The Rest – Page 10

Course Management System Content Conversion Tools wikipage

http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/CMS+Conversion+Tools

One of my main gigs is running a repository service to help faculty here in BC share online course content. As I have likely lamented far too many times, the bane of my existence is the uneven support for content interoperability across the various course management systems. At last count we had at least 6 flavours in the province in which ideally the content would work, and certainly would love it if it’d work with others too. So while I personally believe CMS are increasingly bankrupt as a model for online education and continue to work with others to demonstrate new ways of teaching and learning online, my reality is that the content I am asked to help share is almost exclusively CMS-based, and moreover built directly inside the CMS, thus somewhat reliant on the vendors to provide easy and open ways for getting it out. Yeah right.

We come at this issue from many different directions trying to improve it. We built a “best practice” wiki to encourage people in the province to share their tricks and tips on how to work with CMS and still get content out “cleanly.” We are looking at some content “convertors” as part of the repository framework to clean up some of the exports into better formats (a dicey proposition at best). We’re experimenting with a “harvestor” that will grab CMS content not through the API but by spidering course sites.

Along these lines, I have put together this wiki page to collect together whatever CMS content export/conversion tools I can find, mostly for the CMS flavours at play in the province, but not totally limited to.

And I’d like to invite you to play. There are multiple ways to contribute to this – if you have a wikispaces account, I will gladly add you to the site. If instead you are a del.icio.us user, simply tag any resource you think appropriate with “cms_migration” (or even just send it my way with the “for:nessman” tag). Am I duplicating effort here? Please tell me if you know of another good collection of CMS conversion tools. I have no need to re-invent the wheel here, just trying to give people as many options as possible. Please also tell me if I am barking up any wrong trees with my assessment of what CMS already work well (or not) with each other – I get sporadic access to any of these, and the situation often changes with versions etc. If you can think of a better way to do this, I’m all ears for that too. – SWL

Gardner Campbell on “Computing as Poetry”

http://blip.tv/file/796357

This post has been a while in the making (recent outtages notwithstanding) so you may already have followed Brian’s exhortations and viewed the video of this talk. But if not, do so. I promise you, it is worth it.

I “met” Gardner online through Brian and for a few years followed his writings and explorations in teaching through his blog. Oddly (for it seems a bit odd to me) I feel like we started to get to know each other a little bit better in twitter, and indeed Gardner’s open letter to me when I left twitter for a few months played no small part in bringing me back. And as with so many people I’ve been fortunate to connect with online, I hoped we could meet in person. When I found out he was coming to do a talk at UBC in March, I knew I had to make the trek.

I was not disappointed. Gardner’s talk literally transported me back to my own origins with computing and the web, fresh from a Graduate degree in Critical and Cultural Theory, and helped me remember why I chose to do what I do. Using poetry as a way to understand computing actually goes past my original understanding of computers as “symbolic shifting devices.” As I think Gardner persuasively argues, computing/poetry goes beyond simply mapping one thing to another, that the very act of juxtaposing which they enable/use so well helps bring to light “mappingness,” awareness of the possibility of creating new meaning and understanding through juxtaposing disparate things/words/ideas.

But even if “computing as poetry” doesn’t resonate for you, I think what is even more significant is that Gardner is asking you to choose the metaphor you use to understand computing, the metaphor you are choosing to understand how you are using computing in learning (because metaphors you use, yes you do). I do not hear him arguing that computing must be understood as poetry, but instead, that using poetry as a metaphor for computing can propel us to higher and better uses of computers, especially as regards their uses in learning.

This anti-determinism really resonates with me – it is not that using “computational thinking” or other metaphors to describe computing is “wrong,” but do they result in us then building/adopting/modifying/using computers and technology in the ways that we want? The ways we talk about and conceptualize what we are doing have a profound effect on what we then do, and I see Gardner’s talk as a clarion call to all of us in the profession to become conscious of the metaphors we are using to think about computing and how these effect the results, and to choose ones which describe the highest conception of what could be. For as Gardner had me quote from Robert Frost during the talk:

Every single poem written regular is a symbol small or great of the way the will has to pitch into commitments deeper and deeper to a rounded conclusion and then be judged for whether any original intention it had has been strongly spent or weakly lost; be it in art, politics, school, church, business, love, or marriage—in a piece of work or in a career. Strongly spent is synonymous with kept.

