Seeing Steve Wheeler’s Emporer’s New clothes blog post reminded me of a little something we produced many years ago - now rebadged as The Vice Chancellor’s new VLE. Thanks to the wonder of Google Desktop I was able to find the original from about 8 years ago based on the experiences we had in about 1996 when I was working with Mark Stone on the development of PILL - the Plymouth Internet Learning Lab (sadly defunct, and I wish at the time I’d known we had done).

I’ve updated it slightly but this was produced at a time when the VLE was seen to be a general panacea to Teaching and Learning and written after sitting through endless pitches and presentations from solution providers.

 THE VC’S NEW VLE

(with many apologies to Hans Christian Anderson)

Once upon a time there lived a Vice Chancellor  whose only worry in life was to have elegant Teaching and Learning policies. He changed strategies almost every week and loved to show them off to his people.

Word of the VC’s refined habits spread over his kingdom and beyond. Two scoundrels in the Computing Services Department who had heard of the VC’s vanity decided to take advantage of it. They introduced themselves at the VC’s sumptuous chancellory building with a scheme in mind.

“We are two very good software experts and after many years of research we have invented an extraordinary method to deliver teaching materials so quickly and efficiently that the process looks invisible. As a matter of fact it is invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality.”

(more…)

Having been involved in a number of projects using open source software (such as UsPaCe using Elgg, UPlace using DSpace and the BJHEinFE using Open Journal System) I got the thinking that it could be possible to move over to a totally OS lifestyle. Discussion with JISC’s Lawrie Phipps and my own experience working with partner colleges delivering HEinFE found that FE colleges are thinking about going down the OS route and the HE sector may follow.

So what are the advantages? The main one has to be the potential savings on software licences.

Is there an easy way into Open source? There is via devices such as the ASUS EEE PC. So I’m now the proud owner of an ASUS EEE 1000 and am on the verge of seeing if I can adopt an OS lifestyle after many years of PC usage that goes back to MS-DOS 3.2, Windows 2  through Windows 3 (with a brief excursion into OS/2 in the early 1990s), Windows 3.1 for Workgroups, Windows NT3, NT3.51, NT4.0, Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP.

The ASUS EEE 1000 turned up today - the 40GB SSD version with LINUX and a range of OS application installed. The specification includes

• Intel® Atom N270 Processor


• Wireless Data Network WLAN: 802.11 n


• Bluetooth


• Memory 1GB (DDR2)


• Hybird Storage 40GB Solid State Drive


• 60GB Eee Storage


• Audio Hi-definition Audio


• Stereo speaker


• Digital Array Mic


• Battery Up to 6 hrs

And all this in a package weighing 1.33 kg. Obviously the battery live will be testing - I’ve yet to ever get the life promised by the manufacturer, but it should be more the the 2.5 hours I get from my Samsung Q45.

 First Impressions?

ASUS state No technical manual required with the specially designed, user-friendly and intuitive graphic interface. With this in mind no manual was opened when setting up the EEE (though this is usual when setting up any new kit). I wanted to see if the promise that Stay connected all the time with the Eee PC’s™ built-in WiFi 802.11b/g that automatically detects and connects to the Internet at any hotspotwas achievable. And working in a University this obviously was not going to work.

There are two choices available:

1. Roaming - an unsecured wireless network requiring a VPN to access anything once connected


2. Eduroam - the (secure) roaming infrastructure used by the international research and education community

As a regular Eduroam user this was the network of choice, but connection was not possible. A quick Google shows that this is problem experienced by other LINUX ASUS EEE users as default installed Xandros distribution does not support enterprise level encryption. There are a couple of options to investigate, but if the ASUS EEE is to be used in an education context then use of institutional wireless networks is a priority.

After failing to connect to Eduroam the next stage was to try the Roaming access. Being a unsecured newtork meant access was no problem, but the VPN access failed as the University’s Microsoft’s VPN service doesn’t respond in a manner that the VPN client can understand which protocol to use. So some investigations into resolving this are going to have to happen.

The first day’s experience was not positive, but that was be expected. If this type of portable computing is going to be adopted in FE and/or HE then the user needs to leverage the functionality than can be provided by the OS route and links to Cloud applications. No network = limited functionality (and some major frustrations)

There’s much around about Edupunk. Ok, I’m a late comer to the debate (though as this blog is very much in a backwater I’ll use debate as a very loose term) and http://edupunk.org/ has links to it all. And there’s the obligatory youtube vid.

