Half an Hour

Passwords on gRSShopper

2012-01-29T19:49:00.000-04:00

Last night with all the indignation of the morally righteous someone wrote to me and demanded that I do exactly what they say or they would blog about how awful gRSShopper was to the world.

Let me beat him to the punch: gRSShopper is awful. I have never denied it, or claimed anything else. In fact, the most recent version is a 0.3 pre-release release.

His particular concern was that he had heard passwords were being stored as plain text. No, he didn't actually know this, he had just heard it somewhere.

Passwords are in fact stored in the database, not lying around in some plain-text file, and the database is secure and protected against access. So it's not like passwords were there for the taking, and there is no evidence whatsoever that they have ever been taken.

Despite his rudeness, though, he had a fair point about how they were stored, so last night I rewrote the logins so that passwords are encrypted when they are created, and retroactively encrypted every password in the system. This morning I also rewrote the password retrieval system so now it resets passwords instead of simply sending them (I used to encrypt passwords in the past, but actually changed it back because so many users had problems with the password reset system).

It turns out that this was not enough, and he demanded (yes, demanded, complete with bold-face commands littered thoughout his emails) a better password encryption system, one like the ones used by Drupal and Wordpress.

Because in principle, if someone hacked their way into the database, they could then use a brute-force algorithm to crack the passwords, at which point they would have access to - well, information stored in the database.

The concern of course is that people sometimes use the same password in other systems, and so if some hacker got into the gRSShopper database they could access other accounts that people have unwisely set up using the same password.

I'll tell you what. Here's the login system as it now exists in gRSShopper: click here

When I get some time in the future, I'll use full sha1 encryption and make it crack-proof. I'll also put the whole downes.ca and mooc.ca server onto HTTP Secure (https) so people can't pick your passwords out of wifi transmissions they're eavesdropping on (the https stuff he didn't mention but it has been on my mind for years).

Until then: either send me back the login script with the changes made (and don't forget they have to be backward compatible so they don't mess up user accounts even more than I messed them up yesterday), or give me a bit of a break.

gRSShopper does not have a budget. It's something I do in spite of the wishes of my employers, not at their behest. I've paid for the web server out of my own pocket for years. I've spent a lot of my own personal time (and whatever office time I could get away with) working on it. I went through a long process to get permission to release it as open source so that if people had a problem they could fix it.

It would be great if there were some support for the project, if some foundation were to give me the sort of money they give to the grant-writing experts at Stanford and MIT, if I could devote my time to working on making open learning accessible to people instead of working on private hush-hush projects for the government. But I don't have any of that kind of support, and it's even a violation of public service conflict-of-interest guidelines to apply for it (I can't publish books either, for the same reason) so I can't.

So if you have criticisms, either ask me nicely, help me out, or use something else. Don't write to me as though I'm some sort of subordinate you can demand perform this or that task just because you say so on threat of 'exposing' what a crappy software author I am. I love getting suggestions and help. I pathologically hate being given commands or ultimatums.

Oh yeah, and if you're a foundation or some big company or whatever that would like to fund my work, I'm all ears.

Advice to Teachers on Online Learning

2012-01-26T14:38:00.000-04:00

Here are the answers to your questions:

The EdgeX website says this on your page"This to me is a society where knowledge and learning are public goods,freely created and shared, not hoarded or withheld in order to extract wealthor influence. This is what I aspire toward, this is what I work toward." Whileonline learning would be less expensive and hence make learning accessible tomany Indians, are there concerns that learning becomes very one sided with noreal (as opposed to virtual) interaction?

Yes, of course there are concerns. I think most everyoneworking in this field today is aware of those concerns. The main point,however, is that those concerns do not create a case against the adoption ofonline learning.

In the first instance, while we often compare onlinelearning and traditional learning with the presumption that traditionallearning is more interactive, this is not in fact true. First of all, in manycases, traditional learning is simply not available, and learning that is notavailable is not interactive. Online learning *extends* the reach of learningto many people who could not otherwise access it. And second, many instances oftraditional learning are not interactive. When I attended university, forexample, I attended some very large classes. I never conversed with myinstructor at all. I even had difficulty communicating with the teachingassistant. I was very much on my own. Most online learning offers a greaterlevel of interaction than this.

In the second instance, the concern with respect tointeractivity is taken as a general principle to the effect that onlinelearning should enable, and even encourage, interaction. With this principle Iam in general agreement, at least to the extend that interaction supportslearning. Hence the form of courses I design and deliver - 'Massive Open OnlineCourses' modeled on a connectivist pedagogy - are based around the idea ofconnection and interaction. It is important, though, to keep in mind that thecore of learning for the learner is essentially practice and reflection. The purposeof interaction is to support practice and reflection by creating an environmentfor practice and fostering authentic reflection. But again, online learning is*more* supportive of interaction than traditional learning.

How do you believe online learning is best usedand could be used by Indian educational institutions?

Without having direct familiarity with Indian educationalinstitutions (not to mention Indian culture and traditions) it is verydifficult to describe how online learning is best used.

I think though that as a general principle the advice Igive to Canadian teachers may well be equally applicable in India. The adviceis this: to employ online learning to support one's own teaching anddevelopment before attempting to recommend it and use it for one's students. IfI were to speak to an Indian teacher today, I would not offer advice on how toimprove his or her classes, I would offer advice on how to use the internet tosupport his or her own learning.

Now clearly even here my advice would have to be takenwith the understanding that there are conditions in India I cannot predict nordescribe. So my advice could only be understood as my own description of what*I* have done in the online context to improve my own teaching and learning. Ioffer my own work, my own experience, as the example to draw from, with theunderstanding that each person's experience is unique, and what works for memay need to be adapted before it works for someone else. Or, as they say on theinternet, "Your Mileage May Vary". YMMV.

When I talk about what works for me, I generally describemy process under three major headings: interaction, usability, and relevance. Ifoster a wide and diverse network of contacts and connections from around theworld, in order to draw from the widest range of experience and feedback. Tothat end I have created what is sometimes called a 'personal learning network'supported by my own online writing as well as places where I can read blogs andcomments. Under the heading of 'usability' I foster consistency and simplicityin my life and in my learning. To this end I strive to be clear about my valuesand purpose, to organize my knowledge around my own understandings, and torepresent my understandings from my own perspective and in my own words.Finally, under the heading of 'relevance' I strive to ensure my learning servesmy own needs as well as the needs of those whom I serve. I seek learning thatis appropriate to the task at hand and accessible to me in both content andformat. See more here: http://www.downes.ca/presentation/138

I think that if I understand that this is what my studentwill seek as well, it may change the way I teach. But I cannot understand howand why my students will seek this until I have understood my own motivations,and seen the benefits for myself. I can't simply *tell* people that"practice 100 times a day is good" (or whatever) - I have to actuallydo the practice myself, in order not only to know that it actually is good, butalso why I would think so, and why I would find this valuable.

The Argument from Theft

2012-01-11T20:35:00.000-04:00

The argument from theft once again rears its ugly head, this time in an OER discussion forum.

On 01/11/2012 6:44 PM, Jacky Hood wrote:

There is an alternative: stop forcing people to pay for research, education, etc. How good is something that requires jail sentences and fines to get people to pay for it?

Payment for all goods, not just government goods, is enforced with fines or jail. If you walk into a grocery store and take food without paying, you will be fined or jailed, even though food is necessary for life. Indeed, the establishment of a system of jails and fines is one of the major ways government subsidizes private enterprise; try doing business in a country without a functioning police force or judiciary (Somalia, say) and you get a sense of how expense it would be without this subsidy.

Yes, if something is funded by taxpayers, it should be generally available. However, the backers of the 'awful' bill have a valid point. No free enterprise organization can compete against institutions whose 'investors' must put up the money or face fines and imprisonment. Similarly private enterprise cannot compete against products that are free or priced below cost.

The 'investors' are not forced to invest as though by some arbitrary third party. The 'investors' are the people of the nation who have engaged in a free vote and elected representatives who have enacted the sort of social system they find essential. This investment begins, as mentioned above, with a functioning police and court system. The private sector has also been vocal about its need for an educated workforce, and the people of the nation had additionally supplied this. Another service these investors provide to the private sector is publicly funded research.

I would be happy to see the private sector (aka 'free enterprise organization') 'compete' with the public sector, but only given a level playing field - ie., we can attribute to the public sector the costs that the private sector would be forced to pay in order to obtain free content, but we would require that the private sector pay for what the public sector currently provides it for free: police and courses, an education system, and a research program.

The private sector is not being somehow unfairly treated if the population of a country decides to remove a public good from the realm of free market competition. This is usually done in order to subsidize private enterprise in the first place. In such a case, privatizing the service and ending public investment in the program would end up costing more - that's why people have freely opted through democratic government to invest some of their tax money supporting it.

Someone gets to decide what govenment schools/materials/research gets done and those decisions are not necessarily the ones that the payers would choose.

That's correct. In a democracy, decisions are made on the basis of "one person one vote". In a marketplace, decisions are made on the basis of "one dollar one vote" (and "ten dollars fifteen votes", etc). Naturally, the decisions made by the people with the most money will be different from the decisions made by the people with the most votes. But there is no good argument for favouring the decisions made by the people with the most money, as history shows they will make decisions in such a way as to make themselves even more money, usually at the expense of the public.

I've noticed that many academics favor taxpayer funding of art and science, but would balk at taxpayer funding of NASCAR races and bowling tournaments. The marketplace allows more choice for everyone.

No, the marketplace allows more choice for people with money.

It may be that the people, given the democratic choice (rather than one forced on them by the wealthy) would opt for more NASCAR and bowling. If so, then that is the correct decision. But my observation is that the people can generally be trusted. They are not perfect, but they are more trustworthy than the people with money.

Arguing that it's already been paid for so it should be open is a little like saying "if we already have slaves, we should make sure they do high quality work". The better we make the results, the more we perpetuate the myth that it is OK to use force.

Again with the force argument. If you wish to work outside the domain of laws and police and courts, please be clear about this. Suggesting that measures put in place for the public good are some sort of slavery while measures put in place to protect the interests of private enterprise are something else is disingenuous.

The argument that 'taxation is theft' is dishonest and pernicious. It is propagated by those very people who have benefited the most from the protections offered by law. Measures that take a little bit of that wealth and spread it more widely are not some sort of slavery. They are the dividend society receives for investing in, and enabling the profit of, the wealthy.

On that basis the argument that open educational resources are somehow 'unfair competition' is unfounded.

-- Stephen

Knowledge and Recognition

2012-01-11T13:19:00.000-04:00

Responding to x28, 'Lower Levels of Connectivism'

First, it is probably more accurate to speak of 'domains' of connectivity rather than layers. The use of 'layers' suggests some sort of ordering (from, eg., small to large) that isn't really a defining characteristic. Using 'domains' allows us to recognize that *any* network, appropriately constituted, can be a learning and knowing system.

Second, this usage, "knowledge is found in the connections between people with each other," was a bit loose. I should have said 'entities' instead of 'people', where 'entities' refers to *any* set of entities in a connective network, not just people in a social network. I used 'people' because it's more concrete, but it was a loose usage.

That said, there are two major issues raised in this post. First, how is the sense of 'knowledge' equivalent in one domain and another. And second, how does knowledge cross between domains.

The first raises a really interesting question: does knowledge have a phenomenal quality? And is the nature of this quality based in the physical properties of the network in which it is instantiated? I can easily imagine someone like Thomas Nagel ('What is it like to be a bat?') saying yes, that there is something that it 'feels like' for a neural network to 'know' something that (say) a computer network or a social network does not.

Related to this is the question of whether such a phenomenal 'feel' would be epipehenomenal or whether it would have a causal efficacy. Does what it feels like to 'know' have any influence on our (other) knowledge states? Of is the 'feel' of knowing something merely incidental to knowing?

What I want to say is that there is something in common in the 'knowing' experienced by a neural network and the 'knowing' experienced by a social network, that this something is described by the configuration of connections between entities, so that we can say that 'knowing' for each of these systems is the same 'kind' of thing in important respects, without also having to say that they are the 'same' thing.

Different mechanisms create connections between people with each other and between neurons with each other (and between crows with each other in a crown network, etc). People use artifacts - words, images, gestures, etc. - to communicate with each other, while neurons use electro-chemical signals to communicate with each other. Though the patterns of connectivity between the two systems may be the same, the physical constitution of that pattern is different. It's like a contrail in the sky and a ski trail in the snow - we can observe the sameness of the parallel lines, and make inferences about them (that they never meet, say), while at the same time observe that they have different causes, and that it 'feels' different to create a contrail than it does to create a ski trail.

The same is true of knowledge. We can make observations about the set of connections that constitutes 'knowing' (that it is a mesh, that it embodies a long tail, that a concept is distributed across nodes, etc) independently of reference to the physical nature of that network. And yet, 'knowing' will 'feel' differently to a bunch of neurons than to a bunch of people (indeed, we can hardly say we know how a society 'feels' at all, except by analogy with how a human feels, which may not be a very accurate metaphor).

The second comment concerns how knowledge is transferred between networks (to put the point *very* loosely). There are different senses to this point - how someone comes to know what society knows, how someone comes to know what someone else knows, how somebody comes to know what nobody knows.

In the first instance - and I think this is really key to the whole theory of connectivism - there is no sense in which knowledge is *transferred* between any of these entities.

This is most obvious in the latter case. Learning something nobody knows *cannot* be a case of knowledge transfer. The knowledge must therefore develop spontaneously as a result of input phenomena (ie., experience) and the self-organizing nature of appropriately designed networks.

The organization that results from these conditions *is* the knowledge. The process of self-organizing *is* the process of learning. There are three major factors involved: the input phenomena, the learning mechanism, and the prior state of the network. There is a huge literature describing how such processes can occur.

In the case of one person learning from another, the major different is that the phenomena being experience consist not just of objects and events in nature, but of the deliberate actions of another person. These actions are typically designed in such a way as to induce an appropriate form of self-organization (and there is a supposition that it encourages a certain amount self-organization that one could not obtain by experience alone - the 'zone of proximal development').

What's important to recognize is that the learning is still taking place in the individual, that the other person is merely presenting a set of phenomena (typically a stream of artifacts) to be experienced, and that one's one learning mechanisms and prior state are crucial to any description of how that person learns.

One of the key elements I'd like to point to here is 'recognition'. This is a phenomenon whereby a partial pattern is presented as part of the phenomena, and where, through prior experience, the network behaves as though the full pattern were present. When we see half the letter 'E', for example, we read it as though the full letter 'E' were present.

To 'know' that 'A is B' is to 'recognize' that 'A is B', that is, when presented with 'A', one reacts as though being presented with a 'B'. Recognition lies at the core of communication, as it allows (for example) a symbol 'tiger' to suggest a phenomenon (a tiger).

What is important to understand here is that the recognition is something the *recipient* brings to the table. It is not inherent in the presentation of the phenomenon, and may not even be intended by the presenter (indeed, as likely as not, the presenter had something different in mind).

This also tells us how a piece of knowledge (so-called; there probably aren't really 'pieces' of knowledge) travels from one network to another network. Observe, for example, a murmuration of blackbirds. We humans (the neural networks) observe a flowing dynamic shape in the sky, like a big blob of liquid. We perceive the other network as a whole, and perceive it *as* something. We &recognize* a pattern in the other network.

When a human observes the behaviour of a social network, the human (ie, the neural network) can recognize and respond to patterns in that social network. The patterns are not actually 'created by' or even 'intended' by the social network; they are what we would call 'emergent properties' of the network, supervenient on the network.

So: a person watches 14 other people use the word 'grue' in such and such a context; when the person sees artifacts corresponding to 'grue' he *recognizes* it as an instance of that context. That is to say, on presentation of the artifact representing 'grue', he assumes an active set of connections similar to what he would assume if presented with that particular context.

As a postscript, it's worth mentioning that there's no sense of 'collaboration' or 'shared goal' inherent in any of this. Indeed, I would argue that the use of such terminology makes assumptions that cannot really be justified.

When we say that 'society knows P', what do we mean? *Not* that a certain number of individuals in society know P. There is no apriori reason to assume that social knowledge is the same as individual knowledge, and indeed, it is arguable, and in some senses demonstrable, that what society knows is *different* from what an individual knows. Why? Because the prior state is different, because the learning mechanisms are different, and most importantly, the input phenomena are different.

A society does not, for example, perceive a forest in the same way a human does. A society cannot perceive a forest directly. A human perceives a forest by looking at it, smelling it, walking through it. A society has no such sensations.

A human does not, for example, perceive a neural activation in the same way a neuron does. A neuron receives a series of tiny electro-chemical signals. A human has no such sensations.

A human can only recognize a neural activation *as* something - a forest, say. A society can only recognize a perception *as* something - en economic unit, say, a tract, or something we don't even have a word for.

A human can experience neural activations only in the aggregate - only as a network - in which it may recognize various emergent properties. This set of network activations (this 'sensation') is associated with 'that' set of network activations (that 'knowledge'). The same with a society. It can never experience the forest through the perspective of only one individual - it can only experience the forest through the aggregate of individual perspectives.

The whole dialogue of 'collaboration' presumes that a set of humans can create a fictitious entity, and by each human obtaining the same knowledge (neural state, opinions and beliefs, etc), can imbue this fictitious entity with that state. And by virtue of this action, the fictitious entity can then be assigned some semblance of agency analogous (but magnified) to a human agency.

Assuming that it makes sense to imagine such a creation (and there are many difficulties with it) such a construct does not have independent cognitive properties; it cannot 'learn' on its own, and it cannot 'know' more (or anything different) than any of its constituent human members.

Data

2012-01-10T08:24:00.000-04:00

Responding to Cooperative Catalyst, Metrics and "Success"

I think data is important (it's the only evidence we have!) but I think that people take a very narrow view of data, which is unfortunate.

- they think, for example, that data is just numbers, when in fact data can be found in the full range of perceptions, including observations of emotions, visceral reactions, likes and dislikes, and more

- they think the only way to work with data is to count things, while in fact data provide a rich range of possible interpretations - connections, patterns, flows, etc

- they think data is cumulative, suitable only for iterations, when (as Kuhn pointed out) the right sort of data shows a greater and greater need for quantuum leaps of scientific revolutions - data about anomalies, data that needs explaining, problems, unanswered questions, etc

- they think data should show you a single 'objective' perspective, when in fact different sets of data yield different perspectives, where these perspectives taken individually and together amount to more than the mass of data aggregated

The problem is not with the use of data to make decisions - the problem is with the simplistic one-dimensional use of data to make decisions. Instead of attacking the data - which leaves you with no ground to stand upon - it makes more sense to attack the simple-mindedness.

Change the grounds! It's not that their approach is 'data-driven' or 'evidence-based' and yours is not, it's that they have very carefully selected a subset of the evidence that will 'count', while you are using a much broader, richer, and ultimately more accurate base of evidence.

(p.s. on the term 'data' - sometimes I use it as a mass noun, and say things like 'data is important', and sometimes I use it as a plural, and say things like 'data provide'; there isn't a single 'correct' way to use the term; its conjugation travels as your usage travels).

Memory and Memorization

2012-01-07T11:15:00.000-04:00

From my post titled 'Wrong':

I get where Gary Stager is coming from. Learning is not the same as remembering. By the same token, I made myself a set of flash cards this week as an aid to remember my past participles in French. So there's another side to it.

Comments:

Vicki A Davis, January 6, 2012

Gary missed the whole point of what I was saying in my piece for the New York Times. The flaw with adaptive learning is we have no feedback loop to parents. The fact is that this weekend I have to help my fourth grader learn all of the irregular verbs, his spelling words, and the states and capital review for all 50 stated. many theorists argue we shouldn't be doing rote memorization but the fact is our kids are in a system that rewards it. I find that apps help make the learning happen in less time and with less strain on my relationship with my child but there is no feedback loop to help me know if he is getting it or not. Whether we like it or not, there are times our kids have to memorize.

nboruett, January 7, 2012
Stephen writing from a bus heading to Dodoma Tanzania from daresaalaam a journey of six hours. Thank you for sharing the flash cards. I find the revised. Blooms taxonomy useful. You can not understand what you cannot remember. You then apply what you understand. The rest follow

My Response:

Vicki that's a fine comment for someone who was tired. :)

Here's my thinking: what we need to foster is not memorization, but remembering. However, in cases where we are unable to foster remembering, we need to turn to memorization.

Let me give an example from the perspective of cognitive load theory (I don't need the theory to make the example work, but it's more fun if I use it).

The traditional perspective is, we can remember only seven items at a time. So, I give you seven digits: 4 5 6 2 1 1 6 6 and that's what you can remember. If I give you more 3 2 1 1 3 4 9 4 3 2 you can't do it. Say.

But if you are good at remembering, you'll manage this with no problem because you'll chunk the numbers. 321 - 134 - 9432. Now we can remember it. It's a phone number. It's easy.

Moving beyond cognitive load theory, we are able to remember better if we are able to discover relations, threads, patterns or regularities between what we're trying to remember and something we already know. That's the (crude) purpose of menomics - we convert the long string of things to remember into a simple thing to remember and a rule to convert it into the long string.

This is what we're doing when we're theorizing (what educators like to misleadingly call 'making meaning'). What we're trying to do is to find the underlying thread that connects everything we're trying to remember. A theory. A perspective, or world view.

Sometimes you can't find these regularities overtly. Sometimes there's no rhyme nor reason, or its buried in complexity or antiquity. That's where practice and memorization comes in. By repeating and rote, your brain (which is a fantastic processing machine) will find the patterns you can't find cognitively, and you'll remember.

People who remember really well reach for these associations cognitively, and do the work required to produce them sub-cognitively. That's why, in learning my French verbs, I'm doing some memorization of the stuff there's no rules for (past participles for the irregular verbs), using a mnemonic to remember a subset ('vandertramp'), rules to understand verb-object agreement, and personal discovery to find the key underlying rule (that isn't in the book) that explains everything.

For those who are curious, here's the rule that underlies everything: the verb (extra 'e' for feminine, extra 's' for plural) always agrees with the direct object (You'll never see that stated in the French text, because most of the language is an exception - you see, you have to know what the direct object is, which means you have to have one, it has to be before the verb, and it is sometimes oneself, in which case you conjugate with être instead of avoir).

What you want is the underlying rule that explains everything (or, more accurately, a sense of what underlies everything, because often it can't be explained as a simple rule, but is just felt as a sense or a feeling (which is why cognitivism is wrong - you can't always 'make' this, you often have to grow it).