But don’t rely on my interpretation (all misinterpretations herein are obviously my own) – go listen for yourself, and hopefully be transformed. I know for me, it was well worth the effort, that it is one of those events that I will keep coming back to, going over, savouring and turning around in my head to tease out ever more flavour. – SWL

Webducate Dragster (and the value in open sharing)

http://www.webducate.net/dragster.php
The most successful thing I think I’ve ever published on this blog was the simple “matrix of blog uses in education” that I posted in 2003. It has been translated numerous times and I see it referred to lots of place on the web. It’s always been really gratifying to see the novel ways people re-used it. About 2 years ago I wrote about one of the re-uses that really tickled my fancy, a Flash-based version that allowed users to drag and drop different “uses” onto a matrix. It seemed like a really useful tool for facilitating discussion.

I also mused at the time to its creator, Tony Lowe, how my ultimate goal had been some sort of wiki-like implementation of the “matrix” – I think the various dimensions of use have held up pretty well, but 5 years later I can think of a whole host of new uses to add, and there are likely more that others could add which I have never imagined.

So you can imagine my real delight when an email showed up from Tony that he had built a new version that allowed just this! Now, instead of just dragging the pre-existing set of uses onto the matrix, multiple users can define new ones and position these too. Very cool.
But what is ultimately far more important is that Tony has done this within a new service that he has developed call Dragster. Dragster is a web-based authoring tool for creating different Flash-based drag-and-drop exercises. While it does not remove all the effort in creating these (check out some of the anatmoy examples to see how complex they can get), compared to the alternative, doing this from scratch in Flash, Drgaster offers a fairly simple to use (and relatively inexpensive, at about $100/year) way to quickly author these types of Flash animations which can often run into the $1000s of dollars when done on their own. The resulting animations can be downloaded and used in any environment you choose.

Am I shill for writing up this app because someone re-used some of my content? Or is this instead an example of a really smart and authentic “marketing 2.0” effort, that tries to add value to the ongoing blog conversation and entice bloggers to try products by actually re-using and re-mixing their open content? I’ll let you be the judge. All I can say is, anyone else wants to take something I’ve created and build on it, I will certainly give you some of my precious attention. – SWL

We interrupt this blog…with a message about a horrible ISP – Canada Web Hosting/Synergy Web Services

For those of you who have tried to access something on edtechpost over the last few days but have got error messages, my sincere apologies, but oh what a week I’ve had. All the more frustrating because of the number of posts I’ve wanted to write, which I will return to shortly, but before that, a brief digression…

Complaining about web hosts is dull, but for the record, I have left Canada web hosting (who also operate the site Synergy web services) because of the absolutely atrocious service I have suffered at their hands. The irony is that I had made the decision to leave about a month ago after suffering through yet another technology change on their part, one that not only degraded the services the offered, but in the process of the change over wiped out 2 weeks of blog entries. (For this I was told it was “my fault”.)

Unfortunately, I did not make the site live on the new host quickly enough, and last weekend the sys admins at Canada web hosting felt they were justified in taking down everything in my home directory because of one apparently mis-behaving PMwiki script. When I got back from being away, I promptly called them, apologized for any difficulty with that script and assured them that they could remove it from the server. 3 days passed (and over 6 hours of being on hold with their help desk) and they never did remove the scripts. And never returned any calls. The only solution they offered me was a backup of my database (which took 4 days to happen). The site still remains totally unavailable to web traffic, even for simple static HTML pages. No discussion, no attempt to problem solve. No refund (they basically are claiming as theirs the last 4 months of payments on my hosting contract). I never even got to talk to anyone who had a clue of why the service had been yanked or how to restore it – their 1st level call centre folks had neither technical ability nor access, and they refused to pass me through to the “senior systems administrators” who had mysteriously made this judgement.

