The Ed Techie

We are digitalists - these are our tools

<Image Tatuagem geek no Barcamp - Tiago Doria http://flickr.com/photos/tiagodoria/432822929/>

To avoid the digital natives and immigrants debate, let's opt for the term digitalists instead, and define them thus:

"Those who are comfortable using a range of digital media and are open to the changes that digitisation brings to society."

It's not exclusive, anyone can become a digitalist, and it's not absolute, you can be a digitalist in some areas and maybe have reservations in another. But you're not Andrew Keen.

This follows on from previous post, where I took Scott Leslie's post about just sharing to argue that the mode of sharing has changed. Digitalists know this because they do it every day through blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. In that post I suggested that institutions developed complex approaches to sharing because they either didn't know, or didn't believe that the simple methods would work. Scott commented that the flipside of my just because complex solutions were once required, doesn't mean they will always be ending was that complex problems don't necessarily require complex solutions.

And this is key to the tools available to the digitalist, they are simple. It's Really Simple Syndication after all, not Massively Complex Syndication. So here are my list of tools that a digitalist packs in their bag before leaving home:

• Embed - as Tony says in his video, Embed changes everything. What the embed tag allows is for a wide range of media to be, well, embedded, across the web. Not in itself amazing, but its implications are profound. It means you don't have to agree how to share, you don't have to develop metadata or format standards - you just take the embed code. And what this means is that content becomes widely, massively distributed. And the result of that is that a) people can create multimedia sites without any expertise, b) people get used to sharing, c) content is no longer tied to its originating site, d) content is no longer tied to its originating context and e) models which work against embed (ie locking down content), ultimately fail because if it can't be embedded, it may as well not exist. Embed is the conduit for content across the web, and thus the key element in understanding new models of ownership, creation, business, distribution and presentation.
  
  
• RSS - I've said it before, RSS is the universal acid of the net. It allows you to subscribe to any feed which will be updated regularly. Again, not mind-blowing in its basic form, but it is what this allows which is significant. It means we can all become broadcasters, because the 'schedule' is created by the user. It means you can personalise the information you receive, by selecting blogs, podcasts, video feeds you want to subscribe to you are in charge of the information you receive. And because it is a standard, subscribing is simple, just a click and its there. Which means anyone can do it. RSS is also the means by which meta services can be constructed. Take any output as RSS and you can build a site around it - Friendfeed is a good example of this. To an extent, your online identity is a list of your RSS feeds. If you were sad enough to want to know about me, you'd get a long way subscribing to my blog, Twitter, YouTube and Slideshare RSS feeds.
• Hashtags - once we have all this information flowing around, we need to filter and organise it. Previously this would have meant establishing a committee, agreeing a new metadata field, informing all participants of the correct label, etc. With hashtags users themselves tend to think of a useful term, and put a # in front of it, which allows it to be easily located in search. For instance, there was a CETIS conference on widgets last week (I was supposed to be there but had to pull out). The participants settled on #cetis08 as the tag, and so any twitter posts, Flickr photographs, delicious bookmarks were tagged with this. Thus if you go to Twemes and enter cetis08 as your search term, you get a good feel for the conference. Hashtags allow us to filter and reorganise content - without the ownership of the label, and more importantly what is deemed worthy of a label, being determined by an authority.

What these all have in common is that they are bottom-up, simple and focused on sharing. It is this democratisation and emphasis on sharing, reuse and reorganisation that is the fundamental difference between old content models and new ones, so these aren't just geeky technical matters - they're the combustion engine of our society.

I've focused on data techniques, not actual technologies such as blogs and wikis, and I've tried to keep the list simple and easy, but I'd love to hear of any other suggestions you have for the digitalist toolbox.

The cost of sharing

I've mentioned Scott's Planning to share, versus just sharing post in passing, but here is a slightly more considered response.

Scott sets out his frustration with top down, planned approaches to sharing:

"I have been asked to participate in many projects over the years that start once a bunch of departments, institutions or organizations notice that they have a lot in common with others and decide that it would be a good idea to collaborate, to share “best practices” or “data” or whatever...

But inevitably, with a very few exceptions, these projects spend an enormous amount of time defining what is to be shared, figuring out how to share it, setting up the mechanisms to share it, and then…not really sharing much."

Compared with the bottom-up social sharing that happens every day in the blogosphere, via Twitter, YouTube, Slideshare, etc

"Now I contrast that with the learning networks which I inhabit, and in which every single day I share my learning and have knowledge and learning shared back with me. I know it works."

He then sets out a series of good reasons why this is so, including "We develop multiple (informal) channels while they focus on a single official mechanism".

For me, the key difference is this: The 'cost' of sharing has collapsed, but institutions don't know this. This means they behave in perfectly logical ways if sharing was still a costly activity. I am using the term cost here to refer to both a financial price and also the effort required by individuals.