It's because when you have that underlying grasp of a thing, you are able to manifest expert behaviour - you can know what the thing should be without even thinking about it (which is a good thing, because when you add it all up, if you have a lot to think about).

So, to summarize: remembering really depends on understanding, which is why all the new-fangled progressive teaching methods work better, but understanding can't always be reliably created or scaffolded. It is better to teach students to be able to understand, but also to ensure that they know that sometimes the best and fastest way to understanding is a brute force process of practice and even memorization.

And I might add: this last bit is the work ethic and expectations part of it, and is the place where parents come in. A teacher is not typically in a position to instil the desire to undertake the effort required to practice and sometimes memorize, because this is something that is the result of socialization and culture - the product of a lifetime, not a one-hour-a-week class.

Creating the Connectivist Course

2012-01-06T21:49:00.000-04:00

Originally posted in One Change a Day, January 3

When George Siemens and I created the first MOOC in 2008 we were not setting out to create a MOOC. So the form was not something we designed and implemented, at least, not explicitly so. But we had very clear ideas of where we wanted to go, and I would argue that it was those clear ideas that led to the definition of the MOOC as it exists today.

There were two major influences. One was the beginning of open online courses. We had both seen them in operation in the past, and had most recently been influenced by Alec Couros’s online graduate course and David Wiley’s wiki-based course. What made these courses important was that they invoked the idea of including outsiders into university courses in some way. The course was no longer bounded by the institution.

The other major influence was the emergence of massive online conferences. George had run a major conference on Connectivism, in which I was a participant. This was just the latest in a series of such conferences. Again, what made the format work was that the conference was open. And it was the success of the conference that made it worth considering a longer and more involved enterprise.

We set up Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2008 (CCK08) as credit course in Manitoba’s Certificate in Adult Education (CAE), offered by the University of Manitoba. It was a bit of Old Home Week for me, as Manitoba’s first-ever online course was also offered through the CAE program, Introduction to Instruction, designed by Conrad Albertson and myself, and offered by Shirley Chapman.

What made CCK08 different was that we both decided at the outset that it would be designed along explicitly connectivist lines, whatever those were. Which was great in theory, but then we began almost immediately to accommodate the demands of a formal course offered by a traditional institution. The course would have a start date and an end date, and a series of dates in between, which would constitute a course schedule. Students would be able to sign up for credit, but if they did, they would have assignments that would be marked (by George; I had no interest in marking).

But beyond that, the course was non-traditional. Because when you make a claim like the central claim of connectivism, that the knowledge is found in the connections between people with each other and that learning is the development and traversal of those connections, then you can’t just offer a body of content in an LMS and call it a course. Had we simply presented the ‘theory of connectivism‘ as a body of content to be learned by participants, we would have undercut the central thesis of connectivism.

This seems to entail offering a course without content – how do you offer a course without content? The answer is that the course is not without content, but rather, that the content does not define the course. That there is no core of content that everyone must learn does not entail that there is zero content. Quite the opposite. It entails that there is a surplus of content. When you don’t select a certain set of canonical contents, everything becomes potential content, and as we saw in practice, we ended up with a lot of content.

Running the course over fourteen weeks, with each week devoted to a different topic, actually helped us out. It allowed us to mitigate to some degree the effects an undifferentiated torrent of content would produce. It allowed us to say to ourselves that we’ll look at ‘this’ first and ‘that’ later. It was a minimal structure, but one that seemed to be a minimal requirement for any sot of coherence at all.

Even so, as it was, participants complained that there was too much information. This led to the articulation of exactly what connectivism meant in a networked information environment, and resulted in the definition of a key feature of MOOCs. Learning in a MOOC, we advised, is in the first instance a matter of learning how to select content.

By navigating the content environment, and selecting content that is relevant to your own personal preferences and context, you are creating an individual view or perspective. So you are first creating connections between contents with each other and with your own background and experience. And working with content in a connectivist course does not involve learning or remembering the content. Rather, it is to engage in a process of creation and sharing. Each person in the course, speaking from his or her unique perspective, participates in a conversation that brings these perspectives together.

Why not learn content? Why not assemble a body of information that people would know in common? The particular circumstances of CCK08 make the answer clear, but we can also see how it generalizes. In the case of CCK08, there is no core body of knowledge. Connectivism is a theory in development (many argued that it isn’t even a theory), and the development of connective knowledge even more so. We were hesitant to teach people something definitive when even we did not know what that would be.

Even more importantly, identifying and highlighting some core principles of connectivism would undermine what it was we thought connectivism was. It’s not a simple set of principles or equations you apply mechanically to obtain a result. Sure, there are primitive elements – the component of a connection, for example – but you move very quickly into a realm where any articulation of the theory, any abstraction of the principles, distorts it. The fuzzy reality is what we want to teach, but you can’t teach that merely by assembling content and having people remember it.

So in order to teach connectivism, we found it necessary for people to immerse themselves in a connectivist teaching environment. The content itself could have been anything – we have since run courses in critical literacies, learning analytics, and personal learning environments. The content is the material that we work with, that forms the creative clay we use to communicate with each other as we develop the actual learning, the finely grained and nuanced understanding of learning in a network environment that develops as a result of our working within a networked environment.

In order to support this aspect of the learning, we decided to make the course as much of a network as possible, and therefore, as little like an ordered, structured and centralized presentation as possible. Drawing on work we’d done previously, we set up a system whereby people would use their own environments, whatever they were, and make connections between each other (and each other’s content) in these environments.

To do this, we encouraged each person to create his or her own online presence; these would be their nodes in the course networks. We collected RSS feeds from these and aggregated them into a single thread, which became the course newsletter. We emphasized further that this thread was only one of any number of possible ways of looking at the course contents, and we encouraged participants to connect in any other way they deemed appropriate.

This part of the course was a significant success. Of the 2200 people who signed up for CCK08, 170 of them created their own blogs, the feeds of which were aggregated a tool I created, called gRSShopper, and the contents delivered by email to a total of 1870 subscribers (this number remained constant for the duration of the course). Students also participated in a Moodle discussion forum, in a Google Groups forum, in three separate Second Life communities, and in other ways we didn’t know about.

The idea was that in addition to gaining experience making connections between people and ideas, participants were making connections between different systems and places. What we wanted people to experience was that connectivism functions not as a cognitive theory – not as a theory about how ideas are created and transmitted – but as a theory describing how we live and grow together. We learn, in connectivism, not by acquiring knowledge as though it were so many bricks or puzzle pieces, but by becoming the sort of person we want to be.

In this, in the offering of a course such as CCK08, and in the offering of various courses after, and in the experience of other people offering courses as varied as MobiMOOC and ds106 and eduMOOC, we see directly the growth of individuals into the theory (which they take and mold in their own way) as well as the growth of the community of connected technologies, individuals and ideas. And it is in what we learn in this way that the challenge to more traditional theories becomes evident.

What we’ve learned – at least to me – is that cooperation is better than collaboration, that diversity is better than sameness, that harmony is better than competition, that openness is better than exclusivity, and that understanding complexity is better than reduction to simplicity. These are, to my mind, the opposite of the bases on which traditional education is designed. Does that make connectivism a theory? In a real sense, that question is irrelevant. ‘Theory’ implies principles and abstraction; connectivism is, in practice, the opposite of that.

If that all we’ve learned, that’s enough. But I think, as we read what follows in this series, that the learning is just beginning.

Wrong on Education

2011-12-29T20:03:00.000-04:00

Norbert Cunningham treats Moncton to his own special treatment of education, inspired by Margaret Wente (Globe and Mail Dec. 15: "Why Alex can't add (or subtract, multiply or divide)) beginning with his recommendations on math lessons flavoured by his own style of social psychology:

There's a problem here and it's not the educational specifics. Nor, in the case of bizarre approaches to teaching math, is it just that those in charge of our education system are themselves intellectually incapable of understanding basic principles of math (i.e. 'division' in math doesn't involve conflict and doesn't need to be called 'sharing,' which is a different idea).

Though what he really wants to attack is the whole idea of sharing (if you can't wait for it, go down to the last few paragraphs) he's going to get there by means of attacking the education system. Which he doesn't really know about - but still has strong opinions on.

What we thus get are constantly changing 'standards' (improvements, we're told) that hide the fact the system is failing. When the statistics from year to year and decade to decade cannot be reliably compared, there's only anecdotes. But gosh the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming: our school systems is neither excellent nor getting better.

That's our Norbert - "To hell with the statistics! I have good old-fashioned (made in the 18th century) New Brunswick intuition!" Before addressing editorial writer Norbert Cunningham's concerns about the dropout rate at Canadian schools, let's look at the actual data. Here are the statistics from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada:

And lest we suppose this is a snapshot of an isolated statistic, here are some more figures regarding educational attainment in Canada:

These tables illustrated an unmitigated path of success over 20 years, an almost ceaseless advance toward greater and more equitable educational achievement in Canada. The number of drop-outs was steadily reduced from 16.6 percent in 1990 to about half of that today. The number of people with college certificates or university degrees has steadily increased.

Perhaps the concern is that Canada is not faring well internationally? It's hard to make that case. Almost half of all Canadians completed post-secondary education, the highest percentage among OECD member countries, and well above the OECD average of 28.4%. Add to that trades and vocational certification (not included in OECD numbers) and Canada fares extremely well.

Similarly, Canadian students score exceptionally well in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment tests, or PISA. The students in our best schools - in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia - score with the best in the world - they are the best in the world. Even in Canada's less advanced provinces, including here in New Brunswick, students score even with the United States in reading and well above the U.S. in mathematics - and consistently well when compared with the rest of the world. Read the numbers for yourself. And there's more data saying the same thing.

Yes, we could do better. In particular, our record in First Nations communities is of concern; "In 2006, 41% of the Aboriginal population had post-secondary certification; only 8% had a university degree." Rural communities tend to do less well than the cities, and regions slow to adopt newer educational methodologies - notably the Maritime provinces - also fare more poorly.

So, now, with some facts at our disposal (and there are many more painting the same picture; this is hardly cherry-picking) let's examine Norbert Cunningham's concerns.

He writes (and I'll quote at length, to set the stage):

In our post-war society it became increasingly difficult for people who dropped out of school to find good work with a reasonable hope for an economically secure future. Only a few decades before, it was the norm, particularly for boys, to quit school. University was not 'for everyone.' That evolved in the 1960s. And without at least high school jobs became scarce. But dropout rates remained higher than what most caring people thought was acceptable. It was also generally treated as irrelevant that the same dropout rates were far lower than ever before. What to do? The virtually unanimous answer from newly minted experts was to assume -- never close to proven to this day -- that the persistent dropout rate was caused by flawed teaching methods. That's given us fad after fad, failure after failure.

One wonders what data - if any - Cunningham is looking at in order to draw this conclusion. While the data depict a continuously improving situation, Cunningham reports"fad after fad, failure after failure." One has to ask, what failure? Yes, to be sure, eight percent is still too high (and is only partially mitigated by people who graduate high school as adults, such as myself). But where is the fad and failure in a generation of steady improvement?

But what Cunningham is really after is the straw man argument he sets up in the previous paragraph, the assertion by "newly minted experts" that "the persistent dropout rate was caused by flawed teaching methods." This was just an assumption, he argues. "Never close to proven to this day." And, he writes,

It ignores variability in human nature, interests and abilities. Can't talk about that, it's not fair, was the ethos; everyone's capable. It wasn't 'science' or even evidence based, just dogma married to incredibly sloppy self-justifying research. Both are still thriving.

Cunningham's argument errs on two grounds. First, it is simply not true that newly minted experts simply assumed that the problem lay in teaching methods. Numerous studies exist; we could, for example, examine this report that reviews 203 peer-reviewed studies on the causes of drop-outs:

The research review identified two types of factors that predict whether students drop out or graduate from high school: factors associated with individual characteristics of students, and factors associated with the institutional characteristics of their families, schools, and communities.

Exactly the opposite of what Cunningham claims! There was research, ample research, a wide-ranging series of examinations, and they identified factors related to individual students and their surrounding communities. Yes, teaching methods would be addressed - educators have little power to control socio-economic factors. But these pedagogical changes would address individual student variability and their community.

Different studies produce varying results, but the bulk of educational research yielded similar conclusions, leading to the development of what we today call "progressive" educational policies. These are the policies widely employed in places like Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia (and employed less frequently in places like New Brunswick, largely due to the protestations of people like Cunningham) and which have led - along with national advances in social equity and personal wealth - to the educational outcomes we see today.

(How does Cunningham react to proof that Canadians are the best in the world? Like this: "International ratings, such as PISA scores, become meaningless, for the problem isn't confined to Canada -- being near the top of rankings merely means you're among the best of a global crop producing increasingly impoverished yields." Never mind that absolute measurements - like literacy rates and drop-out rates - are steadily improving. There's still some mythical 'better' that only Cunningham can lead us to.)

Now we get two paragraphs of incoherent rambling (I'm sorry - but there's no other way to say it). First he argues that the putative failures were the "failure of a one-size-fits-all system to adapt to students. Quite so - but that's exactly what many of the pedagogical changes address.

Then he jumps to funding: "Could intractable dropout rates be the result of governments never (not once) putting the kind of money into education that would be required to eliminate dropping out?" Could be - but we see higher drop-out rates in Alberta, despite massive funding - the result of rural and First Nations conditions. Equity - not raw spending - is what makes the difference.

Then he defends streaming. "We've seen bizarre, illogical efforts: 'streaming' was declared inherently 'bad' and discouraging to kids heading into a trade. Out it went, baby, bathwater and basin too. In New Brunswick that meant an end, until just recently, to even trying to teach trades." This would be a surprise to the New Brunswick Community College system - and inexplicable given the already-cited statistics showing a 50 percent increase in trades certification over the last 20 years. Discouraging streaming resulted in more trades education, not less. Because 'putting the dumb kids into trades' serves neither them, nor the trades, well at all.

Then he returns to an argument already widely accepted by today's educators: that "students are not widgets on an assembly line, each to be stamped out identically."

The system isn't coming close to reaching all students. The path we're on fiddles with teaching methods rather than provide the resources to reach all. Lying to ourselves instead of fixing the issues or otherwise accepting reality makes only politicians and bureaucrats feel good. Few believe the lies about 'new' fads: witness decades of complaints testifying to their consistent failure. The culprits are primarily the politicians, administrators, bureaucrats and 'experts.' It's shameful. Deliberate, conscious choices have created a downward spiral of mediocrity.

After his attack on the Canadian educational system, which is doing better than most to cater to individual student needs (I actually wrote a column specifically on this a few years back - does he know that students in Edmonton, for example, can choose from any school in the city?) the reader is left wondering whether he knows what is happening in Canadian schools at all! Or even New Brunswick schools!

Perhaps he should view this video about 21st century learning in New Brunswick (from his comments we have to judge that he has never seen it). Or perhaps this brochure on the program:

Public education in the industrial era was founded on discipline and facts. In the 21^st Century individual and societal success will be founded on creativity. Creative thinkers will be in demand to guide business innovation and to solve complex societal issues, some of global proportions. NB3-21C is designed to produce creative problem solvers. Today, creativity trumps regurgitation of facts. Facts you can access on the internet.

This is not the system Cunningham is criticizing. And while the current government in pulling back on the progressive education program in the province (which will result, I can say confidently, in a reduction in the gains we've seen over the last few years) it has not abandoned it whole-scale and gone back to the traditional system. So what, exactly, is Cunningham criticizing? We can say confidently that he knows little to nothing about the Canadian system. My best guess is that he is probably attacking some of the American education reformers writing in the Conservative policy papers he reads from south of the border (that's just a guess - but what else could be be criticizing? A Dickens novel?).

Cunningham goes off the deep end to conclude his column:

Dump the 'experts'; dump the bureaucrats ensuring confusion about results reigns; and dump the lies to, and slander of, parents and other critics. Dump the assumptions of dogma for valid fact (and do the valid studies -- surprisingly few exist). Set curriculum and methodology locally. Real expertise does exist. Ban outside 'experts' from any contact with the system.

One wonders what Cunningham means by an 'outside expert' - would I qualify, having lived in the province only 10 years?perhaps the people in the Department of Education who crafted the 21st century education plan would qualify, despite their focus on individual achievement and creativity. Who knows? Perhaps what he means is that curriculum and methodology should be set by the writers at the local paper. He certainly doesn't mean the teachers! Or maybe he does...

Development days that merely perpetuate a rotten system are worse than pointless. It's not as foolhardy as it may sound. It puts faith in the common sense, experience and intuition of teachers -- and goods one have plenty. They don't need, and never have, those 'experts' in universities who are using research methodology that'd earn a failure for any first year science undergrad in the next building over. I don't exaggerate. For heaven's sake, university administrators, it's time to insist on meaningful standards too. Anything less and nothing significant will change; we'll be waiting for an unlikely miracle.

Sure - depend on the teachers, he says. But make sure they don't get any of that book larnin! Because then they'll be filled with fool ideas (like, I guess, ideas from Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia? The best educational jurisdictions in the world?)

In the end, Cunningham takes the same approach so many other pundits in the same New Brunswick newspaper have for so many years: attack anything from outside the province as unproven and untested, eschew 'science' (in favour of "common sense, experience and intuition") while at the same time attacking opponents for not being scientific (they just follow "a naive assumption"). And repeat repeat repeat the dogma of the day - that Canada's educational system is doing poorly and that it is the 'experts' that are to blame. To follow, I suppose, a "made-in-New Brunswick" approach (that just coincidentally favours some major corporations already entrenched in the province).

And he is appealing - you can see it pretty clearly if you read between the lines - to the age-old mythology that some people are just born geniuses, or gifted athletes, or musicians, or so on. That's the 'difference' (and not individual desire or creativity) that he celebrates. That's the justification, in his mind, for some people being 'gifted' and other people being 'streamed'. It's a rejection - implicit, never stated, and hence never defended - of decades of studies pointing to the socio-economic basis of educational outcomes. Cunningham believes that some people are simply better than others, that they deserve their privilege, and presumably their wealth. It's an appeal to a sort of social Darwinism that has no basis in evidence (but which lives on in the "common sense, experience and intuition" of people who have not been contaminated by 'science' and 'experts'. That's the dogma - if you note, it is repeated (repeat repeat repeat) throughout the column.

But it's wrong. If you look at the data on educational attainment - actually look at it, instead of pretending you did - you see that those nations that do well are those that practice a high degree of social equity. Read what the data says (see especially pp. 104-105 about achieving equity and improving support for weaker students). That separating and widening the difference between gifted and otherwise harms both. That even if the 'natural genius' theory is correct (though it probably isn't - more genius can be explained by hard work) the suggestion that the rich should get richer at the expense of the poor results in everybody getting poorer. Which is why - in a nutshell - the New Brunswick economy continues to struggle.

Cunningham's commentary does a disservice to education in Canada and New Brunswick, a disservice by labeling a generation of success a "failure", but misrepresenting the state of that educational system, by attacking the people responsible for that success, and by suggesting that there is some sort of local home-spun wisdom that would result in better outcomes. Wrong, on all fronts - and next time Cunningham deigns to write on education, he should do his homework.

p.s. the local newspapers are apparently going behind a firewall some time in 2012. Most people believe it's because they want the revenue - though most such efforts lose money. I think it's to keep columns like this, and the rest of the 'coverage' in this 'newspaper' hidden from public view and the increasing volume of criticism to which it has been subjected.

p.p.s the local newspaper restricts commentary to 1000 words. Having one's own blog - and being able to link to the evidence - is a lot better.

Where the Future Lies

2011-12-27T17:28:00.002-04:00

Responding to Durff's Blog

In a post today I summarized Bill Cushard in Mindflash as follows: If I had to summarize the best advice I could give to e-learning developers, it would be this: "here are two key lessons for learning professionals:
1. Adapt to the on-demand world.
2. Embed learning into the context of people’s work."

I also pointed to the resistance against these two trends common in the industry. I would suggest that some of the sentiments expressed in this post are the cause of such resistance. We hear time and time again comments like "s collaboration is important because it emphasizes skills, team-building, and creativity that will be necessary in any student's future." But it's hard to make such an argument stick when the nature of collaboration itself is changing.

Collaboration brings people together, usually at a set place and/or time. It focuses them on a common objective. It emphasizes conformity and uniformity, orchestration and management, pulling as one" and "all singing from the same songbook." These are precisely the trends we are seeing erode in the future of on-demand and as-needed learning.

people often talk as though the alternative to collaboration is working completely on one's own. But this is not true. We still have to communicate and interact. But we can do so while remaining independent and autonomous. This mode of working together is called 'cooperation'. Online learning of the future will be based around a cooperative model, not a collaborative one.

That's the basis behind network learning (though you have to look at it a bit more deeply than surface observations (following Cluetrain) that 'learning is a conversation'. Understanding learning as a language sees each learner as an autonomous actor comprehending and creating communicative acts.

This has nothing to do with "respond to accelerating global competition," etc., Kanuka notwithstanding. Connectivism and network learning are about augmenting individual empowerment, not accelerating the old commodity-based and management-based economy. It's not some sort of modern free trade that homogenizes us all in a single environment. It is a fostering of diversity, a flowering of individuality.

Where this ties into the workplace is two-fold, both related to individual autonomy and diversity. First, it enables custom workplace support, where the performance support system is tailored to your interests and your resources. This in turn allows each individual to make a *unique* contribution to the production or value chain - people cease being interchangeable parts and begin becoming essential individual elements of the ecosystem.

So much of the writing I see about e-learning, whether present systems or future trends, seems to be focused on some sort of 'business reality' that the proponents seem to believe will prevail. That's probably why most of the pundits, even Siemens, write what are essentially 'business' books.

But the more they are pulled into the old language of 'competition', 'reducing barriers', 'productivity', 'collaboration', and other management-style ideology, the more they miss the actual revolutionary potential of these new systems, both for work and for learning.

p.s. the more I see blog posts citing 'traditional literature' to the exclusion of all else, the more disappointed I become. Don't be led down this garden path into believing that only academic literature is worthwhile. If you want to write about connectivism and network learning, the most important (not to mention original) work lies outside academia, not within.

Taking Responsibility for the State of Society

2011-12-24T13:36:00.001-04:00

What has been most offensive about the media coverage of the Occupy movement has been the misrepresentation of both the issues that have prompted the protests and the response of the Occupy movement. We have yet another example of such coverage in (where else?) our local newspaper.

