Category: The Rest

MOCSL Tools and focusing on user empowerment

http://cosl.usu.edu/projects/mocsl/

So Day 3 at Open Ed 2007 is underway. DJ RSS just rocked the mic with a free form exposition on openness, free tools, mashups and remix culture.

The conference has been really worthwhile on a number of levels – opening my mind to how the needs for localization might be reconciled with the ongoing divergence of needs between leanrers from developed and developing world, and opening my heart to the moral imperative that is OER.

But there was one low point for me, which was learning that funding for COSL’s “Making Open Content Support Learning” toolset had not been renewed in this current round of funding.

Funders will fund what they fund, not much I can do about that; I just wanted to write this post so that I could say publicly what I’ve said privately to a number of folks here, which is that I am really sad to hear about this, because I think these tools and this effort were really promising and important, because they focus on individual learner empowerment in the networked world of OER resources, something you can probably tell from the short movie on client-side tools that I released yesterday, I believe to be an important aspect of improving the chances of OER content efforts to effect learning across the internet as a whole. Funded or not, I plan to continue pointing people to these tools, evangelizing them and their like, and finding my own ways to continue working on these kinds of learner-centric tools. And hopefully this post is understood in the spirit it was written, simply the honest words of an often impolitic blogger . – SWL

Web2ForDev conference

http://www.web2fordev.net/

This post is mostly for other OpenEd 2007 participants who will hopefully see it if Technorati ever gets its act together and finds my posts.

A note of thanks is due to Ismael Peña-López who is conference blogging this meeting currently taking place right now in Rome. It seemed like ti might be of some interest to the OER producers at OpenEd 2007 given how many of the conversations here have ended up around the topic of bringing the OERs to the users where they are. This link will help you catch up on news coming out of that conference. – SWL

My OpenEd Demonstrator – Augmenting OER with Client-Side Tools

http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/opened.htm

Back in June I submitted a paper proposal to OpenEd 2007. In August, the day before I was to go camping, I heard back that while my proposal hadn’t been accepted, I was invited to participate in a ‘Demonstrator’ session (basically a Poster session set up at the end of Day 2).

I have to admit that I was a bit crushed at first. But very quickly I turned this around; not only did I realize that this was a good decision by the organizers in terms of my proposals’ content and the general tenor of the accepted presentations, I also realized that doing a ‘demonstrator’ in the right way would give me an opportunity to reach a wider audience than doing a straight presentation.

So the result is this 10 minute Flash movie demonstrating a few of the ways learners can augment their experience of OERs (in fact the web in general) using client-side (mostly) tools that they control. This idea of client-side tools (by which I mean extensions, bookmarklets and Greasemonkey scripts) really appeals to me because it starts to shift the locus of control back to the learner and away from centrally provisioned server tools. The point in doing this? Well, in addition to simply raising awareness of these techniques, the point in presenting this specifically at OpenEd is as a small challenge to what I see as a past tendency towards monolithic (and not mashup friendly) content in some of the formal OER projects, and to counter what seems to me like the chauvinism that people are going to consume your OER courses on your site, in the way you dictate. In my mind, OERs will really start to succeed when they can augment our experience of the learning space that is the entire internet, instead of sitting off to the side and requiring learners to self-identify that they want an OER. As I say in my final slide “People need their OER even when they are not on an OER site!”

Was this a successful experiment? Well, in my mind, not totally. I really wanted to show more examples, for instance like WikiProxy, of Greasemonkey scripts that dynamically link to supplemental resources without a lot of semantic underpinnings. You know, loosely connected. But I couldn’t get WikiProxy working properly, ran out of time in my own development efforts (but more on this soon) and as much as I think the new OER Recommender by COSL is a good illustration of this technique, it felt kind of superfluous to demo this where it was actually developed 😉

I also think one can validly challenge the extent to which the techniques I demonstrate actually enhance learning. I think they do, but I can see how others would disagree. So my question to you – what other ‘client side enhancements’ have you found that learners can use independently to augment existing coontent and improve their learning experience on the web. I am really interested to hear more ideas!

