Edublog awards – Top 10 news events of the edublog year 2005


December 18th, 2005 10
Obviously, the blackboard takeover of Web CT
Well… who’s to say what happens over this. It may be that the whole market gets cornered by this new giant, as they stop wasting money trying to crush each other and now go to work on the world. Blackboard’s close relationship to microsoft notwithstanding the new monolith that is the mega-LMS industry is something we’ll be watching in 2006.

9
Moodle at Athabasca and open university.
This year saw two massive online universities switch to an open source VLE. I is proof that the open source model can be attractive even to big companies, those of us that are fans of moodle and the open source industry are hoping that all goes well…

8.
Something about web 2.0 which bust out this year
2005 was, if anything, the year of the read/write web. Few websites now don’t at least give you the chance to play with their themes, if not create most of the content. This year user side apps were king, and the wisdom of the masses put to the test.

7.
Open Office 2.0 released
This application might be the biggest reason that microsoft loses its stranglehold on the desktop market. It allows for full compatability to everything that anyone uses. If the browser based app doesn’t kill all, then this will carve out a lot of market for mac and linux.

6.
rising censorship/targeting/moral panic surrounding
myspace, facebook, teen-blogging
One of the big debates this year is ‘what do we do about our students being on the internet’. While this is not new, nor is it the kind of conversation particularly restricted to the net, it just seemed everywhere we turned someone was talking about a new server blocking edublogs, or skype. Or someone talking about how a student who did something wrong ‘also had a blog’. This conversation has now become part of the common discourse.

5.
Podcasting!
Wow. Podcasting’s cool huh…

4.
The one hundred dollar laptop
While many of us are tired of hearing about this already “i want one damnit, stop talking to me about it” we are tired of it because some people were interested in talking about nothing else. How many times have each of you had someone come up to you and say “hey, there’s a hundred dollar laptop”. Well… hey, there’s hundred dollar laptop. ps. It doesn’t really exist.

3
Wikipedia and news reporting.
While the ‘Indian Ocean Tsunami’ actually happened on boxing day of 2004, it was harbinger of the rise of wikipedia and ‘on-the-spot’ reporting. As the cable news reporters were becoming more imbeded and centralized it stepped up and filled the need for immediate personalized news. Other events this year, like the London bombing, have only served to reinforce this. Millions of people now turn to wikipedia to both produce and consume information about what’s happening right now.

2
Firefox
On October 19, 2005, Firefox had its 100 millionth download, just 344 days after the release of version 1.0. Many of us forget that a year ago we were still telling people… hey, you gotta try this firefox thing. Another of the new solid competitors for Microsoft, firefox has now become a household name for people outside that long standing community of netscape/mozilla lovers.

1
the browser based app.
The second, and perhaps more serious, competitor to the microsoft hegemony is the browser based application. With programs like ‘writely.com’ and ‘odeo’ the desktop based app. May soon become a thing of the specialist and the uncool. This year they hit the mainstreem, and they work. We may soon be looking back on 2005 and saying… ‘man, i was still using applications… what a pain in the ass.’

Wikis – many truths, loosely joined


December 13th, 2005 Are wikis showing us that truth is inherently flawed?

Interesting post noted by downes called Are wikis inherently flawed? There is a fine list of good wiki behavious listed at the end of the site that I encourage anyone starting a wiki to look at, and at least address if not follow. My concern though, lies more in the middle of the argument. Thalheimer says

Wikis, blogs, websites (indeed, all forms of communication) carry with them the possibility that the information conveyed is not true. The more widely some information is dispersed, the bigger the potential problems. The more our communication channels have validators who correct inaccuracies, the more we tend to move toward the truth. For example, the press has traditionally played a role in holding public officials to account and conveying the news to people. Competition, as between political parties, can surface truths sometimes. Peer policing, as academic researchers do through research referring mechanisms, offer a correcting mechanism. Credentialling standards or agencies control who gets into a field or who advances.

Take a look at the bolded sentence. If we have ‘validators’ we get closer to ‘the truth’. Validating agents have a tendency to support ‘dominant narratives’ or the truth that already exists, or more specifically, the truth that keeps the powerful, powerful and the rich, rich. The example of the press is an ideal one, here in Canada several editors have been fired for saying things that were not inline with the dominant narrative (they have argued, essentially, against those funding the paper). The validators, in the case of the newspaper, were the censors. The people telling you what you can and can’t write.

There are certainly some kinds of truth that lend themselves more to validating than others. If the math is wrong, then it’s usually wrong. But this is not the same kind of truth. Most kinds of work that will be done in wikis will not be this kind of ‘right or wrong’ truth. It will be subtle issues of context. Things where different persepectives will be important. Where a ‘validator’ might tell you that your idea is foolish, or worthless, (”Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance will never sell” is one of my favorite examples of the ‘validator’ not really knowing what is going on).