Martin Latulippe ("CSP, social entrepreneur and engaged citizen") is given an NB Business Journal column in order to tell us that he has been following the Occupy protests, and that while he is in favour of "these different demonstrations of indignation" he finds it difficult to understand "the absence of accountability among some demonstrators and the somewhat denigrating discourse aimed at people who spent their life honestly building their wealth."

While I applaud his effort to frame the discourse in the first few paragraphs, it should be pointed out right at the outset that many of the demonstrators observe that the richest in society have not been honest in building their wealth, that they very often skirt the limit of the law, if not overtly falling over it, and that they demonstrate time and again a tendency to ignore rules and regulations, engage in corrupt practices, and sometimes engage in outright criminality, especially in the developing world.

And to the extent that these people have come by their wealth honestly, their wealth has been earned not by themselves alone, as such framing suggests, but by dint of the fact that they work within the framework of a society, one that has been supportive of their efforts to build wealth, that provides them infrastructure and security, and educates and manages an increasingly expert workforce to support these efforts.

Latulippe deliberately misrepresents the position of the occupy movement (I say "deliberately" because nobody could have studied the movement, as he says he has, and come to the position he describes). He says the movement "attacks the 1%, proclaiming that the rich should be taxed at a higher rate, in an effort to redistribute wealth; we also here (sic) this in our province and regions."

What the Occupy movement has observed is that the wealthy typically pay taxes at a much lower rate than the rest of us. The Bank Transfer day protest, for example, pointed to the fact that institutions like the bank of America pay less tax than their employees, like the single bank teller. The banks, meanwhile, entrench their positions through questionable and offensive practices. This is not a simple effort to 'redistribute wealth". It is a clarion call for a broad-based regulation of an out-of-control industry.

"I find this discourse quite simplistic," writes Latulippe. Well of course the does! He has deliberately represented it as such. He continues, "It is as if all the underprivileged in the world were being placed under the same umbrella, by saying that they didn't have a chance and that the rich - in addition to being profiteers - were lucky and must pay the tab!" But this of course is not the Occupy Wall Street position at all! Rather, the protesters are saying quite clearly that the game is rigged in favour of the wealthy. Simple fairness would be sufficient to satisfy the bulk of OWS's demands.

Latulippe tells us he is "growing tired of hearing the same things in our media and popular discourse." Rather, he says, "Media rarely looks at the thousands of hours some of these entrepreneurs invest to create their own wealth, the many hours of sacrifice and the risks they take to achieve their dream."

Quite the opposite is true, of course. Media devotes thousands of hours and acres of column-inches to coverage of the rich and the powerful, more often than not describing the sacrifices they made, their unique expertise and insight, and of course the work they undertook on their way to the top. What the media does not describe is the fact that everybody makes sacrifices to support themselves and their family, that expertise and insight are common in society, and finally that most people these days work long hours for the bulk of their lives just in order to get by!

As for the risks - a person putting a little aside for retirement is taking a much larger risk than the banks and corporations that are bailed out or deemed "too big to fail" by the government. Nobody sees their retirement savings disappear more quickly or regularly than the average person.

As much as Latulippe would like to make it seem the opposite, the underlying message of Occupy Wall Street is that the wealthy are not special. They don't sacrifice more, they don't have special skills, they don't take greater risks, and they don't work any harder than the rest of us. Therefore they should pay their taxes and live responsibly in society, just like the rest of us. They should not have a special voice at the legislature, they should not receive preferential treatment, they should not get away with criminal conduct, and they should not be able to manage their risks on the backs of everyone else in society.

Listen to this crap from Latulipp: "I know hundreds of entrepreneurs throughout Canada and New Brunswick who, every year, find themselves facing serious workforce problems because some of their employees would rather take advantage of the system by illegally filing for employment insurance or deciding to remain on social assistance. Such practices often jeopardize the future of some businesses. But such a scourge can never be dealt with in the media or addressed by a politician without public outcry or the opposition up in arms. Defending "the big bad" rich is poorly perceived. And unfortunately it doesn't garner popular votes either!"

What Latulippe doesn't say is that these employers are paying minimum wage and campaigning for it to be lowered or eliminated, that they want to employ people only seasonably or part time, that they want to manage employee hours in such a way as to avoid paying benefits, and that they often create dangerous working conditions and lobby against safety measure that would protect workers. Nobody is living well on Employment Insurance and even less so on welfare - that a person would find it more worthwhile to break the law and live on such substandard means says a lot about how bad these jobs these hundreds of employers are offering.

What Latulippe also doesn't do here is offer actual evidence of any large numbers of people collecting Employment Insurance illegally. In order for such practice to jeopardize the prospects of hundreds of enterprises across New Brunswick, it would have to be widespread, involving thousands of employees. But there is no evidence of this. What is in fact the case is that employers here are paying such low wages and offering such poor working conditions that people would rather leave - and that's what they are doing, year after year. If these employers want their businesses to survive, they should consider paying fair wages.

And then, laughably, from Latulippe: "And yet, the reality is that there are as many rich profiteers as there are poor, but nobody wants to hear about the problems of those who keep the economy running... particularly when these problems involve people who have worked hard all their life to get where they are today." If we just run the numbers on this, given that the wealthy are one percent of society, then if even one percent of the poor are criminals, it follows from Latulippe's own reasoning that every one of the the 1% is criminal. That's probably not true either - some of the 1% were simply lucky enough to inherit their money - but it just shows how poorly reasoned Latulippe's screed has been.

He continues, "Popular culture is obsessed with painting an unkind picture of those who are financially well-off, portraying them as people who want to take advantage of others. Whether it's a Hollywood movie or in one of our Tim Hortons, we have all seen and heard the rich being denigrated."

Yes. There's a good reason for that. It's because it's true. Time after time after time we see incidences of the financially wealthy taking advantage of the poor. That's why, for example, we see in Moncton this week a company that made $100 million last year locking out employees and then refusing to pay them money they had already earned and set aside while the dispute remains unresolved. That's what their talking about in the Tim Hortons - and if the corporations didn't do it, the people in Tims wouldn't have anything to talk about!

But Latulippe would rather have it otherwise: "It's easier to blame the 1% for all the hardships of the world and demand a share of their wealth, than to push up your sleeves and create your own happiness. The Robin Hood discourse has always sold well. But, personally, I find it appalling that some demonstrators blame only the rich and wealth, in general, for the ills of the world."

Let's remember that the Robin Hood discourse describes a gang that attacks rich people and forceably removes them of their wealth. These attacks are well-deserved - the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John are abusing the trust that has been given to them by King Richard and are oppressing the poor through means contrived and illegal simply to augment their own wealth, and causing widespread hardship and ruin in the land as a result.

We have all of this today except for the Robin Hood attacking the rich and distributing wealth to the poor. And while I know that it is a popular lament of the 1% to describe taxation as a form of theft, it is in fact the opposite of that. Nobody in the Occupy Wall Street movement is demanding the violent seizure of wealth from the rich - around the world, whether in Egypt and Tunisia, in Russia, Italy and Greece, across the United States, and in Canada, the call has been consistently to stage peaceful demonstration, to accomplish legal changes, rather than to promote armed uprising.

But Latulippe thinks the whole system is unfair - to the rich. "It's ironic that a young student who spent two months demonstrating out of an 'Occupy' camp is perceived as person with good values, whereas the young entrepreneur who worked hard during the same period to launch his business, take risks and believe in his dreams will soon be perceived as a crook, once he's succeeded!"

Let's pause and reflect on this for a moment. The person in the Occupy camp - who may be a student, but is just as likely a retired person, an unemployed, a seasonal worker, or any other member of society - is giving up their income and family life for two months in order to work toward an improvement in society. He or she is calling not only of redress of the social and economic problems being caused by the inequities in society, but also for a proper response to things threatening us all, such as the onset of global warming.

The rich person, by contrast, has spent the same time to launch his own business. Well good for him, but let's be clear that this person is working for himself during this time - entrepreneurs are not launching businesses for the good of society, they are doing it to make money. And will this person be perceived as a crook? well - sometimes. Not always - most people doing business in the community are honest, which is why they remain small businesses. There will be some, however, perceived to be crooks - because they are!

After all - if the person after working for only two months is able to support with his taxes the protestor for that same two month period, then there is something fishy going on, because no honest person makes that kind of money after only two months effort. And more often than not, the accumulation of a lot of wealth in a short amount of time is a good indication of some criminal behaviour. If I suddenly bought a new house and began riding around town in a Hummer, you'd look at me sceptically no matter where I work. But when a businessperson does this, we're supposed to just look away?

The representation here is vile. We are being told that the rich people are the "job creators who help keep the economy rolling" while the rest of us - and especially those who protest - are ignoring our own responsibilities and simply trying to seek more of their wealth. What a load - frankly - of crap.

The rich do not create jobs, and directing more and more wealth in their direction results in a loss of jobs, not a creation of them. Societies with the greatest and most stable employment, as well as the most enduring and dependable wealth, are those societies in which there is the least disparity between rich and poor. Actual job creation is accomplished though the concerted efforts of the entire society to make the most of natural resources and trading opportunities, not through the singular largesse of some rich person working for his or her own self-interest.

What we see the rich doing, more often than not, is using their wealth not so much to create new wealth but as leverage to acquire other wealth that already exists. Sometimes this is accomplished through the purchase or acquisition of companies that actually do produce things (their new wealth will now be directed to paying the interest on the borrowing needed to acquire the business, not on new development or research). Sometimes their wealth is used as leverage against politicians to make decisions that create windfall profits. Again, this often works against the interest of the community.

Now after this blatant simplification and misrepresentation of OWS, Latulippe is going to claim some nuance for his own position. He's always there to support the disadvantaged, he says, but we must bring citizen accountability to the forefront. "Conservatives blame Liberals. Liberals blame Conservatives. The rich blame the poor, the poor blame the rich. Parents blame teachers; teachers blame parents, and so on and so forth." What he would rather see is "a box with a nice little mirror inside, so that people can look at themselves and see where the true solution really starts."

That's fair enough, and everybody should be accountable for their own part of the problem, but it follows that those causing the greatest part of the problem have the most to be accountable about, and need to make the greatest redress. And that's just it: I can accept my own responsibility while at the same time still be protesting with those of Occupy Wall Street. Indeed, taking part in these protests is actually a part of taking responsibility. It would be easier, and a lot more safe, to quietly go to work day after day and not make any waves.

But what I observe is that the damage to society being caused by the rich is too great to allow for such luxury. We have observed the predatory and often criminal acts of the wealthy bring our society to the edge of collapse (and we may yet fall over). We have seen the inequity in society not only harm the economy and not only impair the work we are trying to do in health care and education, but also cause a great deal of hardship and harm. People lose their jobs, they lose their pensions, and the social supports like EI and pensions, into which they have paid all their lives, are being destroyed in order to subsidize the rich.

I live in a province that has at once two of the richest families in Canada and at the same time some of the lowest levels of income in Canada, a province in which the wealth of one family is remarkably similar to the provincial debt. The prevalence and influence of wealth in provincial politics and the widespread poverty are not coincidence: one is the cause of the other. And it is a part of my responsibility, indeed, my prime responsibility as a citizen, to respond to that situation, not for my own benefit (for most surely there will be none) but for the benefit of the people of the province.

Make no mistake. More and more of the poor and the wage earners and the retired are "taking responsibility" for the state of their society. And the rich will not like that one bit. Because the poverty of society has not been caused by these people working hard and saving and sacrificing their entire lives. It has been created by the wealthy, who have manifestly and most obviously have stolen that wealth. It is not simply time to force them to give it back. It's time to reform our democracy, so that this can never happen again.

Here's the Moncton Occupy protestor, speaking out:

Replacing Email?

2011-12-22T21:29:00.000-04:00

In response to Brian Kelly, The (Technology) Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present and Christmas Yet To Come

While my perspective is admittedly limited, and while I can almost be legitimately referred to as an old stick-in-the-mud, I think my own experience is relevant.

Currently, email is by far and away the most common way people contact me. I'll get maybe two or three phone calls in a day, zero instant messages or texts, and about 200 emails. Granted, 150 of those are not useful emails. But the remainder still dwarfs what's left.

But OK, that's just me. My mobile phone is usually turned off and lost somewhere in the house, the battery drained. I don't use an instant messaging client because ICQ never worked with MSN, which never worked with AOL, etc, etc. But I do have active Facebook and Twitter accounts (from which I'll average a couple of messages a day) and I'm not *that* technologically archaic.

My newsletter statistics tell a similar story. My website gets a lot of views on the web - almost a million page views in the last six months - and the number of email recipients of my newsletter continues to grow slowly, now over 3300 a day and around 5000 for the weekly. My Facebook friends, meanwhile, which peaked at 3000 or so, have *dropped* to 1800 - many people don't want the newsletter in their social networking. And while the OLDaily Twitter account has almost 1500 subscribers, that's still less than a third of the number subscribing to my personal account. RSS as well remains strong, with something like 5000 (or it could be 10,000 - I don't have a good count, just Google Reader stats).

What does this tell me?

There may be a lot of traffic in social networks and instant messaging, but it's personal traffic, replacing what used to be accomplished with a quick phone call. I've never really been a phone call person, and today I'm not an instant messaging person.

And there are two other observations I would make:

First, it's not clear to me at least how successful Facebook and Twitter would be without email and the web. Especially the web. Both services depended a lot - and to a certain extent still depend - on email notifications to get off the ground. I would probably never visit Facebook unless an email notification reminded me that people want to friend me, or that someone has sent me a Facebook message (the same was true of twitter until I turned it off).

Second, a significant part of the traffic on Twitter and Facebook point to those very web contents that i also send by email (journalists say that most of that traffic points to professional news content, but I'm not sure the numbers would bear that out). RSS, email and the web are all different facets of the same content, at least when email is thought of from the perspective of email lists, as opposed to quick person-to-person messages.

When Google+ came out I thought that it might be a viable alternative to web or email (I'm sure Google thought so too - a Wave that works, I can imagine them saying to themselves). But with the same sort of limitations imposed on users as those by Facebook and Twitter - the walled-garden effect, with a clampdown on links out - Google+ is also aiming for the same personal traffic as the other services. There's a lot of such traffic - the telephone was successful, and so should be these services, over time.

But people do not want to use those channels for more formal communications, no more than they want to receive advertising or music over their telephones. These communications rely on what are being represented here as 'old' technologies - email and the web. Longer and more in-depth content will continue to be transmitted over these channels (or something similar, but not something like instant messaging or social networking).

So - as Kelly asks - what will replace email and/or RSS and/or the web in the future, if not Google+? Probably our best clues are found in iPhone and iPad apps. Though these platforms are not as open as the devices of the future will be, the sort of functionality found in apps will come to characterize what we will find in web pages and email messages in general (indeed, if one were to measure the app market side by side with with social networks or instant messaging, we would be tempted to rashly predict the death of the latter!).

We need to work out some things. These apps (or at least the data they run on) have to be interoperable. Though the walled-garden works for Apple now, in a wider market it will be unsustainable. Additionally, with the proliferation of mobile content that actually does something on your device, security will have to be dramatically improved (indeed, security is the paramount reason why Apple has employed the walled garden - it keeps the incidence of spam, virii and phishing way down, unlike (say) contemporary email.

The more formal content of the future will resemble the magazine apps of today, with built-in hooks to social networks (to support back-chatter) but also to live data, analytics, interactive media, smart functionality, game-like or simulated behaviour, and other goodies I can't even begin to think of today. Like web 2.0, in other words, but without the sensation of being tied together with duct tape and Javascript.

And while in some cases these new products are being displayed on completely new platforms (like iOS or Android) they will also be displayed on the good-old-web and delivered via RSS, email or personal subscription (which for all practical purposes are in this context indistinguishable from each other). They will not be displayed on the Facebook, Twitter or Google+ 'platforms', no more than you would read a magazine by radio.

People creating email, web and RSS products are already well into the design of corresponding apps. As these apps gain in popularity, the numbers of the 'traditional' services will decline. But the numbers in social networks or instant messages won't increase correspondingly - because social networks and instant messaging are not replacing email, the web and RSS, no matter what the numbers seem to show.

A Little Space for Me and Mine

2011-12-22T13:54:00.002-04:00

A local writer and editor of the teen section in our newspaper, Isabelle Agnew has gotten herself into hot water in the letters section of the newspaper by penning a column in which she admits she's a pagan and asserts that she finds Christmas greetings offensive.

"My issue," she writes, "is when I'm buying a coffee and they wish me well for Christmas or when it's completely generalized, at school for example, that we all celebrate Christmas."

Or, "that people were calling the Santa Claus Parade by another name that offended me... My problem with this is that it's not a Christmas parade. If it was, all of the floats would have a Jesus, Mary and other Biblical references. But they don't."

The reaction from her readers has from "Get a life" to " I am not the least bit offended when someone wishes me Happy Yule or Happy Hanukkah" to "I am a Christian and will continue to wish people a Merry Christmas."

The bulk of the respondents have, I think, missed the point of her remarks. It is not that she is offended by the sound of someone wishing her "merry Christmas" or the idea that people would celebrate the season in their own way. It's deeper than that.

Let me make the same point by way of a digression (bear with me, it's a bit of a story, but I think it tells well).

In 1977 I was in the second of two years working at the Rideau Carleton Raceway, serving drinks and snacks in the box lounge (yes, I was underage - don't tell anyone). It was near the end of the season, which finished November 30, and by then I had come to know the box lounge regulars quite well.

I had an excellent strategy for working in a raceway - I banked my salary, and wagered my tips on the ponies. Over two years at the racetrack I had an excellent record - I broke even. It made the work a little more interesting and allowed me to have something in common with my customers.

The last day of the year one of the box lounge regulars gave me a tip, and I bet a $20 exactor on the last race and walked away with more than $250. It was my single biggest win in two years, and came at a time when I couldn't just lose it on the next race. So I walked away from the track a rich man, at least by my standards of the day.

It being found money, I decided to spread the wealth. I went for a trip into the city and found really nice presents for my family members - my four brothers, parents and other relatives. Don't ask me what they were; I have no good idea. I remember plastic and bright colours and that's about it. And I remember them costing me the bulk of my $250.

Christmas came and I spread my presents under the Christmas tree, mixed unobtrusively with the others, waiting to surprise my relations with my generosity. But the presents were unwrapped and set aside with the others with scarcely even a remark. Nobody expressed surprise, nobody expressed gratitude, nobody thought anything of it at all.

The year following, and the years thereafter, I was living on my own, still earning a minimum wage, still desperate for hours of employment, living on the bad side of the poverty line, and counting every penny. I remember drafting a monthly budget that totaled less than $150. And so when Christmas 1978 came around there was not a chance in the world I was spending any money on Christmas presents.

The reaction from my brothers was, I guess not surprisingly, "if you're not getting us anything, we're not getting you anything" (my parents could be counted on for $20 or more in my Christmas card every year until well into my 30s). And in the many years following, that has been the attitude of almost everyone I've ever met.

Indeed, the once exception to this is remarkable. In 1988 (or so) I was invited to a Christmas dinner by Moira Brown and Sam Proskin, colleagues form the Graduate Students' Association who wore their faith on their sleeves and whose generosity was overt. Despite my being very clear no presents were expected or would be exchanged, they ensured I had extra presents, including a nice black-and-white sweater (this one) I own to this day.

So, for me, the giving and receiving of presents has never since been a part of the Christmas season. Nor do I exchange gifts for birthdays or other events. It's no longer part of my culture. That's not to say I no longer give gifts; I have on occasion surprised people with my largesse. But I don't give gifts on a schedule; I don't give gifts because it's expected.

So what does this have to do with people wishing me a merry Christmas?

Well - it's not the act of people wishing people a merry Christmas. I have no problem with this, and I'm sure Isabelle Agnew doesn't either. Rather (and I deduce this from the way she has expressed her point) it's the expectation that what would be wished is a 'merry Christmas' (or even a 'happy holiday'), as though this is what everyone celebrates this time of the year.

Like Isabelle Agnew, I don't celebrate Christmas. Unlike most people, I don't celebrate anything this time of the year, not even Yule or Solstice or whatever. I take the days off because I'm required to by my employer (when I was in the food industry I always worked Christmas and New Years) and generally spend the time working on some project or another (this year I'm setting up a local newspaper cooperative ).

I am frequently asked around this time of year whether I've got all my Christmas shopping done. I respond politely that I don't do Christmas shopping, that I never buy presents. "Not even for the children?" I am asked, as though I committing some sin against nature. "Especially not for the children," I say, under my breath. For my indifference I am called a "grinch."

Generosity is simply expected this time of year. The charities work themselves up into high gear. Christmas dinners are boxed and distributed to families across the city. Teddy bears are collected; Toys for Santa "makes sure every child has a present." I never contribute to such efforts, and if I am ever heard to remark that such generosity would be better distributed across the entire year rather than for a few days in December I am thought of as a wet blanket.

What offends me - and I think this is at the heart of Agnew's point - is the expectation that there will be presents given and received at this time of the year.

Now I don't know whether Agnew distributes presents - she celebrates Yule, so she may well - but her objection to the idea of Christmas is the same as mine. It is the expectation that everyone will celebrate Christmas that is offensive. The suggestion that a common community holiday parade might without a change of meaning be referred to as a Christmas parade.

I have no problem with people celebrating Christmas, and I have no problem with them wishing each other 'merry Christmas', nor even do I have a problem with people wishing me a 'merry Christmas' - but I do have a problem with them expecting me to celebrate Christmas, just as I have a problem with them expecting me to give presents at this time of the year.

If I read Isabelle Agnew right (and I'm pretty sure I do), she's saying, "Don't take my religiosity for granted." Just as I would be saying, "Don't take my generosity for granted."

One of the typicalities of the dominant culture is that it does not even realize that it is dominant. This is so much so with the celebration of Christmas that every little challenge is perceived as an "attack on Christmas," as though any challenge to such a widely-entrenched celebration could be even remotely meaningful. Dominant cultures trample on other cultures without even being aware that they exist.

What I do during the holiday season - even if it's nothing - is meaningful. It has a right to exist, not as an aberration that needs explaining, but as an ordinary state of affairs that ought to be countenanced at least as possible by the majority culture. When you act and talk as though no alternative to the mainstream could even be considered, you go beyond the celebration of your heritage, and into the obliteration of mine.