Live and learn, I guess. I chose them because they were a B.C.-based company who offered what seemed to be at the time an inexpensive hosting solution for my blog and other web apps. And really, I should have jumped ship a long time ago. Having done it now, I realize it is not that hard to do and wouldn’t have put it off nearly this long. The other lesson – to not rely on any hosting companies backup solution for my sites, because they still own the backup. My site is my site, and even if you are going to kick me off your server, you have no right to keep it hostage for 5 days. End of rant. Sorry. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming… – SWL

Testing windows live writer

[“Rockin’“]

This is totally just an excuse to try out Windows Live Writer on the recommendation of Chris Lott, whose nicely formatted images and citation technique I wanted to emulate. But I could not pass up the opportunity to link to this photo of two of my very favourite people in what could possibly be the only jam in recent memory to perhaps rival the all eduglu blues revival. I am certain it outstripped us in musical competency, and by the look on Brian’s face, perhaps even in dementedness (though the latter would have been hard.) – SWL

180 seconds to an online “scrapbook” (or, “On the importance of simplicity”)

This is a post I shouldn’t need to write. It is too obvious. Indeed, here’s the conclusion up front:

People like simple-to-use tools. If you give them simple, easy to understand tools, they will use them. (They will also use complicated tools anyways if their needs are strong enough, and always use tools in ways you never expected, but those are different posts.) You will not need to provide help documentation, training sessions, or PD release time. They will just use them. You will probably be threatened by the results.

So now the lengthy backstory, which of course you can skip if you get the above. And if you don’t, you either probably don’t read this blog anyway, or else probably won’t read this post. Sigh…

I have young kids. While I have quite a number of computers in the house, we definitely meter access to them in an effort to get them engaged with the huge variety of activities we feel kids should be involved in. Our small attempt at balance. All of which is to say that, while my 8 year old is generationally a “digital native,” he is only just starting to figure his way out around the net, around a web browser and around Windows (sigh). His latest accomplishment/goal was using Google Image search to find pictures of whales which he was printing out (one at a time) and stapling together to make a “book” for his friend at school.

While I was proud of his ingenuity and initiative, prompted by the thrifty aim of reducing his use of my paper supplies, I saw an opportunity to point him towards an online way of “collecting” things and “re-presenting” them for his friends. I told him “hold on buddy, we’ll find you a good online scrapbook tool tomorrow where you can add all the things you find for your friends.” He was excited by the prospect, and the next day held me to my promise.

I had in the back of my mind Zoho Notebook or Google Notebook, both of which I had tried with some success to use as clipping services. But sitting next to my son as we checked out both, I realized neither of them were good fits for him – too much functionality, too many buttons, too many steps for him to simply grab a piece of content and insert it, really all he wanted to do. On the spur of the moment I did a search for “web 2.0 scrapbook.” I scrolled down looking for pieces that I had tried before or that twigged my memory, and about 20 results down came to tumblr.com, a site I remember trying and hearing others praise.

So, we went and created an account for him. 60 seconds later he had an account that allowed him to add content to his own web page. 30 seconds later I showed him how he could drag an image onto his site to embed it (caveat: having dual monitors makes this SO simple to teach.) 30 seconds later he had the idea of adding text to anything he embedded, so he could add his own comments for his friends. After doing this for a bit he wanted to know how to add Youtube videos (he’s a fan because of our regular living-room Youtube dance parties). 30 seconds later I showed him where to drop the embed script from Youtube into Tumblr. And finally after he had been doing that for a while, he wanted to know if he could upload a recording of the music I had been noodling on in the background while he had been working. 30 seconds later he had done this too. (This last one less a testament to my musical skills and instead of how little help I had to give him, freeing me to noodle!)

So, 180 seconds of instruction later (in nice 30 second chunks) he’s now publishing a page of his favourite finds. With an RSS feed, so he can use it elsewhere (heck, even print it out in a nice format.) The word “blog” never came up – he has done “scrapbooking” before and that seemed to me the most appropriate metaphor to use.