Wikis don’t ‘create’ truth anymore than anything else does. They allow for a special kind of presentation of a truth, a truth that comes together through many people working together. Truth is created where people invest their trust. If we invest our trust in commercials, then we believe that we need three glasses of milk a day to stay healthy. If we believe the American government, the war in Iraq has been won… twice. If we believe that wikipedia matters, then it does. The ‘JFK involvement’ story is an growing pain that we must all go through, the man who did it said ‘he didn’t realize that wikipedia was a serious thing, and therefore treated it like a bar bathroom stall.

Wikis allow for dissent. They allow for group-think. The violent group-think that leads to mob mentality usually happens when people are ‘trying’ to find a voice and can’t. Wikis give them that voice. Is it the final word on group work… certainly not. New and better will be on the way. But I’ll put my trust in the truths of wikipedia, that can come from different cultures, and different perspectives, and trust to the new research methodologies of the current era that allow me to assess people’s perspective, rather than trusting to the single, top-down perspective of brittanica. (who’s name is so colonial it’s kinda funny)

And these research methodologies ‘many truths, loosely joined’, is where i think we need to be going.

Blogging for social justice – 5 minute podcast excerpt

December 10th, 2005 This is from about 70 minutes into this week’s brainstorm… just to give you an idea of some of the conversations that happen. This one has me sounding a little more proselytizing than i really feel about the issue… just a little. This is the sound file. Check it out, join the debate.

Get your podcast online in 10 minutes – if you’re lucky.

Just a quick note about podcasts. I got a call from a friend of mine asking me to get her up and running with a podcast. She already has the audio recorded, and put into an mp3 file. (see audacity) We chatted about it for a while, and after a little debate, we decided on a plan. From start (after the debate) to finish… about ten minutes. here’s how.

First step – get a place to host it
Go to bluehost. Register for a one (or two) year account. They’ll throw in a free domain name with that, 10 GIGS (etc. etc. etc.), cpanel of space pretty much everything you need. If you wanna check to see if you’re domain name is taken or not… i use godaddy
This costs just under $100 Canadian a year(credit card or paypall). This is the only cost you will incur.

Second step – get your site configured
At the end of the bluehost installation it will ask you if you want to go to your ‘cpanel page’. you do.
You’ll see a bunch of icons over most of the page and a bunch of info on the left banner that you may or may not understand NO MATTER.
-scroll down
-in the far right column you’ll see something called ‘fantastico’ CLICK IT.

in the left column you will see a list of programs… you want WORDPRESS

click on wordpress and the right column will change, you will want to NEW INSTALLATION

Fill in the information. The directions are there, read them carefully, and you’ll be okay… some tips
-install into the root directory (leave the first field (rectangle) empty.
-use ‘admin’ as your username and a familiar password
-don’t worry about the email account, just use one of yours, it’s for sending a new password if you lose yours.

click – finished a couple of times and you’re wordpress will be installed.

Check to see if your domain has ‘propogated’)
This can take anything from 2 minutes (which it did for us today) to 72 hours (which happened to me once). This is the lucky part referred to in the title. It takes a while for the internet to decide that your domain name is a place to go.
– type http://domainname.com into your browser (try with and without the www) (the ‘domainname’ refers to the domain you chose in your bluehost install)

Get that podcast up and rockin’
Once you are propagated you can go to http://domainname.com/cpanel
use your user and password from bluehost installation.

– click file manager (second column second row of icons (i think))
– click www (on the folder part (little yellow rectangle))
– near the top of the list you will see ‘create new folder’ click this
– call the folder’ audio’
– go to the ‘audio’ folder
– click ‘upload’ (other list of options, somewhere topish right)
-find your mp3 file and upload.

Go to wordpress
-go to http://domainname.com
-click ‘login’
-click ‘write’
– post a title and some text and somewhere include a xhref=”http://domainname.com/audio/filename.mp3″>my cool podcast (except you’ll need to add a ‘< ' to the front of it, which i can't, because it would just make a link. -click submit. I have to do this with the wordpress in fantastico, i don't know why. -after you've logged into wordpress (see above) click 'Presentation' -theme editor -footer template - In the first 10 lines of code there are two place where it says 'feed:' - in here, delete all the things that say 'feed:' save changes.

Celebrate
You have a podcast. Immediately return to this site, and post your podcast ‘feed’ in the comments. your podcast feed is available at the bottom of your new podcast page where it says ‘entries rss’
this link information will allow the whole world ‘potentially’ to enjoy you’re great audio
-find beer
-open beer
-drink beer
-repeat as necessary. Technorati Tags:

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 8th, 2005 at 12:23 am and is filed under planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Get your podcast online in 10 minutes – if you’re lucky.”

  1. Cyn Says:
    December 8th, 2005 at 1:31 am It works, it really works. Here is the proof:

    Parkdale Doris

  2. Dave Says:
    December 9th, 2005 at 8:17 am Or just sign up for an Elgg account – upload your mp3 file into your file repository and then subscribe to your feed – done. 2 mins max!
  3. Ben Says:
    December 9th, 2005 at 3:02 pm To echo Dave, Elgg also allows you to have several podcasts, sorted by tag, or subscribe to every podcast anyone runs. You can also limit individual podcast files so they can only be accessed by certain people.
  4. Tim McKean Says:
    December 12th, 2005 at 12:09 pm Thanks for the step by step Dave…

    I’m still a little unclear on RSS feeds… will I have to change the feed each time I post a new episode, or does the feed just look for the most recent post?