What we who are not a part of the mainstream ask is just a little space in which to be allowed to exist. Saying "have a happy holiday" instead of "merry Christmas" at least allows that I might be of a faith different from yours. Asking for a charitable donation whenever it's convenient rather than "at this special time of the year" allows for the possibility that this time of year might not be special to me.

For my own part, I wish people every happiness and warmth in the embrace of whatever faith or belief they profess. I wish them satisfaction and success in their endeavours, whatever they may be. I ask nothing in return of them, except that they travel peaceably the road of life and leave a little space on it for me and mine, so we may live harmoniously together.

Musability

2011-12-21T07:33:00.000-04:00

This morning I read a short item from Mashable describing some predictions being made for the next five year by IBM. Among more workaday predictions we've heard elsewhere - that biometrics will become mainstream, for example, or that mobile computing will end the digital divide - is a prediction that demands more attention: that mind reading will become a practical technology.

This seems more the stuff of science fiction than it does a practical reflection on the future of work. However, the technology itself is not science fiction. The technology already exists to allow a person to control the movement of a cube on the screen through the exercise of thought alone. As we design input devices of greater and greater sensitivity, phenomena that once appeared to us to be only mental - our thoughts and dreams, for example - will begin to appear as physical manifestations.

Musing ('mental using') will become commonplace. Musability will become an important science, as these interfaces will need to be able to support action without distracting us - if you think it's dangerous to drive while talking on a mobile phone, imagine how dangerous it will be to drive while interfacing with a poorly designed muser agent.

Most likely we will first experience these interfaces as games. We will play at rotating the cube or dropping the objects into the correct containers all the while adapting to new skills our children (or their children) will take for granted. These mental environments will become as real to us - and as important a part of our every day lives - as places like Facebook and Twitter and World of Warcraft are today. It will, indeed, be difficult to imagine what the world was like before people were connected mentally.

It is tempting at first to see such devices as replacing our current control panels and input screens. And there is an advantage to be found in mental control of physical devices. For example, we can with training speed our reaction times. Or we can, through visualization, execute movements that might be difficult physically, such as balancing an object or reproducing an image. Mental controls also reduce the distraction physical movements create while driving or executing some other motor operation.

Musing, however, has the potential to have a much wider impact. The possibility of subsonic broadcast through, say, a tiny transmitter implanted in our ears, or through optical displays embedded in a contact lens, enables two-way communication. A person could interact with another person or device in an entirely inconspicuous manner. The clerk at the counter who smiles and welcomes you by name may be communicating with a complex computer program that tells her everything she needs to know in the time it takes the two of you to shake hands.

Or you may be communicating with each other subvocally. When you walk up to the counter your request has been prepared by your own computer system and is transmitted to her with a thought. She receives a short mental message acknowledging receipt and nods to you in response, while subsonically expressing her thanks for your patronage. Meanwhile your status - and your thoughts - are relayed instantly to other members of your workgroup, who receive them as updates as they participate in meetings or tasks of their own.

It seems like a small thing, internal communication instead of external. But as our machines become more able to respond to our thoughts, these communications will enable complex tasks to be performed by teams of people working in concert. Highly sensitive operations, like computer chip design or brain surgery, for example, will be performed entirely by thought, by operators working in fully immersive environments imagining their way through an environment. Close your eyes and picture yourself attaching neurons to each other - that's what it will feel like to you as nanobots perform the actual physical labour.

While it is tempting to linger on the practical and technical aspects of musability, these will seem superficial when considered against the social changes wrought by such intimate communications. It may be hard to imagine today technologies such as email and texting to be slow and cumbersome, but that is how it will feel to a muser. And the immediacy of such communications will change the way we relate to each other. Social organizations will become much more personal, and the idea that "it's just business" will be relegated to an age when you didn't know - or could pretend you didn't know - how people would feel when you worked with them.

Practical musing technology may still be five years away, and the rise of what the new version of Wired will call "Muser Nation" may be a generation to come, but just as we can see how network technologies have had a profound impact on today's social organizations, weakening the dominance of the hierarchies and resulting in the rise of asymmetrical warfare, people power and crowdsourcing, so also the mentally connected society will experience a fundamental change. It is hopeful - but maybe not unrealistic - to talk of moving beyond mere communicating to an ethos of caring.

Two factors would bring such a future into being. First, we would need a science that allowed us to share not just vocalized thoughts but also our experiences, emotions and feelings. Such a science would be technically possible; the major question is rather whether it would be socially acceptable. And second, a mechanization of work such that the bulk of physical labour were performed mentally, through musable interfaces. In such a case, the practice of 'work' as we know it today becomes less like labour and more like art. In such an environment, we would in order to become engaged, and the level of engagement becomes directly proportional to the emotional fulfillment we receive.

It is perhaps difficult today to imagine a society in which we work for something other than the bread on our table and the roof over our heads, but a combination of abundance energy and mental computation make a reorganization of the underlying economics a necessity. The less demand there is in society for physical labour, the more unfair and less efficient a distribution of wealth based on labour will become. And so as we transition into a post-wealth society, and as public access to the necessities of life become commonplace, new currencies of community and well-being will become paramount.

Online Newspaper Software

2011-12-04T19:10:00.005-04:00

Drupal & Hosted Drupal

Newspapers Running on Drupal
This is a demo site showcasing newspapers running on Drupal, a popular open source content management system. These are sites set up using Drupal and then expanded with various modules. There are four newspaper-specific Drupal module packages:
* NodeStream - publish content in newspaper style
* OpenPublish - OpenPublish is an online news platform that emphasizes visitor engagement and ease of content creation. uses automatic tagging
* ProsePoint - online newspaper with configurable sections
* Managing News - Tracks news through RSS feeds and displays where each event is happening on a map

Prose Point Express
This site hosts newspapers - looks like Drupal but I would have to confirm. Modules for facebook like and Disqus comments. Content organized into 'channels'. Separate (and useful) upload for photos. 'promoted story' sider on main page. You can adjust layouts, etc. I was editing fine but then lost the 'control menu'.
Here's a demo of our site
Hosted service, plans at $19, $39, $99 / month
For an overview, see the case study

Joomla (+K2) and Wordpress newspaper packages - still looking.

Major Commercial

PageSuite
Commercial software, pricing not available, demo not functioning. Focus on subscription, scheduling, advertising and analytics. It looks like there's support for the newer apps. There's a glossy PDF-style magazine publisher.

PressSmart
Suite of products for newspapers, including ePortal and emobile. CMS, templates, classifieds, and cloud hosting, among other features. Major professional suite. I've contacted them for a demo and pricing. Update ePortal Standard Features (US$ 600 per month - includes hosting on Cloud infrastructure) plus extras for additional features. Some examples: http://www.flcourier.com, http://www.thenews24x7.com/

ZMags
Apears to be more of a commerce server, but has something they call online newspaper software. The 'demo' is a video touting ecommerce solutions. A photo of a glossy PDF-style magazine appears. Example: Reboot.

Small Commercial

Flexportal
Newspaper and portal software written in C (which means more installation problems but much better speed). System information here. Available as a hosted solution, or they'll install it on our servers.Demo here is a bit cluttered. Another demo. Here's another example, which is better. Another example. The usual stories, classifieds, layout editor, user management and discussion list, RSS support, and sections, no indication of social features.

Bulletlink
Templates and allarently free hosting, $59/month. Here's an example. Here's another. No demo mode available.

Bondware
Newspaper website software. Demo version.
It looks a bit like WordPress (definitely PHP). Templates would have to be rewritten, as they're not very good. Demo site admin accessed. Here's a 'submit article' page. Note: you have to buy 'epostage' to send emails! $145 monthly (it's broken down into components, like 'core', 'polls', 'calendar', 'newsletter' etc. plus another $550 setup fee). Here's a sample story.

EZY Media
Services include software 'packs' (eg., starter pack ($295), newspaper website ($295), the works ($3K) etc). Hosting starting at $30/month. Here's a demo of the newspaper template. Various link errors on the site. In which case you get a "Page Not Fount" error. Some samples here and here's another.

Tech Cruiser
Newspaper and magazine turnkey hosting. $99 setup fee in some cases, $39/month hosting. Here's a demo site. Here's another. No examples of customer websites provided.

Django

Django
This Python application framework was designed specifically for newsrooms. Some examples: http://www.lawrence.com, Washington Post, LJWorld. An option is a site like Django-CMS, which bundles Django with a CMS and extensions, including newspaper extensions. Here's a demo. See also DjangoSites - some example of newspaper sites

Penny Press
This is a Django newspaper adaptation.

A resource article on Drupal versus Django

Other Open Source

Props
Open source software available from Sourceforge; PHP and MySQL; not updated since 2008. Example available here and here.

The Right Mix

2011-11-27T10:05:00.000-04:00

My response to Jon Dron, And so it ends...

Interesting reflections and I appreciate the comments and the participation.

It's easy enough technically to implement some sort of collaborative filtering or reputation management system, but the result would conflict with the objectives of the design of the MOOC.

To over-generalize, things that pull out one (best post, most reputable writer, etc) out of many are exactly the sort of things I wish to avoid. I think you sense this - you write "A single view of any course is always going to be a compromise that suits some and not others" - but my response is to attempt to avoid the single view.

This makes the parcelling or highlighting problem an order of magnitude more difficult. Basically, it amounts to wanting a way to do it for each participant, but also to provide each participant maximal choice, and a reasonable but not excessive amount of homophily.

I think a tag system is an excellent alternative, but simple keyword tagging is clumsy and ineffective - it depends far too much on what you are calling soft technologies (and specifically, the act of applying the tag) and means the only resources available are self-selected materials.

I do have a 'topics' system that preserves the best of tags but greatly automates the process, but I've been frustrated by some technical difficulties. It requires a lot of caching, and my cache system has its issues (if comments haven't been appearing when you make them on posts, it's because I'm still trying to make the topic system work).

I don't think a parcelling system will be by itself sufficient, however. I'm not even sure it's necessary. I think that the problem of participation lies elsewhere. Because we could send a post with only a small number of resources to people, which would be easily manageable, and participation would still decrease.

That's why, in my talk on engagement this week, I tried to explore the various things that would cause people to commit to doing things. I don't think any of the formulae are quite right yet. And nothing will be perfect - people take these courses in their spare time, which means they may stop for any reason at any time.

I don't think the answer will be a _simple_ thing, like badges, levels, competition, rewards, etc. - I expect it means getting the basic design (open, connected, interactive) right, plus providing focus (attractors, parcelation, personalization), and then stimulating actions (signs and symbols, loyalty, campaigns, progress indicators, etc).

How to Get the Most out of a Conference

2011-11-26T09:20:00.002-04:00

MS-Word version -- PDF Version

EDUCAUSE has this habit of creating placeholders for its posts and then sending RSS feeds composed solely of those placeholders. Maybe the content will be filled later, maybe it's just a program entry and will never be fleshed out, but RSS readers like me will never know; we see nothing but the headlines (and sometimes not even that!) that leave only tantalizing glimpses.

This is the case for an entry that came out today, How to Get the Most out of the Conference. By 'the Conference' I assume they mean one of the EDUCAUSE conferences, but even that useful tidbit is missing from the entry. So I am left to speculate about what could have been.

I once started a post, How to Attend a Conference. It was just a stub of a post. Yet now as I see the headline I am reminded of that unfinished project. I have attended dozens, nay, hundreds! of conferences, a guest, a presenter, a panelist, and a keynote. So I know something about how to attend a conference.

Selecting

The same conference every year? Some people (maybe even most people) go to the same conference every year. I know I was that way with the NAWeb conferences. It's a good thing if you can do it - you get to know the people and know the format. The second time at a conference (or at a venue) is always more productive than the first.

But if you can only attend one conference a year, make it a different conference every year. It's harder and less comfortable, but each conference is its own community and you'll get a lot more out of seeing many different communities than the same community every time.

Keeping track. What conferences are actually happening? It's easy to focus on the content of blog posts and tweets and to overlook the venue (often it's indicated with nothing but a hashtag). It's a good idea to keep track of what contents other people you read are attending. Make a list.

Many fields have someone who keeps a comprehensive list of conferences. In educational technology, Clayton R. Wright provides this valuable service, issuing a new document every six months. In philosophy PhilEvents does the job. It's better to find a list specific to the discipline, but if all else fails, Conference Alerts provides generic versions for many other fields.

How you score these conferences (if you score them at all) is up to you. Some indicators of a good conference for you are:
- the volume of Twitter comments and blog posts from people you know
- presentations from authors you have read and enjoyed
- topics that are fascinating to you (but which you don't know a lot about)

Submitting a Proposal

For many people, the only way to attend a conference is to be presenting a paper or talk at the conference. It's a sad state of affairs, and has resulted in a bloated number of conference papers and talks, but it can't be helped for now.

Conference Guides. Many conferences will have detailed guides on how to submit a proposal. Read them. They will help even if you are looking at a different conference. The ASCD conference proposal guide, for example, offers review guides that will apply to almost any conference you apply to:
- how well does the proposal relate to the conference theme and strands?
- is the proposal content of current interest or a hot topic?
- has the proposal content been implemented?
- is the proposal an innovative solution, or does it offer a fresh treatment?
- does the proposal address or support solving significant problems in education?
- is the outcome or takeaway clearly defined?

Often, conferences will look for proposals in a specific format. The Pythian conference proposal guide, for example, specifies a list of sections your proposal must contain. So follow the list! The same guide also points to a number of reasons proposals fail:
- the title and/or abstract too vague, ambiguous or unclear
- the premise is unbelievable
- the abstract is too short and doesn't describe the talk
- too much material has been presented for a single talk
- it's a sales pitch
- it assumes reviewers are familiar with your work

The proposal. It's actually pretty easy to get a proposal accepted. But (to my mind) the trick is, make the proposal specific to the conference. Don't just submit some paper you've written. Taylor your proposal to the needs of the conference. Then, in your proposal, talk specifically about the proposal. Don't try to 'set the stage' - the conference theme does that.

Typically, a proposal follos the format of 'problem-response':

- problem - draws from published literature relevant to the conference theme, identifies a question to be answered, identifies a 'pain point' reported by customers or clients, or describes a proposition made by someone else you wish to refute. The more specific the better. Don't just give a generic description; identify instances of the problem.

- response - responds to the problem. There are many ways to do this; the best is to offer some concrete evidence of a solution. For example, you may have developed a tool that addresses such a problem. The response will consist not only of a description of the tool, but also an account of how the tool was employed in practice, and evidence from that experience that the problem was addressed.

Test your proposal with your colleagues (I don't recommend putting them online ahead of the selection process because it may impede the process - I personally prefer openness but many conference organizers do not, and may react badly).

Submission: Submit several proposals but be reasonable. It's better to submit several proposals instead of just one in a season, to ensure that you are accepted. But don't submit dozens if you're only going to one conference; it takes time and effort to review a proposal and it's unfair to organizers if there's no real chance you'll actually attend the conference.

Invited Speakers

If you are an invited speaker, do the same thing. There's nothing worse than a speaker who gives the same canned presentation to every conference they attend. I've seen a number of talks like that, and though they are very polished, they're sterile. The presenter hasn't talked with the audience, he or she has talked to the audience.

Any speaker will have a repertoire of content they rely on - I'm not going to go into a conference and do a completely original work on constructivism - it's just not part of what I do and would require several years to develop the expertise before I could talk on it. So there are slides I will use more than once, themes (like 'groups and networks') I will return to and discuss. That's expected (and if you are being invited, people will be disappointed if you don't do the thing that got you there).

But - as they say - localize. How does what you offer tie in to the theme the conference presenters what to talk about? If you are an invited presenter especially, you have an obligation to do some research ahead of the talk - what is the topic, who are the 'big names' in that topic (and who may also have been invited to speak alongside you), what specific objectives are the conference organizers trying to achieve?

Here's an example of a talk I gave in Mexico. Notice that the slides address the conference theme exactly. I am telling the conference organizers I am taking their needs seriously and trying to address them. I describe my own work in the field, and then at the end, show how it meets their objectives.

Here's another example. I was asked to speak at a conference in Belgium, at the Flemish Parliament. I took the venue as my starting point; the organizers wanted a talk on openness, and the audience consisted of managers and decision-makers, so I described a policy framework for open learning.

One more example. I was asked to do an online presentation on the topic of student engagement. I didn't really know the group I was talking to, so I did some background reading on the topic engagement itself. I discovered that the conference organizers had written and presented on engagement. This gave me a basis in literature I could refer to. I found a problem related to engagement in my own work, mapped it to what the organizers had written in their paper, and made some comments.

Here's a case where I dropped the ball. I was invited to speak to Empire State College, in Saratoga Springs. Really nice people, very dedicated and very engaged. I didn't realize that the college was already committed to open and online education, so the first part of my talk, where I presented the standard advocacy argument, was unnecessary and (frankly) a bit insulting to them. If I had done my research ahead of time, I would have found the considerable common ground we have, and been abot to craft a much more compelling presentation.

Invited speakers will also have to prepare an abstract and specify any special requirements (regular speakers are generally stuck with a small room and a standard issue digital projector). I always ask for internet access at the podium (because I like to be able to show people things). I rarely ask for sound, but if you plan to play videos, ask for room sound - people will not be able to hear your laptop speakers.

Planning Your Travel

So you're proposal have been accepted (I knew it would be!) and you are planning to attend the conference. You will want to plan your travel as far ahead of time as possible. This is not so much to save money; you can get good airfares and hotel rates almost up to the point of departure. It's to give you options and choices that may not be available closer to the event.

If you have to fly to the conference, book this first. If you're taking the train, you also want to book this first. If you're driving or taking the bus you can basically skip this step.

Arrival. When I plan airfare I always plan to arrive a full day ahead of the conference. That is, if the conference starts on the 10th, I arrive in the city and at the hotel the evening of the 8th. Yes, it's an extra day. But in my mind, it's the most important day, and especially if you're travelling internationally, a day you can't afford to skip. Here's why:
- it's "jet lag day". I actually call it that. The first day in a new city is rough, even one just a couple time zones away. It gives you a chance to at least begin to get your sleep schedule on track. If you're lucky, the conference will begin the afternoon or evening of the first day, which gives you a bit more time.

- it gives you a chance to get to know the area, to find convenience stores, good pubs, rail and bus services, attractions you may want to visit. You should also explore the conference venue.
- this is an excellent time to localize your presentation. Now that you're in the city, you can get a feel for the place, take photos, and try to get a sense of where your organizers are coming from.
- and most importantly - if you miss a connection or your flight is delayed or cancelled, you won't miss half the conference! You are much more likely to be there when the conference starts (with all your luggage, which might also take an extra day in transit).

Departure. When you leave is up to you, but unless you absolutely have to, leave no sooner than the day after the conference ends, rather than the day of the conference. This is because conference participants often have ad hoc post-conference meetings, and if you have a planed tyo catch, you won't be able to take part in them.

I also prefer to leave one or two days in the city for myself (if it's a city I visit often, this doesn't really apply). It's really nice to be able to explore a new city, and best to do it after the stress of the conference has passed. This is typically done at my own expense. Your employer should never be asked to pay for these extra days, and most all employers will refuse to pay the amount. But if you pay the extra expenses (which won't be that large) yourself, few employers will say no - especially when they realize you can save hundreds of dollars on airfare by staying a couple of days.

Flight times: Do not schedule morning departures. I repeat, do not schedule morning departures. I never leave sooner than 11:00 a.m. or so. Airports are an absolute zoo in the morning, because most travellers get up early and travel first thing in the morning.

And when you're returning home from a strange country in an airport you've never been to, you don't want to be getting up at three or four in the morning, hoping you get a cab or a train, going to an airport in chaos, and trying to get onto your flight without losing half your stuff. Book a noon flight, have a nice breakfast, pack at a leisurely pace, arrive at the airport awake, and - this is the best part - you still arrive at your destination at a reasonable hour.

The Hotel. Stay at the conference hotel. Yes, it may be a bit more expensive. Maybe even a lot more expensive. But it's many times more convenient:
- You won't be paying extra money for a taxi, or spending time walking back and forth
- You can take a nap, take a break or get some work done in the space of a 1-hour period
- You can charge your gear without having to stand guard over it
- You have a place for meetings or after-hours gatherings

Book your hotel as soon as you can, so you can get space in the days before and after the conference. Often other conferences will occupy the hotel, and space may be at a premium. But if you book well ahead, you can get a room at a reasonable rate. Also, when booking, be sure to mention the conference, and attempt to get conference rates.

Travel Agencies. If your organization has a travel agency, use that agency, because your organization may require it, but also because they may have bulk purchasing arrangements with airlines and hotels. But be careful - they may also work within constraints, such as the cost of a hotel room. Don't let them put you in a box on the outskirts of the city! (Yes, it has happened to me). Pay the extra your self, if you have to, to be put into the right hotel. Also, be very clear about your departure time preferences and seat section preferences (I really recommend window seats, because you're never disturbed, and you have a bulkhead to lean on and use as a pillow).

If you're not using a travel agency, check seat prices at both the airline and a agency site like Expedia (I always use expedia.ca when I book my own flights, and in Europe I've found lastminute.com has excellent rates, far cheaper than anything I can get in North America). If you can, try to use an agency to book the hotel. Booking directly is often a lot more expensive than booking through an agency.

Fly economy. Your students or employers are paying for the flight, and even if some company is paying for it, they're writing it off as tax deductions. I call business class 'subsidy class' - the rich receiving subsidies from the poor in order to fly in greater ease. Don't patronize that system.

Your travel budget: travel can be expensive, especially if you're not prepared for the extra costs ahead of time. Make a budget (or at least keep one in your head) and be prepared:
- airfare (plus taxes, and be ready for luggage and other fees at the airport)
- international fees - check ahead - many countries charge western travellers at the airport to enter or leave the country
- taxi or (far better) train to the airport (it's better to take the train because trains rarely get stuck in traffic, and they're typically a quarter of the cost)
- food - you will want coffee and snacks while you're travelling (and maybe a DVD, if you're me). Plan ahead. I would have starved on my recent trip to Oslo had I not looked it up and discovered that it's one of the most expensive cities in the world (Oslo - who knoew?).
- tips - customs vary in different countries, but basically, if you interact with a human for anything more than a minute or two, you should be prepared (and happy!) to pay a tip
- internet access - if you travel a lot, have a current account on t-mobile or boingo (I use boingo.com); hotel internet is either free or ridiculously expensive - plan ahead how you will access internet on site (don't depend on conference wifi; I repeat, don't depend on conference wifi, especially if you have to do things like finish your presentation or do online banking).
- booze - if you plan to drink, make a budget and stick to it - booze in bars (especially conference hotel bars) can be really expensive (in Oslo, my $50 beer budget was consumed in four beers in one night - and that was at places that can only be called dives).
- souvenirs - you will want branded t-shirts, plaques or ornaments, local food (check what you're allowed to bring home)

Travel Gear

The other major expense of conference travel is travel gear. Fortunately, you can manage most of the costs by planning ahead. It's often a good idea to make a list (or to at least have a list in mind) as you prepare for conference travel.

