a> (8168) <br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/38502">Things You Really Need to Learn</a> (7860) <br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/38526">How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly</a> (7567) <br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/2">How To Be Heard</a> (6954) <br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44261">Seven Habits of Highly Connected People</a> (5223) <br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/46">The Semantic Social Network</a> (5195) <br></p><p>Top 20 Posts</p><p><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44422">The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds</a> (32145) Unattributed, Association of Virtual Worlds<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/45401">Cuil</a> (17035) Various Authors, Website<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/45851">Google Chrome</a> (10474) Scott McLeod, Google<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44760">Introducing Edupunk</a> (8749) Leslie Madsen Brooks, BlogHer<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/47241">2009 Predictions</a> (8472) Raj Boora, EDITing in the Dark<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44179">Download YouTube Videos As MP4 Files</a> (4396) Ionut Alex Chitu, Google Operating System<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/42665">Stockhouse</a> (4155) Jennifer Griffin, Website<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/42733">Travian</a> (2757) Various Authors, Website<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44820">SeeqPod</a> (2695) Various Authors, Website<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44591">Creepy Treehouse</a> (2126) Barbara Fister, ACRLog<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/45687">Should Teachers Adjust Their Teaching to Individual Students' Learning Styles?</a> (2022) eduwonkette, Weblog<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/35238">Blackboard Awarded Patent on e-Learning Technology</a> (2017) Press Release, Blackboard<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44861">Robert F. Kennedy</a> (1811) Various Authors, Wikipedia<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/39339">Vixy</a> (1786) Various Authors, Farside Inc.<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44541">Human History Is Additive NOT Subtractive!</a> (1773) Wayne Hodgins, Off Course-On Target<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/42727">EduSpaces Shutting Down</a> (1643) Unattributed, EduSpaces<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44682">gRSShopper</a> (1643) Stephen Downes, gRSShopper<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/45542">2008 Beijing Olympics</a> (1581) Various Athletes, Olympics<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/41187">Professor Pans 'Learning Style' Teaching Method</a> (1502) Julie Henry, The Telegraph<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44836">Wikipedia & Edupunk</a> (1502) Dave Warlick, 2 cents worth<br><a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/post/44709">Quick Quiz: What New Web Tool Can You Use and Get an ASUS?</a> (1465) Alan Levine, CogDogBlog<br></p><p>Total: 5568035 posts read </p> </a>, , January 5, 2009 [Tags: <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=90" rel="tag">Google</a>, <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=213" rel="tag">RSS</a>, <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=198" rel="tag">E-Learning 2.0</a>, <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=202" rel="tag">YouTube</a>, <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=184" rel="tag">China</a>, <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=135" rel="tag">Blackboard Inc.</a>, <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=201" rel="tag">Video</a>, <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=178" rel="tag">Wikipedia</a>, <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=2540" rel="tag">Google Chrome</a>] [<a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=47334">Comment</a>]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309776483" />
Writing Diagrams
One of the reasons I don’t tend to use many diagrams in the OUseful.info blog is that I’ve always been mindful that the diagrams I do draw rarely turn out how I wanted them to (the process of converting a mind’s eye vision to a well executed drawing always fails somewhere along the line, I [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310238365" />
New Year, New Job? OU Vacancies Round-Up
Given that OUseful.Info is a personal - rather than a corporate - blog, you may be forgiven for wondering why I post round-ups of OU job ads every so often. The answer is simple - I look at the OU jobs listings (via a public RSS feed) to find out about what projects are actually [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310238366" />
[video] Werbung - Heineken
Auch wenn ich kein Biertrinker bin, die Werbung ist aber gut:(via Werbeblogger)<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310492828" />
What not to build
I met with an individual today who is creating a virtual world for young teens. The project is conceived as serving a niche market. Of course, we all feel our ideas are unique or our particular circumstance is different from others. I left the meeting with a sense of “why are people still building these [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309451779" />
Links for 2009-01-03 [del.icio.us]
<ul>
<li><a href="http://dev.netvibes.com/blog/2008/12/12/uwa-now-supports-the-opensocial-api/">Netvibes Developers blog " Blog Archive " UWA now supports the OpenSocial API</a><br/>
One for the to do list - play with Open Social in a Netvibes context...</li>
<li><a href="http://www.warkensoft.com/products/amazonfeed-wordpress-plugin/">WarkenSoft Productions " AmazonFeed WordPress Plugin</a><br/>
Wordpress plugin that automatically adds 1..N items from Amazon (e.g. books) (based on Wordpress post tags or categories) to each post. What's more interesting is how this plugin provides a recipe for using any web service that can be usefully called with a tag/category key :-)</li>
</ul><img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310238367" />
[videos] Wie funktioniert Geld?
Auf YouTube bin ich auf eine interessante Videoserie gestoßen: Wie funktioniert Geld oder wie übernimmt man einen Planeten?
Auf eine etwas eigentümliche Art werden hier schön die wesentlichen Dinge des Finanzwesens erklärt:Teil
Teil
Teil<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310492829" />
Tinkering With Time
A few weeks ago now, I was looking for a context within which I could have a play with the deprecated BBC Web API. Now this isn’t the most useful of APIs, as far as I’m concerned, because rather than speaking in the language of iPLayer programme identifiers it users a different set of programme [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310238368" />
Internet überholt Zeitung
Ein bemerkenswertes Resultat liefert eine Umfrage von Pew research: Das Internet überholt erstmals die Zeitung beim Lesen von nationalen und internationalen Nachrichten. Darüberhinaus liegen bei den unter 30-jährigen TV und Internet gleichauf.