Clay Shirky argues that the cost of organisation has disappeared, and I believe this is because sharing is easy, frictionless. If I come across something I share it via Google shared items, Twitter, my blog, etc. If I want to share I stick it up on Slideshare, my blog, YouTube. There is a small cost in terms of effort to me to do the sharing, and zero cost in anyone wanting to know what I share. Sharing is just an RSS feed away.

But institutions don't believe this, or know it. It used to take consortium agreements to share, conferences, best practice guides, incentives, metrics. How can all that be replaced by an RSS icon? Obviously it must be something different they reason, so for our needs we have to invent a system. Except it isn't.

Just as the record industry thought this online stuff was something different, it couldn't possibly relate to their chain of record shops, their carefully maintained back catalog, their army or A & R professional, their logistically beautiful distribution chain, the sophisticated marketing campaigns. All of this had to be different to this online stuff, it just didn't make sense for all of these carefully constructed elements to be replaced by the same, messy uncontrolled online world. Except that, oh yes it did.

The moral here is that just because something used to be expensive, time consuming and complex doesn't mean it will always be.

SatNav - a microstudy in digitisation

<Image Mapa antiguo de America del Sur - thejourney1972>

We have only recently got a SatNav system for the car (it's invaluable if you are towing a caravan, no matter how small and trendy, as doing 3-point turns is not easy, or popular). Using it has made me reflect on how the process of digitisation and connectivity changes behaviour and our relation to certain artefacts. I think what is true of SatNav and maps, is probably true across all forms of content.

Here are the changes as I see them:

1. The need for a particular skill (in this case map reading) which was previously thought essential becames largely irrelevant.
2. This democratises the behaviour for use by nearly all member of society (navigation).
3. The skill becomes highly specialised then, and possibly as a result, highly valued when it is needed.
4. We gain in functionality because the community can create content - we have map mashups, numerous filters placed on maps, regular updates, recommended routes, new voices (Darth Vader "You have reached the dark side), etc.
5. The presence of the tool begins to alter behaviour. A small example, but when driving in France over the summer, we were more likely to explore because we could put in a destination, or a place of interest and not have to be concerned how we would get back to our original destination - the SatNav will do that for us. It has also removed the need to shout at each other while wrestling with a map.
6. We lose some of the richness and affection that is attached to a physical artefact, particularly with a history, in this case, maps - these are a thing of romantic wonder. Authors will not write of SatNav systems:

"when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my  finger on it and say, 'When I grow up I will go there.'"

Is Uniglu what I need?

A warning upfront: I think this post may expose my ignorance, and there may be a 'duh, we've been working on that for ages', type reaction. But based on previous experience, I've found that my ignorance is often shared by others, I'll forge ahead.

I'll give you the background: On Friday I had a quick play with video in Googlemail. Naturally it works fine, so I put out a rather facetious tweet about why do we bother to design software specially for education when this stuff is just there. Niall responded saying:

"can it be linked to student registration systems for automated population of tutor groups etc? "

This is a good point, and one that people like Scott and co have kicked around a few times.

The IMS Tools Interoperability Spec seeks to do some of this, stating:

"The IMS Tools Interoperability (TI) approach addresses the growing demand for a reusable mechanism for integrating third-party tools with core LMS platforms."

And Chuck Severance pointed me at something he is playing with called Simple Learning Tools Interoperability.

I may be wrong, but these don't quite seem to be what I'm after. What I want is the tools equivalent of eduglu, which for the sake of not bothering to come up with an original name, we'll call Uniglu. Here's my user scenario, so you can tell me if these will do what I want:

Tom is a lecturer at Strummer University in French Language. He wants his students to get used to engaging in online audio/video discussions, capturing mobile input. He has distance as well as campus based students so wants something asynchronous. Seesmic seems to be ideal. But rather than tell his students to sign up there and swap ids, he just wants them to be able to use it as a suite of tools. If they decide to go there, it will be already configured for them.
So he speaks to his IT services dept. who tell him that Seesmic is one of the 2138 applications that are listed in the Uniglu directory. This means they are trusted and are capable of accepting university data. They pass the secure data to the Seesmic API which automatically creates accounts for all the students, using their OpenID and preferred user names. It adds in all the students in the cohort as Followers and Following.
Similarly, in the course wiki, Tom is using Wetpaint. This also adds in all the students, and also sets up Tom and the two course assistants as moderators. The access to the wiki is set to registered only (ie the course cohort only, not public) which is the default option when it is available.

It seems to me that we aren't far off doing this, and that a combination of existing data standards would get us some way there, for instance OpenID, OAuth and OpenSocial?

