Category: Uncategorized

A Short Poem about S.O.P.A

With sincere apologies to Martin Niemölle, and in no way meaning to diminish the seriousness of its original subject, I offer this short remix, prompted most recently by SOPA:

First they came for the file sharers,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a file sharer.

Then they came for the free content creators,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a free content creator.

Then they came for the political activists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a political activist.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

I know, I know, this seems like just so much hyperbole and overreaction. Just call me Cassandra. But only if you really believe that things like SOPA and Canada’s Bill C-11 (formerly C-32) or the DCMA or ACTA or… are the ultimate battlefield. They are not. They are simply initial skirmishes in a much large battle about CONTROL and FREEDOM, not just of what you watch or read, but what you are allowed to do. More hyperbole, you think. Well, I URGE you to watch Corey Doctorow’s keynote at the 28C3, “The Coming War on General Computing,” which does as good a job as any in explaining how big the stakes are here.

[youtube HUEvRyemKSg]

This is difficult to explain to many people as it seems arcane, philosophical, excessively technical and geeky. Yet don’t we already see all around us expressions (albeit incredibly tepid ones) of the extent to which technological wherewithal is now a core “21st Literacy.” Get used to it – like Lessig said, “Code is Law,” and unless we start to engage with these “arcane” technical issues, we will be the ones being programmed. – SWL

Buddhify

I was extremely privileged to help facilitate, along with Ross Laird and Brian Williams, a session on mindfulness and technology at last month’s Fall ETUG gathering at Kwantlen College in Richmond B.C. We did the session in three parts; Brian opened with a guided meditation, which Ross followed with a wonderful drawing exercise that asked people to depict their centered selves and then additionally the way they felt technology related to this self. The results of these drawings and starting the day this way was quite special and we got lots of positive feedback from participants for this novel beginning to an ed tech gathering.

For my part, I followed up these two great facilitators by leading a bit of a discussion about our relationship to technology, its effects on mindfulness and attention, ways we can cultivate mindfulness in the face of distraction, and even ways in which technology itself might be used to help improve our attention and mindfulness.

It was in the context of this last point that I made mention of Buddhify, an iphone (and android) app I had only been made aware of, via a tweet by openbuddha, the day before. So when I mentioned it I had only had a single day to try it and wasn’t able to endorse it too vigorously, though it did already feel like something that could be useful for folks.

Well, a month later I have had a much better chance to give Buddhify a whirl and unreservedly can say that for the novice/beginner to meditation, it might be the best $2.99 they could spend. The main component of Buddhify is a collection of guided meditations (the male voice, which I have it set to, provided by the mellifluous founder Rohan Gunatillake, but a nice touch is there is a female version too.) Now guided meditations are nothing new, you can find many good ones for free all over the internet, and I often recommend to people who are completely new to meditation or who claim they have tried but “can’t meditate” to start with a guided meditation. Not only can it be a gentler introduction, there are often lots of good tips and encouragements to help you through common frustrations. Buddhify is no different in this regard; the instructions will be very familiar to seasoned meditators, and I really appreciate the light-heartedness of Rohan’s laugh when he recognizes some of these common struggles we all face.

But this is where Buddhify has something extra going for it, actually a couple of things. The first is that it is explicitly built to be a mobile app that recognizes the various different contexts people generally have their phones in. So at the start of the session, it asks you to select one of four settings in which you are using it – Walking, Traveling, At the Gym and finally At Home. It further contextualizes the guided meditation you’ll be offered by asking you to select what you’d like the focus of that session to be – Clarity, Connection, Stability or Embodiment. Based on your choice you’re offered a guided meditation, typically 15 minutes or so, that fits with the context.

Very cool. But in addition, Buddhify brings in some game-like aspects to your beginning practice; the Dashboard keeps track of the percentage of recordings you’ve listened to, how often and the longest stretch of days you’ve used it. Now ultimately, like so many things that are “good for us,” meditation is its own reward, but I think the addition of this game aspect is likely very helpful to people getting started. Just as with exercise practices, early on the tangible results might be slight and the impetus to give up strong, as who doesn’t attach to “outcomes,” and the trick with both is to just “stick with it” for a bit, until it becomes a regular thing (and surprise, surprise, the “results” start to show up too!)

In addition to the Dashboard is the Check-In feature; you check in by rating (on a non-numerical sliding scale) how you are feeling on a number of fronts like Joy, Calm, Curiosity and Balance, and the dashboard then shows you which way you are trending. Again, positive feedback that can help you acknowledge subtle effects that can be difficult to see at any one moment (as an aside, one small addition I’d love to see would be the ability to see the longer trend diagram of these.)

After the ETUG session I used buddhify pretty much solid for 2 weeks. I then found myself using it less, only because I already had a well established sitting practiced. The app is really aimed at people just starting out, I think. But that said, even people who have been sitting for a while can use a hand; while I strive to be dilligent and sit every day, I have my ups and downs too, and just this week I turned back to Buddhify (indeed that’s what prompted this post) in an effort to get myself back on track, and have really appreciated the support and encouragement it offers. (Plus I must say I am pretty intrigued to see what happens when the community unlocks the “Buddhify Mode,” another clever motivating feature that uses skillful means to exploit our curiosity for our own benefit.)