    -Tim

The LMS/PLE die debate


Wow,
Now that was a podcast. Took a while to kick in, the first 40-50 minutes included alot of babbling by yours truly with some pretty cool backchannel action, and then the inestimable Barbara Sawhill came in and started taking names. Harold joined in along with Art Gelwicks Jeff Flynn and I and we debated the place of the LMS, the PLE in terms of privacy, the real and whether the whole damn this is just a waste of time.

I gotta say, this debate is really working its way in my mind. Just put ‘die lms’ into google and see what happens. Leigh has started one of those meme viruses i heard about at the pop tech conference. And with good reason i think. I’m not yet sure that i agree with him, i’ve yet to either get a direct answer to my objections (my fault, as George Siemens said, i more implied (think he meant babbled) rather than expressly stated them) or managed to get my mind around the implications of the the exit of the LMS. Let’s do a little imagining…

Leigh Blackall kills the LMS


in other news… PLE on its deathbed


The LMS was found dead this morning, slain by a series of determined attacks by a group of blog wearing thugs lead by Leigh Blackall… The classroom has been left without any place to put their grades, to forum, to wiki, to read and hand in their assignments. Teachers everywhere are throwing caution to the wind, and spreading out over the internet. An assignment popped up in the footer of cnn.com, linuxquestions.org was swamped with 6 year olds looking for a pen pal and fark.com has started it’s own internet ethics course based on a discussion of the follies of others.“Really!”, was all Josie Fraser was able to harrumph when she found 50957 comments in her last edtechuk post all from 14 year olds claiming to have an ‘educational blog’ and therfore demanding their chance to vote for themselves in the edublog awards.

“Chaos is on the march,” an anonymous Blackall was reported to have blogged, “and not the silly anarchic chaos either, the real kind, the kind that my quantum mechanics prof used to talk about.” Leigh’s blog is currently down, of course, as the influx of 35 million new members have done the blogger service in for the forseeable future.

(unfortunately, i must run… more news tomorrow… any alternative interpretations?)

Technorati Tags:

This entry was posted on Friday, December 2nd, 2005 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Learning 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “The LMS/PLE die debate”

  1. Harold Jarche Says:
    December 2nd, 2005 at 8:58 pm Alternative Interpretation (à la Kafka):

    Microsoft announces “free” LMS with every Windows server package [see EULA for details]. The Blackweb system, based on .NET will be available to qualified educational institutions [does not include support costs]. Administrators of universities and school boards are flocking to the new deal and MSFT stock just rose 15 points.

    No actual students were available for comment as they were too busy on LiveJournal, Blogger, Xanga, Flickr and other points of interest outside the firewall.

  2. Leigh Blackall Says:
    December 3rd, 2005 at 7:58 am Ste-ruth! This is great role play. I’m still catching up with all the talk (currently downloading mp3.. sorry I missed the show, am still tuning my timetable in).

    adding my bit:

    After many decades complaining about going to school, kids all across Australia were freed today after the minister for education recognised that the schools were succeeding only in holding kids back, exposing them to bullying and teacher sadism, and other anti social development.

    “As from today, schools will play a different role in society” said the Minister, “teachers will be given more ‘free’ time, but will be expected to be on call to their students 24/7. Classrooms will be open to the community, and teachers are now expected to invest that new free time in developing stronger digital litteracies to help the community. The ministry and I will work towards establishing free wireless internet accross the regions. Sporting clubs, scouting associations, home schooling communities, and other groups servicing social development will be encouraged to work more directly with the schools so as to coordinate flexible time tables of activities for kids to engage with. Complimenting all this will be a strong media campaign from my department” –

    Pop!

    I just woke up.

Techknowledge – web 2.0 (hee hee) grounded in a little theory… with a love interest.

I just may be the only person writing about post-modern educational theory today declaring a bias based on the person i’m fortunate enough to share my life with. But I am. The paper i’m talking about today was the final, deciding factor in my side of the decision to spend the rest of my life with Bonnie. It took that little frightened place inside me that could tell that things were not as they seemed, but was too afraid to admit it, and gave it language it could be proud of. It gave me the language I needed to understand the capacity of uncertainty, the historicity of change, the power hierarchies of language and the hipocracy and fear that lie at the heart of many of the worlds ruling ideologies. It, in effect, changed the way I spoke about the world.

I was brought back there by the post on “the late age of print” over at weblogg-ed. I’d like to suggest the thesis that sent me down a similar road that Will seems to be going down now… It’s not what you’d call light reading, and the first few pages take a few readings until you get your mind around the language, but it’s more than worth the time.

Bonnie Stewart, Techknowledge: Literate Practice and Digital Worlds.
This is a quote from the introduction, to give you a taste of both the content and the style of the writing.