Conference Kit. I have a 'conference kit' that is my essential conference gear, and which mostly stays in its own place at home between conferences (actually, I store it in the suitcase, so I don't even have to pack it!). The conference kit contains most of the personal items I might need on the road:
- electric toothbrush, small travel toothpaste tubes, soap, comb or brush, wash cloth, travel-sized shampoo and conditioner (I use Pert so I only have one bottle), disposable razors, sunscreen - you might not need all of these, but it's really nice to have your own toiletries, so you know how your hair and skin will react
- daytime cold medicine, NeoCitran (great for sleeping on the plane!), Imodium or rehydration salts, Ibutrophin or Tylenol, Strepsils and Fisherman's Friends, Polysporin (very important to treat cuts in tropical regions), Gaviscon and Rolaids
- your own prescription medicine - bring the original bottles or copies of the prescription

Travel Documents. You will need your passport (and possibly a Visa - check before you travel (I once had to scamper to get an Australian visa while in transit in Toronto!)), flight tickets, and hotel bookings. Bring your driver's license (but not your car keys!), credit cards and bank cards (you can use ATMs almost everywhere in the world; don't bother with travellers' cheques, and don't travel with a wad of cash).

I have an old blue passport case (I got it as a speaker's gift about ten years ago) I use to hold my travel documents (there's a zippered case for the passport and a string I can use to make sure it's attached to my body). Then, make a copy of every document and store it in a separate case. If you lose your passport (like I did once) having a spare copy will save you from huge problems (as it did for me).

When you are traveling, don't put everything on one place (when my camera bag was stolen in Spain I lost nothing but the cameras - but I heard people in the police station talking about how they had lost everything when their bag was stolen). I put travel documents in the passport case, money and cards in a wallet (front pocket only) and another secret location, electronics in another bag, etc. I once lost all my music gear from an airline seat pouch when someone swiped it while I was in the washroom - now I keep a backup iPod nano and earbuds in a separate location.

Note: these warning apply equally if you're travelling half way around the world or if you're travelling to a nearby city. Loss can happen anywhere, and it's when we get comfortable that we're the most vulnerable.

Vaccines. Check the CDC page for recommended vaccines. If you can, you should get a Twinrix vaccine against Hepatitus A and B if you're going to be doing any large amount of travel at all. If you are travelling in the country or to tropical regions, be sure to bring and use bug spray (like Deep Woods Off).

Electronics. I travel with a MacBook Pro, an iPad, and an iPod (with a backup Nano). These have of course their power cords (each neatly coiled) and connecting wires (I have two baggies containing essential cords - chargers for iPods and Pads, earbuds, USB connectors, adapters for digital projectors). If you're travelling overseas, check the power supply requirements, and purchase an adapter. I also bring an extension cord or power bar.

My cameras are in a separate bag (of course!), and I bring my nice camera, a small compact back-up, and chargers and USB connectors for each. I have a nice microphone so I can record audio (both cameras record HD video). I also use a Sony Walkman to record conversations, street sounds, background noises, and whatever. It's also a local radio receiver and backup iPod!

You might ask, why don't I travel with one computer, one MP3 player, and one camera, and skip the rest. It's all about having the right tool for the job. A computer's a lot easier to use than an an iPad, but the iPad is great for crowded conference audience seats (I don't know why conference organizers don't provide tables, but they often don't). The compact camera is great for the bar or busy areas where you wouldn't want a big camera, but if you want really nice photos (as I do) you want the really nice camera. And having more than one device is great for long airplane trips, because between them you have hours and hours of entertainment!

Note: power in the Americas is 110 volts, and elsewhere is 220 volts. Most of your gear will work with both (check the tiny print on the charger, power cord, or adapter - if you see 110-220 v you're OK). Some things won't! I've blown up a number of power bars!

Clothing - bring extra socks and underwear, and economize on pants and shirts. It's always wise to bring a sweater. When travelling to a cold country I wear the coat in transit (some guides say you should pack them, but coats are really bulky) and use it as a pillow (up against the bulkhead of my window seat). If you're giving a talk, have clothes designated especially for your talk - wear nice clothes when you present, even if it's informal. You're on stage. Be professional.

The Rest - I travel with a Cpap because I have sleep apnea, so I have to make sure there's always electricity where I'm sleeping (yes, sometimes organizers forget you need power, so make sure ahead of time). I also travel with my own prescription meds. I bring a travel alarm clock. And I bring my own coffee machine, coffee, filters and whitener, because you can't get good coffee anywhere!

Luggage. Don't use suitcases, and be prepared to walk with your luggage without a baggage cart. I use upright luggage, like this. I have one larger bag I check-in, and another smaller bag as carry-on. Then I have my computer shoulder bag. I use a bungie cord to loops the smaller luggage to the back of the large luggage, so I can pull the two of them with one hand (matched sets will also have straps that join the two together). I either carry my computer bag over my shoulder or use another bungie cord to attach it to the tall luggage. The idea is that I can be pulling everything with one hand, and have the other hand free (for a coffee, for a phone, for my travel documents, etc.).

Preparing for the Conference

A conference comes and goes in an instant. Even a long conference might only be four days long - most are only one or two days. You won't have time to find your feet, even if you're arriving early.

Research the conference. Who will be there? What will they be talking about? As much as possible, scan the program, look for people (especially keynotes) talking about things that are interesting to you, and look them up on Google. Do this before the conference! Sometimes it's nice to be surprised by someone you weren't expecting, but the experience is so much more rewarding if you know where they're coming from.

You also want to be looking at the program to see which sessions you want to attend. You don't have to decide right away (but if you do, create your own schedule and put it on your iPad or computer - it will be really hard to find this information at the conference itself, because they almost never post big signs with the conference program on it (they just assume everyone has their program).

Find the chatter. These days every conference has a backchannel (where or not the organizers want one). The backchannel is typically indicated with a hashtag. If you don't know the hashtag, search for the conference on Twitter. Or use a Google site:Twitter search, like this. Or just include 'hashtag' in your search, like this. If you still can't find one, ask people you know. If nobody knows, create a hashtag of your own, and put up a blog post with the name of the conference, the year, the URL, and your proposed hashtag (don't forget to Tweet using the hashtag too).

The hashtag chatter will not only highlight talks to attend and issues that are current, it will be a guide to the unofficial activities associated with the conference. If people are meeting at a pub, or getting together in an open hotel room, it will show up in the chatter (use reasonable safety precautions when travelling to new places in strange cities). It will point you to resources and background materials. Being linked to the chatter ahead of time will prepare you to get the greatest advantage of the backchannel during the conference.

Prepare your talk. It goes without saying, I suppose, but it can be the last thing you're thinking about when travelling overseas. You want to do as much as you can ahead of time, but remember, your presentation is a creation of the moment. Plan on making changes, adding local content, and more.

Mostly what I do ahead of time is to assemble resources. This is especially important if the hotel has a bad internet connection. I'll have copies of papers I want to quote in my digital library, copies of all my previous slide presentations, sometimes even downloaded versions of web pages (I just use the browser - it downloads the site and copies of all the images on the site). Sometimes I download video clips (using DownloadHelper). One day I want to use videos for my sldies instead of static images, but I need to get better at that.

It's also good to create an outline. If you have a good abstract, this has already been done for you. Now you can fill it out. The principles I've described before work really well for presentations. Sometimes I create an entire outline first; other times I have the outline in my mind and just author the detailed version slide by slide. The less experienced you are the more you'll need to prepare (on the bright side, once you've done this a few hundred times, you can create an interesting engaging original presentation in a few minutes right before the talk).

Create Your Presentation Page - I should do this ahead of time a lot more than I do. But what you should do is to create a web page for your presentation. This page will constitute the permanent record of your presentation, but for now it's a planning document. Your presentation page can be a blog post, a wiki page, or any other internet presence. I really recommend that it be a page rather than something transient like a blog post or social network status update. This will be an archive; treat it seriously. (In my view everyone should create their own presentation page - the fact that most people still don't is a matter of some astonishment to me).

When your proposal is first accepted, post your abstract and links to any background material you may be looking at. Especially if your talk is going to be controversial, make sure your summaries and readings are available for people to see. So - for example - when someone says you "didn't understand" their paper, you can point to your summary and ask, which part was wrong (in my case, probably nothing - but I get the "didn't understand' sour grapes a lot).

Here's a good example of what I mean. Note that even before I even arrived in Utrecht I had the background work done, and more importantly, posted online for comments and feedback. It's useful in multiple ways - like when someone says "oh he just got mad and did it in the last minute" you can point to this work and make it clear that you had in fact planned this all along (and can hardly be accused of springing a surprise attack on someone). Here's the completed presentation page of the talk finished after the event (yeah, I know it's not beautiful - but it's a great archive of the talk).

Publicize your presentation - use the conference hashtag and post a link to your presentation page on Twitter. Give people a way to give you comments (don't be disappointed if you don't get any - people talk a lot about how interactive the web is, but there's a lot less actual feedback on things than you might think). Be prepared to add to your presentation right up to the day of the event.

Practice your talk. Seasoned hands have probably forgotten that people need to do this, but people who are new to the whole concept of giving talks at conferences should strive to practice their talk in front of a live audience. Don't read your talk, even in practice. Make sure you have notes, so you don't lose your place or forget what you wanted to say. But even when you practice your talk, just glance at your notes to find your place, and then speak without reading your notes.

Why? Three reasons. First, you want to hone the art of interacting with your audience, and you can't interact with them if you're staring at your notes. When you speak, you want to be looking at them, not your presentation. Second, practising this way will help you remember your presentation. It forces you to think about what you're saying, and not to merely recite it. And third, you'll get feedback and probably a lot of support. People will tell you it's a good talk, or how to make it better.

I still do this, especially when I'm trying out an entirely new line of argument. My Speaking in LOLcats presentation was first delivered to a small conference in Richmond Hill, and then to an online course. Of course, this would have been a lot better done the other way around. Online talks are great ways to hone your conference presentations - just do a Google hangout and have people join you. Or here, I presented first to an online class (same class, different year) and then next to an international conference.

Writing Your Paper. Some conferences will require that you provide a written paper for the presentation. This means that you may be committed to having a presentation (and paper!) completely planned before you have all the information you need. That can't be helped, and you should strive to accommodate them.

Do it this way: prepare the presentation and slides first. Practice your talk a few times, if you need. Ideally you want to actually give your talk first, but if you can't, rely on the practice. Delay as long as you can, pulling your resources together, assembling your articles, links and diagrams. Then, use the presentation outline as your essay outline. How you proceed at this point is up to you, but I sit down and do it in one draft. Maybe not necessarily start to finish (as I type this paper, for example, the organization is chronological, but I'm adding sections as I think of them).

This works really well. My paper E-Learning 2.0, for example, was created this way. Here's the link (it was published in eLearn Magazine, was their most popular paper ever, but then they broke the link and now none of the references to it work - that is why you keep your own records!). I first presented the talk to a CIDER online workshop. I adjusted a bit and presented it in Edmonton (to many of the same people!). Then I wrote the paper.

This is really common. The purpose of conferences once upon a time was to provide a forum where people could try out their partially-formed ideas before committing them to print. Over time, with the publication of conference proceedings, the conference presentation has become ossified. But I try as much as possible to use presentations to try out new ideas. That's why it's so important that I actually talk with the audience, rather than just at them. Even if there's no question-and-answer, I can get a good sense of how it was received from their expressions, and later, from the converstaions and backchannel.

The Night Before

Charge your electronics. Make sure you have a full charge on ytour computer, iPod, iPad, camera batteries, and anything else you are bringing.

Print boarding passes. If you can (check your airline site), print your boarding pass. While you're at it, make sure you print backup copies of all your documents (if you don't have a photocopier, take a digital photo of the document and print that).

Use Google Maps. You may have done this at an earlier stage, but do it now, the night before you leave, so it will be fresh in your memory. Locate the conference venue, your hotel, and the airport. If you're taking a train from the airport, locate the train station. Print out a copy (and backup) of the street map and store it with your travel documents. Use street view and walk through your route on Google before you arrive. (Seriously - I actually do this and it makes a big difference when you arrive, and you know what your hotel looks like, because you saw it on Google maps).

Make an arrival plan. The idea is that you'll be making plans before you get there. You arrive at the airport and get on the train - what stop are you getting off at? Make sure you know. Will you be able to want to the hotel or will you need a cab? Finding taxis or trains at the airport is usually very easy, but when you arrive at a train station in the middle of the city it can be confusing. Plus, there are thieves, so if you're standing there looking lost they will zero in on you. Have a plan so that when you arrive, you know what you're doing.

Sometimes, especially when you're an invited speak, your hosts will say "don't worry, leave it to us, someone will pick you up at the airport." Don't count on this. I remember arriving in Bogota for the first time - the fight was four hours late, I arrived at 10:30 at night, and my ride had bailed. What would I have done if I had not already looked up where to find taxis at the airport (there's an official stand, but it's a bit out of the way) and known the location of my hotel?

Back up your files. I always travel with a 32 gig USB drive on my keychain. I put a copy of my presentation on it, as well as a nice reading library, all my previous presentations, and a bunch of other stuff I'll write about in another post one day. The night before you leave, make sure you've updated your USB drive with backups of all your data.

Pack your bag. Fold your clothes, make sure everything fits, and don't forget to weight your luggage. Use a luggage scale. There are always restrictions. Be sure to check your connector flights - in the middle of a long trip recently a tiny airline handling one leg of my trip tried to shake me down for excess baggage fees - but I had done my homework.

Travel

Getting to the airport. If you're travelling from home, you may have a good idea of what to expect. Since you're travelling at noon or later, the airport won't be a zoo. Plan to arrive an hour and a half early (that gives you an extra half hour for traffic, car accidents, disputes with the driver, delayed trains, whatever). Don't economize on your arrival time. Time spent at the airport is just as productive as time spent at home, so it's really silly to delay departure to the last minute in order to have more time at home.

Note: in many places you will need to arrive even earlier, up to three hours earlier, especially when travelling internationally. If you're not familiar with the airport, ask at the hotel, and then follow their advice.

I travel with checked luggage. I know that when you read travel guides they will say you should try to avoid checking your baggage, but I'm not really sure this is a wise idea, especially if you're on a trip of any length. Yes, your baggage might be delayed or even lost (though my luggage has never been permanently lost). And you have to wait at the carousel to get your baggage. But who cares! You've arrived - what's the rush?

But if you don't check your luggage you're travelling with heavy and often bulky cabin baggage. You have to lug it around the airport. You have to fight with other passengers for overhead compartment space. And the stuff you need in transit - like computers and flight documents - gets mixed up with stuff you don't need to be messing with on an airplane, like underwear. You're always rationing your liquids. Being careful to make sure you have no toe-clippers. You don't have enough room for your electronics (which you absolutely must carry on - don't risk losing them) and you can't do things like bring your own coffee machine. All this to save a few minutes at the carousel?

Have a carry-on sized carry-on. Like this.They are designed to fit into the overhead bins (if you are travelling on a small plane like a CRJ or Embraer you will have to cabin-check your carry-on - don't panic, it will be there as you leave the aircraft, but keep this in mind and keep the stuff you really need in your computer bag). Don't overstuff your bag because it won't fit into the space if you do. This may seem overly pciky but you can save yourself a lot of heartache at the check-in line or in the airplane by using the proper baggage.

As I said, arrive early. If you're going to be standing in line a long time, be sure you have something to read or listen to (an iPad is fabulous in a check-in line). If you can, print your boarding passes the night before, or otherwise, use the airport kiosk check-in. There are many options - you only need to learn them once, and then they'll save you hours every trip thereafter.

Be nice to the airline staff. Let me repeat: be nice to the airline staff.

As you approach security, put all your pocket stuff into your coat pockets (you should almost always wear a coat when you travel, because you never know where you'll end up, airplanes can be cold, and it's good to have extra pockets). You can also toss stuff into your carry-on bag, but it's a lot harder to fish out after. Don't travel with liquids in carry-ons unless you absolutely have to. You will need to remove your computer and iPad, so when you put them in your bag, put them in last so you can easily remove them. Carry your boarding pass in your hands (if they do an extra check, they will ask you for it, so it's good to have it with you and buried inside the x-ray machine). In the United States you'll have to remove your shoes (happily that insanity has not spread beyond the American border) so prepare by untying them.

Go through security right away and go straight to your gate. I always do this in strange airports. It's important to make sure you know where your gate is as soon as possible, because you never know what's between you and your gate (in Bogota, it was an extra security check, in Oslo, there was a passport check just outside the gate).

Arrival

Remove all your clothes and put them in the dresser; when you finish with your clothing, fold it neatly and put it in your suitcase (that way, you can pack to leave in just a few minutes). Put your stuff in the bathroom where you need it. In my case, I set up the Cpap and coffee machine right away, so I can spot any problems before they happen. Check your electronics, connect to the internet (if you're using in-room internet, which I really recommend if it's not too expensive), and use Skype to call hope and tell them you've arrived safely.

(I know some people use phones. I can barely make my phone work where I live, but I have no idea how to make it work when I travel. If someone has a good guide to this, that would be nice.)

On jet-lag day, get the lay of the land, catch up on email or correspondence - if your hotel internet is awful or nonexistent, find the nearest cybercafe. Find coffee shops (unless you've brought your own coffee machine) and stores and things that might be useful. Have a nice day and relax - travel is really stressful, even when everything goes well. Putter with your presentation - see what people are writing about the conference (they will also be arriving, some of them, and you can meet up if you want).

The Conference

It has been a lot of work (less work with experience) but you're finally here. You're well rested, you've already had a look at the program and have a good idea what you want to see. You've been chatting with people online and have some contacts to meet for lunch or just a gab session, if you wish. You know when the official conference sessions are, and also when some unofficial meet-ups will take place.

The key rule now, after you've done all that planning, is to go with the flow. Let your interests and instincts guide you. Don't feel you have to do anything, feel free to change your schedule, and plan in the moment. Because you've done all that background work, you are now perfectly positioned to surf through the conference like a master.

The receptions. Personally I hate conference receptions because I'm just not a wine and cheese kind of person, but if you're an invited speaker you really should go to them. Being an invited guest at a conference isn't about the keynote - that's the least part of it, often. You're there because people want to meet you, and the receptions are the first and easiest way to do this.

If you're not the keynote, you should feel free to skip the receptions, and I often do. But you may want to look at it this way: free food! Remember, conference travel is expensive. You'll probably eat more than your meal allowance (assuming you have one). Your conference fees have paid for this food, and you ought to fill up. The receptions are a good way to do this.

Most receptions are stand-up and free-flow. I'm not very good at them, but here's what I've learned, that works reasonably well. Look for a smallish group of people (three of four or so). Approach them - they will be talking - smile and nod. Then listen and get a sense of the conversation. If it's boring or personal, move on. If it's interesting, stay, and use body language to communicate your interest (for example, nod at points you agree with). If they are welcoming, they will look at you as they speak, to include you in the conversation, and may open their stance so the group circle now includes you. Wait for a natural pause in the conversation before you interject a remark. When you comment, keep it on topic. It's ideal if it's a question that helps them carry the conversation further.

If you're speaking with a group of people at a conference and someone is hanging around at the edge of your circle, look at them, open your stance, and give them an opening - because it's probably me, and if what I've just stated doesn't work, I've got nothing!

I suppose I don't need to tell you not to get hammered at the opening reception. Just remember this: the hangover will last the rest of the conference! But again - go with the flow. I remember some all-nighters with Terry Anderson and Rory McGreal that were really important to me when I was just beginning to attend conferences.

I know a lot of people approach receptions like sharks and go into them with an express intent to gather contacts, make a good impression, pass out business cards, and all the rest of it. I don't recommend this approach; it's too stressful, and it's too artificial. I would say that your main objective would be to have some great conversations. You're meeting some really interesting people. Listen with interest, ask relevant questions, and enjoy the art of a great story. And don't just focus on the work. Talk about the venue, the local attractions, or anything else that interests you.

Finally - as I write this the concept of the 'social artist' comes to mind. I first heard it from Nancy White; she credits Etienne Wenger. When you're taking part in conversations, don't think about what you want to get from the other people, don't think about what sort of impression you're making (you know, unless there's blood dripping from your nose or something). Think, instead, about how you can help the conversation. Lead by creating a space for dialogue - ask open-ended questions, venture an opinion that could be considered, say something nice about a talk you've heard.

The keynotes. A big part of the conference fee went to pay for the keynotes, so you may as well attend their talks. Often, they'll be the best speakers (but sometimes there are some real dud - beware keynotes given by politicians or corporate sponsors). Also, the keynote speakers are one experience most people at the conference will have in common (they'll split off for the conference sessions). They set the tone for the conference, and many other speakers (including you!) will refer back to the keynotes during their own talks.

Whatever you do, don't sit there passively when the keynote is speaking. I know there was once upon a time when you showed the best honour to the keynote by paying strict attention and doing nothing else. As a frequent keynote, I can only say: please don't do this. Because I know what's happening - you start out with the best of intentions, but your mind wanders, you start thinking about other things, and then the talk is over and you can't remember a bit of it.

I strongly recommend taking notes. If you're a novice, take note as an outline - you will then be able to see the structure of the keynote's talk (and you'll see how it actually does fit the patterns I've talked about). You can learn a lot by how they have put together their remarks, even if you're not so interested in the subject matter. Also note the way they speak, the way they're communicating with the audience - learn from them, because you'll be on that podium soon enough.

Taking notes also helps you interact with the subject material. There's a very good chance that what the speaker says will be relevant to your own talk (especially if you've both tried to fit within the theme of the conference). You will want the notes for later, when you are making last minute additions to your slides. And if you're asked to give a report on the conference (something I think is a good idea, but which I don't personally do nearly often enough) the notes will be a lifesaver.