So, novice or experienced meditator, I think there’s something here for us all. I highly recommend Buddhify, and hope it can help others on their journey to mindfulness. – SWL

Why I am going to #occupyvictoria on October 15th

Last night I attended my first meeting of the People’s Assembly of Victoria, the name chosen for Victoria’s version of #occupytogether. It was a long, slow, occasionally tense (or at least tenuous) meeting – in other words, exactly what it needs to be.

With only a week to go until the initial action (which I do hope is followed by an actual camp), the desire to move “past process” and onto some specific issues and decisions was palpable (and indeed, important.) And hopefully some of that happened by the end of the meeting – I actually don’t know what ended up happening in the last half hour, as I broke off with others to discuss technology support and expand that team beyond the heroic efforts of the initial two volunteers.

People's Assembly of Victoria consensus making process
This is What Democracy Looks Like

Yet I have nothing but praise for the folks trying to facilitate the meeting and help this assembly be born (nor indeed nothing but praise for ALL who attended the meeting.) This isn’t to say there aren’t ways to improve the process, there always are, but NOT forsaking process (and the overlooked and under-represented people and perspectives it is meant to protect) in favour of “efficiencies” is EXACTLY part of “the point” of this movement, from where I am sitting.

Someone on twitter yesterday (I think quoting Naomi Klein on Democracy Now) summed up one of amazing aspects of this emergent phenomenon – it has the courage to ask questions for which we don’t have answers. Many will see that as weak, as being simply idealism. To which I say, firstly, when did idealism become a crime? But much more than that – not only is it not weak, it represents the very best, the most courageous, of us as loving humans, to hold space for a multitude of voices clamouring to be heard and not collapse our discomfort with uncertainty through violent imposition of will, but instead, through patience and listening, allow real learning and change to occur, something that can only happen over time.

If the facilitators have not already experienced Open Space Technology (which seems unlikely given the level of awareness many of the folks seem to bring) I do hope some aspects of it can be brought into play on October 15th and following. As its originator, Harrision Owen, describes in his book “Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide,” the conditions for which Open Space process works best sound a whole lot like the conditions we are all facing right now:

  1. a real issue of concern, that it is something worth talking about.
  2. a high level of complexity, such that no single person or small group fully understands or can solve the issue
  3. a high level of diversity, in terms of the skills and people required for a successful resolution
  4. real or potential conflict, which implies that people genuinely care about the issue
  5. a high level urgency, meaning the time for decisions and action was “yesterday”

I know this will sound like old hat to many folks, especially activist types. Consensus process has LONG been common in activist circles. But instead of jadedly dismissing what we are seeing as simply “Johhny Come Lately’s,” people have to recognize that for many of the “99%,” consensus process (and learning how to speak and listen in a way that doesn’t replicate the dominant paradigm) is extremely new; we should be rejoicing that what was once a discipline practiced by only a few is coming to the fore, and expect that it may take a while for people to learn this new way of relating. But isn’t that in part what we are gathering for?

So – I’m not going to list out here the many issues I have with the current massively-interconnected financial/government/military/educational/entertainment complex that has come to dominate our world (and for which resistance has always existed.) My analysis of that hasn’t changed for a long time – though if anything I finally found the courage not to abandon the truths I’ve come to understand in exchange for security and a mortgage. Those are certainly part of why I am going to #occupyvictoria. But even more so, I’m going precisely to participate in a General Assembly, one that hopefully includes many who don’t self-identify as activists, to participate in the birth of this new conversation, this new way of relating. And I’m bringing my kids, so that one day, when they are old and I am gone, they can tell their grandkids they were there when it was born.

If you are in Victoria, I hope you will come and join us – the Assembly is on October 15th at Centennial Square but hopefully that is just the start. If you are elsewhere, I hope you seek out an action near you, or find other means to show your support. In the  words of the Democracia Real Ya, a collective created in Madrid:

An Ethical Revolution is necessary. We have put money above human beings and we must put it at our service. We are people, not the products of the market. For all of the above, I am outraged. I believe I can change it. I believe I can help. I know that united we can do it. Come out with us. It’s your right.

On the “value” of Open

For this year’s ETUG workshop in Nelson the skookum (look it up) organizing committee did a call for videos discussing the Value of Openness. The submissions, from happy mutants all over the network, were fantastic.

The complete finished version (about 30 minutes long) is well worth the watch (I can’t find the embed code, but watch it here – http://etug.ca/2011/06/02/2011-etug-spring-workshop-open-keynote/)

Here’s my little contribution, didactic and heartless as usual ;-( Anyways, for what it is worth

 

Hiatus

I post infrequently enough that I probably don’t even need to tell anyone edtechpost is going on hiatus, but there it is. Not sure if it will be back. Not looking for sympathy or comments. Mostly just feel done with all of this.