It’s been interesting following the blog posts on Edupunk and as a backlash to Blackboard it’s unleashing a fair bit of frustration in the community.

But, it’s hardly new. Over the past 15 years we’ve been involved in project and developments - some funded, the most unfunded. These projects/interventions/ideas all have one thing in common - they are designed around user needs, and these needs are not those of the institution (though some times they coincide); they are not the needs of the developer/instructional designer/academic. They are the needs of the learner.

To paraphrase the opening line of a true punk classic from X-Ray Spex

Some people think little learners should be seen and not heard…..but I think Oh Blackboard, up yours

There’s a fair bit of evidence around  such as the recent JISC Great expectations of ICT: how HE institutions are measuring up report that users want to do their own thing.

 Evidence shows that using these [social networking] sites in education are more effective when the students set them up themselves; lecturer-led ones can feel overly formal

We can’t constrain them to using institutional systems, they don’t want to use them, they will look for their own ways of working - what we need to do is to support our users.

If they don’t use Blackboard or <—insert your own MLE/VLE here —> so what?

The Wired Campus article: Frustrated With Corporate Course-Management Systems, Some Professors Go ‘Edupunk’ states

A group of tech-savvy professors are claiming punk music as inspiration for their approach to teaching. They call their approach Edupunk.

Great, but it’s just as much about learners doing their own thing, making their own choices and we need to support them in this. Institutions love their Enterprise, out-of-the-box solutions, and yes as academics we can be anti-establishment, but there’s one part of the establishment we need to take with us…..the learners.

Hopefully as Emerge projects you are aware of the Web2Rights project and that there is a focus group on the IPR toolkit in Leeds on the 7th April.

The skeleton of the Toolkit has been produced and the content is on the Web2rights site. We are currently developing an IPR Diagnostic tool and will be incorporating the content in Training materials.

But we do need you help.

• come along to Leeds and give us your feedback
• tell us what YOU want
• be the first to see what we are doing
• help influence the IPR toolkit

If you want to attend contact Naomi Korn - naomi@naomikorn.com

When it comes to micro blogging I have to admit it’s not really held my attention. I was too late for Jaiku and I never really spent the time to fully exploit Twitter. We have, though,  been spending a lot of time working with Elgg as part of the community area for the UsPaCe project.

The community working with Elgg is small (compared with most Open Source projects), but it’s pretty vibrant and the Elgg site and its forum is one of the first sites I check in the morning just to see what updates/patches/gossip there is. So, this morning I found that the guys behind Elgg had released Elggvoices. The UsPaCe project is aimed at supporting students on Placement or doing Work Based Learning and Elggvoices looks like it could slot in as one of the tools we could use.

If Elgg 1.0 (release date to be announced) allows the seamless embedding of Elggvoices it’s going to be easy to get it used by learners. From the Focus Group work we’ve been doing it looks like they like the skin we’ve put on our Elgg community and the Elggvoices will add a dynamic layer. If we can get up channels for groups (or even get the learners to set them up) we’ll have buy-in from our users.

OK, so I can’t get the RSS feed to work (yet) from Elggvoices but having watched the Shouts today I can see that Dave and Ben from Curverider are quickly getting things sorted, and it looks like some familar names from the Elgg Community are playing with Elggvoices. I liked the Google map mashup showing locations of shouts - it looks like there’s only 4 of us who have entered their location in their profile so it’s sparsely populated but readable. I’d imagine, if there’s a few hundred/thousands of users the map will be unreadable….but if you could just show Shouts from your own channels it would be great.

 So..lots of exciting changes with Elgg…..with ElggJam 08 now open for registration, Elgg 1.0 about to be released and Ellgvoices out as a tantalising glimpse of Elgg1.0

And this week there were and two exciting pieces of news from the Elgg community.

1. There’s going to be another ElggJam - this time in London in June. We’ll probably be there as we’ve spent a lot of time tweaking and tailoring Elgg to our needs. What’s really interesting is that one of the main uses of Elgg by the team at http://community.brighton.ac.uk/ is the support of placement learners, which is what UsPaCe is all about

The Elgg site blog states

In particular, the ability to develop community interaction and provide supportive information and shared experience have been identified as particularly useful for courses with large contingents of students on placement study where they spend protracted periods of time off-campus and where students planning placements can benefit from sharing the experinces of those already on placement.