I really like the reasons outlined by Matt Thompson of Poynter of why you should live-blog, as they get to the core of thebenefits of taking notes:
- a liveblog forces you to genuinely pay attention
- it also forces you to write.
- it can be intensely engaging
- it’s a service to your readers
- it can be a service from your users
Thompson also has a really good checklist of things to do before you liveblog - have you set up, have you tested your gear, do you have the relevant facts (like speaker names, etc) handy, etc.? See also Marshall Kirkpatrick on live-blogging.

Unless someone explicitly tells you that you shouldn't, feel free to take pictures of the speaker and some relevant slides (not every slide, you don't need all of them). You can use them on your own slides when you refer to the speaker's points (don't worry about the copyright, this falls squarely within fair use).

Finally, track the backchannel. I recommend something like Tweetdeck for this, so you can follow more than one thread and so you don't have to worry about reloading pages and all of that. Participate - judiciously - in the conversation. I don't think Twitter is a good place for a summary of the talk, but rather should be used to highlight good quotes, express support or opposition to arguments, and to fact-check the speaker.

The whole point here is to engage with the speaker and the subject material. Don't just sit there passively and watch the presentation as though it were television - you will be bored silly and you will learn nothing. The content during a presentation is coming at you at 300 baud, and you have a 64,000 baud mind. Use that space to learn by being active, by creating, by interacting.

If your notes are half-decent, I recommend positing them online, on your blog. Too few people do this. I like to link from my presentation to the summary, but so few people really do a summary. The best presentation summaries read like a blog post or short essay - like this. Don't try to capture everything; focus on main points - it's a summary. With any luck, the presenter will provide a recording, slides and a transcript.

A note on recording: I don't mind if you record my talks (actually, I encourage it, so I have a backup) but some people think they are protecting some big secret. So if you intend to record the entire talk, it's always a good idea to ask the presenter (at some of the larger conferences the organizers also will have to approve, because they've arranged some special deal with some company to create conference recordings - I imagine conferences like TED and Idea City are like this).

The streams. Everything I've said about engaging with the keynotes also applies to the stream speakers. Maybe even more so, because these speakers will be a lot less skilled and will have less to say.This makes it more difficult to pay attention and follow the thread of the presentation. Try to be charitable - many of the speakers will not even have read this post - they'll be jet-lagged, their presentations will be awkward, and they won't be sure of the point they're trying to make.

Because of that, feel free to be mercenary with the streams. Don't treat the program as an agenda, treat it as a buffet. Pick and choose the talks you want to see and feel free to move about. One of the great things about a conference is that you don't have to stay in the room - but to take advantage of this, you have to feel free to leave. I know it's harsh, but you didn't spend thousands of dollars to watch some guy read his slides describing how he used a website for his class of 14 people.

The hardest thing when dealing with the streams is moving from place to place.Make sure you know where all the breakout rooms are so you can dash from one to the other without searching all over for it. Sometimes you'll want to switch rooms in mid-session - conferences often schedule two or three speakers to a slot, so you may want to view the first speaker in one room and the last speaker in another room (and yes - of course it's allowed. It's not a prison).

And if none of the stream speakers is interesting to you, take a break. Catch up on email, pull together your notes for a session summary, grab a snack - whatever. Sometimes the best conference experiences are had by people hanging around in the halls during the sessions (treat these conversations just like the ones at receptions and you'll be fine you'll be fine - in general, if people are seated at a table, they want to be by themselves, but if they're standing by the bar or at a standup, they welcome interaction).

The big difference between the streams and the keynotes is that it's a lot easier to interact and have conversations during the streams. Because you're taking notes and engaged, you will be in a good position to ask questions. But ask genuine questions - try to draw out the person on a certain point or concept. If you think there's a criticism that should be made, make it - but in an empowering way. Because you're both engaged in the same pursuit of inquiry and truth. It's not a competition; you don't have to knock out some opponent.

The booths. Many conference (but by no means all) have vendor booths. I always make the time to go to as many of the booths as I can (a challenge at some of the bigger conferences). Why? Well for one thing, you'll never have to buy pens or coffee mugs again. There's also sometimes free clothes, pointers, and other trinkets. If you give them your business card (or let them scan your conference badge) you'll be added to their mailing list - but also eligible for some good door prizes.

Most importantly, though, the booths are offering products and services relevant to your area of interest. It's advertising, sure, but advertising tailored to you (or to as close an approximation of you as they can manage). You'll be able to watch demos, try out products, as questions (and even get answers!) about costs, service and support. Booths attune you to the trends in your field and suggest where the future is heading. When you're back at your institution and someone says "we're considering getting a SmartBoard" you can say "oh yes, I tried one at the conference, and..." (that actually happened for me).

I also feel free to engage with booth staff. Yes, they are often actors or people hired to represent the brand, but they are also tasked with collecting feedback. So if I disapprove of a company's business practices, I say so at their booth. If I have a specific feature I need, I ask for it. If I have a criticism of the product, I offer it. I'm always nice about it - but I'm a customer, they're a vendor, and I am using this experience to help them serve me (and society) better.

Don't collect paper brochures from booth staff; they're too heavy to fly home, and you'll never read them again anyways. Collect web site addresses.

Your Talk

Almost before you know it, the day of your talk will arrive.

Make sure ahead of time you know exactly when your talk will take place, and in what room. You wouldn't think this comes up, but I've had more last-minute scrambles than I care to count, and so now I always take the effort to get my bearings and make sure I'll be on time.

The night before (or, if you're me, at five a.m. on talk day) you're finishing your slides.

My talk often doesn't take form until this point. Yes, I have an abstract, yes, I have a plan, but I rarely know precisely what I want to say until I've arrived at the venue, gotten a feel for the place and the people, and (ideally) been able to see some of the keynotes and other talks (that's why being the opening keynote is a special challenge).

Your slides: your slides are not your speaking notes (unless you're able to work with minimal speaking notes). Your slides are a visual aid for your audience. And unless you're a very compelling speaker, your audience will rely on them to keep tack of where they are in the talk.

It's really important to take the time and effort to prepare effective slides. I recommend a visit to Presentation Zen (or Garr Reyonolds's summaries elsewhere). And notwithstanding that there are dozens and dozens of sites giving advice on slides, here are my inviolable rules:

- no more than eight lines of text per slide. Usually less. Text on images and charts count as lines of text, so don't throw up a 20-line graph. People simply can't read slides like that.

- use enough text - some people love the Lessig style, but unless you're prepared to create and time 200 slides for a half hour, don't do it. Actually, don't do it in any case. For two reasons: people who speak English as a second language will depend on the slides to follow the talk, and people reading the slides later on will want a clear message, not mysterious one-word blips.

- one major image per slide. Use the rule of thirds to size and position the image.

- dark text, light background. Otherwise, your room much be very dark in order for your slides to be visible.There's been plenty of research on colour selection; take heed of it.

- use a consistent design theme throughout; you can be creative with the design, but don't overwhelm the message with it.

Your delivery: Again, there are many sites that can help you learn how to give a good talk. This is a good comprehensive guide. We've addressed the content and outline above, so here I'll focus on the delivery.And really, there are only two major rules:

- speak clearly. This means speaking loudly enough for people to hear you, saying your words clearly and not mumbling.

- speak to the audience. Don't face the screen, don't read your notes, look at the audience and speak to them. If you can't speak to an audience like that, practice until you can.

This isn't just a conference skill, this is a life skill. It doesn't matter how good a scientist or researcher you are if you can't look people square in the eyes and explain your point of view.

One more tip: love your audience. I know that this may sound weird, but it really does work. When you love your audience, when your focus is on how well you can give your gift to them, everything else melts away. Just remember: they are there to hear you (if your a keynote, they actually invited you and paid your way - how could you not love them? How could you have any doubt that they really want to hear what you have to say?

I tried to find a good link for this but couldn't find one, which tells me that I need to write about this in more detail one day.

Why? Why have I lingered so much on your own talk at the conference? Because this is going to be one of the main ways you get the most out of the conference.
- a good talk will prompt questions and discussion, which will lead to much-needed suggestions and improvements to your ideas
- people will want to talk to you after your talk; they may offer to exchange resources, collaborate, or in some way help you do your work (and even better: give you an opportunity to help them do their work)
- your talk is like a calling card; a person who gives good, well-researched and well-presented talks will be considered for recruiting and job opportunities

You can't fake your way through a good talk. That's why they're so important. People will see the real you when you are giving a talk. And they will engage (or not) based on that. So give a great talk, and become the person everyone wants to talk to!

Archiving and Recording

I strongly recommend maintaining an archive of all your talks. On my presentation page, you can see the archives of some 288 talks I've given over the years (people keep asking me, so I must be doing something right).

- Your slides: upload a copy of your slides to Slideshare (or an equivalent slide hosting service). Save .ppt versions and .pdf versions on your website (assuming you have a website). And of course, be sure you save a copy in your own filesystem.

- Audio: it's really easy to record audio and there's no excuse for not doing it. On any computer, you can download and install Audacity; this is a free and open source program that will record hundreds of hours without a problem (seriously! I've accidentally left Audacity running over the weekend and returned to find it happily recording away).

Use a good quality microphone; as mentioned above, I use a nice Audio Technica microphone. You should use some sort of directional condenser mic for the best results. Make sure the microphone is pointed toward you when you speak (it is after all a directional mic).

Save your audio as MP3. You'll need to install LAME with Audacity to do this. Here are instructions. For audio, set the bit rate to 64 or even 32 (the default is 128) so you don't end up with huge audio files. You can store the site on your website or (better) use a free storage site like Dropbox.

- Video: it's a step up, and harder to do, but if you can, record a video of the talk. Probably the best way to do this is to use a Flip Video camera or (because they're out of production) a Kodak video camera (your regular camera will only record for 20 minutes or half an hour). I upload all my video to Blip.tv (because YouTube has size and length restrictions).

Save your archives, create a presentation page (like the ones I've been showing throughout this post), and when it's ready, Tweet it to the world and write a blog post about it.

Why? You will receive a much larger audience for your archive than you will for your presentation - some of my presentations have been viewed by thousands of people online. The archive also gives prospective conference organizers some idea of what to expect if they bring you in as a speaker. Your archive is also your calling card for prospective employers.

And best of all, if you do this, others will do it too. And that helps you get the most out of any conference you attend. Imagine what it would be like to be able to replay that really influential talk you heard? Normally, the talk comes and goes, and unless you've taken really good notes, it begins to fade. But if there's a recording, you can refresh your recollection whenever you want.

After the Conference

After the conference, you have two major resources that you want to cultivate:

- ideas - you've seen a bunch of talks, met with and talked to people, and with any luck, have been filled with ideas. It's a really good idea to ensure you're recorded them somewhere, so you can recall them in the future if you need. You could post blog summaries online; it's also a good idea to collect and save website addresses.

You will have been exposed to dozens of resources - websites, projects, applications, products. Take the time to review them at your leisure - they would make a great topic for a blog post later on, again keeping a record so you'll remember what you found. You may well find yourself installing a new application and using it for a while (or for a lifetime!).

- people - unless you're going to the same conference every year, you will have met a wealth of people. Now is the time to make sure you stay in touch with them. Depending on how you communicate with people, add them you your email address book, your Twitter follow list, your Facebook friends, or (my prefernence) your RSS reader.

You don't need to form a deep and permanent bond with all the people you meet at conferences. You can't - and even if you could, you will be introduced to their friends, and their friends, and so on. But it's OK to stay network friends with most people. You'll chat from time to time, exchange messages on social networks, and be there for them when they need the answer to a question or a suggestion for a good resource.

It is best (even if a bit idealistic) to think of the people you meet at conferences as people you can help. I'm not so good at that as I should be (though I try). But I've seen it modelled really well - people like Dave Cormier and Helene Fournier are people who seem to approach every interaction with the question, "what can I do for you?" Those are the best kind of people.

And - if you've followed the advice in this post - think about the impression you've left with other people. You knew where everything was ahead of time, because you took the time to check. People asked you for directions. You were interested in what they had to say and created a space for some really interesting conversations. Your presentation was on topic, interesting, clear and well presented. And you really interacted with your audience. And when you were at other presentations, you were interested and engaged, taking notes and (ideally) asking questions. Who wouldn't want to do more work with you?

Engagement and Motivation in MOOCs

2011-11-22T13:33:00.002-04:00

From Col - see also Beer, Clark, Jones, Indicators of Engagement, which has much of the same content

Most of the research into measuring student engagement prior to the widespread adoption of online, or web based classes, has concentrated on the simple measure of attendance (Douglas & Alemanne, 2007). "Stovall (2003) suggests that engagement is defined by a combination of students’ time on task and their willingness to participate in activities. Krause and Coates (2008) say that engagement is the quality of effort students themselves devote to educationally purposeful activities that contribute directly to desired outcomes."

"Additionally, Chen, Gonyea and Kuh (2008) say that engagement is the degree to which learners are engaged with their educational activities and that engagement is positively linked to a host of desired outcomes, including high grades, student satisfaction, and perseverance. Other studies define engagement in terms of interest, effort, motivation, time-on-task and suggest that there is a causal relationship between engaged time, that is, the period of time in which students are completely focused on and participating in the learning task, and academic achievement (Bulger et al., 2008)."

"A basic tenet of the research into engagement is that students’ activity, involvement and effort in their learning tasks is related to their academic achievement. While there does not appear to be a single definition for engagement, the following definition represents an aggregation of the literature. Engagement is seen to comprise active and collaborative learning, participation in challenging academic activities, formative communication with academic staff, involvement in enriching educational experiences, and feeling legitimated and supported by university learning communities (Coates, 2007, p. 122)."

Vicki Trowler, Student Engagement Literature Review
"Coates (2007, 122) describes engagement as “a broad construct intended to
encompass salient academic as well as certain non-academic aspects of the student
experience”, comprising the following:
- active and collaborative learning;
- participation in challenging academic activities;
- formative communication with academic staff;
- involvement in enriching educational experiences;
- feeling legitimated and supported by university learning communities."
See also: Examples of positive and negative engagement (p.6)

Table 1. Alignment of Coates’ (2007) definition of engagement and Chickering and Gamson’s seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education

Element of Coates’ (2007) definition of engagement	Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education
Active and collaborative learning	2. Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students.3. Uses active learning techniques.
Formative communication with academic staff.	1. Encourages contacts between students and faculty.
Involvement in enriching educational experiences	5. Emphasizes time on task.6. Communicates high expectations
Feeling legitimated and supported by university learning communities	1. Encourages contact between students and faculty.2. Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students. 4. Gives prompt feedback.

Michael Heise - Director of Distance Learning, Onondaga Community College, Be Aware of Student Engagement - basis in Bloom's Toaxonomy

On-campus engagement may be very different from online engagement. Typical types of engagement, from this report:

- conversation with faculty
- taking notes / reading notes
- collaboration
- serious conversations

Esther Wojcicki: Student Engagement is Key
- why do students drop out? because they don't see the curriculum as relevant
- what skills are relevant? 21st century skills - blogging, reading ads
- need to get school districts to change - students are in 'airplane mode' - students need input, education that serves their interests
- need creative teachers

Teacher Tube - What is Student Engagement?
- 10 seconds - multiplication rap
- students choose field, become experts in the field, then they teach the other students
- 1:50 - nice definition - looking, thinking, engaging, talking... "doing something"
- think-pair-share, looking at test results & evaluating errors, peer editing, we choose what we measure...

Factors Affecting Engagement?
Colin Beer, Ken Clark and David Jones, The Indicators Project
"It has given early indication that a different LMS or different social system can influence the level of feature adoption. The paper has identified a number of patterns that seem to indicate that the relationship between LMS activity and final student grade may be moderated by a number of factors including type of student and the level of staff interaction. The paper has offered some indication that the level of staff interaction on a course site might be an important factor. It has established that instructional design input may also be important. The paper has also reinforced the point that the analysis of LMS usage data is only useful in identifying potential interesting patterns of effective or not effective learning and needs to be supplemented with other methods, data and knowledge."

Engagement - how?
Col: "Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education have been referred to as a guiding light for quality undergraduate education and represents a philosophy of student engagement (Puzziferr-Schnitzer, 2005)."

Arthur W. Chickering and Zelda F. Gamson
Good practice in undergraduate education:

encourages contact between students and faculty,
develops reciprocity and cooperation among students,
encourages active learning,
gives prompt feedback,
emphasizes time on task,
communicates high expectations, and
respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

Also TeacherTube - Work on the Work Making Student Engagement Central eg
- student teamwork, discussing the work with them - interaction

Student Engagement in Dawson Creek - video
- project-based learning, real-life learning, eg., CSI project
- all our subjects are incorporated
- if we can teach effort -
But the presumption of a MOOC is that participants have self-selected, that they're already interested and motivated.

Student engagement through Use of Music
- goal-setting, plan - "What's your plan to get an A in my classroom?"

Twitter use?
- found that twitter users had higher engagement - 4:40

Teemu Leinonen
- MOOC isn't focusing enough on what motivates people

"In a good course students should have the opportunity to practice leadership, gain knowledge, and be autonomous. Students should be provided ways to get social attention and opportunities to play and compete with each other. But this is not enough. Students should have the opportunity to make connections to deep philosophical issues, too: to obey moral codes, improve society and have connections to past and upcoming generations. Students should feel safe and secure and opportunities to take part in rituals, organize themselves, eat and express themselves as sexual beings. Finally, according to Reiss, we also have a desire to exercise muscles. Maybe the idea of school children gymnastics and the Bauhaus’ practice to began lessons with exercises is not that bad idea (I have tried the morning exercises, stretching, yoga, etc. in my lessons)."

This leads us to the second issue: what constitutes motivation?
Steven Reiss has proposed a theory with basic desires that explain human behaviour. In the article Multifaceted Nature of Intrinsic Motivation: The Theory of 16 Basic Desires Reiss (2004) describe the motives behind the desires. These are:

Desire to influence (including leadership; related to mastery),
Desire for knowledge,
Desire to be autonomous,
Desire for social standing (including desire for attention),
Desire for peer companionship (desire to play),
Desire to get even (including desire to compete, to win),
Desire to obey a traditional moral code,
Desire to improve society (including altruism, justice),
Desire to exercise muscles,
Desire for sex (including courting),
Desire to raise own children,
Desire to organize (including desire for ritual),
Desire to eat,
Desire for approval,
Desire to avoid anxiety, fear,
Desire to collect, value of frugality

Video on Creating a culture of engagement and motivation in a classroom
- from part 1, structure and consistency
- engagement and motivation:
-- getting to know the student
-- don't set them up for failure
-- reach out to the family
-- confidence / reputation / expectations - higher expectations are the norm (3:40)
-- ultimately, give choices (3:15 or so)
- know what the outcomes are - what will they be able to do? Make expectations clear
- interaction - work, feedback, etc - check for understanding
- choice: how to critically engage with the content, and how to be evaluated on that engagement ('open canvas')

Joseph Pate video, Student Engagement through Choice, Curiosity, and Interest: The Implicit Connections of Learning
- reference to Ken Robinson, divergent thinkers (not just critical thinkers)
- "we should be waking them up" (4:40 or so)
- has to be a committment by the person who starts the class to follow through
- expectations (again)
- deep engagement - service learning
- Four orientations:
-- eyes of a child - natural inclination to learn
-- answers lie within students and their connections to the world
-- learning is not always comfortable
-- evaluation should be collaborative and formative, not reductionistic and summative
Content, connection, community and collaboration - as a grading matrix
- activity in the community beyond the classroom

EDUCAUSE converstaion on student engagement (and part two)
- students are more engaged, by talking with each other, by participation in their own learning
- the mode of interaction makes it possible for them to speak up more
(part two) - new ways of submitting materials - "they will invite you to join their group"

Where is the challenge in a MOOC?

Measuring Engagement

Using Flow as a measure of student engagement
TED talk from Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi

The characteristics of “Flow” according to Czikszentmihalyi are:

Completely involved, focused, concentrating – with this either due to innate curiosity or as the result of training
Sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality
Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done and how well it is going
Knowing the activity is doable – that the skills are adequate, and neither anxious or bored
Sense of serenity
Timeliness – thoroughly focused on present, don’t notice time passing
Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces “flow” becomes its own reward

Beer, Clark, Jones, Indicators of Engagement
- LMS - "a general correlation between the number of clicks by students within each LMS and their resulting grade across a large sample size consisting of 91284 online undergraduate students for Blackboard and 1515 for Moodle. However, there is also a high standard deviation for each grade group on both systems that is indicative of the degree of variance or volatility in the mean result."
- academic analytics - an LMS hosted learning environment enables every mouse click by every student within the system to be automatically tracked for analysis at a later date. - but this isn't available in a distributed environment

Jackie Gerstein, Flipped Classroom example

"Experiential Engagement: The Activity: The cycle often begins with an experiential exercise. This is an authentic, often hands-on learning activity that fully engages the student. It is a concrete experience that calls for attention by most, if not all, the senses"

Also: Student Produced Viral Videos

T4LT - Online Student Engagement Tips and Strategies
- call them or text them
- require them to blog
- find out who's not logging in
- make assignments relevant and meaningful
- explain expectations
- pre-assess students' readiness
- include a time-management activity, because online learners often struggle
- assignment variety and ownership
- add a regular webinar to the course - not canned, culture of communication and study
- communicate personally

TED, Gabe Zichermann: How games make kids smarter
Game Thinking - game mechanisms to engage audiences
- speed camera lottery (11:00 or so)
Features:
- faster pace
- rewards everywhere
- extensive collaborative play
- global world

Judith Borreson Caruso, EDUCAUSE, Measuring Student Experiences With Course Management Systems - LMS measures - features used, tool use, perceived value

BlogForever Interview

2011-11-20T17:36:00.001-04:00

This is an interview of me conducted by Mike Joy for the the BlogForever Consortium, a project co-funded by the European Commissionwithin the Seventh Framework Programme. An audio version of this interview is available here.

First,we would like to understand your background. This will help us to understandthe context of your answers.