The primary question behind it [the paper] is “what will it mean to know in the 21st century; in the digital age?” And its primary aim is to offer a contribution to the cultural conversation predicated by that question; a foray into the broad realm of possibilities that the query opens. In its focus on practice, the thesis represents an effort to breach the boundaries within which questions of “knowledge” and “technology” are popularly taken up, and to formulate an approach to the conversation that allows these concepts and their relationships to be examined in the cultural context.

There’s a great description of the development of technology and how it changes knowledge inside (some of which i agree with, some not) and not a complete thesis she’d like to be held to now, but a great starting point for the conversation. And, as I say a great place to learn the language of one side of the debate. And, for me at least, an artifact both as an intellectual and as a partner to one very smart woman.

more details later.

What is this whole school thing about anyway?


Brisk sunny day on the east coast, cold enough to freeze the ground around here today. Had a lovely night with an international group last night, all the international students from UPEI put on a cultural evening for all the people that work with them. (I try to teach them academic writing) The food was fantastic alot of smiles and laughs, and hundreds of pictures taken, A real sense of community, where people get a sense of what other people are like. I found myself moving from table to table, trying to mix some of the groups, strangely trying to set an example of cross cultural belonging and friendship… strange to have finally moved to that role…

Which bring me to Leigh Blackall’s
polemic against the LMS/VLE/PLE. I’m a big fan of Leigh’s writing, but i have to say that this time, i have a few problems with his position, and i’d like to start a little healthy debate on the subject. I have two main subjects that i’d like to cover, one concerning relative computer literacy and the other about what the school and learning is all about.

Who needs ALL of the internet

Why do we need a PLE when we already have the Internet? The Internet is my PLE, ePortfolio, VLE what ever. Thanks to blogger, bloglines, flickr, delicious, wikispaces, ourmedia, creative commons, and what ever comes next in this new Internet age, I have a strong online ID and very extensive and personalised learning environment.

I think that Leigh’s logic here is solid insofar as his ‘I’ is concerned. This is true for me as well, and for most of the people that are likely to be reading this blog. The majority of people will NEVER have an internet presence. By definition, there is no room for the ‘presence’ of 6 billion people. Some people, like Leigh, will do enough good work to have room on the internet for Stephen Downes to read their work and post it, most will never. Community environments like elgg allow for them to be noticed, and interacted with, by their peers. It’s a safe, controllable environment, away from the chaos and uncertainty that is that rather long list of tools listed. The PLE and to a lesser extent the VLE/LMS provide some security, some much needed structure and most importantly guaranteed interactivity. Technorati is claiming 21 million blogs or so (i have 4 or 5) where will the interactivity be when there are 200 million or 2 billion. A PLE like elgg allows for focus.

Learning from life

My thinking is that we need to build media literacy in our institutions, and not prevent it by building replicas.

A PLE is not a simulacra. There are many instances in this ‘real world’ that Leigh is refering to where the PLE is being used. I have several friends who have installed moodle and elgg as training and communication platforms for companies, from restaurants to government agencies.

So while I whole heartedly agree with the PLE and Scott’s reasoning for rejecting the LMS/VLE, I can’t say I’m with them on their alternative. In my view, the VLE, LMS and PLE are the same. A suggestion that the Internet, and informal networked learning are not enough. That people still need to come to school to learn. That people need to distinguish learning from life, that people need to download and install an application that will solve their learning needs.

If I understand correctly, ‘informal networked learning’ as it appears in the internet context, is ‘real life’ and the LMS/VLE/PLE are artificial. I’m not sure that i understand how someone would start informal learning in a ‘natural way,’ but i would love to have this further elaborated on.

My real objection to this is the part about ‘coming to school’. I don’t think that people come to school to gather knowledge in the traditional sense. In an ideal world they learn how to learn, they learn to work together, they learn how to kiss behind the water filtration system, they learn how to fight… and eventually how not to… they get the opportunity to know more than their parents do on all the above subjects… school still has this power (if used) to level the social classes. Now weather or not we replace the military classroom with another free, government sponsored place that isn’t called school but still allows them to do the things above and many more, we still need them.

A friend of mine was called by another parent from the community about something her son was doing on the internet. Suffice it to say that he was about ten and he was emailing porn to his buddies… This will happen. Kids will publish porn, just for fun, to push boundaries, to experiment, all part of the natural experience. How do we teach appropriate behaviour on the internet? How do we pass our cultural values on to the wired generation? In these PLE/VLE environments, where we guide by example, where we lead… where we teach.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 26th, 2005 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

12 Responses to “What is this whole school thing about anyway?”

  1. Bud Hunt Says:
    November 27th, 2005 at 2:31 am Dave,

    Interesting stuff here. I’m not sure I quite understand the argument, but here’s what I’m thinking after I read both your post and Leigh’s. (Disclaimer — I am on some cold medicine right now, and that might impact my judgment a little bit.)
    Aren’t PLE’s constructed out of bits of the Internet? For example, I use Bloglines to bring to me the stuff that I consider my “personal learning environment.” The advantage of something like Bloglines is that it siphons off a manageable drink of the fire hose that is the Internet. But I’m still a public participant.
    Because I have such a tool, the entire Internet can be a place where everyone has a presence — I simply take in the stuff I’m interested in.
    Of course, there are advantages sometime of having the learning spaces be private. That’s why I use a Moodle — to work online together in private. I don’t think either space is inherently artificial — I suspect that Intel is not using a blog to discuss the latest tech specs of its newest processors. But they might be using an in-house electronic communication tool.
    Aren’t both valuable, and can’t we teach (and learn via) both? Did I miss the entire argument?

