Obama, the web and us

February 2, 2009 at 12:47 pm · Filed under Web 2.0, goingson ·Tagged ,

I caught the first airing of Future Tense on ABC Radio National the other morning on the drive to work. It replaces the rather excellent Media Report so it had some big shoes to fill in my view. It seems to have started well with a very interesting look at Obama’s use of various Web 2.0 (can we stop saying that yet?) tools and the internet to increase the transparency of his administration.

Now in power, the new president has taken the first steps towards making the US government more technologically connected and more interactive with its constituency. But what are the risks and how difficult will it be to change the bureaucracy?

Sitepoint amoung many, many others have followed along with the Obama campaign’s massive use of social networking and every other Web 2.0/social tool it could throughout the election. Specifically they look at the sustainability and use of the networks after the task of getting elected has past.

What I found particularly interesting were the parallels between the governance issues for government and our context in the delivery of education. The same issues of control/openness/reliance on external services and dealing with the legal risks and ramifications of reduced control over information release and interaction are present and not really solved either for us and them. I expect to see and hear more on the new US approach to openness and hopefully we’ll be able to borrow solutions as they apply them. We might also enjoy increased comfort with such approaches to delivering services as well.

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Another look at PLEs – G. Atwell

February 2, 2009 at 12:25 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , ,

Graham Atwell suggests that PLEs might be the future of education in his presentation:

At a glance the main functions Graham outlines for a PLE are as follows:

  • Search
  • Aggregate and scaffold
  • Manipulate – test, try, experiment – “mixing deck for ideas”
  • Analyse – make sense of the information aggregated
  • Storing – increasingly important – store or backup the information stored on various services on the web “myself”
  • Presenting – presenting all these ideas/knowledge
  • Representing – presentation in context
  • Sharing – of the representations

To sum up Graham asks: What a PLE is and what can we do with a PLE?

Good questions, I feel everytime I have a bit of an idea about either things get muddled up again. Even more so, when we get to looking at any sort of implementation, even of just some aspects, we get caught up with these same questions. Even more frustrating is the round-about nature of some of these features and functions which get a bit generic – which is fine – but when we look to some sort of implementation specifics become necessary.

Other issues still unresolved are the institutional control problems – if it’s not hosted by the institution issues of compliance and control seem to arise. How much all this even matters is pondered on elearnspace and to some extent I see this issue as being one where we can’t prescribe an environment or require its use LMS style, but where we’re aiming to assist and show people how they might better enable their own approach to their (institutionally homed) learning. Hopefully the long term effect is that they can then apply their comfort with perhaps a few tools to their ongoing work and learning outside and after university.

Anyway, a few ways forward appear to becoming clearer:

  1. work with a couple of groups of academics to get some of these things in front of a group of users – having a clear idea of what works, is wanted, is useful to compare against what we/others think is required will go a long way to moving us forwards
  2. wait and see what 1. shows us :)

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Cloudworks and Cloudscapes

January 21, 2009 at 11:38 am · Filed under goingson ·Tagged

Cloudworks: Social networking for learning design

Cloudworks, developed by the Open University Design Initiative is a social network for sharing  ideas for teaching. There is an explicit aim of creating a sustainable community which lasts longer than the initial funding (recognising that such a learning object/approach repository isn’t really new but that a new approach to its execution might be more successful long term).

Engeström – objects which mediate the links/ties to people. The example given is a comparison with LinkedIn (or Facebook) where there is a recognised link between people but limited information on what that link is and its effects, Cloudworks seems

Development

Generally what might be expected form such a projects: vision statement, protoyping (testing on paper), first release on Drupal CMS, feedback now the second release.

Principles

People oriented, not just the content (a contrast to other such attempts), open

Risks

  • Being too abstract in the naming/description of tools – what works and what doesn’t isn’t immediately clear when looking at the site
  • Not a repository as there have been many attempts at creating these but ultimately they’re not engaging to a community and fail. Therefore this project aims to be a a conversation – community focus added Cloudscapes, an aggregated grouping of topics (clouds) so they can be followed together – whether it is able to maintain use and a community after its funding ends remains to be seen

Overall the attempt appears to address a need, it’s just that I don’t really know what that need is entirely. Learning objects and whatnot are wonderful on paper however the “customisation” that is inevitably required in each context of use tends to be reduce their transferrability in practice.

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Workshop – Teaching and Learning 2.0

December 1, 2008 at 11:12 am · Filed under Web 2.0, goingson ·Tagged ,

Began with introductions and Deakin’s pilot and current status of it’s Social Software effort. Integrated with Deakin’s Bb Vista are Drupal SMF for threaded discussions and blogs (perhaps not technically a blog in the WP or blogger sense) and MediaWiki for wikis. A Bb grant funded the work and social presence (avatars) seen as a significant advantage of these other systems.