1. Could you please tell us abit about your blogging experiences and why are you blogging?

I havebeen blogging since before there was blogging. I first got on to the Internet in’92-’93. My first online experiences were as early as 1981 working for TexasInstruments, but that wasn’t theInternet properly so called. There is this Texas Instruments’ internal WorldWide Network. But I first got on to the Internet, really, when I started with,Athabasca University in 1987. But I really started using my Internet accessfrom them, as I said in about ‘92-’93, which should be participating inmultiple user online games (MUDs). So, of course, I would have started writing then.The first actual writing for the Web that I began doing would have been in1995. I created my home page in 1995 and began writing and posting articlesalmost immediately. I have some of my earliest articles - which are still on mypage now - are from ’95, including, for example, a transcript from an onlineconference that we hosted. I have beenwriting articles since then.

Whatmotivated me to begin using what we were today call a blogging format is myparticipation in online discussion lists (usually hosted lists, althoughsometimes mailing lists as well). When I was using those, in mid to latenineties, it occurred to me that the archives of these might not last forever.And I should store my own contributions, because they were so brilliant (jokingly), so they would not be lost tohistory. And that’s exactly what I did. If you look at my list of articles, Ihave a page with all of my articles on my website. I forget how many there are,I have to look it up. But there are hundreds and hundreds of articles. I amjust looking it up now, because I am not sure what it says. It says: 1,159articles. That’s a bit out of date, so there are probably about 1,200 articles.But at the head of these articles you see: “Posted to www-dev” or “Posted tothe HotWired mailing list”.

It turnsout that these concerns were prescient, because you can no longer access thewww-dev mailing list archives. HotWired was taken down in 1998 and all thepostings completely wiped out. It turns out it was a really smart idea for meto keep my own content on my own website and so that is what I have been doing.I mean there’ve always been these posts I have rigged to myself. Concurrentwith that, beginning probably in ‘98, but officially on May 5^th2001, is my daily news letter.

My dailynewsletter consists of short posts (not the longer ones that compose myarticles) and these short posts are generally links to external resources. Thishas its origin as a mechanism for me to synchronise my bookmarks between homeand office. Back in the 90’s of course, if you wanted to save a website you wouldbookmark it. Bookmarks were saved locally as HTML files, but it was very inconvenient to have one set ofbookmarks that is at work and then other one at home. So, I set up a littledatabase on my website and instead of bookmarking using the Netscapebookmarking system I would just fill in a form and that would create a bookmarkon my website. These were all dated, these were all posted on my website and sothat became my daily newsletter.

So, Ihave two forms of blogging – the articles and the newsletter. The articles comeas a means of me saving my posts to mailing lists and such. The newsletter is ameans of me saving my bookmarks.

2. How do you facilitate orprevent that your blog will be found by other people

Goodquestion. When I first started, when I posted something in my newsletter likeposting links, and when I’d post a link of so and so I would then send an emailto so and so and say “I posted a link to your article in my newsletter”. Idon’t do that so much now because the people I would send an email to aregenerally reading the newsletter anyway and they already know.

My URLis in my email signature, and has always been in my email signature. It used tobe on my business card, but we have a new policy at NRC that only the Institutewebsite goes onto business card. So it is no longer on the business card.

Otherthan that, I post short Twitter posts to indicate when I have written a longerarticle. That is typically a lengthier article – on the Blogger blog, half anhour. These blogger blog articles are eventually migrated into my website. Ialso have a system set up so that when I create a post in my newsletter itautomatically feeds to a separate Twitter account called @oldaily. My mainTwitter account is @Downes, my separate Twitter account is @oldaily, and thisone is fed automatically from my newsletter.

I’vebeen manually posting posts recently in Google+. I don’t expect to do thatforever. I expect to automate that at some point because it takes a few extraminutes every day. What else do I do? I think, probably, the biggest thing; Iam a prolific commenter on other people’s websites. I do a lot of reading. Iread hundreds of posts a day, possibly thousands of posts a day. It is aridiculous number. And very frequently, I leave comments on those other posts. Evenif I am not going to write about them in my own newsletter I’ll nstart babbling.A lot of the times these comments I leave on other posts become articles on myown site, because once it gets beyond one or two paragraphs that same reasoningclicks in: “Oh, I better keep a copy of this, because I can’t be guaranteedthat it will be forever available on the other side”. And, so I snag it andmake it an article on my own side.

When Imake comment on the other websites, much of the time (almost all of the timesthese days) they ask for an email address, name and website URL, which means mycomment appears on the other website and when they click on my name, they go tomy website. I know that drives a lot of traffic.

Do you use specific keywords or tags?

No, notreally.

3. Who has the right to dowhat with your blog content or any data from blog? How do you indicate andcontrol the rights for your content?

I do notcontrol the rights. Life is too short to be controlling things. I use aCreative Commons, by-non-commercial share-like. It is supposed to be 3.0, but Idon’t know what version it actually is – I don’t care. My interest incontrolling what people do with my staff is, honestly, minimal. I put thelicence up only because it makes it easier for other people to use my content,so they don’t sit there and wonder whether they are allowed to do stuff with itor not. I don’t like putting them through that kind of angst. But this is justsomething that doesn’t matter to me.

4. Are you interested inpossible interconnections between your blog and others?

Well,there are interconnections – they are called links. And every one of mynewsletter posts links to something else. Every single one! And most of my blogposts link to something else. As for forming blogging networks or some sort ofgroup-like behaviour, I am not interested in that.

5. In a platform where youbrowse and search for blogs and the relations between them what would make theuser interface comfortable and intuitive?

Itdepends on what you are trying to do. I mean, you probably want some sort of avisual representation. There are lists and lists and lists of blogs or forumsthat have you searched for blogs aren’t really very helpful. Because, in thebeginning I use Google. Google has a great search. Any services are veryunlikely to match Google search. The only advantage that a local site canprovide with respect to search is to limit the range of search results.

On myown website I harvest content from other blogs. I have about (I forget) athousand to 13 hundred or so blogs that I aggregate and put that content intomy database. And search on that is useful because it is limited to the contentof these 13 hundred blogs. So, if you were doing something like that, searchlimited to this content might be useful, but it would have to be a well curatedset of blogs. You don’t want just 13 hundred random blogs. You don’t want:“anyone can submit a blog”, because you get ten useful blogs and 25 spam blogs,which would be a big problem.

When youare talking about the inter-connections between the blogs, it is hard todescribe how visually it should be represented, although, I have my own ideason that, but it should be represented visually as a function of contributionand a function of time. So, I think there should be a time axis. Typical representationsof the linkages between blogs are never indexed to time. It is always thisnetwork and a network guy who says: “here’s a blog, here’s blog, and there is aline between them”. But in real world, the relationships between blogs aren’tlike that. They are not static. It is not a one-time thing such as: “here is anetwork – forever and a day”. It is very fluid, very dynamic. So, having a wayof representing that would be important.

And so,the idea is that there would be this image that would change over time and youwould see these changes over time as you came back to it on a regular basis oras you subscribed to it. How do you do that, can be a long, long discussion.

Whatelse? You are asking what would make it easy for users. My experience is that,with some few exceptions (these exceptions are sites like Facebook, Google, maybe Yahoo, perhaps Flickr, YouTube and a few others) people don’t go towebpages. It is very rare, you hardly ever see it. The only time you really seepeople going to webpages is if the address of that webpage is returned as aresult of a search. As when you do a Google search, get a link, click a linkand you are on that page. A person doesn’t just go back to a web page withoutsome sort of a search or other prompt. So, to make any sort of system like thisuseful to users, it is going to have to provide that prompt that will sendusers to whatever information is that you want to receive on a regular basis.

That iswhy like in the Massive Open Online Courses we have, were we do have thisnetwork of blogs that are written by individuals all over the place and at thecurrent Connectivism course we have something like 270 blogs (I am just lookingit up, because I like to use exact numbers). We have 260 separate blogs thatpeople write. And it is essential for us to have a central newsletter that wesend out to every participant every week day, so when somebody has posted a newpost at one of those 260 blogs it shows up in the newsletter. Because it isimpossible for somebody to go tothose 260 blogs and even they are not going to come to our course website tosee what’s there. Even though they know there will be something new every daythey won’t come to the website, it will not occur to them. So having thisprompt is crucial, absolutely crucial. The course couldn’t have run without it.And I think that will be the same for your service.

6. Are you interested in howyour blog is ranked among blogs for the different subjects and how do you checkthat?

I justassume it is first (jokingly). The shortanswer is no. I suppose, if somebody came up with a ranking and I was like 81^stI would kind of wonder. But you know, does my blog rank higher or lower than GeorgeSiemens’s, that really is a pretty irrelevant question. Even the question ofranking itself raises the question of what would constitute the ranking. Is itnumber of visits? Is it amount of time spent on the blog? Is it the number ofposts out there in the world that are spawned off the post on my blog? Is itthe number of links from other blogs back to my blog? You can come up with abunch of other measures. You can look at ranking services such as Alexa or Kloutand come up with other ideas on ranking, and they all turn out, in the end, tobe kind of arbitrary, and kind of snapshot-ish and kind of quantity-focused.

Whatreally interests me about my blog (with respect to inter-relations to otherpeople) is whether it is first to come out with a concept or an idea, and Ihave no idea if you guys can rank that or if you can rank that automatically.It interests me if I authored a unique (well, no, not even unique, it doesn’tneed to be unique), an informed, an insightful perspective or a point of viewthat matters. I would prefer to be right more often than other blogs. To me,the number one ranking would be: “I have more factually true statements in myblog than any other blog”, demonstrably and knowably so. But who is going torank then based on that? And you do not want to rank that trivially, becausesomeone will just start posting dictionary articles, and they get lots offactually true statements. So, say, the highest number of factually truestatements that are contextually relevant to the current debate. If you measurethat, than that would matter to me, but ranking on the number of readers… I amnever going to have the most number of readers, never ever, ever, and anythingthat tends me to want to have to the most readers is actually detrimental tome, because it means that I am going to be broadening my coverage in order toattract a wider range of interests and that I am going to be making my coverageless deep, or minimally, less idiosyncratic, again to capture broaderdemographic. I don’t want to do either of those things. Either of those thingswould damage the integrity of the blog.

7. By what other criteria wouldyou like to see your blog ranked?

Oh, Isee what you mean. You know what, it is not a competition. It has never been acompetition. I am not racing againstother blogs. I am working with them.Since I started, especially in the newsletter, but also in the blog, I havetried to direct traffic away from mysite to other people. This whole ideaof ranking blogs creates a competition where there isn’t one. I mean, would yourank the rivets on an airplane? That would be stupid right? What is the numberone rivets on your argh…? It is a dumb thing to ask for. And, in the same way,ranking the blogs in the Blogosphere is like ranking the rivets on an airplane.What matters is that they each hold their own part of the airplane together.That is all that matters. And to suggest that one of them is more importantthan the other makes no sense. It is an incoherent concept and you should notdo it.

8. Would you be interested inan analysis of your blog (or part of your blog) to extract for example:statistics (popularity, visits, etc), keywords or sentiments and why?

Well, Idon’t know how you are going to do visits. Good luck with that. You are notgoing to get accurate data, because I know that traffic to my blog comes from awide variety of sources. I get stuff from RSS feeds, I get audio listens,people look at my content on other sites like Flicker or YouTube or Blogger. Mycontent isn’t even located on a single website. If I am trying to increase theranking of my blog I make sure everything goes on one site. If I am trying toincrease the usability, I put different staff on different places. So, you willnot be able to get accurate statistics of the readership on my blog - period. Idon’t have accurate statistics. I mostly don’t care. In theory I could havesort of accurate statistics, but … I actually have a weblog analyser that Istarted up over the summer after ten years of running the thing I have finallyturned on the hit counter. But even that does not record the number of views onRSS readers and the like. So, that part of it I am not too interested in.

Thesemantic analysis is interesting, because I am always interested in how peoplesee what I am doing – that’s interesting. If it is just the identification ofkeywords, I have done that: you submit your blog to Wordle or whatever and getthe word-cloud. I would something that is a little bit more insightful. I knowthat there are text analysis software packages available that you run itthrough, EPSS or whatever. So, that would be kind of interesting. Comparing thefocus, you know, Stephen talks a lot about cognitive structures than George whotalks mostly about social structures, that would be kind of interesting. Ithink that would be really hard to do though. But because it is hard to do,that is probably why it would be interesting.

9. Do you archive or back upyour blog(s)?

Yes, Ido. Everything.

Can you describe the process of archiving or backingup the blog(s) you are authoring.

Quickly?No. Again, my content is scattered all over the place and there are lots ofgood reasons for that. So, the simple rule of thumb is: I try to make sure thatthere’s at least two places where any given instance of my content is. Thelonger version is, I actually try to make sure there is three or four placeswhere everything is. Different content is archived in different ways. So, thearticle content, any textual content from third party sites like Blogger orcomments or posts is retrieved and stored on my main site which is downes.ca,in my database. And then I periodically do a backup of my database. I also havea backup system through my website provider. I also save copies of my website.They’s just the whole lock, stock andbarrel on hard drives, like I just copy the whole website over to my hard driveat home. I then save that onto some backup hard drives.

Photos,I make sure to send a copy of my photos to Flickr, and photos are backed up onat least tow, and usually more than two, hard drives. And I have a bunch ofphotos also saved on DVDs.

Can you describe the process of accessing or restoringinformation from your archive.

Forother people to access my “archive”, they are accessing the database off mywebsite and they just use the interface of my website. For me to access that,it means getting the database file and re-loading it into the database and thenI access it as though it were the first bit.

If it isthe images, it is just I open up the hard drive, but mostly, from theperspective of people you look at the images on Flickr. If Flickr everdisappeared then the way they would access my archive is they would wait untilI found Picasa or some other image upload site and filed my images there. Andif that weren’t available, they would get them off my website.

Can you identify any problems/issues with theprocedures you are currently following?

They arenot all automatic. I would like to just be able to make content and upload itand not worry about whether there is a backup and just have a backup that wouldrun automatically, and I wouldn’t have to do anything.

The WaybackMachine was really good for that, and it saved me a bunch of times. And what Ireally liked about it is – I didn’t need to do anything. The problem with theWayback Machine is that it wasn’t complete. It would capture snapshots, but ona dynamic site like mine snapshots are hit and miss.

10. Would you like to have areal time, continuous and viewable archive of your blog? Can you imagine whatthis service could be like?

Wellagain, good luck with that. I mean, for 99% of people that is going to workfine, for me it is a bit dicier. Would I be interested? Yes, sure. I think thatwould be a cool thing to have. And again, anything that makes it easier to usemy stuff for other people, that’s cool. So, I am all over that. It is a bittricky, because what you consider worth archiving and what I consider wortharchiving might be two separate things. Again, because I have a wide range ofdifferent content, in different places. If you are archiving all themseparately that’s, kind of, not that efficient. So, you’d probably want tobring them together. So, I have variousblog websites. The one I use most of all is my main website, downes.ca, as wellas the ‘Half an Hour’ website. But I also have another Blogger website called ‘Let'sMake Some Art, Dammit’ and then the photo-site, the YouTube site etc. If all ofthose were pulled into a single archive that would be great. I think it will becomplicated to do it all separately. Yes, I think people would like it. I thinkit would give me a little bit of peace of mind knowing that if I have acomplete crash and burn moment it is there – somewhere else.

Everybodysometime in their life is going to have a complete crash and burn moment,right? They would no longer be paying for anything, and all other sites willstop being updated. So, having that would really help.

It wouldbe interesting to know. You say archiving, you mean archiving for ever? Thatwould be cool, especially if you’d archived my backlog (my back catalogue ofstuff going back to 1995) and kept it forever. I think that would be reallyuseful.

11. If there would be apreservation or archiving system for blogs how would you like to control whichof your content is captured and stored?

If it’scontent, capture and store it. Life is too short to be choosing which stuff toarchive and which stuff not to archive. If I create content I think it is workcapturing it and storing. But that is just me. I think all my tweets should becaptured. I think random off hand remarks should be captured. I have got somelike 300 comments through the Disqus commenting system; I think that should becaptured.

I thinkwhatever I have created is worth capturing and I think it all forms a part ofthe overall picture or tapestry that is my contribution to the World, whateverthat is. And I bet you most people feel that way. Even my Facebook posts. Ifyou could get into Facebook and pull the content out that would be cool.

I thinkyou will have an issue with duplicates, but, I mean, I do not want to be theone editing duplicates. My content propagates automatically. So, I do not thinkI want three of the same announcement, just because they showed up on differentsystems: the announcement first on my, then on Twitter, and then on Facebook,because I have them daisy-chained. Just one will do. That is another long-windedway of saying that I don’t really want to manage that.

How would you like to indicate that content should beremoved from the preservation system?

Thereare two aspects to this. First, locating the content you don’t want to be inthe system. So, there needs to be some kind of content-location system, like asearch engine of some sort. And then, secondly, the function that actually doesthe removing, whereas that function has a built-in safety check like: “Delete?Delete forever? Really? Are you sure? This will delete it forever!”. And then,when I do that, don’t actually delete it, but just change its status to “showto nobody”. Because, I will make a mistake even though it said “are you sure,are you sure”… I will at some point make a mistake. So you shouldn’t actuallydelete it, you should just make it not viewable, unless the decision to deletehas been overturned.

12. How do you facilitate orprevent technically that your blog will be found and disseminated by searchengines?

I don’t.I don’t care.

13. How do you facilitate thereaders of your blog that they find related posts inside your blog?

I havetried different things over the years and right now it is a bit haphazard. Ihave an automatic tagging system (but it’s broken; I keep intending to fix it) Iknow it is worth mentioning. Basically, I have a predefined list of topics. Idefine each topic as a regular expression string. I apply that regularexpression string to any post in my blog. If there is a match that topic isattached to that post. And then there is a list of topics, so when you click ona particular topic in that list of topics you get the lists of posts that matchto that topic. I also capture author/publisher information and that does work.It is not all hypothetical. But the topics is a horrible, horrible nightmare tomanage. If you try to build something like that you are going to need so muchcaching it is not funny.

So, whenI submit stuff, I submit the name of the author and the name of the journal orblog it was published in. People can click on the name, that name, anytime andget a list of posts associated with that. I have got a graphing system that Iam just building now, but it is intending to track all the links from one postto another post to another post. This is not implemented yet, but the ideashould be that you can follow links on links.

All mynewsletters, all my contents are searchable. I also have an archive ofnewsletters that is Google indexable and that really helps a lot of people, becausea lot of people find related stuff just by searching on Google.

14. If there would be apreservation or archiving system for blogs and if there would be a specialaccess or interface for blog authors how should it work?

Invisibly.Yes, I get what you are after. I have thought of this. First thing you have todo is to be able to associate blog authors with blogs properly. That is thething that Technorati ran into years and years ago and they came up with a“Claim Your Blog” system. There needs to be a mechanism by which you claim yourblog or blogs (because the relation will be multiple blogs to multiple people –a many-to-many relationship).

Secondly,we need to understand what sort of functionality that interface would entail.Sofar, we have one functionality defined and that is to delete a post from thearchive. Hopefully, you are not tying up bloggers to more management than thatreally. You are probably looking into some kind of a blogger profile and beingable to apply this profile and information to the blog to provide bettersearching capability or some such thing. So, you want a profile editor of somesort, but really, it is “yet another profile editor.” YAPE. The World alreadyhas about a billion too many profile editors. So, it would be nice if such a system would actually support access tomy blogging system, whatever that may be, through a mechanism such as OAuth orsome such thing. But again, how would you do it for someone like me who justhas its standalone website, that is a bit problematic. You will need to allowmanual input as well as automatic input of data. It depends what you want your interface todo: authoring about profile and delete the posts that should not be archived. Ido not know what you want to do.

15. Do you have any generalcomments on the development of a blog aggregation, preservation, management& dissemination software?

I wouldreally want to see it. If you are building this it is going to be hard. I know,because I have built pretty much that. I used systems like that for our MassiveOpen Online Courses. I used a system like that called EDU-RSS, that works offand on. You are going to run into issues with specific types of blogs like Posterousand Tumblr. You are thinking of tracking the relationships between blogs, Ithink that is a very useful thing to do.

You aregoing to find these relationships show up in odd ways; to give you one example– images. X uses an image, Y uses the same image, that creates a link between Xand Y even though may have never connected with each other. They may use thesame images at the same URL, which is easy to detect, they may use the sameimage where the copies of the images are located at different URLs, even thoughit is the same image. One may use the cropped version of the same image ofanother. All of these kinds of things create these kinds of linkages.Definitely go for the easy case. My aggregator, right now, analyses for linksfor embedded media, for images, anything I can find. And then I create separateentity tables out of these and now I am able to draw links from people to blog poststo images to comments to whatever. If you are going to do that, you probablywill, you are probably looking at creating a giant global graph from entitiesto entities and then creating some interesting linkages out of that. But this isa lot of overhead. It is a lot of processing. It is going to be hard to do. Itis going to require a lot of hardware to pull off and bandwidth to pull off.So, there are probably financial issues as well, which leads into questionsabout sustainability. Keep me informed. I would really like to see how youaddress all these challenges that I looked at. And feel free to talk to meabout any of the challenges you are facing because I may have already facedthem, because, I have been, like I said, this deep in this stuff. It is most ofwhat I am doing these days. And it is an area of a very deep interest of mine.

Thank you very much indeed Stephen, That has beenreally, really helpful.

Intro Video for CQU Seminar

2011-11-20T12:09:00.001-04:00

MOOCs and the OPAL Quality Clearinghouse

2011-11-20T09:22:00.000-04:00

I have submitted the following responses about #change11 and MOOCs in general to the Open Education Quality Initiative (OPAL) survey of OER practices (I love how the email said it would take five minutes to complete the survey). I would also encourage others involved in MOOCs to participate in the survey, as my responses represent my own perspective only.

Please describe your practice

Please be specific. Describe how you managed to achieve greater openness in educational practices, policies or other fields. What were the challenges you encountered to start with? What works in your view? Were there particular phases you had to go through to achieve the result? How can others best learn from your experience? Please upload additional material, or give a link to a helpful resource, tool, description, website, etc.

The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a concept developed by Stephen Downes, George Siemens (University of Manitoba, Athabasca University) and Dave Cormier (UPEI) in 2008.

The practice consists of hosting a traditional college or university course in an open environment, supported by technology that facilitates massive participation.

A series of MOOCs have been hosted by various organizations since (please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course for examples).

MOOCs are instances of a connectivist pedagogy. The essential element is to foster and support connections between participants and learning resources. Participants in MOOCs are encouraged to use their own platform (blog, photo account, social network site) to create and/or share resources.