  2. Leigh Blackall Says:
    November 27th, 2005 at 9:45 am Hi Dave, Bud. Thanks heaps for continuing on this topic, its rare that I get to read a rebuttal to what I think up – perhaps leading me into a false sense of security with my points of view – so thanks.

    If I may, I’ll use some of my experiences with online learning, both as a student and a teacher, to try and nut the argument out a bit.

    Firstly, as a uni student in 1995 I was given a student email account, my email address was somthing like s95034790@studentmail.com (actually, I think it was worse than that, something like s95034790@alinga.studentmail.com, no wonder noone on email took me seriously ;) . 3 years later someone showed me Hotmail, and I wondered why I was putting up with the student mail with its 1meg or less limit for so long – or why I even needed to be using student mail in the first place… I think it was a student management thing.

    Then, as a student in 2001 I was asked to participate in an online course (teacher training actually) using Blackboard. I knew a little about computers and the Internet by then, but spent most of my time trying to explain to my classmates just how Blackboard worked. At least 1/5th of the class dropped out of that course, sighting Blackboard as the issue… Than a friend showed me Blogger, and I got to wondering again…

    When the 2001 course unenrolled me and the remaining classmates, they deleted our forums. That sealed it for me – I swore I would never use a ’system’ to communicate and conduct my online learning with again. At best, I might post into a forum a link to my blog or what ever.

    After teacher training, I found a job in an innovations unit trying to help teachers get a grip on another LMS being used. The poor teachers hated it, but they had been told in no uncertain terms that online learning was the future, and learning how to use this LMS was the way to the future. Then I met a teacher who showed me Moodle, and I got to asking why on earth my organisation was spending millions of dollars on this LMS, when Moodle was free. I realised that the LMS we were using would not be around for much longer. I couldn’t face all those teachers trying hard to learn our present system, knowing that no sooner would they have worked it all out, than I’d be showing them a new LMS.

    In the end, I decided that it would be better to teach teachers and students how to use tools that would be relevant to them outside of school and work as well. I started showing teachers how to use Blogger – most loved it! I showed Gmail and GoogleGroups – everyone asked why they were settling for an email service so inferior! I started showing Del.icio.us – most loved it! I showed Bloglines – most were amazed, but few took the leap to RSS I must admit.

    Why, I asked myself, were the teachers who were so resistant to the LMS stuff, suddenly so keen on these tools? Why could they so clearly see that these tools were better? I’d say it had a lot to do with the speed in which they could get their stuff online. They didn’t have to negotiate with IT support for server space, no QA process, just them and the Internet – nothing in between.

    So, I have a choice. People only have so much handling capacity for the new technology. I could keep showing people how to use the LMS and suite of tools that would be of use to them only when within the organisation, or they could start learning tools that would be useful to them outside as well. I don’t think both would’ve been OK. Too much to take in and all that. The answer was obvious.

    This, and many other reasons is why I make the classroom/real world analogy. The extra curricular activity that you mention and credit school for Dave, occurs in may other places besides school. And with school banning iPods, IM, most social softare, and probably blogging, I think the school environment is less and less likely to have such a role. Our kids will have to learn how to fight, and how not to fight in some other place.

  3. Harold Jarche Says:
    November 28th, 2005 at 6:27 pm Reminds me of this comment I made, on the fact that the new media can’t fit into the classroom:
    http://www.jarche.com/node/475
  4. dave Says:
    November 29th, 2005 at 8:23 pm Thanks for chiming in gentlemen…

    First, sorry for spelling your name wrong Leigh… seems i’ve been doing that for a while. Blackall. Got it.

    Bud – Yes. I agree. Tools are just that, regardless of how they are packaged. Some of the packaging is better, some not so good. but…

    Harold – yes, no telephone. :) and it’s taken years to get the computers in there. And, for now, the training isn’t even in the BEd programs. The academics are the one’s who need the push… at the end of the day, they are the only one’s who influence both the teachers and policy. It can be changed, but it’s gonna take a long time.

    Leigh- I think we’re talking about power here… it always comes back to this one way or the other. Who controls, who designs, who has the power to delete. My experience has been very similar to yours. Some rebuttals.
    1. I’m certainly not suggesting that people ONLY use ?LEs. In my writing class my students have our blocked VLE (class negotiated) and i’ve set them up with their own blogs and encourage them to work on their assignments on forums elsewhere on the internet. That way, the things they learn in my class they will be able to use out in the internet. Some external things are better. I don’t even use my university email account… when i start at a new school, i get them to put a forwarder to my personal account. Gmail is better. no doubt.
    2. That’s why we need to take the PLE off the school server. I’ve started a pilot project with 8th graders to do just that. Would love to have your input on it. Would also love to have you come on the show someday, we could ‘talk’ about some of these issues…
    3. (same as two) We definetely need continuity. We also need publishing of work. This is the final step after the ?LE work is finished. Students need to be encouraged to take their essays, research etc… out of the moodle and then onto blogger.