Hier der gesamte Artikel.(via Andys Black Hole)<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310492830" />
Great Way to Start the New Year: Set Up a Personal Board of Directors
An intriguing idea: "Do you have a personal board of directors? I don't mean a traditional corporate board, nor do I mean an informal board of business advisors. I mean a personal board of directors composed of seven people you deeply respect and would not want to let down. A group like a set of tribal elders that you turn to for guidance at times of ethical dilemma, life transitions, and difficult choices, people who embody the core values and standards you aspire to live up to." Pamela Slim</a>, Escape From Cubicle Nation, January 2, 2009 [Tags: none] [<a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com/get_a_life_blog/2009/01/great-way-to-st.html">Link</a>] [<a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=47327">Comment</a>]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309776484" />
Year of the Cloud
George Siemens puts his stake into the prognostication arena with this post on 'the year of the cloud' - cloud computing, to be precise. He decides to embrace the cloud to answer some questions: "How will my communication and information processing habits change when I don't need to confine myself to a particular computer? What types of software do I need when I don't want to be tied to a particular laptop?" <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2009/01/02/what-will-change-everything/">The Edge, meanwhile, asks</a>, "What will change everything?" You mean global warming and economic collapse aren't enough? And <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.mcgeesmusings.net/2009/01/02/simple-competence-as-an-overarching-theme-for-2009/">Jim McGee</a> looks at simple competence as a theme for 2009. And <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://ouseful.wordpress.com/2009/01/02/all-set-for-a-year-of-internet-appliances/">Tony Hirst</a> looks at internet appliances. George Siemens</a>, learnspace, January 2, 2009 [Tags: <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=189" rel="tag">Connectivism</a>, <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=108" rel="tag">Portable Computers</a>] [<a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2009/01/02/year-of-the-cloud/">Link</a>] [<a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=47325">Comment</a>]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309776485" />
The U.S. Air Force: Moving Full Scale Into Social Media
This post is worth visiting for the blog posting flow chart (<a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://blogoehlert.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d01069e2010536a38ec1970b-popup">see here</a> for the big version). Mark Oehlert</a>, e-Clippings, January 2, 2009 [Tags: <a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=153" rel="tag">Web Logs</a>] [<a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://blogoehlert.typepad.com/eclippings/2009/01/the-us-air-force-moving-full-scale-into-social-media.html">Link</a>] [<a style="color: #0fad0f; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=47324">Comment</a>]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309776486" />
Year of the cloud
Cloud computing has been a common, but somewhat subdued, topic on technology sites. The cloud metaphor is appealing, though what it exactly means is still somewhat unsettled. In a technological sense, cloud computing refers to a service-view of computing, where technical details are largely hidden from end users. Which means, it is driven by financial [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309451780" />
What will change everything?
Every year, The Edge asks prominent individuals a big question. This year, with the humble introduction of “New tools equal new perceptions. Through science we create technology and in using our new tools we recreate ourselves” (sounds like McLuhan’s “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us”), The [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309451781" />
Top 10 future tools
Jane Hart has served the elearning field well this year, taking a Techcrunch role for learning technologies. In her recent post, she turns her attention from looking at the most popular tools today and focuses on what she feels will be the top tools of 2009. Most of the tools listed assume traditional desktop/laptop access [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309451782" />
This thing called depth
End of the year/start of the new year reflections always seem to centre on meaning and depth. We desire to eliminate meaningless and shallow pursuits in favor of more substantial ones. John Connell asks how to best move to greater depth: “Do we need the bloggers’ equivalent of the Slow Movement? Authentic blogging? Critical blogging? [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309451783" />
Twitter, Networks, and “following” people
The popularity of Facebook, Twitter, and other social software has resulted in a popularization of network terminology. How networks work and how information flows is understood experientially by anyone who has used the software. As a result, the networking concepts long explored by sociologists and mathematicians are now being explored by Twitter users: How am [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309451784" />
All Set for a Year of Internet Appliances?
Towards the end of last year, my better half rediscovered the joys of radio… Around the same time, James Cridland wrote a post extolling the virtues of the Pure Evoke Flow wifi radio (Pure Evoke Flow - what it means for radio, or see this video walkthrough), so that was that Christmas present sorted…
As JC [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310238369" />
Copyright Puzzler Part Two
Let’s make the CC By-NC-SA versus First Sale battle more specific.
Jamie Boyle’s new book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind is licensed CC By-NC-SA and is available for purchase from Amazon. If I purchase a copy of the book from Amazon - in other words, if I come to legally own a [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=308378688" />
Die 10 besten viralen Werbe-Spots 2008
Man findet in der Blogosphäre zuhauf irgendwelche “Best-Of-2008″ Listen, eine auf die ich aber verweisen möchste, ist jene der besten 10 viralen Werbespots 2008.
Ein Video daraus:<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310492831" />
NY Times and Visualizations
We have hit our scale limit in managing information. We need new processes to make sense of abundance. One approach is found in the use of social networks for filtering important ideas and concepts. A technical approach is found in data visualization. Bill Ives links to the NY Times Visualization Lab. The site is based [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309451785" />
e-Learning 2009?
So, das neue Jahr ist gestartet und es stellt sich die Frage was bringt 2009 in Sachen e-Learning?
Wie immer verweise ich darauf, die technische Entwicklungen nicht aus den Augen zu lassen und die scheint einen deutlichen Schritt Richtung Mobilität zu machen. Nicht nur die Mobiltelefone der neuen Generation (Nokia N-Serie oder iPhone) werden sich [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310492832" />
A New Year’s Copyright Puzzler
A short version, a long version, and a surprise.