I know it’s anecdotal. And I am not trying to hold out the resulting page as a work of great creativity or learning. But it is hard to have experiences like this and not think that

simple gets used
simple and easy is not a “nice to have” or “eye candy” but instead one of the critical features that often marks the successful parts of web 2.0
there might be something to this idea of support in little, contextual, hands-on 30 second chunks
our institutions of learning are doomed to become technological ghettos unless they can figure out how to work with the ever-increasing innovative services online instead of doing it all themselves, in-house, with 3-5 year timelines.

Enough. Like I said, stating the obvious. But you know me, sloooow. – SWL

I have seen the future of online education and it is PMOG

Where to start this post?

I could point you at my earlier presentation on “Augmenting OER with Client-side Tools” to orient you to the idea the browser itself offers one of the most powerful ways for users to both customize content on the fly and interact with each other.

I could tell you a story about seeing a reference to a browser-based multiplayer game, played (in my own words) “on top of and alongside of the web itself,” but then loosing that reference in my aggregator, only to have the niggle in the back of my brain eased when my query on twitter was successfully answered.

I could explain how, until recently, the web browser/web server model was kind of replicating earlier (boring) client-server models, treating web browsers often as dumb terminals. And how P2P challenged that in one (network) way. And how social software challenged that in another (that there were *people* at all those browsers). And how browser-based plugins are bringing both of those phenomena (albeit in a different way, technically) to the web experience.

I could point you at various pieces on “networked learning” which I think are all pointing to a new way of learning where the “online” part, the “network” isn’t just an afterthought, whose existence radically challenges what “to learn” and indeed “knowledge” even mean.

Or… you could just tell you to

install Firefox. I mean really. Install Firefox (though v2.x). Seriously, give me one reason why you haven’t already.
go to pmog.com. Get an account. Install the toolbar. And go on a mission.

Why? Because there you will see the (well not “THE” because hopefully there will always be many) future. In brief, once you’ve got that installed, you are in the game. Suddenly, you will notice small windows appearing when you look at web pages, windows urging you to “take this mission” or instead alerting you to dangers or treasures placed by other players. Where is the game taking place? Well, there is a site, and a codex (which is kind of essential reading to get the real flavour of the game). But the game takes place “on top of and alongside of the web itself,” as a PASSIVELY multiplayer online game, meaning it comes to you as part of your regular experience on the web.

So immediately I can see people blanching at the idea of their students being called “shoats” or “bedouins” and coming up with all sorts of FUD on why PMOG.com can’t be used as a platform for education. I am not suggesting that PMOG.com itself is the platform to rush out and adopt (though indeed, why not? Take a mission yourself – can you see any potential for leading people through a learning path, placing obstacles in their way that they must overcome and building a rewards system into these goals? Sound familiar?)

Indeed, the first (easily implementable) idea that popped into my head was to go back to Trailfire and start constructing trails with pieces left out, so that to continue on the trail, you needed to answer a question or figure out a problem that would result in a URL where a new annotation would leave to the next site. But more on that later.

The web has always had this potential – what are hyperlinks (and Google thinks this way) other than people providing context on whatever they are linking to, and through that, paths.What’s new is that all of this context (and all of the people) can be brought back to the very thing being described, in place, enriching the experience, and in the example of PMOG, tied together with a narrative thrust.

Finally, if I was really good, this post wouldn’t be a post. It would be a PMOG mission. And maybe it will be… – SWL

What “Postures” Make Up Your Personal Learning Environment

Just now a silly argument broke out in twitter concerning the acronym “PLE” that I wanted to follow up on. I say “silly” because it was the classic “It’s personal, not monolithic” complaint with the term, which I get and agree with. My response is not to defend the “PLE” acronym but instead just say if it bothers you, come up with a different one, or don’t use a moniker at all, but more importantly, model model model it for the 95% of learners (and teachers) who are drowning in the tsunami of information and choosing to turn their backs rather than learning to surf (to borrow metaphors from a bunch of people whom regular readers and blogosphere denizens will recognize on their own).