  5. Bubbling Minds » Blog-arkiv » LMS, VLE, PLE Says:
    November 30th, 2005 at 1:37 am […] Der er en meget spændende debat i gang i øjeblikket om LMS (Learning Management Systems), VLE (Virtual Learning Environments) og PLE (Personalised Learning Environment) her, her og her. Leigh Blackall indtager det mest radikale synspunkt og erklærer død over LMSer, VLEer og PLEer – hvad skal vi med dem, nÃ¥r vi har internettet, mens Dave Cormier klapper hesten og mener, at det overvejende flertal aldrig vil fÃ¥ en “Internet presence” (eller blive læst af Stephen Downes) – der er simpelthen ikke plads…… […]
  6. Miguel Guhlin Says:
    November 30th, 2005 at 10:25 am Howdy…wrote a response back to you at http://www.mguhlin.net/blog/archives/2005/11/entry_731.htm

    Thanks for the great conversation!! Leigh is right on target.

  7. Leigh Blackall Says:
    November 30th, 2005 at 5:29 pm Hi again Dave, Harold, Bubbling Minds, Miguel.
    I remembered to come back. Sustaining conversation in the comment areas of blogs can be difficult hey! Why all blogs don’t have email pluggins I dunno… You’re right, I should just track back to a post, but for some reason it doesn’t work for me…

    I think Downes covers some exciting terrain about the classroom in his recording of eLearning 2.0 Alberta Cut. I’m not sure if that’s what Bubbling Minds was pointing to, I don’t understand the language of the comment :(

    Dave, I totally agree that its about power. Ain’t it always! Its also political. Not much dif really come to think of it.

    I’ve been meaning to read more on anarchy, looking for anarchist views to education. As it strikes me that the natural politics of the Internet is anarchic. I’m not talking black shirt, bomb throwing, anti christ anarchy – I’m sure there’s more reason to it than that. Which is why I think a bit of historical research is needed on this topic.

    Know any well informed anarchists to bring into this? I would be very interested to see if new thoughts and directions could be spawned from such a different angle..

  8. Leigh Blackall Says:
    November 30th, 2005 at 5:40 pm not sure if my comments are getting through, but wikipedia has quite a massive entry on anarchism, quite interesting…
  9. Andy Roberts Says:
    December 1st, 2005 at 9:40 pm I’m not an anrchist but I do agree with Leigh on this one, having dipped into the conversation via Downes

    http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=32632

    and just noted that Siemens has picked it up as well.

    http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/archives/002285.html

  10. Leigh Blackall Says:
    December 2nd, 2005 at 6:52 pm what I’ve found so far on anarchism… no ideas yet, but it fits at least.
  11. Mona Says:
    December 22nd, 2005 at 1:53 pm Hi all,

    An interesting debate on LMS and VLEs. I would like to add my comment over here, at first I asked myself why would we use lms? Are VLEs important in the learning process? Actually they are when we talk about Distance Education or Blended learning. It is more like managing the learning process. It is true that some are difficult to use or even makes the user annoyed but at the end, who would benefit from it? Is it the learners? Why would we go against them, while we can develop or give our opinions on what can be added to LMSs.

    It is true that learners can learn from the internet and other people, still it is important to learn from the instructor or other learners who takes the same subject, and contribute with them.

    Why don’t we just integrate Blogs and the other interesting tools with the LMS to make the learning more exciting and learner centered. Wouldn’t be a good Idea?

    Every technology and tool has its advantages and disadvantages, we can benefit from the advantages and try to reduce the disadvatages of it by developing or adding what we need or what is the Learner need, since he is the ONE we care and try to facilitate his learning.

    I might misunderstood the argument, but thats what I came up with when I read your interesting article. Lets not say Die LMS, lets just wait for the new LMS and Blogs, del.icio.us, bloglines’s Baby :)

  12. Virtual Canuck » PLE’s versus LMS: Are PLEs ready for Prime time? Says:
    January 9th, 2006 at 10:48 pm […] I’ve been trying to get my head around the viability of moving educational programming from institutionally centered Learning Management Systems (LMS) systems, or even institutionally owned and controlled educational social systems like Elgg or Barnraiser, to a distributed and likely syndicated set of tools often referred to as Personal Learning Environments (PLE). The recent postings by Leigh Blackall, response by Dave Cormier and the work of Paul Trafford and his RAMBLE project at Oxford got me thinking. James Farmer’s pioneering 2004 work applying our Community of inquiry to blogging and Michael Hotrum’s comments on that work are also incorporated in the ideas below. […]

Mac, Windows or Linux – thoughts from an educator without a country


It’s been seven days since my last… mmm… nice morning here on the east coast of Canada, as long as you don’t mind it being -1C. The leaves have all succumbed to the wind and frost of late fall here on Prince Edward Island, and the shrill whine of electric leaf blowers tell us that it’s time to tidy our lawns so the snow won’t be offended. I’ve been fighting with computers for the last couple of weeks, and for those of you out there considering it, i thought I would drop a few words your way.