 This is really interesting as this is what we are doing with UsPaCe.

2. We are getting closer to seeing Elgg 1.0. Ben Werdmuller posted earlier this week that it should be ready to ship in the next 6 - 8 weeks. This is great news and I’ll have a development server on stand by.

I’ve been looking recently at the terms of use Blackboard Scholar to see whether it really is a good thing or not. Its all a bit worrying really because its all a bit restrictive and to put it mildly, the use of BB Scholar means that projects are restricted in:

1) Their ability to change, adapt or alter the software in any way. This is because the source code is closed and access is by a proprietary licence rather than an open source licence. This is not surprising in light of BB’s recent attempts to patent its software

2)  Projects are contractually obliged to get pretty comprehensive permissions for uploading content containing third party rights on to BB Scholar. This is because the BB Scholar’s terms of use includes the statement relating to uploaded content: “ you automatically grant and/or warrant that the owner has granted Blackboard, the perpetual royalty-free, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, perform, display, and transmit the User Content to Scholar. You also permit any other user of Blackboard with access to that Services, subject to your restrictions, to access, view, store, and reproduce the User Content to the same extent permitted herein.    http://www.scholar.com/termsofuse.html 

3) If by chance projects were to upload any content for which they had not got all the permissions, then crucially, you would “… agree to indemnify and hold Blackboard, and its affiliates, officers, agents, partners, and employees, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorney’s fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of User Content you submit, post to, email, or otherwise transmit through the Services, your use of the Services, your connection to the Services, or your breach of the TOU.”

 The question is whether BB would enforce any of this? At any rate, these terms of use underpin the Service provided by BB and should not be taken lightly….so to “BB Scholar or not BB Scholar”, maybe but with eyes open about the ramifications of NOT complying with the terms of use…

We just come back from the EMERGE and U&I project Start Up Meeting in York. We’ve been amazed by the variety of projects funded - a massive range of the great and good.

So what did we get up to?

• We launched phase one of our project website www.web2rights.org.uk


• Charlotte and Naomi ran a couple of back to back copyright workshops and answered lots of questions and spoke about RISK Management loads


• We realised that the 3rd April for our focus group clashes with another event – so we’ve started rescheduling


• We had lunch with all of Leeds Metropolitan University projects and chatted with lots more


• We ate lots and drank too much (but this seems typical for an EMERGE event, and we blame Lawrie Phipps)


• Neil and Naomi spent some time brain storming and have come up with a prototype process chart for engaging with rights issues…here’s the first draft  - we’ll start work on turning into an interative version soon.
  
  
  
  

  

• We came away with clear ideas to refine our content more and make it more pragmatic, practical, user-focussed and flexible


• We decided to ask you to help us too,  by sending us any IP lessons learnt and IP resources/template licences etc that we can share with other projects

Everyone that we’ve spoken to or listened to has had some kind of copyright issue running through their project, whether it is because they are deploying/adapting existing technology; developing new technologies; using pre-existing content or developing their own. In all these cases, they have been thinking about their need to make sure they have the permissions to do what they want to do in terms of creating their project deliverables, as well as ensuring that the rights are sorted out so that there is compatibility between those permissions that they have got from third parties “rights in” and the permissions that they want to grant users to use their stuff “rigths out”. We are building and adapting the content all the time.

Let us know what you need from us…speak soon, Naomi and Neil

So what did I get from my 15 minutes experience? Not a lot. Having spent 12 years working with proper simulation I’ve been spoiled – having these to work with.

So I don’t get Second Life. It’s touted as a “venue” but are user expectations being met? Personally I hate the idea of any student having to pay for functionality of an application. Living in a rural area connectivity is an issue, and it’s the same for my students – we don’t all have high speed Broadband and if you’re in Cornwall you may never have it. So I don’t have a machine with the right spec to access Second Life, and my university currently blocks access.

A website which allows university students to meet and talk to each other online before they start their course has been launched by the commercial arm of the university admissions service Ucas.

The yougofurther site (www.yougofurther.co.uk) also allows students to upload work, such as musical compositions or articles they have written, to show prospective employers what they are capable of.