I accept there would be issues around data protection and privacy, but one could imagine universities being declared trusted data owners and that applications have to be vetted to be in the Uniglu directory. The difference here with the IMS spec is that we are sending data out to these apps, not requiring them to come into our systems. I'm not sure if that's significant or not. The standard is probably something that is in the domain of IT Services, not individual educators, but it would need to be easy enough to implement for application providers if want the rich tapestry of apps to choose from, and of course, from the user's perspective it must be seamless.

So my questions are:

1. Does this make sense?
2. Is it desirable?
3. Does it exist already?
4. If not, could we do it easily?

And here I am asking the question in Seesmic:

UnigluWhat I want is Uniglu>

My edublog 2008 nominations

With all the usual provisos about awards not mattering, the Edublog 2008 nominations are open, so I thought I'd spread a little love. Here are my nominations (it's okay not do every category isn't it Josie? I don't have a best use of virtual world).

Best Individual Blog - I'm going to nominate John Connell here. John manages to combine quality and quantity. Almost every post sets me off thinking. I have at least ten unwritten posts which are responses to things John has posted about. I particularly liked his grandfather's social network post.

Best group blog - Pontydysgu - they're Welsh, they like edupunk, they do a crazy internet radio show and have challenging posts. What more do you want?

Most influential blog post - I'm going to go with Jim Groom kicking off the Edupunk thing. This was easily the most edublog fun this year, and took off so quickly that within a week people were declaring it old hat. Keep up the good work my wonky spectacled friend!

Best librarian blog - falling into the obvious trap, but if all librarians were like Lorcan Dempsey we'd pay them more than bankers.

Best ed tech support blog - I'm not sure if it counts as ed tech support, but perhaps rather obviously I'm opting for Brian Kelly's blog. Brian manages to push at the comfort boundaries of IT services, but does so with intelligence and insight into the practical issues.

Best educational use of audio - again, not sure it fits in this category, but I'll nominate the Talis Podcast series (and not just because I'm one of them). Always worth a listen.

Oh, and I think they should add in a new category: Lifetime achievement award. If there was such a thing, the obvious nominee would be Downes, but I'd opt for Scott Leslie. Back in 1782 I remember looking at Ye Olde Blogs for the first time and Scott's was one of the first ones I came across and found relevant. And he's still at it, and still writing great stuff, witness only the other day his post on planning to share.

Quick play with xtranormal

Tony pointed me at Xtranormal (and the CogDog reminded me that Tony had pointed me at it). It's a service that allows you to create little movies, adding in dialogue, camera angles, music, expressions, etc.

So, while having my ham sandwich for lunch I had a quick play and produced the following. It's not very good, but you get the idea:

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A better one is this take on FightClub.

Pregnancy, FLOSS and lightbulbs

Following on from what I hoped was a balanced post about the pros and cons of FLOSS software in education, Mark Ballard at the Inquirer writes a one-sided piece. At least I got to air the celebrity's favourite complaint 'I've been quoted out of context'.

It's been a strange process this debate. At the OU I've long been one of the evangelists for open source. I developed SLeD, was the VLE Director who rejected proprietary solutions, part of the team that got the OpenLearn grant, and have blogged often about how the open source method is the best way to produce content. Yet, the outcome of the debate has been to leave me less well disposed towards FLOSS. That can't be right can it, and surely can't be the aim of the OSC? But then I went and re-read the comments from pro-FLOSS people on my original post and they were all very sensible and intelligent, and with lots of suggestions I think the OU could adopt. So, my feeling was probably a personal reaction to the article. Nevertheless, I was left wondering if FLOSS support was an absolutist position, whether it was possible to be a 'bit pro-FLOSS', or was that like being a 'bit pregnant'.

The danger of articles like the Inquirer piece is that it works better if they can set up a pro and anti stance. So none of my pro-FLOSS statements make it into the piece for instance. This may be good for lazy journalism, but it's bad for open source adoption, since it alienates people.

Anyway, I initially wrote a very defensive post responding to the piece. But then I reflected on the above, and felt that was only further entrenching us, and forcing me into a position I was uncomfortable with. I want to resist those who seek to polarise views. So, instead I'll let my original post stand as it's own defence, and instead offer up this pro-FLOSS video (via BlipTV - original is here and on YouTube here):

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All educators are broadcasters

I gave a short talk at the OpenU a couple of weeks back about the changing nature of broadcast and what it means for educators. Although it was aimed at the OpenU audience, I think a lot of it is more widely applicable, so I've finally made a slidecast of it. The original had a few audio and video clips, which I haven't included in the slidecast. It does however, feature the now famous 'Caravan equation' (oh, okay famous in my mind only).

What does changes in broadcast mean for educators?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: higher education)

Should FLOSS be the only option?

The OU has been taken to task by the Open Source Consortium for supporting Microsoft Office. The OU has sent an official response, but here's my unofficial take on it.

