O.k., so while I still think it sucks that I can’t currently import my old bookmarks into del.icio.us, Greg Ritter (yes, that Greg Ritter, he’s still alive, just lurking but not blogging) quite reasonably pointed out that there is no time like the present to make the shift to del.icio.us, and that the lack of an import feature doesn’t need to be reason not to. He recommended just starting to use it regularly, and then setting up a quicksearch shortcut in Firefox to my FURL collection. It’s not perfect (something that quickly searched across both collections would be even better) but as an interim solution until the cats at del.icio.us fix their import feature, it seems pretty good. (Though if it wasn’t obvious, my post was less a cry for a workaround and more a public challenge to del.icio.us to get off their duffs and fix this!) Still, thanks Greg, as the Firefox quicksearch feature is a nice suggestion in and of itself. – SWL
Author: sleslie
Why del.icio.us sucks
That got your attention, didn’t it. Actually, it doesn’t suck at all, in fact my complaint is that I want to use del.icio.us because of all the cool tie-ins it has spawned, but I am not going to abandon 18 months worth of FURL’d links, and del.icio.us refuses to fix their import feature. There has been a message on the import page for del.icio.us for going on at least 4 months that says “Our import feature has been turned off for a few days while we fix some bugs. Sorry!” and the reply I got to my email back in November was “Should be done soon. We are removing the last final bugs.” Gee, thanks. If there is anything worse than not responding to potential customers, its responding to potential customers and lying to them.
Maybe this is what a rapid infusion of cash does to a company. Oh well, I guess this is what I get for backing the wrong horse in the first place, but sheesh, they’re only links, how hard should it be to export and then import these things? – SWL
Wayfinding at UBC
I’m lucky to be invited out to UBC tomorrow to give a little talk and meet with a few folks. I’ve been there maybe a half-dozen times but I really don’t know my way around the campus that well – it is truly immense! I was about to email my contact there to ask for direction, but then thought to check the university’s own website for maps.
Wow! Was I gald I did. I would have felt foolish to be asking after what I found at the Wayfinding at UBC site. The link above points to the final map I produced and printed – what I loved was the ability to plot not one but at least two distinct locations (and get directions between them if need be) and to add or subtract information to my final printout page (like closest parking, local details) if I wanted. I also loved they way they tied into Google where needed or where more appropriate.
Perhaps I don’t get on to enough campuses and the quality represented by this site is commonplace elsewhere and I just don’t realize it. But I think not – apparently the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education were also impressed enough to award it the 2004 Gold Prix d’Excellence for ‘Best Department or Program Site on the World Wide Web.’ And well deserved at that; the gold standard as far as I am concerned for helping people find their way around campus. (Have I just inevitably damned myself to be driving around downtown Surrey while my talk is going on though, I wonder 😉 – SWL
Reports from the CETIS Vocabularies Project
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/elp_vocabularies.html
Wow, what can one say, these reports from the Cetis Vocabularies Project are nothing if not exhaustive. Pretty well everything one could ever want to know about controlled vocabularies for pedagogical resources are contained in these three reports. And if you needed more evidence of the width of the gap between the ‘big standards‘ approach to learning resources and where the best minds of the loosely coupled elearning blogosphere seem to be going, well look no further.