I started all my computer stuff on a Commodore Vic-20, which while i don’t advise you to try and purchase one it was a really good system, didn’t crash and you had nice cartridges that you could plug into the back. I grew up and got my first 8086, and then a 486 and then went through the pentium strain… I was windows only… then i got a consulting gig that forced me to learn linux, and i’ve used it as my desktop software for the last year and a half, and now, 2 days ago, I bought an apple Ibook. My father called me a traitor. Someone told me my computer was ‘very cute’. Very cute, i mean, how can you do any serious writing on something that’s ‘very cute’. Is it any wonder that i ended up talking about leaves falling in the intro paragraph?

My transition to linux had been part learning experience, part psychological breakdown. I do alot of work on these little beasties… i develop curriculum, i communicate with my friends, i test software, i do a radio show, i consult with those who are kind enough to consider my advice worthwhile… I need a computer that will work, and that has the range to perform a vast quantity of tasks RELIABLY. And i don’t have time to spend a whole weekend figuring stuff out. Linux is, right now, an excellent solution for a couple groups of people. If you can get someone to set one up in your office (which i can now do, thanks to the last 2 years) it can run exactly like your XP or Mac with far fewer problems than the first, and cheaper than the second. It is by far the best option for a computer lab, a distro like edubuntu set up in a computer lab would be ideal. Super cheap(you could easily get the computers second hand for 200 bucks (or less and have good use out of them), all the functionality you need, and the students will be unable to mess it up… Two great uses, desktop you’ll never touch or computer lab. For me, it’s just been plain murder. Crash, blank staring, crash. Skype crashed about a million times, it didn’t like my usb mic, java had to be installed by hand, etc… the linux people tell me – go check it out, figure it out yourself. Well… i have. and for either of the two groups mentioned above, you’re good, for me… i just can’t do it anymore. I waste hours some days looking for that perfect piece of information that will get me what i want. I’m keeping my linux desktop, but it’s going to second place… a testing area…

Windows, well, most of you are familiar with it. It’s buggy. It crashes alot (my linux crashed too, more than i figured it would) it gets more viruses than a 2nd grade teacher, and they charge silly amounts for their software. Now, with all the open source software you can get around some of that stuff. Using firefox or opera will help alot, openoffice.org makes a great office package and most other software can now be downloaded leagally for free (see gimp and others… ) it is however what people know, and there is a great deal to be said for using what you are familiar with. That and almost everything works with it. Some things you just can’t do with Linux or Mac unless your willing to ’spend a whole weekend with it… although this is far more true of linux)

I was worried about the mac. I remember all the propaganda about how expensive they were, how hard it was to get the software, how it didn’t perform as well as the PC unless you were doing ‘artsy stuff’. Two days in… i’m cautiously converted. The damn thing crashed twenty minutes in… and has been singing along perfectly ever since. (now mac-heads are coming out of the wooodwork and saying that their’s only crashes a couple times a year… and not – never) The transition was pretty painless, installing software is pretty hilarious, download, click and drag, ‘thank you for installing your software’. The service is different. they actually seem to care if my computer crashes. They offer advice in a non-condescending manner. But here’s the clincher, for all the stuff that i do, in 48 hours, i have only once wished i was using XP. I wanted to install openoffice.org and i needed X11(whatever that is, windows emulator of somekind) but then found neooffice, which seems to do everything i want. That’s it, once, and i found a solution. Be not afraid windows user, come over to the white side… it’s… very cute.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 19th, 2005 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Mac, Windows or Linux – thoughts from an educator without a country”

  1. Harold Jarche Says:
    November 20th, 2005 at 1:50 am Neo-Office, hmm, perhaps that could make me switch to a mac. I notice that it’s based on OOo v 1.1. Is there something in the works to match it with OOo 2.0 and the open document format?
  2. Tim McKean Says:
    November 23rd, 2005 at 1:35 pm Dave,
    I was listening to your podcast tonight and was very interested to hear about your experience, especially your frustrations with Linux.

    I switched to the Mac side a year ago, and as you experiened, have wished for my windows applications just a few times. I am interested to learn more about this neo-office. Also wondering if you have tried any windown emulators on your Mac like virtual windows to get access to those few applications that just aren’t available?

    Thanks – Tim

  3. Rob Wall Says:
    November 29th, 2005 at 10:06 am With the preponderance of great, cross platform application like OpenOffice (yeah – I know, its not totally, transparently cross platform, but let me go with it for the sake of example), Firefox, Gimp, and a host of others being developed every day, I’ve been feeling for a long time that operating system is pretty irrelevant for most people; in fact what most people get attached to is their GUI. Even there, the differences are not significant – once you get used to one GUI, you’ll probably find it to be the “best”. If a user is moderately intelligent (such as don’t run Internet Explorer or Outlook, use a home router to provide a hardware firewall), I don’t even find Windows ist too much of a security problem. (But don’t tell anyone I said so – I used to be president of a Mac users group).

