Technologies for Learning, Thinking and Collaborating
http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_eval.html
This paper describes a general process for evaluating software, but has a specific focus on how to evaluate Open Source software against proprietary packages. It is useful in that it highlights key areas outside of straightahead functionality to pay attention to, things like cost, support, maintenance, reliability, and license issues. – SWL
– via [OpenSector.org]
“Koha is the first open source integrated library system … the Koha system is a full catalogue, OPAC, circulation and acquisitions system.”
I’m not an expert in OPAC systems, so I leave it to the librarians to judge how full-featured this software is, though on the surface it seems fairly mature. I’m posting this, though, as just another example of how wide the range of open source projects has become. It wasn’t that long ago that people (usually in an attempt to maginalize their effects as part of a FUD campaign) would characterize open source projects as focusing on only those types of programs of interest to the geeks who could build them. There’s probably always going to be a bit of that at play, but a quick glance at, for instance, sourceforge projects by intended audience shows just how broadly the phenomenom has spread. – SWL
– via [OpenSector.org]
I work all day on a project based out of Colorado but am physically located in Victoria, Canada, and my colleague Bruce Landon is outside of Vancouver. So we’re forever trying various voice over IP and instant messaging solutions in an attempt to find a cheap, easy and effective way to stay in touch, but so far either they’ve seemed flaky or at times ran into problems with firewalls.
Not so this new one called Skype – just tried it out with my colleague in the U.S. and it was pretty close to phone call quality, with only the slightest drop out once or twice in the conversation. It’s from the makers of Kazaa, so who knows, maybe it installed some nefarious spyware on machine. In any case, it worked great and I now have an easy way to stay in touch via voice, for free. Will have to check out if it handles multi-party conversations. – SWL
http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=1067
This article in the latest Technology Source asks some good questions about the ends to which many faculty development efforts focused on technology are directed. Rather than simply having ‘faculty adoption of technology’ as an end, the article suggests that such projects need to align with a more overarching goal, improved student learning, and points to an excellent document from George Mason University that outlines 10 IT Goals for Liberal Arts students. – SWL
– via [Online Learning Update]
http://www.glance.net/site/home.asp
There are lots of desktop sharing programs out there. I came across this one today in search of a program that would allow me to have many remote users view my desktop(and pretty well do *only* that) and not require them to have anything but a web browser, e.g. no other client software required.
There’s a tiny app to download on my end; the service runs in an ASP-model, so they give you an unique URL on their server, and then sharing you desktop is as easy as starting the program and then passing the URL to anyone you want to see it. Pretty close to real-time viewing of your desktop in your guest’s web browser. Their pricing model is not ‘bad’ ($400/year for unlimited one-to-many sessions, and they have monthly plans as well) but could maybe use some tweaking if it were to appeal to higher ed users as a potential low cost/low threshold application. – SWL
http://lester.rice.edu/DesktopDefault.aspx
New to me, this directory out of Rice University provides “an online community and database focused on innovations in learning science and technology (LST), [and] profiles innovative research projects and researchers.” To jump start the project, LESTER has actively collected records for over 250 projects, 260 researchers, and 130 research organizations, and invites new users (you have to sign up for a free account) to contribute resources. Vast. – SWL
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/aug03.asp#susan
The latest newsletter from Human Factors International has this report on recent research into how download times affect user perceptions of Web pages. It’s long been a truism in web design that users hate to wait for web pages and so download times and file sizes are the bane of many designer or developer. The studies in this article spin this a bit more – not only do users apparently hate to wait, they will actually judge the same material to be less interesting if made to wait for it. – SWL
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
Not specifically ‘ed tech’ but pretty nifty – you can now keyword search the wayback machine. Here’s an old project I worked on when I was at The Banff Centre that I thought was otherwise lost forever. – SWL
– via [ResourceShelf]
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3718
Short thought-provoking piece about whether we will see a reduction in the role currently played by relational databases, specifically in relation to issues like indexing, because of the ever onwards march of processing speeds. Indexing systems are inherently less efficient then structured searching, but at a certain point that may appear to matter less in the face of insane processing speeds. – SWL
In the comments area on a recent post by David Davies on unwanted blog comments was a note by Bill Brandon describing a more common form of spam, email spam, generated by harvesting email address from blogs. Anyone who has been publishing a blog for some time and is also publishing their email address is probably subjected to this.
But what it reminded me of was a message I received about a month ago by someone in the field of elearning simulations that was for me an example of spam that wasn’t spam, or at least that I didn’t treat as such. This person made mention of the fact that I published a blog, and then went on to introduce me to their new book on elearning simulations.
Was it spam (or ‘unsolicited bulk email’ to use its more useful/less colourful name)? It was unsolicited and it was email. Was it ‘bulk’? Well, the author may have hand-culled my email address and typed up the message to me. I don’t know. I kind of doubt it. I expect it may have come out of one of the ed tech OPML files floating around, or someone’s web-based blogroll. But the point is, I couldn’t really tell for sure. The tone was such that it appeared somewhat personal, and it was very on topic. If the author hadn’t actually read the manifesto, he was at least very much on the cluetrain.
Did I buy the book? Well no (not because I wasn’t interested, but because it’s about 49th on the list of things I can’t afford right now). Did it work as a email marketing exercise?: I’m not a converted buyer, so not by that measure, but I kept the email in my inbox for a few weeks(regular spam lasts 2 nanoseconds in there), I was interested enough to research the author a bit more, and I’m posting to my blog about it (though you’ll have to puzzle out the specifics yourself, as I won’t shill for a book I haven’t read 😉
I don’t mind unsolicited messages; I just mind unsolicited messages that treat me as just another email address. – SWL