Mashups for Non-Programmers – an experiement gone slightly awry

So, we were one of the sessions first up at this morning’s Moosecamp. At the last minute we decided to change the format; originally we had wanted to try and stay true to the ‘camp’ ethos and do very little presenting and a lot of co-creating with the audience. But competition is fierce for attention at Northern Voice, and there are too many good sessions that I wanted to attend too, so we cut it down from theh originally planned 1 1/2 to 2 hour we had hoped for to a quick 45 minute show and tell, with the hope that anyone who got really inspired would meet us latter to get hands-on with the tools.

D’Arcy kicked it off and his set of examples worked pretty well, but right at the end, Pipes failed. Hard to tell if it was the Pipes app itself or an overloaded network conneection. I was up next, and even though I had a few Pipes-based examples to show, I luckily had a few others too in my bag. Unfortunately, one of the service, OpenKapow, seemed to not respond at the same moment, and Dapper, which I was using to illustrate how to create data sources where none exist, was sooo slooow that we had to move on. Oh demoitis, you cruel beast.

We at least tried to seize the moment and turn it into a teachable moment, illustrating that while there has been a true explosion of services, as “non-programmers” we are largely subject to their availability whims. 

Brian followed on with a parable of his efforts over the years with Aggrssive, which while I know he is hard on the results I still think was and is a valiant effort to create a software package to allow us to host our own feed mashups, something many of us at institutions require if we want to introduce these techniques into production.

And finally, Chris Lott brought a rock-solid performance, with hhis various experiments in Ning and Google Co-op working great.

I don’t noticed how many people we convinced that the potential for non-programmers to mashup content are there; that wasn’t so much our goal. For me the session was meant as an experiment on how far non-programmers could in fact go, and hopefully there were at least a few in the crowd who were inspired to push on further. If you are interested, the wiki page that we used to organize the session is chock full of additional examples and technologies to start creating your own mashups. Good luck! – SWL

SUNY SLN awards ANGEL Learning a master agreement

http://www.cyberlearninglabs.com/News/documents/2007-01-23.html

Not sure if it is right to link these too closely, but coming close on the heels of a story last week is an announcement that SUNY’s Learning Network has granted a ‘master agreement’ to Angel Learning. You’d hope business was actually pretty good over at Angel these days, what with their major commercial competitor getting deservedly pilloried for suing their other major commercial competitor. I mean, if you must choose a commercial vendor for your CMS, who are you going to select. The bully? The bullied? Or these guys, who’ve quietly built a very decent CMS (if you go in for that sort of thing) that plays well with others. – SWL

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Ahem…Is this thing on?

Sorry for this totally superfluous post – I am moving Edtechpost off of MoveableType on to WordPress (finally) and a new URL, http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/. If I did this the way I hoped, you should still this post in your current subscriptions, through the wonders of mod_rewrite. Feel free to update subscriptions and blogrolls, but I’m hoping this won’t be totally necessary. The whole reason for the move – mainly to get Comments turned back on. I was getting killed by the spammers using MT, so much so that almost 2 years ago now I disabled them and never got a solution working that satisfied my ISP. I know, lame. Well here’s hoping the magic of Akismet and other WP solutions keep comments up and running. This ain’t no soliloquy, you know, at least not intentionally.

Educause Quarterly Article: Changing Course Management Systems

http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm05/eqm05210.asp

This is one of those articles that ranks in the “could have been important but ends up being too anecdotal” category. The authors are right in pointing to course conversion as both a potential cost issue and huge concern in switching CMS. All one has to do is ask a collection of system administrators or educational technologists who support almost any of the major CMS and they will nod knowingly, or start frothing at the mouth (depending on whether they’ve actually had to do it en masse or not).

But this is one area where higher ed suffers greatly from diverging from the corporate training world – we have no equivalent to an ADL to provide certification of these products on IMS Content Packaging (the larger scoped SCORM never having taken off within higher ed, for good reason.) So we are left to rely on the self-reporting of the CMS companies about their compliance with the Content Packaging and QTI schemes.

For a while the story that the churn of these specifications was what caused the lack of consistent implementations seemed plausible, but increasingly, less and less so. And fair or not, it’s no small part of the reason why on the LOR front, people are increasingly resistant to the notion of trusting their content to the big CMS vendors, as they have yet to exhibit content exports from their systems that will work well in their competitors’ systems.

The irony of this article is that D2L, one of the 2 companies mentioned here, has in fact done a lot of work to be able to convert content from their competitors’ systems as part of their business growth strategy. So if this is the case in trying to convert to them, one can only wonder what it might look like going betwen some of the others. IMS CP got started as a spec shortly after the formation of IMS in 1997, and was an early goal for good reason. From the customers’ perspective, it represented a major risk mitigation strategy to adopting one of these large systems (at a time when arguably the entire domain space was still in a very nascent state). 8 years later, one has got to ask, has it worked? Has the risk been mitigated? Ask your CMS admins and content developers, I’m sure they will tell you what they think. – SWL