Interesting comparison to CQU is that these and all of the trialled social softwares (Gallery2, WordPress included) are PHP+MySQL apps which have all but been eliminated from any sort of contention on CQU’s network. As they’re running it on “their own” server the PHP+MySQL base hasn’t prevented their use. As part of the course admin interface an install of Media Wiki or Drupal is availble at “the click of a button.”

WordPress didn’t seem to have much adoption in testing/pilotting – perhaps WP-MU would suit better now.
Professional development – with social software – staff capability and knowledge of social software (which in this context is limited to Drupal SMF and MediaWiki which perhaps doesn’t reeeeally capture the potential or broader meaning of the term).

Issues

  • Privacy and copyright/IP rights issues were still touched upon and not really resolved. As was the issue of leaving instances available across terms
  • Lack of clear usage patterns and stats for students’ use of the various installs (mentioned there are some 50 installs with another 100 for 2009). There was some acceptance that build it and they will come didn’t occur, it would be interesting to see how much these systems/installs were actually used

I found the use of Drupal a bit surprising – it’s a very compentent and well regarded PHP CMS however it’s vanilla interface is sparse and not particularly easy to use. Issues like keeping installs up to date for security reasons also came to mind. Facilitators said that they’ve disabled almost all of Drupal’s features (and there are a lot) just allowing for basic page-editing CMS and the SMF forums.

Presentation: Wikis in higher-ed

Pilot use of Media Wiki (which perhaps doesn’t have the easiest interface to use)

Issues with wiki use involved technical knowledge and comfort with use of the product. A significant and ongoing issue involved participants’ relunctance to edit eachother’s entries or working together offline and having one user then post the completed entry, defeating the features and purpose of the system.

When used in courses, academics would introduce the wiki and how to use it in a first lesson. Strong approach towards training the trainer. Staff go through professional development for using the tools (and to some extent how to apply them to the course) and then it is mostly up to them to show the students how to use the tools.

Assessment is a difficult task – some 3000 posts generated from 400 students. Obviously impossible for staff to read/respond to these.

My Issues with this approach to “social software”

  • too narrow in scope – Drupal isn’t a particularly usable system, neither is MediaWiki and both are delivered through the institution in a controlled manner (limited customisablility, timeframe of availability is generally been term based). It’s a great start to see institutional support of these systems and  approaches
  • blogs aren’t really blog like – RSS, comments, etc aren’t visibly used it would seem
  • SMF forum is perhaps better than the Bb one – customisability and social presence through avatars was a primary aim here but again it’s not accessible once the term has passed
  • Attempts to recreate the socal nature of a wiki/blogosphere are somewhat contrived creating some of the problems with assessment – wikipedia has a strata of users. Some who write a lot about a topic (authors) and others who have made thousands of edits of a small numbers of words (editors). These aren’t allocated roles, they have naturally evolved this way. Trying to create a working/sophiosticated use of wikis is difficult without realising how it has worked in the wider world
  • if a student is in two courses which require blogging, they will have TWO blogs – rather than a single blog which they can categorise conent to the applicable subject/topic. The value of building up an online presence takes a big hit from this approach – it must be created multiple times and won’t eveolve and interrelate through a degree and throughout courses

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The trading room – social software place

December 1, 2008 at 10:55 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged

The project is from Deakin, so social software refers again to Drupal-SMF or MediaWiki. Drupal in this case for blogs.

Academic doesn’t use Web 2.0 sites/services/profiling – “I don’t know how to do all that, they do” perhaps indicates the disconnect again. Blogs on finance, commerce, etc.

Alfie D (Alfred Deakin) was the teacher’s avatar through which moderation and instigation for activities with students.

280+ students 60-70% international, face to face 2 hr lecture each week. Blogging was part of assessment to ensure it occurred as a mandatory task. Frequent and consistency as part of assessment – at least 5 posts through the 13 weeks (does this capture the blogging thing?) and involve technical nature of commerce in the course – and some interaction with the blogs of others – commenting, conversations not really part of the approach it would seem.

Survey

64% of respondants already had a blog (outside of the uni) or some other space (MySpace/Facebook) – what was the split here? These social networks can allow conversations, but they aren’t open to all in the blogging sense. 2007 results to the same question showed there was a great deal of growth in uptake in blogging/online spaces.

Usefulness of blogs was seen as #1 for reaffirming theorie s and work covered in lectures/tutes. Social interaction was much less

Assessment/Moderator/Teaching interaction

Engagement of lecturer – couldn’t read EVERYTHING or respond to everything. Highlights again the futility in trying to recreate the blogosphere in a small environment and with a moderator (demi-god figure) trying to oversee the whole .

Cognitive load to some extent an issue – also involved having to read other students’ take on a topic having to reflect on that too.

What worked

Compulsory participation worked

X

Marking – through printing out a blog entry and marking from hardcopy!!