I am really in no position to cast stones; I’d be lucky if my house were made out of even glass, and I sure ain’t without sin. But the 121 pages that comprise the first two survey reports, the Pedagogical Vocabularies Review and the Vocabulary Management Technologies Review, seem hardly to justify the tepid 7 page ‘Recommendations’ document that follows. Study study study, disseminate, more study, pilot a bit, repeat. Sorry guys, I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this; I want to take succour in the belief we can control the growing chaos, find sense through old patterns and methods, but you know what, I can’t do it anymore, I have seen the light, and this is not it. Whoa, dude, your unconscious is showing…put on a towel or something, at least! – SWL
Happy Solstice
This is going to be my last entry for 2005 before I fly off to Wales tomorrow to join my family who have been over there for the last 10 days with our inlaws. Just wanted to send everyone sincere best wishes and hope for their joy and successes in the new year. I am totally stoked about 2006 and look forward to more cool projects, collaborations, meetings-up and general rabble rousing with you all in the coming year. – SWL
OSS Watch – Documentation issues in open source
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/documentation.xml
Bravo to the OSS Watch guys for tackling this hoary issue straight on – the best way to fight ‘fear uncertainty and doubt’ is by talking about the issues and showing how one can address them. Not that I know of any open source project that have this problem, ahem, but this short piece contains the sensible advice to make mailing lists, chat logs, etc., accessible to search engines and bookmarking systems, as well as to encourage new users to contribute documentation as their first contribution to the project. – SWL
An Evaluation of Open Source CMS Stressing Adaptation Issues
http://moodle.org/other/icalt2005.pdf
This paper looks at the ever expanding world of open source course management systems, but adds to the comparison the factors of “adaptability, personalization, extensibility and adaptivity” (this later meaning “automatic adaptation to the individual user�s needs”). The results; Moodle is judged to be the best in terms of its adaptation capabilities, though all of the projects are deemed to be light on end-user adaptivity. – SWL
Unicon provides Sakai ‘Test Drive’ sites
http://www.sakaitestdrive.com/
If you haven’t already had the chance, Unicon has made it even easier to have a look at Sakai 2.1 (just released on December 1, 2005) through their new “Test Drive” sites. The sites, available for free for 90 days, give you access to a demo course and worksite and allow you to change roles so as to see the system from various user perspectives. The background here is that Unicon once developed a CMS on top of uPortal called Academus, but appear to now be piggybacking on offering Sakai support and other uPortal support based on their years’ of experience.
This will not change anyones’ mind who had already decided they were not down with the ‘course managed’ approach, but for those looking for an alternative to their current CMS, this provides one more method to kick the tires, and just in time for Christmas! – SWL
Why does ‘Freesound’ succeed when so many learning object repositories fail?
Bryan Alexander posted a link to The Freesound Project and it was interesting to me for a whole slew of reasons.
It was interesting first off because I have been using the site myself for the last few months; I am getting more into making music with digital audio tools (yes, yes, I will post something, someday, give me time to build up my courage) and so turned to Freesound to find new samples for a drum machine. And it works; not perfectly maybe, but you can definitely find new samples fairly easily, and it has a number of other social affordances (‘users who downloaded this also…’ and folksonomies) that lead you to related stuff you might like.
I was interesting also on a personal level as it was built as part of the 2005 International Computer Music Conference. ICMC is dear to my heart because way back in 1995, I was responsible for building the first website to support a ICMC conference, when it was hosted in Banff (the only remnant of which I can now find is this reference, the ‘WayBack machine‘ not even going back that far, so safe to say Internet ancient history!)
And finally it’s also of interest as a ‘repository’ of shareable remixable content, and one that would have to be judged relatively successful at that, with around 10,000 ‘objects’ and almost a million downloads. So what makes it tick, why does it succeed when so many of our various ‘learning object repository’ projects are failing so miserably? Let’s consider (more)….
Continue reading “Why does ‘Freesound’ succeed when so many learning object repositories fail?”
Worthwhile Read – Scott Berkun’s Project Mgmt and other wisdom
I came across this blog via a post from Christopher Sessum (another worthwhile subscription, I’d add), who pointed to an essay titled ‘Why smart people defend bad ideas.’ It REALLY struck home (for better or worse I am more and more trying to be brutally honest in my personal assessments) and led me to subscribe and read some of Mr. Berkun’s other posts. And so far I haven’t come across a single post that hasn’t rocked my brain in some way or another. In fact there is almost too much good stuff (I kind of depend on some dreck in trying to track 180+ blogs, which is where my subscriptions are at these days.) Not ‘Ed Tech’ focused, but ‘Highly recommended’ anyways! – SWL