There are other pieces that I didn’t get to show but that if you are interested you can find out more in my del.icio.us links for the presentation. Specifically, how you can perform some of these tricks in other browsers (through things like Turnabout and Creammonkey), how organizations can distribute these tools through mechanisms like custom toolbars, customized portable apps on cheap thumb drives and how yoyu can turn Greasemonkey scripts into proper extensions. Enjoy! – SWL

OpenEd 2007 Day 1 Reflections

So the Day 2 sessions for the OpenEd 2007 conference in Logan just started, and in my typical lightening fast way I am just getting my thoughts together from Day 1.

For me, the first day of OpenEd was all about humility. The opening sessions by the Nepalese contingent opened my eyes to the challenges faced by educators in the developing world. Sure, on some intellectual level I already understood these, but to hear these folks talk and see their wonderful pictures made this so much more real for me, and helped me connect with it with my heart, and helped me to reframe the challenges I’ve been wrestling in their proper perspective. Previously I had approached discussions of open education as a basic human right with some skepticism, but by the end of the day instead I’d become convinced that it is a moral imperative.

What was also amazing to see was what seemed like a shift in the greater discourse to recognizing the critical importance of both local knowledge and community to open education initiatives. Christopher Hoadley from Penn State did a wonderful talk on a project running in four countries across the Himalayas that rejected a computer and network focused approach in favour of providing local children with video cameras to document (and create disalogue around) local knowledge, lore and issues. To see the resulting video and hear how it was fostering dialogue in these communities felt like a real experience of appropriate technology.

Other highlights include trying out COSL’s new 51weeks service, a new system they have developed with a view to extending the rich conversations that begin at face to face conferences to the other 51 weeks in the year when you are not there, and of course hanging with the dudez, experiencing the scorn of the waitress at what is apparently the only watering hole in town. I am very grateful to be here for all of these reasons and more. It just feels like the perspective correction I was needing. – SWL

P.S. if you’re interested, my brain dump notes for day 1 are available, and every session is being podcast and the presentations uploaded to the 51weeks site.

Change Change Change

Not really having a great day (or month or year for that matter) but in the midst of this most recent despondancy, as ever, all I have to remember to do is breathe, look up, look around to find space, signs, a way forward. In this case this image from Theory U, by Otto Scharmer (www.theoryu.com) via a workshop description from Reboot 9 by an old friend and mentor, which also reminded me why I’m here. “Open Mind…Open Heart…Open Will” indeed. Take 3 times, repeat as needed.
EdTechPost may go a bit quiet for a while (even quieter than the one post a week currently). In the words of Stiff Little Fingers, “gotta gotta get away.” Where to I’m not sure. But gotta find some space to work things out. Peace out.

One of those days to cap off one of those weeks

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

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

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

Widgitized LaTeX Equation Editor

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

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

Great Presentation on the Role of the IT Liaison

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

So I am still waiting to hear the results of Brian’s foray into the lion’s den at IT4BC, but that’s only one of a number of things that have had me thinking on a perennial topic of mine, how to engender innovation in higher ed, specifically with conservative IT departments, or to frame it differently, how to improve my management ‘kung fu’ and make change happen within the political landscape on a typical campus.
Which is why I found this presentation by Matthew Braaten of Lander University on The Emerging and Necessary Role of the IT Liaison so interesting. The sections I found particularly helpful were the discussion of the “political framing” of organizations (“scarce resources and enduring differences make conflict central to organizational dynamics“) and the technique for mapping the political terrain. Even if the maps seem too simplistic to you, the very act of considering these dynamics before you engage strikes me as another step towards cultivating awareness and intent, which is to say, better kung fu!

eLAB’s blog? Hardly, that’s mine!

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

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

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

So I wrote them this letter:

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

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

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

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

Sincerely, Scott Leslie”

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

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

thagoo – meta-search for social bookmark sites

http://www.thagoo.com/

So this kind of seems like a good idea, a site which allows you to search tags across a large number of social bookmarking sites, but somehow I expect I’ll use it as much as I use “meta-search” engines, which is to say, not at all.

If I knew I was getting the best stuff from all the sites, and it dealt well with duplication, then maybe. But my experience, which seems borne out by how hard it is to get people to shift off of their habitual search techniques, is that familiarity with the search experience (both interface and reliability of the results, and in the case of social bookmarking, the extent of your affinity or ability to control your sources) trumps the greater span of these ‘meta-‘ approaches. – SWL