The short version: who has precedence, the CC NC clause or the First Sale doctrine?
The long version: First, a little background on the First Sale doctrine from Wikipedia (normal caveats apply):
The first-sale doctrine is a limitation on copyright that was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=308378689" />
OER Remix :: The Game!
What do you think about while you stare at the ceiling, unable to sleep?
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about license compatibility issues. Specifically, I’ve been wondering how I can communicate to people the difficulty copyleft causes for would-be remixers. Until you get knee-deep in it, you can’t really understand the pain. And how many [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=308378690" />
Rückschau: e-Learning Jahr 2008
Am Ende eines Jahres sollte man zumindest kurz zurückschauen, was das scheidende Jahr alles so an Höhepunkte hatte. Ich bin immer der Meinung, dass die wesentlichsten Dinge jene sind, an die man sich einfach so erinnert ohne lang im Blog nachsehen zu müssen.
Also wenn mir jemand 2008 als Stichwort in Bezug auf e-Learning und meiner [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310492833" />
We get the culture minister we deserve
Camus said of Mersault in L'Etranger that he was the 'Christ we deserve'. This phrase has been used many times, usually to indicate that if a society has a problem, then the reasons can be found within the society itself,...<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=307343630" />
My 7 stage plan for the film industry
Alan Parker, Kenneth Branagh and assorted British film people wrote an open letter to the Times warning that piracy is undermining the creative industries. On the radio yesterday I heard the producer of...<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=307343635" />
Geeks Bearing Gifts
Still waiting for mine to arrive, but Geeks Bearing Gifts looks to be absolutely fabulous. Whether you like him or not, Ted Nelson is probably one of the most visionary people of our age. As I’ve written about in a number of places, his work on primedia, transclusion, and reuse generally is the foundation much [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=308378691" />
[study] US - Majority of Kids Are Computer Savvy
Eine interessante Studie “Simmons Kids Fall 2007 Full Years Study” zeigt die Änderung der Kinder im Umgang mit digitalen Medien:An overwhelming majority (89%) of all kids age 6-11 in the US spend at least some time doing online activities and - though many of their basic social activities haven’t changed much over the years - [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310492834" />
Blogging isn't about fame
I think I was rather muddled in my last post, as all three comments interpreted it as saying 'I want to be more famous'. This wasn't my intention, so let me clarify what I meant.Firstly, let's place my blog in...<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=307343631" />
It's all gone a bit Affleck
I was reflecting on this blogging lark the other day. It is something I enjoy doing, but in terms of academic return it's been hit and miss. The big hit is that it has connected with a global network of...<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=307343632" />
[picture] Blick auf die Bischofsmütze
Moblog vom Nokia N95:[picture] Blick auf die Bischofsmütze
Sa 27.12.2008 14:58 271220081005 Schöne Grüße aus dem diesjährigen SkiurlaubOriginally uploaded by Martin Semriach<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310492835" />
Educational Technology Conferences
Clayton R. Wright compiles the most comprehensive list of educational technology conferences. With his permission, I have posted his list for ed tech conferences from Jan-Aug 2009 (.doc). Great resource!<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309451786" />
Top 10 forecasts for the future
I’m not sure why future forecasts always require 10 items. Why not 6? or 11? Does selecting a nice round number like ‘10′ provide a glimpse into our assumptions that the future will exhibit some type of order?
The World Future Society has listed its top 10 trends for 2009 and beyond. Some are fairly obvious [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309451787" />
The Pirate Hoax
The Pirate Hoax is generating strong reactions. Basically, a professor asked his students to a series of fabricated resources posted on Blogs, Wikipedia, and YouTube, and promoted on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. The project was discontinued once actual historians - colleagues of the professor who initiated the project - “bought into the hoax”. Deliberating [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=309451788" />
So What Else Are You Doing At The Moment?
I was intending not to write any more posts this year, but this post struck a nerve - What’s Competing for Internet Users’ Attention? (via Stephen’s Lighthouse) - so here’s a quick “note to self” about something to think about during my holiday dog walks…:
What else are out students doing whilst “studying” their course materials?
Here’s [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310238370" />
The RAE - Packt Like Sardines
"After years of waiting After years of waiting nothing came And you realize you're looking, Looking in the wrong place I'm a reasonable man Get off my case" Packt Like Sardines In A Crush Adblock Found at skreemr.com The results...<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=307343633" />
CBeebies iPlayer, and Why I Think an OU iPlayer Presence Would be a “Good Thing”
Last week it was a present for the beta junkies (”BBC iPlayer Desktop Application“), this week Auntie Beeb has a present for the kids: CBBC iPlayer (announced here: CBBC iPlayer press release; a good discussion about the rationale for why there is a need for such a thing can be found here: New CBBC [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310238371" />
In defence of Powerpoint
Okay, it's not going to win me any popularity points, but I thought I'd take a look at the fairly standard Powerpoint bashing that takes place. This article features John Sweller, saying that Powerpoint is counter productive because, according to...<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=307343637" />
NC Isn’t the Problem, SA Is… Part Deux
In his commentary on CC’s new report on the state of OER licensing, Stephen finds an opportunity to express his continuing support for the noncommercial clause:
In the full report you find their recommendations, including machine readability of license terms, license standardization and license compatibility (which is once again essentially the recommendation that [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=308378692" />
What Happens If Yahoo! Pipes Dies?