I ought to say upfront that I love open source. Not necessarily the software (I'm pretty agnostic about software), but the fact that it's there and it works, when all conventional thought said it shouldn't. The very existence of open source gives me hope for the world. And I find the manner in which it is created fascinating, and probably the most interesting business, social and technological development of the past twenty years. But even so, this letter causes something of a dilemma for me, which I'll try to articulate.

Firstly, it is worth saying that the OU has done a massive amount to support open source, particularly in the case of Moodle. Adopting this as our VLE was a major boost to the profile of open source in education, and we have contributed a lot to that community. On a smaller scale we have developed a number of open source products (eg Compendium, Cohere, Sled, etc), and use a range on our courses. So our FLOSS credentials are pretty good. And as the letter concedes, we do distribute Star Office to all students.

Let's look at some arguments as to why the OU, and all universities might support non-FLOSS solutions.

The first argument is a pragmatic one.  I don't want to stereotype students, but let's imagine a student of Victorian literature. They don't really like using a computer, but have bought a laptop because the course has a website and they submit assignments online. They just want to be able to use the system they have, which has MS Office installed. Getting this student to install 'OUnix' as the letter suggests (particularly for distance students), is probably not going to fly. I think the OSC don't appreciate the context and range of students we support. For a start, these are not university computers, but the students' own ones, so making them install OU specific software should be limited. Secondly, they are often shared machines, either in a family or at work. Converting the family machine to a unix box may not be popular.

Negative impact on students. The technical bias of open source proponents I think sometimes blinds them to the reality of a normal distribution curve of users. It is no surprise that the OSC letter uses a computing course as an example, and not say, a social sciences one, because these do not appear on their radar. The OU spends a good deal of time and effort in getting students to that first assignment, as we know from experience that if they do this they will probably go on to complete the course. At the start, many students lack confidence and aren't sure if study is for them. It would concern me if the first thing we made a nervous, technophobic student do was to perform a complicated installation and reconfiguration of their family PC, which they don't want to do, and can fail at. We will lose them before we even start the course.

A related argument is that of suitability. As much as we like it ideologically, open source solutions aren't always the best solutions. Particularly for some very specialist software, the OU often strikes very good deals with providers to give students 'free' proprietary software which is best suited to their needs. I feel that pedagogic suitability should be the priority for a university in selecting software, although FLOSS or not may be a significant contributing factor.

The last argument in favour of proprietary solutions is that we could be seen to be providing students in certain subject areas with experience of the commercial applications they will meet in the workplace. The Cisco courses are a specific example of this, although I think it is a weaker argument for generic software, such as Office - if someone can use Star Office they should be able to use MS Office.

I have one further concern about the letter, which is that it has a rather Stalinist resonance. We are more open than you, and we will out anyone who is not open. Comrades, report anyone who does not fully embrace openness to the central committee for openness! Weller has been overheard praising proprietary software - send him to the SourceForge Gulag! I think this is a dangerous route to go down, as arguments are always more nuanced than the simple FLOSS/proprietary binary choice.

Now onto the pro-FLOSS arguments (not in general, they've been done elsewhere, but why universities should promote them):

Positive action is required. The letter makes a good point about the hamster wheel - we support proprietary solutions because they have the biggest user base, so it is a pragmatic decision. Why do they have the biggest user base? Because people support them because they have the biggest user base. If (and the if is a strategic decision for universities to take) you want to move to more widespread FLOSS adoption then you need to take deliberate steps to make this happen. As the letter suggests the OS tools on the Asus has been one such significant breakthrough, and universities could use this as a springboard for further FLOSS uptake.

The role of universities. To what extent should the OU, and indeed, all universities, force students to adopt Open Source solutions? Should universities act as a force for social change? One can see the argument here: if all universities did this, then all students would graduate as a user base for open source, which they'd take in to the workplace, forcing change there. Within a few years, it's all open source, problem solved.

FLOSS as educational process. For me, the process of FLOSS is the most interesting element. In the FLOSScom project we looked at how these approaches could be adapted to education. I think there is a lot of value in this: students as co-creators, being part of a community, engaging in meaningful tasks, etc. To take my own argument, technology can be seen as a metaphor for how universities operate, so you could suggest that in order to adopt FLOSS like practices into general education practice the first step is to adopt FLOSS software.

So there you are - you can see my dilemma. I can see both sides, but ultimately I think the pragmatic and pedagogic suitability arguments are the strongest ones for a university, and so I think the OU probably has it about right in this case. Maybe it comes down to your definition of 'open'. As I've discussed before, for the OU openness primarily means open access. This means being open to students using commonly installed software. For the Open Source Consortium, open primarily means open source. These are often mutually supportive, as the OU's adoption of Moodle demonstrates, but maybe not always?