(Again) the sheer number of posts

plagiarism – blogs still require acknowledgement of sources

Future

!! extending access to the blogs (the Trading Room) to allow access to wider community of those involved in finance (outside the uni) and outside of the limitations of term timeframes. Life-long learning part of Finance Central which allows alumni, etc to access the site/social space.

http://deakin.edu.au/alt/dsmf/finance – voluntary but requires signup (and doesn’t seem to be publicly available without a login) so it’s still a contained

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Continuing the discussion

November 27, 2008 at 12:49 pm · Filed under Opinion, PLE ·Tagged , ,

Further to DJ’s original post, I’ve looked into pingbacks verses trackbacks to get a better understanding of the differences and how they do or don’t work when trying to thread together discussions between blogs.

  • trackbacks (howto) – the original (legacy) notification method
  • pingbacks (howto) – newer, automatic when link is in post content, displayed differently, no special URL is needed

I’ve noticed a steady increase in the use of blogs by programmers (ruby/rails focus now). Rails has tended to have quite vocal discussions emerge given its opinionated-ness and as a result this has provided me a way to look at how blogs are used to carry out the discussion.

I realise I too have this blog on WordPress.com so I’m pretty certain the pingback will work, to that end I’ll find something on blogger to try out the differences and see what happens. Again the rails community provides some insight into how well this might work, as a good many blogs use a somewhat heterogeneous set of blog engines (more detail…).

What are the mechanics, benefits and limitations of using individual blogs to manage a multi-person discussion?

Mechanics

Each person needs their own blog as opposed to just jumping onto a common discussion board. Of course, if everyone grabs a blog from one provider (wordpress.com or blogger for example) then the situation is a perhaps bit different – the technical issues around integration and reliance on pingbacks are hopefully muted but there’s less diversity in the blogs. However, with the diversity of themes available the underlying blog engine mightn’t be readily discernible anyway. I’m not sure if there are issues with the lack of diversity, perhaps the impact of competition and features might be one issue though.

Limitations

Multiple blog posts on multiple blogs or discussion through the comments on one post. Reading through a single (long) list of comments is more akin to a discussion forum and is possibly more cohesive. The alternative is jumping through a whole lot of different blogs (with their own personalisations, look and feel, etc) which is probably going reduce cohesiveness of the conversation. Even ensuring you’re reading through it chronologically might be tricky.

Benefits

One clear benefit I see from a learning, reflection, tracking/assessment standpoint is that each person’s contribution are clearly identifiable as they’re all collected on their own blog. This is where I see the whole ePoprtfolio thing going – the blog provides a very flexible platform to do all all sorts of ePortfolio type activity without needed an ePortfolio product.

Blogs allow the author’s interests and escapades in work/life to be intermingled into their conversations. Taking the rails example again, an author might take up a particular point in a multi-blog conversation but the post beforehand addresses implementing a new rake task and the one after is about a new camera. These multiple aspects of a person can provide a greater insight into the author’s way of thinking as it might apply to the larger conversation.

As opposed to a topical discussion board or thread, a blog might be involved in various and completely disparate conversations within a range of cummunities. Again this builds a bigger picture of the author.

Well, there’s a start. My first pingback and all. How exciting :)

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ePortfolio or blog – is it just how you use it?

November 20, 2008 at 1:02 pm · Filed under Opinion, PLE, ePortfolio ·Tagged , ,

George Siemens mentioned Elgg as a great ePortfolio product, and None mentioned them again the other day:

I have today completed a draft for an assessment item in one of my course redesign projects (see attached). What is clearly needed here is an ePortfolio and a simple tool to allow students to reflect on their learning journey…

Any thoughts on portfolio-based assessment?

Yes…

Your last comment reminded me of my brother’s portfolio he had to put together for one of his final subjects (a year or so ago I think). As it was multimedia, he had to make the site, but he included work he’d done privately and throughout his degree. It’s not even hosted at the uni and still available : http://users.on.net/~fitzhood/index.html

After looking at the sakai based eportfolio product a couple of years ago I’m wary of just jumping aboard the Product bandwagon, I still maintain that a blog is perfect for this – much better organised and with the likes of WordPress/blogger, very open, standard and interconnected. And they’re always getting updated with new features, easier to use interfaces and better connections to other sites.

Looking at the screenshots for Elgg, I was somewhat impressed but wondered just how useful that system might be, compared to the LMS or facebook already. It’s certainly better than the sakai eportfolio thing though!!

Way back, when a few of us students did the Webfuse special topic with DJ we used a local install of the MovableType blog for exactly the sort of stuff that’s mentioned in this assessment. Although I always lagged with getting the reflection done in time, looking back it was a good thing to write out and quite useful/valuable (in hindsight:). So again, I get to wondering exactly what is the difference between a blog and an eportfolio when looking at the products and the outcomes we’re wanting from them.

If students were consistent in applying themselves to reflecting when requested (like I generally didn’t:) I think it’s quite a good approach.

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