News appeared recently that Yahoo’s video editing site Jumpcut has stopped accepting new uploads, and users are being encouraged to move over to flickr. (On the odd occasion I’ve played with online video suites, I’ve tended to use Jumpcut, so I’m not overjoyed about this. Just FYI, Jaycut or Photobucket (which uses Adobe Premiere Express) [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310238372" />
BBC iPlayer Desktop Application
So with iPlayer hitting 1 year old last week “iPlayer Day: A year under the hood”), it’s great to see that there is now a cross-platform iPlayer downloader available (albeit as a beta) from the BBC iPlayer Labs (download the BBC iPlayer Desktop here) - a BBC news story about the release is available atBBC [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=310238373" />
Merry Christmas, Edubloggers
I finally met Michael Feldstein at the recent The Open Forum 2008. It was a really fun meeting with incredible food (warm cookies and cold milk for the morning break? are you kidding me?!?). However, the most personally rewarding part of the meeting for me came afterward, in Michael’s brain dump about the meeting, in [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=308378693" />
Top film titles in Wordle
Whilst watching one of my favourite films last night, John Carpenter's The Thing, I took the top 250 films from IMDB and ran them through Wordle, using English translations of titles where appropriate, and setting it to ignore commonly used...<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=307343634" />
First Experience Asssessing E-Portfolios
As an instructor in Athabasca University’s Master of Distance Education program, I was involved in providing an e-portfolio option to replace the standard comprehensive exam process for non thesis route students. The old ‘comps’ consisted of the candidate writing yet two more essays on material covered in the porgram and defending the essays with two [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=302191251" />
Seesmic and the Nabakov equation
Yesterday AJ Cann posted about his frustration with Seesmic, which he felt was going backwards in terms of usability. This led to an exchange in his comments via Seesmic (and cool, Seesmic founder Loic LeMuir joined in). If you haven't...<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=307343636" />
You are your (tag) cloud
My tag cloud for this blog is a bit rubbish, I don't create enough categories, and when I think of adding a new one, I've already blogged about it a few times and so I face the dilemma, do I...<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=307343638" />
Marking with Voice tools
I have nearly completed this term’s paper and report marking using Adobe Acrobat to add voice comments and annotations. In a word, the results are terrific!!
First, it saved me time. I am not a fast typer and using voice, meant I didn’t even have to spell check!! My comments were much longer than text annotations [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=302191252" />
Tell Creative Commons What NonCommercial Means
This should be the largest of all indicators that there is a huge problem with CC’s NC clause - Creative Commons is currently hosting a survey asking the community to help them understand what the term means. I mean, they’re only the authors of the license! Head on over and let your voice be [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=308378694" />
Booing as legitimate protest
(Warning: Mainly football related post)There was some fuss at the weekend that Arsenal fans booed one of their own players, Eboue, to the point where he had to be substituted. Most of the pundits have been outraged, and the common...<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=307343639" />
Ascilite presentation
Ascilite presentation plus audio now available from slideshare.<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=296649986" />
Conference live blogging
As I blogged about before we have drastically changed the structure of cloudworks and in particular introduced the notion of ‘cloudscapes’, which are aggregates of clouds associated with a particular event or community. One of the potential uses we saw for this was as a means of providing a space for capturing and discussing activities [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=296649987" />
Keynotes at Ascilite
Michelle Selinger from Cisco opened the Ascilite conference in Melbourne this year. Her talk provided a nice introduction to the conference with a broad brush of current and future perspectives on technology. She began by defining 4 phases of globalisation:100 years or so ago - with the first wave of world trade
1980s - with a [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=296649988" />
Major Updates to “Intro to Open Ed” RPG Syllabus
So far the response to the redesign of the Introduction to Open Education course has been great (already coverage in the Chronicle and the syllabus has been online less than a week). There’s been good critical feedback as well; the newly revised syllabus has a completely revamped Grading section based on Lynn Taylor’s comments (for [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=308378695" />
Endings and beginnings
<p>No one who reads Ida Takes Tea can have missed the fact that I've not been posting regularly. It's been one of those cases of life intervening! So, I'm very pleased to announce that I'm moving to a new job as Educational Designer at La Trobe University, starting in mid-December 2008. After eight years in the UK, I'm very pleased to have returned to Australia, and I'm excited to be joining my new colleagues at La Trobe. There are some interesting initiatives starting up at La T., and in 2009 I'll aim to keep you all informed on these new institutional projects, and on news in general from the Australian e-learning community.</p><p>Of course, I'm also sad to be leaving CARET and all the fantastic people I've met and worked with over the past few years, both inside and outside Cambridge. The last few weeks in the UK were absolutely hectic, and apologies are due to everyone I didn't manage to catch up with while I was frantically arranging travel and shipping. I won't make the Ascilite conference this year, so Matt Riddle will be presenting our joint paper in Melbourne, but I will be in Cairns for OZCHI. The ed. tech. and HCI communities don't always overlap -- not often enough, perhaps -- but I'll hope to see some of you there.</p><img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=295633097" />
Change.gov Goes CC-By
President-elect Obama’s Change.gov website has formally adopted the Creative Commons Attribution license as it’s standard copyright license for the site. High marks for President-elect Obama on this! Now, if we can just get Lessig appointed as Copyright Czar we’ll have a prayer of seeing real copyright reform during the next administration.<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=308378696" />
Conference cloudscapes
We have drastically revised the cloudworks site and now have the concept of ‘cloudscape’s which are spaces that can be set up for specific communities or purposes. I am testing the notion out at the Ascilite 2008 conference. I have set up an Ascilite Conference Cloudscape and am adding options to it. It’s really interesting [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=296649989" />
Talking about design
I’ve spent Thursday at Edith Cowan University with Ron Oliver (pro vice chancellor for learning and teaching) and Joe Luca (dean of the graduate research school). It’s a beautiful campus about half an hour train ride from the centre of Perth. I was struck, as I often am, by how similar Ron and my lines [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=296649990" />
So who are we??