And I’m not proposing to re-open this debate here (but maybe I am), instead I have a question for you.

What are the various “postures” by which you understand your own orientation/embeddeness to/in your own personal learning environment (network, whatever!)?

Let me explain a little more of what I mean. I broadly collect my own actions on my learning network, the tools I use, the uses I make of them, and the people that comprise it as well, into three broad “postures”, or ways of relating. For me these are, at a high level,

reading/consuming information, content, reflection, etc,
producing/creating information, content, reflection, etc,
weaving together components, people and conversations on the network, and activity that surely encompasses the former two but also has some distinct aspects to it in and of itself.

Now I don’t think these are exhaustive nor even particularly well conceived, but they are the buckets into which I sub-consciously find myself putting my various activities. And what I am interested in finding out from all of you is, at this high level, what “postures” you see yourself as having in relationship to your learning network, your networked learning, your practice. Are there others you would add to this list or do you have a totally different way of conceptualizing this?

I believe, again without a lot to substantiate it, that you all do indeed have many other ways of organizing and conceptualizing this. But are these all entirely idiosyncratic? Well, to the extent to which we can still talk about “categories” and to the extent to which ideas like “learning styles” still have any meaning, my sense is that we can tease out a number of different “postures,” and a number of different ways to relate these postures, and use these as the entree with which to orient newcomers to weaving their own “personal” learning environments. Certainly these will be personal in the sense of being oriented around them, and certainly be personal in the sense of including different tools, content sources and conversations than mine or yours might. But to argue that we cannot evolve some ways of talking about generally how we orient ourselves to our own PLEs is I think to embark on a solipsistic road that doesn’t resemble the one I find myself on.

So what do you think? Is there a sense in which we can use this notion of “postures” (again, feel free to suggest a better term) as a conceptual entree to helping new people weave their own PLEs, or is this already to reify it. Will it always only be a case of each of us modelling our individual practices, with whatever pieces and conceptions of them resonating individually with each person who sees them. – SWL

(P.S. I am certain this post belies my thoroughly amateur status, that there is lots of nomenclature in the learning sciences that better describes what I am fumbling with here. Please feel free to educate me on it. I do not need tot invent terms where better ones already exist. Like I keep telling you, I am a slow learner).

Jim Farmer’s Eyewitness Account of the Blackboard Patent Trial

http://mfeldstein.com/an-eye-witness-account-of-the-trial/

Through a combination of resignation towards what seemed a pre-determined outcome and pre-occupation with Northern Voice when it was announced, I managed to miss most of the recent hair-pulling that the ridiculous finding in Blackboard’s favour prompted. And thank goodness too, my hair couldn’t have stood it 😉

But I did go read Jim Farmer’s extended eyewitness account of the trial which Michael Feldstein graciously posted over at e-Literate, and I thoroughly advise you too as well, as much for what it portends for the future of high tech patents as what it says about this particular judgement.

It is not difficult to see a picture here (and I want to be clear here, because I think Jim did a fine job being as impartial as possible, that these are my interpretations) of not just “Justice for Sale” but “Patent Law Judgements as Economic Diversification Program.” It’s bad enough to have to read this about Blackboard’s (god how I even cringe to write that name) expert witness:

“Expert witnesses always are asked about their fees. When asked how much he had earned, Mark Jones was unable to give an answer. He said he had spent “hundreds of hours” and gave his rate as $325 per hour. (I thought he said $375, but court documents have the lower amount). He also said he had received $170,000 in fees from Blackboard before the end of 2007 as his [IRS Form] 1099 showed. It is likely he will have been paid more than $300,000 for his testimony when the trial is complete.”

But the picutre of an economically challenged town with a propensity to trust the government (in this case the Patent Office) gearing up to become a high tech patent rocket docket should send shivers up your spine (well, at least unless you are totally jaded about the state of justice in the land, which I can’t say I’d blame you for being.)

