The Ed Techie

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?

Because it's MY blog...

I was going to think of a clever (read tortuous) analogy between this goal and loosely coupled pieces, but hey, it's my blog. Spurs fans enjoy:

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Music Video Code by FootyFilms.com

Documentally is waki

The other day social media journalist documentally was invited by Reuters to attend Gordon Brown's press conference. Being a streaming video kinda guy (to put it mildly), he streamed live via Qik:

This went around on Twitter, and I tuned in. It occurred to me that I wouldn't have bothered to watch it live on TV, so why did I watch this time?

Partly it was out of curiosity, this being one of the the first times social media type journalists have been in on a big, proper news event (ie a non-techie one). So I wanted to see what it was like.

But there was also an element of feeling more connected to the events. It seemed more like a personal invitation to tune in (I don't know Documentally, aka Christian, but a few of the OU folks do). This made me reflect that we have become rather distant from traditional journalists. Because you engage much more in a dialogue and the everyday aspects of a social media journalist, one can view them as your representative.

Creating a character that acts as the audience's representative, or a proxy for the reader in literature, is a common enough tactic. In Shakespeare, Falstaff and the Fool (in Lear) perform this function, and in Japanese theatre the secondary role of waki is often seen as the embodiment of the audience. I'm not an expert in journalism, but it seems to me that social media provides a means of increasing this relationship with the audience. This can be true even with 'conventional' journalists - for example if the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones tweets that he is appearing on the news, I'm probably more likely to tune in and watch it, because I've been following his process in creating the story.

A Twitter love song

When I did my talk on Twitter a few weeks back I said it was a love song to Twitter. Last weekend I had some spare time to myself, so what did I do: did I sort out the back garden? Did I finish reading The Alexandria Quartet? Did I go to the gym? No, of course not, I wondered what a Twitter love song would be like, so I spent the time messing about with Camtasia to produce one. And here it is:

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Also available in not so good quality on YouTube

New ways of being open

I've done a guest post for Ken Udas over at Penn State. It's called Exploring new ways of being open, and sets out some of the evolution of the term 'open' in education, from the Open University's perspective.

But more importantly, it contains a Billy Bragg quote, so go take a look.

Ed Tech posters - come get 'em

I'll do a slidecast of my broadcast talk in a few days, but thought I'd share a couple of the images I adapted from Flickr photos. They'll soon be adorning student bedroom walls everywhere.

(Original image Kent Wang - We must liberate Taiwan: http://flickr.com/photos/kentwang/34405544/sizes/o/)

And this one inspired by Brian Kelly's talk where he suggested we all have an inner geek, called Ellis:

 

(Original image Mattham - Yoda Dog Costume: http://flickr.com/photos/matthamm/285952194/)

And from my content video, James Boyle's  Internet Holy Trinity:

 

(Original image Zen - Fog birds telephone wire close: http://flickr.com/photos/zen/1209773/

Quote is John Perry Barlow)

(original image Guille - Freedom http://flickr.com/photos/cguille/2556176764/

Quote is Stewart Brand)

(Quote is John Gilmore)

Your search is valuable to us

Tony was giving a talk yesterday as part of a workshop with me and Grainne, to the OU Library and he said something I hadn't really appreciated before - namely that because Google refines its search results based on your history (if you are signed in to Google), the results, say, that Tony gets will be different from the ones you or I get. I know it came out in 2005, I told you I was slow on the uptake.

This made me think that your search history is actually valuable, because the results you get back are a product of the hours you have invested in previous searches and the subject expertise in utilising search terms. So, if you are an expert in let's say, Alaskan oil fields, and have been researching this area for years, then the Google results you get back for a search on possible new oil fields will be much more valuable than the results anyone else would get.

There are a couple of interesting implications to this. Firstly, just as people who don't have the time will pay others to build up their characters for them in virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft, so the time you have invested in your search history may become a valuable commodity. Time is the commodity we don't have enough of, and anything that can only be realised through the investment of time has some value to someone.

Secondly, if you can assemble and utilise the expert search of a network of people, then you can create a socially powered search which is very relevant for learners. Want to know about really niche debates in evolution? We've utilised Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones and Matt Ridley's search history to give you the best results. Or if you prefer, the search is performed as the aggregation of a specialist community.

You can see how this would play in a SocialLearn type context - the benefit of belonging to the network is that you gain access to a collective search refinement. And in a Google World search almost equals  knowledge. Of course, this would require some means of you opening up your search history to be used by others, in a way that a) didn't reveal all of your searches (if you're an eminent historian you don't really want everyone to know the time you searched for 'Who is Paris Hilton?') and b) didn't corrupt your search data, in the same way as when you buy gifts for someone in Amazon and your recommendations get screwed. (Because I buy books for my parents I get recommended a range of London in the Blitz books - who knew there were so many?).

Anyone know if such a thing is in operation anywhere?