Last week, Eileen Scanlon and I ran a similar kind of event at the OU to the TEL interdisciplinary research workshop I blogged about earlier, but this time the focus was more on what was the nature of our field and which directions it was going in.
The workshop started with a series of short presentations [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=296649991" />
Moodling about
I’m at the start of a mammoth three-week trip of Oz – Perth, Melbourne and then Sydney. I spend the day yesterday with Martin Dougiamas (head of Moodle). It was a pure luxury to spend the day brainstorming with him and great to see ‘Moodle head quarters’ and the core team. Was surprised to see [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=296649992" />
Intro to Open Education - “The Game”
Winter semester I’m teaching a new version of the Introduction to Open Education course here at BYU. I’m as excited for this course as I’ve ever been for any - partly because the course has been completely redesigned as a massively multiplayer role-playing game. From the Syllabus:
Instructional design faculty are frequently criticized for delivering information [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=308378697" />
Competencies for Online Teaching Success (COTS)
Larry Ragan, Director of Faculty development at Penn State’s World Campus has put his flip camcorder to good use over the past few months, cornering various ‘experts’, practitioners and generally experienced online teachers. He asked each to describe one core competency for successful online teaching.
He has uploaded about 30 of these 1-3 minute videos to [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=302191253" />
Even with Information glut, we need Open Education Resources
What Brian Lamb seems to confuse in this entry about the Open Education Resources, universities and information scarcity argument is that information (or more accurately a surfeit of data) available on the net does not equate to a surplus of quality learning content.
Quality learning content charts a path through complex issues, ideas and problems creating [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=302191254" />
Canada/ Brazil Distance International Education Symposium
I’m sitting in the Rio airport one leg down and three to go on my way home from the Canadian-Brazil International Seminar on Distance Education, just concluded in Goianas. The seminar featured presentations and lots of questions from about 200 Brazilian delegates and Canadian DEers Heather Kanuka, Griff Richards, Elizabeth Murphy and myself. I did [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=302191255" />
Fostering interdisciplinarity
I am part of the Personal Inquiry project, which is one of eight projects funded under the ESRC/EPSRC Technology-enhanced learning programme. http://www.tlrp.org/tel/ This is an ambitious (ca. $22 M over five years), funded by the EPSRC/ESRC, which at its core is about tackling these challenges of educational significance from an interdisciplinary perspective:
Technology enhanced learning (TEL) requires interdisciplinary collaboration [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=296649993" />
Learning in a networked world
I was lucky enough to hear Roy Pea from Stanford University speak twice last week; first at the Becta research conference and then at the launch of the LSRI at Notthingham University. Here’s a summary of some of the things he was talking about. He peppered his talks with highlights from the report of the [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=296649994" />
Sloan-C Keynote
This post from Goiânia Brazil where four of us Canadian Distance Education folks are presenting at a Brazilian-Canadian summit on Distance Education. Goiânia is one of those agriculturally based town in Central Brazil with 1.5 million inhabitants that few in North America have ever heard of. But the folks are friendly, the weather tropical, the [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=302191256" />
Online Student Course Evaluations
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education confirms my own experience that most students enrolled in online course do not complete standard course evaluations forms. Online teachers don’t have the luxury of handing out evaluations forms on the last day of classes (naturally before marked papers are returned,) and assigning a graduate student [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=302191257" />
Web 2.0 in schools
Charles CrookOne of the parallel sessions at Becta’s Research Conference was an overview of the work that Charles Crook and Colin Harrison have done on looking at web 2.0 in schools. It’s an excellent, timely report and complements other research being carried out on learners’ use of technology (see for example the Elesig special interest group). As the report [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=296649995" />
Another great issue of IRRODL
I feel less engaged in shameless self-promotion, with this announcement of the 9.3 issue of the International Review of Research on Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL), as Jon Baggaley was the editor in charge of this fine issue.