Go read for yourself. But all I can help thinking is – did we honestly think it was going to go any other way? And how far along are you on your open source CMS? (or even better, on your loosely coupled teaching platform?) – SWL

What this slow learner learned at Northern Voice – The 2008 Edition

I am not certain enough time has passed yet to have fully digested the last few days (heck I haven’t even left Vancouver and still get one more culinary delight before I go in the form of Dim Sum with the crew). (Sheesh this post has taken a while to write and it is still rushed and not very clear…) This year was different than last; the learning was more in the form of themes that emerged from numerous conversations rather than thunderous emotional epiphany. Anyways, here it goes, what (I hope) I learned this year at Northern Voice:

The Importance of Stories and Narrative

I am a former English major. So I will forgive you if you ignore me from here on out as a perennial dimwit when I tell you that it took me this long to ‘get’ how crucial narrative and storytelling are to everything we are doing, be it learning online, connecting, weaving one’s online presence, blogging… From cogdog‘s masterful 50 Ways performance, to Nancy White’s drawing party, from seeing the WordPress hotshots demonstrate the myriad ways it can be used to tell different stories, to a comment from Keira that “living online is like being in a movie,” to my own little story of blog love that dared speak its name, at each step there seemed to be another story, or someone urging me to re-approach all my convoluted configurations through the simpler (and as some convincingly argued, innate) frame of “storytelling.” Like I said, slow learner.

People deserve simple tools that give them control and choice

Another important theme that emerged for me is that it’s not the specific tool itself that is critical but instead the motivation to use the tool, the problem that is trying to be solved, the itch scratched, that largely determines success or failure. Human instrumentality is such that we will find a way to connect, to work, to change, even if it means using smoke signals or rocks to do the trick.
Sure, ‘bad’ tools get in the way of motivated people, and ‘good’ tools help them work even better. But when people are motivated to connect, to collaborate, to communicate, to learn, they will find a way, make the tools at hand bend to their purpose.

Our job, then, as tool makers is in part to make tools that they can bend to their needs, that are useful because of the uses they can be put to and not only because of the intentions of their designer. Twitter is a great example of this that came up time and again. The many disguises that WordPress can wear another.

But place this alongside Brian‘s usability demonstration of checking discussion threads in WebCT (25 clicks that told a 1000 words), that usability, simpleness, is not a simply a “nice to have.” I wish we had video of it. Instead I would just urge all campus decision makers be forced to monitor a discussion thread in a CMS, like their instructors have to do, for a few weeks. I think we could get the revolution started overnight this way.

The welcoming heart

Now that I think of it, I guess there is some commonality with the revelations of last year. Last year I had my heart opened to the impactful, authentic ways in which people were using blogs, in strong contrast to the often intellectual exercise they can be for me. This year it was my assumptions on the social/network skills and fluency that I require people to bring to participate in the form of connected, networked learning and community that were challenged and hopefully opened my heart a bit more.

It happened a few times, but the most notable was during the “Blogging is Dead – Long Live Bloggers” when (I will blame it on my somewhat addled Saturday morning state) I made some obnoxious assertions about online identity that were really exclusionary. I didn’t mean them that way, but they were.

Yet as the Reverend Jim helped remind me later that day “People call me on my bullshit…and I like it.” I got a bit defensive in the session when it was called to my attention, but because of one of the people doing the calling (and her inimitable, gentle way of doing so), I tried to hear past my defensiveness. And I came to see that while one can be ‘open’ and available on the web with one’s writing & one’s work, that is different than being open and having a ‘welcoming heart.’ That is, a (I’m struggling for a word here – stance? posture? feeling? revealing?) well, an “open heart” that welcomes those you come across, who come across you, instead of an egoful one always needing to be regarded. I don’t think I am expressing this well. Maybe that simply belies that I have not learnt it well yet. Like I said, slow learner.

There’s more. So much more. But I can’t get it out of me right now. (Plus I’m off for a hike with the cogdog, so that struggle will have to wait). But like others, I did not come away from NV unchallenged or (hopefully) unchanged. – SWL