    To be honest, all the action for the interesting development seems to be online with the growing prevalence of web applications. My favourite operating environment? To be honest, I guess it would be Firefox which happens to run on any operating system in any GUI. Its where I do most of my work (and play) on the computer these days. But I’m certainly not a zealot – Flock looks interesting, and some of my best friends are IE users – just not on my computer. ;^D

  4. Ed Says:
    January 23rd, 2006 at 6:22 pm Yes, a good MS alternative Office suite on the Mac is a whole waiting to be filled. I tried using NeoOffice for a few months and I wouldn’t recommend it. It seems to work fine, but it’s slow. Everyone thinks Apple is going to further develop their own office suite, so therefore have not supported getting OpenOffice working on a Mac. It’s a shame, because it’s a truly cross platform application.

    If you can handle not using OpenOffice, I would suggest Apple’s Office suite, iWorks. It cost’s $80 (less with an educators discount), but it’s worth the money. It’s fast and it “just works” (the beauty of using a Mac).

    By the way, I’m new to your blog and enjoying it. Thanks.

Skype, Socrates and how learning 2.0 will marginalize the ivory tower and bring back the symposium

I was listening to Etienne Wenger’s presentation today at the Nordic Voice conference and it helped me bring things into focus. I’ve spent much of the last couple of weeks babbling about knowledge and what it means to know, and not really considering what this will mean.

Boring historical background stuff that i find fascinating
Socratic symposium
Imagine trying to be ‘intelligent’ or ‘informed’ in the time of Socrates. This was a time where there was no real writing, people still got most of the their information, political or otherwise, in person or through a friend, second or third hand. Imagine how this would work out in reality. If you wanted to be informed about everything that was going on, not only in Athens, but in other cities as well, you would have to have a vast network of people that you knew, and trusted, who would come by your house regularly to tell you about it. (Of course, you could go to their houses, and this would certainly be a cheaper proposition, but not nearly so convenient.) Plato’s ‘the symposium’ stands as the best recorded example of this.

How would one acquire these ‘friends’? Well, it was possible to acquire them by money; if you were the sort of person to put on lavish banquets, to attract many people and hope that some of the informed people would come, this might work. But you would also attract very dull people, and this would obviously only work for the very rich. For most people, you would have to have something to exchange, you would want to BE one of the people who would be invited. This would force all but the most fantastically brilliant in a society (say… Socrates, who could be a little odd, and condescending, but was still on the whole charming) to be polite, to be interesting: that is, to do things that made people want to be involved with them.

Silent reading and 2500 other years of stuff
Enter the book. Socrates hated the idea. He thought it would upset the fabric of society, and make people lose the ‘real’ things they needed, like oratory and memory. With the coming of St. Augustine, some 800 years later, you have the first recorded instance of a person reading silently, and the transition was complete. Learning became anti-social, instead of supremely social. Something that happened in quiet, dank rooms instead of in the open air over beer. People still gathered together to do it, but one person talked about material they’d worked on in their room for a year and hundreds of people listened.

Skype and the backchannel
Now, we have a free Skype presentation (really a conversation) with people on a backchannel, all live. We have all the people who’ve heard about it and are interested coming over to join in on the fun. The meaning that is being made here is far more complex and contextualized than any that could be made in an office by a single person, or even by a group of people at a single institution. This morning, on the Etienne Wenger conference, there were people from all the continents (save Antarctica, reticent those Antarticans, penguins not being very interested in things other than fish). They were cross-examining and adding their own opinions, their own context, to the conversation.

How could the ivory tower possibly compete with this? Indeed, how will they even know, or get invited to join in the conversation that goes on if they remain aloof to the meaning that is being made in this kind of webcast? They will have to learn to communicate their ideas so that practitioners of their ideas (and now I’m sliding over to ed-theory particularly) if they want to be part of the conversation. They will need to be like the Greeks who wanted to be informed, they will need to be polite, inclusive and willing to be part of a larger community, or they will be left behind.

I don’t mean to say that academics aren’t polite, I’m sure they’d offer you a coffee if you went to their office. But they will need to bring learning, philosophy and they’re unique brand of intepretation back to the people for it to be valid, and to do so, they will need to learn the new way of speaking…

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 2005 at 12:36 am and is filed under Learning 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Skype, Socrates and how learning 2.0 will marginalize the ivory tower and bring back the symposium”

  1. Will R. Says:
    November 14th, 2005 at 6:02 pm Hey Dave…Skype as Socrates…hmmm…you’ve got me thinking. Speaking of which I can no longer Skype you or Skypechat with you because it says your settings aren’t allowing it. Something on my end? I have questions!!!

    Will

  2. barbara Says:
    November 22nd, 2005 at 8:56 pm When did “backchannel” become a word?

    🙂

    Barbara in Maine (snowing here too)

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