The issue features a video as well as text editorial by Jon, neither of which should be [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=302191258" />
Mapping Dublin Core Elements to Sakai 'Resources' Metadata Fields
<p>As mentioned in my previous post, I have been working on creating a table that shows how selected Dublin Core metadata elements map to the available metadata fields in Sakai. I've put a copy of this up <a href="http://lookleap.com/runawayobjects.wetpaint.com/a1">on my Wetpaint wiki</a>, for reference.</p><p>For researchers such as myself, one issue with metadata is that it is relatively simple to deal with when you are talking about a handful of resources, but the process becomes radically more complex when resources start to number in the hundreds. Equally, the ability to auto-detect metadata has to rate high on any librarian's or archivist's wish-list for an information system design. So, what does Sakai have to offer?</p><p>We are involved with a pilot project which should help automate the process of "siphoning" digital resources from our Sakai project worksite into our institutional digital repository. We've come up with a simple metadata scheme, based on Dublin Core. Now, we need to know how much metadata Sakai can "auto-slurp" from our files, and how much we may need to enter manually. If manual edits turn out to be necessary, which they may well do, then we need to know exactly how to get the right information into Sakai, and from there, into DSpace.</p><p>In Sakai, from the user's/regular site admin's perspective, metadata is associated with individual Resources and is displayed in the Resources tool for an individual worksite. If you click on an individual resource, you can then click on "Edit Details." This will reveal a screen containing both the auto-detected metadata (some of which is manually editable) and various "optional" fields. Some of the "optional" fields are hidden away under an expandable heading titled "Optional properties."</p><p>For the most part, the fields available in Sakai Resources correspond closely (as you'd hope / expect) to standard DC elements. There are a couple of overlaps and oddities: for example, it's unclear how the "Description" field in Sakai differs from the "Abstract" field. And in place of the familiar DC elements "Rights Manager" and "Rights Owner", Sakai offers "Copyright Status" (associated with a drop-down menu offering a slew of optional settings) -- which I suppose is intended to address the problem of how a resource stored in a Sakai worksite may eventually be used by others. (In Cambridge's Sakai instance, CamTools, the default setting for Copyright Status is: "I own copyright"). But addressing end-users' behaviour is slightly different from making a statement of who owns or manages the rights to a particular resource. Maybe I've got this wrong, but I'm certainly confused by it. At least, I hope I'm learning something.</p><img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=295633099" />
Reflection and Selection: Creating a digital project archive
<p>At the end of any project, the time comes to wrap up work and, hopefully, to prepare project outputs for dissemination and archiving. We’re working with the folks from <a href="https://camtools.cam.ac.uk/access/wiki/site/48a227c1-755a-4624-80c4-b1ac266f0c91/home.html">CTREP</a> to create the digital archive for the Learning Landscape Project. It’s an interesting process – while working to pull together the materials for inclusion, I’m also thinking about what we learned on the way, mentally summing up the project’s achievements, as well as the things we could have done better. I’ve reflected that this process of archiving is, in many ways, the process of creating the institutional representation of our project: its official history. I’m not suggesting this is the “best” story, or the “only” story, to tell about our work – there are, of course, many stories to tell. But this collection will constitute (we hope!) some of the most accessible documentation of our work, so we want it to be diverse in content, and we want it to be as thorough -- as rich -- as possible.<br /><br />CTREP is a project under <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/reppres">JISC’s Repositories and Preservation programme</a>. At Cambridge, the CTREP team is working to integrate our VLE, Sakai/CamTools, and our institutional repository, <a href="http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/dspace/">DSpace@Cambridge</a>. (Up in the wilds of Scotland, our CTREP colleagues at the wonderfully-named <a href="http://www.uhi.ac.uk/">University of the Highlands and Islands</a> are doing related integration work with TETRA / Fedora). The idea is that DSpace will appear as “just another folder” in the Resources area of a CamTools site, and that pushing items from Resources into Dspace will, eventually, be a simple matter of drag-and-drop. Metadata will be pulled in automatically, along with each individual resource item—although I’ve got a lot to learn about how that works, exactly. Today, I’m working on creating a table that maps the metadata element set used by our project (which was based on <a href="http://www.dublincore.org/">Dublin Core</a>) to the Resources “Edit Details” fields in Sakai/CamTools. Much of this is straightforward, though some Sakai-tastic idiosyncrasies have crept in.<br /><br />Of course, there is a lot of workflow that has to (or: should) happen before a digital resource held in Sakai/CamTools is ready to go into DSpace. In part, this is due to complex, organic human factors: it sits at the very core of what happens when people work together over time. The LLP team used Sakai/CamTools as the home for our “working” project site, and as the worksite grew, along with the research activities, the initial structure we’d designed for it became outmoded. New tools and folders were added. People in the team took ownership of different parts of the site, and redesigned them accordingly. As we added people to the site, some of whom had only a peripheral interest in the project, it became more important to create “private” areas to which only the core team had access. Taken together, all this conspired to increase the complexity (and un-usability) of the site. So we established a second, parallel site to serve as the internal institutional project archive site. A clean slate, if you will. It’s from this second, archival site that items will eventually travel through into DSpace. <br /><br />Various editorial processes happen before an item even makes it through from the project’s worksite to the second, archival site. Inevitably, our archival site does not reflect the messy “reality” embodied in the project worksite, and perhaps especially in the project Wiki. But an archive has to balance the desire to keep everything with the ultimate goal of usability (which I take to be a higher-order goal, encompassing the sub-goal of “discoverability”). It’s a process of reflection and selection that strikes me as being “portfolio-like”, even though a research project archive is rarely represented as a “portfolio” of work.</p><img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=295633101" />
More on Groups versus Networks and Collectives
During my presentation to CK08 Stephen Downes challenged me to clarify if his distinctions between groups and networks matched my own. I had a little trouble determining exactly his criteria- as I am sure he has my own, but I did find a long speech he gave in New Zealand in 2006 titled Groups versus [...]<img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=302191259" />
Wrap-up on Education Unbound 2008: What a difference a year makes
<p>I much enjoyed participating in last night’s panel discussion at the <a href="http://blog.onlinecc.co.uk/index.php/education-unbound-2008/">Education Unbound</a> event in London. Held at Adam Street private members’ club, the vibe was relaxed and informal, with intense discussions continuing well after the panel wound up. Thanks to <a href="http://www.onlinecc.co.uk/">the folks at Online</a> for inviting me to join what I think proved to be a very successful event. I got to plug some of CARET's new projects, such as <a href="http://egret-project.blogspot.com/">EGRET</a> and the stuff we're doing with OpenSocial. Some interesting people I talked to, in random order: Gaia Marcus, a student and journalist from UCL; Jeremiah Alexander, from startup Ideonic; and Nikolas Heyng from Online. It was a much younger professional audience than I’m used to addressing (!), and a very different bunch of people – there were few, if any, representatives from HE, with most of the audience drawn from publishing, media, start-ups, and not-for-profits, with a sprinkling of students and teachers. From my perspective, the only practical “issue” (not the organisers’ fault, I hasten to add) was being sat directly in front of the blinding light of the projector, which lead to jokes among the panellists about being issued with matching sunglasses.</p><p>I wasn’t at last year’s event, but Matt Locke (from BBC’s Channel 4), who’s bravely chaired the panels for both events, shared some insights on the differences he saw between the two:</p><ul> <li>There was much more agreement this year between the speakers (potentially, both a good and bad thing – leading to less debate, but also, less time wasted on slanging matches and cross-sectoral issues).</li> <li>The discussion appears to have moved on from early-stage ideation to implementation issues – topics such as the role of the expert practitioner; how best to create or expand professional development opportunities; technologies; social and educational aspects of balancing on and offline behaviours.</li></ul><p>On the train back to Cambridge, I reflected that the following issues seemed to be of common interest to the panellists:</p><ul> <li>Professional development and digital literacy for learners and staff.</li> <li>How do professionals get informed and educated about all things ICT, outside of the formal ‘umbrellas’ of peak sector bodies and professional organisations (e.g. BECTA, BERA, and ALT in the UK)?</li> <li>Locating and sharing effective strategies for dealing with information overload, managing resources, and how to filter to ensure that the information selected / sought / received is of good quality.</li></ul><p>So there was lots of common ground, but in the discussion afterwards it emerged that there was a shared feeling among the audience that there were issues of real importance that we just didn’t touch on – due partly to time factors, I suspect, but also perhaps because these are some of the more “difficult” and seemingly intractable problems.</p><ul> <li>Socioeconomic dimensions and impacts of informal learning. Moves to informal learning may not benefit – may actively disadvantage –learners who are less socioeconomically privileged.</li> <li>Accessibility: in terms of disabilities; differences in preferred or available access devices (phone, desktop, laptop, etc.); dealing with slow connections. How not to ensure that web 2.0 is accessible only to citizens of developed countries. Socioeconomics – again.</li> <li>Audit and QA – who does it, who should do it, how do smaller organisations and the third sector in particular access this kind of expertise?</li></ul><img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=295633103" />
Cambridge Festival of Ideas: "Facebook: Friendship and Social Interaction"
<p>Just received the programme for the inaugural <a href="http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/communications/community/ideasfestival/">Festival of Ideas</a> in Cambridge, the "arts/humanities/soc-scis" response to the successful <a href="http://www.cambridgescience.org/">Science Festival</a>. One event that looks potentially interesting is an evening panel discussion on social networking, scheduled for 25 October. Titled "Facebook: Friendship and Social Interaction", the panel brings together the Guardian newspaper's UX guru, Meg Pickard, Chris Locke of AOL Europe, Sue Hessey from BT and Cambridge academics <a href="http://psychometrics.sps.cam.ac.uk/page/65/david-good.htm">David Good</a> and <a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/kathleen/">Kathleen Richardson</a>. Soporific? I hope not! Obviously, Facebook is not a fresh subject; yet, as far as I know, this is the first public event focusing on Facebook at Cambridge. I'm curious as to what the panel's take will be on social networks and the creation of social relationships online.</p><p>I find it frustrating sometimes that HE seems to be so far behind the curve with SNS -- FE, youth workers, and youth agencies / quangos are just so much more advanced, compared to us. For example, the recently-launched Final Report from the <a href="http://blogs.nya.org.uk/ywsn/">Youth Work and Social Networking Project</a> (which I plan to blog separately) developed a fantastic matrix of youth worker engagement with social networking which could readily be adopted for HE staff development and training. (See p.36 of the Final Report). <a href="http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/">Higher Education Academy</a>, <a href="http://www.seda.ac.uk/">SEDA</a>, are you listening?</p><p>Cambridge students were -- famously -- early adopters of Facebook's social networking technology in the UK. Both the demographics of the student intake at Cambridge (relatively homogeneous in terms of age, educational background, and ethnicity) and institutional culture (especially, the collegiate system) played roles in the site's rapid rise and eventual dominance of the local 'social networking' landscape. A year or two ago, Cambridge was largely an SNS "monoculture", with the possible exception of the international student body - roughly 10% of undergraduate students, more like 50% of postgraduates, who were (and are?) more diverse. At the same time, and basing the following statement on pilot research I conducted with academic staff and students, as well as on personal experience, my sense is that most lecturing staff at Cambridge have limited engagement with social networking sites, and are potentially most likely to encounter them in relation to their own children, not their students. In my initial research, this limited engagement with SNS was particularly evident in the case of "mid-career" academics.</p><p>As an institution, we could certainly do more in terms of educating students and staff about the opportunities and risks posed by SNS. I'll look forward to the panel, and to participating in a discussion that I hope will help to engage and motivate people.</p><img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=295633105" />
Using Social Network Sites the Wrong Way
<p>This post was written in response to danah boyd’s post, <a href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/09/15/facebook_and_te.html">“Facebook and Techcrunch: the costs of technological determinism and configuring users.”</a> danah focused on recent (and not so recent) attempts by social network sites like Facebook to regulate how individuals relate to others when using their service. I noticed that danah’s argument—expressing a consistent point of view, whose development you can trace in her writing—reinforces the <a href="http://connect.educause.edu/blog/catherine/spocksriskytakeontrustpri/45727">criticisms I made of the Spock service</a> last December.</p><p><br />At that time, I pointed out that Spock was actively discouraging individuals from initiating and maintaining multiple online identities, but that this attempt to regulate user behaviours was incompatible with much social life as it is actually lived on and offline. And it is becoming evident that if valid user concerns and social needs are not met—in relation to issues like privacy, contacts management, and the overall balance of “open” and “closed”—then people will simply look elsewhere. The abundance of web-based services contributes to the way we think about these kinds of profiles—as social artefacts, they are pretty evanescent; especially, as danah has noted previously, from the perspective of teenage users.</p><p><br />The reference in the title of danah’s post to Woolgar’s (1991) influential concept of “configuring the user” wasn’t lost on me. And I’m familiar with one particular social scientific/research response to the problem of companies trying to configure their users (via bureaucracy, restrictive ToS, or whatever). That response is generally to say, OK, well, we just need more context about the ways people are actually using these systems, and then we’ll be able to design them better. To caricature, “thick description cures all ills”. I’m not suggesting danah was necessarily advocating this perspective, certainly not in a naïve way, although I suspect that some aspects of it are compatible with her preferred research approaches and overall perspective. And I’ve experienced and been influenced by elements of the “contextual” approach myself, both in my academic training and in my subsequent research experience. However, here be dragons.</p><p><br />The notion that “designing for diversity” means enriching design formalisations with social data is pretty prominent right now. Conferences like <a href="http://www.epic2008.com/">EPIC</a> are promoting a healthy interest in ethnographic approaches in HCI and user-centred design in industry. But—and repeating that I write as someone deeply invested in social research—I think that ethnographic and social scientific approaches to design don’t necessarily hold all of the keys to meeting users’ needs. I’ve been thinking back to the arguments James Stewart and Robin Williams proposed in their 2005 paper, “The Wrong Trousers?”. In that piece, Stewart and Williams critiqued what they termed the “design fallacy”: “the presumption that the primary solution to meeting user needs is to build ever more extensive knowledge about the specific context and purposes of various users into technology design” (4).</p><p><br />I think Stewart and Williams are basically right, that we can’t necessarily overcome companies’ design flaws by building the “right” values into their systems… Values are constantly being politicized; as a consequence, they are also very much subject to trend cycles. Currently, the research buzz is around openness and sociality, and the bias is towards sharing. Yet these values are as “political”, as “constructed”, as any others; researchers are not neutral participants here. Neither are educators; who, where social media is concerned, are often responsible for promoting learner understanding of what constitutes “appropriate” or “correct” use (see Tracy et. al.'s paper, <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/101748/Chaired-Panel-2-Frances-Tracy">"Using the wiki the wrong way"</a>).</p><p><br />Finally, and perhaps more importantly, user needs and behaviours are constantly shifting; they are inconsistent; they are difficult to predict. “Designing out” context may be more important than designing it in. Like danah, I don’t see a point in chasing the techno-determinist tail of cause and effect. I believe that where social research can have most impact is in design iteration and studying overlapping patterns of design and use; realistically, we can improve, far more than we can "optimize". As researchers, we are almost always playing catch-up, and we capture or describe the social “what” long before we start to understand the “why”.</p><p><br /><strong>References</strong></p><p>Stewart, J., and Williams, R. (2005) "The Wrong Trousers? Beyond the Design Fallacy: Social Learning and the User ". In: User involvement in innovation processes. Strategies and limitations from a socio technical perspective. Ed. by Harald Rohracher. Profil-Verlag, Munich.<br /><br />Tracy, F., Jordan, K., and Johnstone, K. (2007) "Using the wiki the wrong way: A case study in plant sciences." Solstice 2007 Conference, Edge Hill University.</p><img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=295633107" />
Education Unbound 08
<p>I'm looking forward to attending this year's <a href="http://blog.onlinecc.co.uk/index.php/education-unbound-2008/">Education Unbound</a> event, organised by digital agency <a href="http://www.onlinecc.co.uk/">Online Creative Communications</a>. I'll be joining Futurelab learning researcher Dan Sutch, teacher and web 2.0 advocate David Noble, and co-founder of the "School of Everything", Andy Gibson, on the speakers' panel for the evening event. Channel 4's Matt Locke will be <strike>cat-herding</strike>, ahem, moderating what I'm sure will be a very lively discussion on all things related to learning and social media. Last year's event, which focused partly on the impact of social media on educational publishing, was reportedly thought-provoking - see previous participant Ewan McIntosh's <a href="http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/11/education-unb-1.html">lucid dissection of the 2007 event</a>.</p><p>I'm expecting the discussion this year to highlight social media's role in informal learning contexts, including recent "open teaching" initiatives, which have obviously generated a lot of media interest and debate (the <a href="http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i06/06a01301.htm">recent Chronicle article</a> representing what was, from my perspective, a somewhat underwhelming and thin introduction to some of the issues). Issues around microblogging services and the emergence of what danah boyd (and others) have called "crowd effects" will doubtless also get an airing. I'm hoping that there will be space for discussion of mobile and pervasive devices, as well as experiential learning.</p><img alt="" src="http://xfruits.com/mebner/?id=43128&s_item=295633109" />
New semantic web tool for Plant Scientists
<p>The <a href="http://www.ensemble.ac.uk/">ENSEMBLE</a> project has recently finished its summer studentships programme (known as <a href="http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/teaching/urops/index.html">UROPS - Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program</a>, a concept <a href="http://web.mit.edu/urop/index.html">initially developed at MIT</a>). The key to UROPs is that students participate as researchers in a real research project, in the process gaining valuable skills and experience, and actively participating as members of an academic research c |
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