Typically, a MOOC will be supported with technology that facilitates this sharing. A number of MOOCs have used gRSShopper, an application that harvests RSS feeds created by participant platforms, organizes the material, and redistributes it as a daily email newsletter and RSS feed.

The principle of connectivist learning is that the learning takes place not as a result of absorbing the course content, but rather in using course content as the basis for conversation and the creation of additional materials.

Typically in a MOOC more content is produced than learners can consume; they are encouraged to select content that is relevant to their own circumstance and by so doing create an individual perspective or point of view on the domain of discourse.

Conversation is also often seeded by the hosting of online sessions with guest participants, typically experts in the field. While these live sessions are attended by a smaller percentage of participants, they result in the production of artifacts that prompt additional discussion.

Quality - OER/OEP

How does the institution approach quality in OER? Is there any current indication of a quality concept or process? Does the institution perceive quality from the perspective of the quality of open educational resources or the quality of open educational practice? How does the institution show quality through OEP versus quality of OEP? What methods, concepts and practices are used to enhance the quality of OEP?

There is no filtering or other mechanism directly addressing quality in a MOOC. The design is such that quality materials will be discovered and highlighted by course participants. Quality, in other words, is not determined by experts, it is crowdsourced.

This is an important feature of MOOCs. There is not the presumption that (a) there is a single type of quality that applies to all participants, and (b) that this quality could be recognized by course facilitators. Accordingly, what we observe in a MOOC is that participants will cluster around different types of materials or media - for example, they may cluster around a discussion board, social network site, or virtual world. Quality is then indicated in different ways specific to those environment s(such as the 'Like' button in Facebook).

Additionally, course facilitators do not participated as dispassionate observers or 'coaches'. Rather, they participate as though they were students, creating resources on an ad hoc basis, highlighting materials they find interesting or useful, and in other ways modeling the practice of quality contributions.

'Quality' in a MOOC is defined not as the exceptional nature of published materials, but rather the richness and utility of conversation and discussions mediated by those artifacts and other activities. Hence, quality is determined post-publication, and even post-distribution, as an emergent property, and not an inherent property of the resource itself.

The most overt quality mechanism is the review of participant feeds. Each feed is reviewed by a facilitator prior to being added to the list of aggregated feeds, as follows:
- to ensure the URI submitted for the feed RSS (or Atom, or other supported format) is correct
- to ensure the content encoding is correct, and can be understood by the aggregator
- to ensure the content is not spam, or irrelevant to course materials

Participants also select by overt action the content they want included in the course through the embedding of a course tag (for the current 'Change' MOOC the tag is '#change11') in the title, description or category fields.

Innovation

How can OER/OEP innovate educational practices? What current innovative practices are there in the institution? Please do not regard innovation from just a technology perspective!

The MOOC is as a whole an innovative educational practice. For example, the following:

- a course need not be offered by a specific institution; while one institution may 'seed' the course, other institutions may use the MOOC as the basis for courses of their own, which they evaluate and and credential in their own way.

- all aspects of course function are open; in addition to open educational resources, planning documents are open (and may be edited by participants), online class sessions are open (and recorded, the recordings posted), materials contributed by participants are open (though participants may form their own closed groups; we don't force anyone to contribute), and any evaluative materials are open.

- the principles of learning by conversation and creation of artifacts are not in themselves new - we are reminded of Papert's constructionism, for example - the conduct of these activities in a massive open online environment is new

Policy

What are the current OER/OEP policy arrangements at institutional and national level across Europe/the World?

MOOCs are mostly characterized by a lack of policy.

Course materials themselves are licensed under CC-By-NC-SA (though there is no particular requirement for this). Contributors own and manage their own IP.

It is important to note that contents are never actually acquired by the institution or merged in any way. This frees the participating organizations from most policy requirements governing IPR, quality, accessibility and hosting conditions. Materials are accessed in situ by course participants, and are only linked to or referenced by the course management system.

There are certain policy implications that could be recommended by the model, such as:

- public support for MOOC applications and environments, such as content aggregation software, online synchronous meeting software, etc.

- public support for open educational resources that may be used by the MOOC application - this supports the authoring and hosting of content deemed important from a public policy perspective

Actors

What actors are involved in OER/OEP? Is there any evidence to show that OER actors do not always promote OEP but “only” access to OER?

Actors in the MOOC include:
- course facilitators, and often volunteers helping the facilitators
- course participants, both 'for-credit' participants at one or more institutions, and non-credit participants
- guest experts or session hosts
- the rest of the world, in the form of people who create resources that may be accessed by course participants

OER actors produce whatever they want; there is no effort made to police their production, and this would in fact be counterproductive to the objectives of the MOOC.

Initiatives

What OER/OEP initiatives can be evidenced? Is there any evidence to show that OER initiatives do not always promote OEP but “only” access to OER?

Not applicable, except in the sense that the course itself produces a series of artifacts (such as synchronous session recordings) and these are stored online. A website http://www.mooc.ca has been established to store archived MOOCs.

Open Educational Practices

Can you identify some case studies/ descriptions which form the illustrative base for a more general model of OEP?

The more general model of open educational practices is to consider openness to be the default, rather than the exception. As a consequence, aspects of the course production that are closed are done so only as a last resort, with good justification.

For example:

- the course participant list is closed, and not shared with anyone. This is to prevent the course list from being used for spam. Participation in general may be anonymous. A privacy and security policy is employed: http://change.mooc.ca/privacy.htm This policy is specific to the course, but could be modified and standardized as a common practice.

- access to the gRSShopper administration functions are closed, in order to prevent access to course participant information, and to prevent unauthorized use of the emailing function or page publication functions

- individual student records related to course grading policies at specific institutions are closed, for privacy reasons

- and as mentioned elsewhere, participants at any time have the *option* to create closed discussions or groups; these are not 'official' parts of the course (there are no 'official' parts of the course, though those organized by facilitators tend to have a higher status among participants)

Tools and Repositories

What tools and repositories are being used to deliver OER/OEP? For example GLOW, Connexions
Are there any other special tools for OER/OEP? e.g. Cloudworks, in which practices can be discussed and validated?
Are there any tools for Visualisation? e.g. CompendiumLD
Are there any tools for Argumentation? e.g. Cohere

The primary tool for the Downes/Siemens/Cormier MOOCs has been gRSShopper (http://grsshopper.downes.ca), a purpose-built application supporting the aggregation, remixing and distribution of references to OERs.

Strategies

Can you identify any strategies for organisations to use OER/OEP? Can you identify any business models that promote OER/OEP?

There are no strategies that specifically encourage the use of OERs; rather, there is instead a lack of strategies requiring the use of proprietary materials.

When participants are not required to use proprietary materials, they gravitate toward OERs on their own. Many will rely on the listing provided by course RSS feeds and emails, while many others will find or produce materials of their own, contributing them to the course.

No business model is needed in order to stimulate the production of these resources, over and above the business model that supports the offering of a course in the first place.

Current barriers and enablers

What are the barriers to the use of OER/OEP? Is there any evidence to how these barriers have been overcome? What are the enablers to the use of OER/OEP?

Not applicable in the current context. The MOOC assumes that constraints are not placed on the production and distribution of relevant materials.

MOOC Statistics Thus Far

2011-11-11T11:01:00.000-04:00

Here's what we have for participation rates in the #Change11 MOOC this far.

'Persons' are people who have registered for the course. The gap between persons and subscriptions is the number of people who signed up for the course but unsubscribed to the newsletter.'Subscriptions' is the number of people subscribing to the daily newsletter.'Feeds' is the number of blogs submitted by course participants and harvested by the feed reader. It includes active feeds only.

The Role of Open Educational Resources in Personal Learning

2011-11-06T16:08:00.003-04:00

Presented to the Best Practices in Upgrading Online,Calgary, via Adobe Connect, March 29, 2011. Presentation slides and audio.

The very first thing I want to do is to counter thedisclaimer that frightened me as this session opened, it was very loud, andsaid all kinds of things about how this was all private and cannot be shared.You can share this presentation all you want. This presentation is mine and ifyou want to share it with people, go ahead and share it. No problem at all.

I should have probably put a Creative Commons license on it,although everything on my website is licensed under the Creative Commonslicense – attribution – non-commercial – share-alike license. So don’t feelinhibited from sharing this stuff.

I do want to talk about the role of open educationalresources in personal learning. I also want to talk about what they mean inpersonal learning. I have a challenging presentation ahead, one that I thinkwill make you think, I hope will make you think, and rethink just what it is that we’re up to when we take resources like this presentation, and thepictures and the words and all of that, and put them online or present them ina Connect workshop, what it is that’s happening there, what it is that we’re upto.

The Idea of Openness

Here’s the argument in one slide, and the argument from myperspective really is very simple. Learning and cognition happen in a network.And I could go on and on and on about what that means, but basically, first ofall, learning happens in your brain, your brain is composed of a network ofinterconnected neurons, and learning happens in a society, and society iscomposed of a bunch of interconnected people. We can depict both of those asnetworks. And, they are networks.

The second thing is, networks need to be open in order tofunction. If those connections between the nodes and the entities in thenetwork are broken, are blocked, then that network ceases to function. In orderto function, communication has to take place from node to node. And thiscommunication needs to be unobstructed. If the communication is obstructed,this is a network failure.

So, the argument for open educational resources is simply:networks need openness in order to function. So we’re all done. We can all gohome now.

Well, nothing’s that simple. What does it mean to say thatour network is open? What is openness?

Well, there’s Richard Stallman and the traditionaldefinition of open source as four elements (Stallman, 1994):

- Freedom to run the software
- Freedom to study the software
- Freedom to distribute the software
- Freedom to modify the software.

And this is a definition that has carried over into the openeducational resources (OER) movement. And it’s a definition I think that weneed to challenge because we need to consider what the perspectives are on thisfreedom.

When people talk about open source software they talk aboutopenness and freedom from the perspective of the person who already has thesoftware, who already has it in their hands and wants to do things with it,like read it, share it, modify it, whatever. And anything that restricts whatthey do with it is considered aninfringement on the freedom.

But what if you’re a person who does not have the software,and needs the software? Now our definition of freedom begins to change a littlebit because from the perspective of someone who does not have the softwarefreedom would be open access to thesoftware with no restrictions. Anything that infringes on that open access is arestriction on their freedom.

And the difference between these two models comes to a headwhen we talk about commercial use. If you own the software then you should beable to sell it, and if somebody says you can’t sell it that’s a restriction.But if you don’t have the software somebody trying to sell it to you ratherthan actually giving it to you is creating a restriction.

You have different kinds of open depending on yourperspective. So the question is, what is the correct perspective to be lookingat, or looking at the issue from, in the context of learning, and onlinelearning in particular.

David Wiley has spoken about open educational resources formany years. He’s one of the pioneers in the field. He came up with one of thefirst open licenses. He talks about openness and standards, and he is again oneof the early pioneers in things like learning objects and learning objectmetadata. He talks about openness in software, and then he talks about opennessin system, like open courses.

George Siemens and I, in our work offering online courses,have depicted the progression of openness in three major stages:

- First of all, openness in educational resources
- Secondly, open courses, and then
- Third, an as yet unrealized openness, opennessin assessment.

There are other kinds of openness. I was reading somethingfrom Sir John Daniel, the former president of the United Kingdom’s OpenUniversity, talking about openness as related to openness of access oradmission to a university program, open resources, and then openness in beingable to determine your own educational progression, your own course of studies.

So there are these different dimensions of openness we cantalk about, different ways of describing the same concept.

I’m just going to go through those six.

The Open Standards

I’m not going to linger on this because you could spend alifetime talking about standards. In education there’s a variety of standardsintended to facilitate how we describe, how we discover, and how we reuseeducational resources.

The grandfather of these is called learning object metadata,or LOM, created originally by the Aviation Industry Computer-Based TrainingCommittee (AICC), and then passed on by Instructional Management Systems, orIMS, and then standardized under IEEE, and then really standardized under theISO standards organizations.

But there are other standards as well: Learning Design,Common Cartridge, and Learning Tools Interoperability. The United Statesmilitary, under the auspices of Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) came outwith the Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model (SCORM), which is thestandard in commercial online learning.

These standards have all had kind of a murky history,they’re sort of open, they’re sort of not open, they’re sort of proprietary,they’re sort of not proprietary. IMS, for example, supports itself with amembership system. If you pay them several thousands of dollars, more if you’rebigger, then you have access to the standards ahead of time. It’s about a yearahead of time. And so you can make all your products line up with thestandards, and everybody else has to wait until IMS formally releases them.

IEEE by contrast will release the standards openly whilethey’re still being discussed and decided upon, but once IEEE settles on theformal specification it then removes it from its website and you have to paythem for it. So openness is really murky, as I said, with respect to standards.

In my world the best kind of standards are ones that arecompletely open, without encumbrances, which is why, out of all of these, Ihave tended to favour none of them, and instead favoured things like RSS oreven Dublin Core, which are much more open and much more freely used.

Open Source Software

Open Source Software has had a significant impact on onlinelearning. I imagine most people are familiar with Moodle, which is a PHP-basedopen source learning management system is created originally by Martin Dougiamasand then thousands of volunteer programmers. Moodle is small, portable, anduseful for colleges and schools.

Another learning management system that was developed asopen source software, Sakai, is exactly notthat. It’s Java-based, it’s enterprise, it was built by a consortium ofuniversities as part of MIT’s Open Knowledge Initiative. There’s Elgg, which isan open source social network software for learning, Atutor, LAMS (LearningActivity Management System), and more types of software are available aSchoolforge. And so on.

And all of these are released under one or another type ofopen source license. If you’re not sure about open source licenses, really –and I’m going to over generalize here – that world breaks down into two kindsof worlds: one where the open source license allows commercial development, andthe other, the GPL world, where it doesn’t allow commercial development.

Open EducationalResources

More specific to our agenda today are the open educationalresource projects themselves. Here I list just a few of them. One of theearlier ones, and certainly the most famous, most heavily promoted, is MIT’sOpen Courseware project (OCW). Something that’s also received a lot ofattention recently (because he appeared on the TED videos) is the Khan Academy,which is a whole series of YouTube videos on mathematics, physics, and similarscience and technology subjects. MERLOT is a project that was created by aconsortium of North American educational institutions.

And I could go on. There are dozens of projects that havebeen set up specifically to create educational materials for distribution forfree (or some version of free) to people around the world.

The licensing of these resources, in order to make themavailable for use and reuse, used to be based on something called the GNU FreeDocumentation License (GFDL). That was the license that accompanied open sourcesoftware originally. You’d have the software, which was licensed under GPL orsome other open source license, and then the documentation that came along withthe software had its own license.

More recently we’ve had Creative Commons, and CreativeCommons is not the dominant mechanism for licensing open educational resources,for licensing open content of any sort. Creative Commons was devised byLawrence Lessig and actually providers the licensor – the person who owns thematerial – with a series of choices. The person may apply some restriction tothe license of the material.

For example,

- CC-by: that requires that the person who usesthe content attribute the content to whomever wrote it in the first place. Soif you use my content, and I’ve applied the ‘by’ condition, you have to say,“This content was created by Stephen Downes.”
- ‘Share Alike’ means that if you share thecontent, you must share it under the same license that you got the content.
- ‘Non-commercial’ mans that you cannot use thecontent to make money (and we could talk about that in more detail)
- ‘Non-derivatives’ means that you have to use thecontent as it was created; you can’t take the content and make changes to itand effectively create derivative materials from it.

By far the most popular form of Creative Commons license isthe one that I use, “Creative Commons By Non-Commercial Share-Alike,” whichmeans that I want to be attributed, I don’t want the content to be usedcommercially, and I want it to be shared under the same license that it wasobtained under.

Making Things Unfree

A lot of people in the open educational resource communitysay that the non-commercial condition means that the content isn’t really free,because, if it were really free then you should be able to charge money for it.But this is the perspective issue again. If I don’t have the content, and wantthe content, and some guy’s charging money for it, it’s not free, it’s not freein any sense of the word. It’s not free in the sense that I don’t have to payfor it, but it’s also not free in the sense that I can’t use it if I don’t havethe money, I just don’t have access to it.

The response from the defenders of commercial use has alwaysbeen that the content’s always available for free somewhere. So it doesn’tmatter if, say, Penguin sells a copy of Beowulfbecause Beowulf is in the publicdomain and you can always get it for free somewhere else. But in fact, in my opinion,it’s not so simple as that. When there is commercial use of free resourcesthere are all kinds of motivation to prohibit or prevent the free use of theseresources. So even if theoretically it is the case that there could be freecopies of Beowulf hanging around, thecommercial publishers of Beowulf the$4.95 version have all kinds of ways of making sure you just can’t get at it.And this creates an entire infrastructure for creating open content and thenmanaging somehow to charge for open content, which to be goes entirely againstthe whole concept.

I did a study in 2006 on models of sustainable openeducational resources and what I found was that most of the projects thatproduce open educational resources are publishing projects. The resources arecoming out of either commercial publishing houses, or universities thattraditionally feed materials into commercial publishing houses, or foundations.And the different models for the sustainability of open educational resourceswere all based around that paradigm.

So for example you have the endowment model. This model isused by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. You take a big chunk of moneyand put it aside, you get interest on that money every year, and you use theinterest on the money to publish the resource. Which worked really well untilthe stock market crashed.

Then there’s the membership model, and that’s the model Idescribed earlier for IMS, where you charge memberships, and people can joinyour consortium and participate in the creation of the resource. But whenpeople pay for memberships they usually expect privileges, and that typicallymeans some sort of privileged access.

Another model is the donation model. We see Wikipedia usingthe donation model. National Public Radio uses the donation model. And again,it’s based on this idea that there will be some organization that does somepublishing.

But even if you have these free resources hanging aroundcommercial publishers still manage to get you to pay for them. And there’s avariety of ways they do this:

- Lock-in, for example – if they lock you into acertain technology, such as, say, iTunes, or the Kindle, then the materialwhich would normally be available for free is, within that environment, onlyavailable at a price.

- Another way of making it very difficult to getfree materials is to set what might be called a ‘high bar’ for free content.You pose conditions, for example, learning object metadata, which has 87 or sofields which must be filled in for itto be registered. The commercial publisher can afford to hire some guy to sitthere and fill metadata fields, but free content providers don’t have that kindof resource, and so the requirement that content have metadata attached to itcreates this ‘high bar’ that free content can’t get over, and so the onlyversion of the content you’re going to get is the version where somebody paidsomebody create metadata.

- Another way of making you access the commercialcontent rather than the free content is ‘flooding’. This is what Starbucksdoes. When they want to move into a community they look at the downtown area,three of four square blocks, and they put 25 stores in there. You might say noarea needs 25 Starbucks, and it’s true, but when they put 25 Starbucks in, thatdrives out all the other competition. Nobody can compete, and once Starbuckshas the only coffee stores in thearea, now they can start closing stores, raising prices, kicking people out ifthey’re hanging around on the nice sofas, etc. In the world of software, onceexample is with the commercial versions of Wikipedia. Wikipedia has one ofthese licenses where you can make a commercial version of it. There are thesecommercial versions of Wikipedia, and what they do is they take Wikipediacontent, put it in a little tiny content window in the middle of the screen,and surround it by advertising, the more flashing and annoying the better. Itused to be the case – it’s not now because Google stepped in – that if you dida search for a topic that is covered by Wikipedia, you couldn’t find theWikipedia article. All you’d hit were these commercial versions, because theycan afford to pay for search engine optimization and Wikipedia can’t. Now overtime Google stepped in and like the hand of God reaching down elevatedWikipedia up in the search rank, so this doesn’t work anymore. For Wikipedia.But it still works for all the other kinds of free content that Google doesn’televate. You don’t notice that. But if you go the next time you do a search atGoogle and look at the listings, ask yourself how it is that these five are atthe top of the list. They’ve been search-engine optimized. And they’re almostcertainly, if they’re not Wikipedia, they’re almost certainly going to becommercial content of some sort.

- There’s also ‘conversion’. That’s where you givesomebody a free resource, and then you convert it to a commercial resource, andthen get them to pay for it, because they’ve become so addicted to your freeresource that they can’t bear to be without it.

So you can see – and you can disagree with the details ofthis – but you can see that there’s this whole economy of free, of commercial,of publishing, of subscriptions, this whole infrastructure which is surroundingthe idea of putatively open educational content. It’s open educational content“to a degree, with restrictions, if circumstances permit, using certaintechnologies.” Otherwise we’re strangled in the whole – well, as the picturegoes, the interests of industrialization, work, images, etc.

And that’s the story of open educational resources.

The Language of LOLcats

Now I’m going to change gears, and I’m going to change gearsreally dramatically. What I want to propose to you is that on the internet nowthe new media that people use - and there’s a whole range, everything fromlittle cartoons to videos to animations to those Flash games to the memes thatgo around to Twitter hashtags and all of that – all of these new mediaconstitute a vocabulary, and that when people create artifacts in this newmedia they are, quite literally, “speaking in LOLcats.”

A ‘LOLcat’ is – LOL stands for ‘Laugh Out Loud’ – istypically a photograph, a digital photograph, preferably of a cat, with a funnysaying on it. The original is a picture of a cat smiling, looking very smug,looking up at you, and saying “I can has cheezburger?” And there’s a wholeethos that goes into LOLcats. There’s the bad grammar, there’s tying intocontemporary memes, there’s contemporary ideas, Cheshire Cat, and any of youwho have spent any amount of time online know about these, especially thesedays, the YouTube videos are almost the dominant memes. Even if you don’t spendtime online, if you watch CTV news, the weather reporter (Jeff Hutcheson) doesthis “I watch video so you don’t have to” segment with these cute videos.

All of these are instances of people, if you will, speakingin LOLcats. LOLcats, or any of these media, are far more than just the imageand the words. Here we have a cartoon, one of my favourites, it’s XKCD, andit’s a neat little story about all of the tech things a person does to contactsomebody who is inside the locked room, and of course you can read the punchline for yourself. But is that all the comic is saying? What are the messages?What are the meanings behind the comic?

Here’s an instance of something capped Gaping Void. This guymade a name for himself drawing little cartoons on the back of business cards.They don’t always mean a whole lot, but then he started putting them up onlineand they started getting shared a lot, and they’re very interesting. So with eachone of these we can ask, what is the person saying? What is a person sayingwhen they take one of his littlebusiness cards and put it on their own website?

Here’s something that was popular not long after 9-11. Somesaid too soon. As you can see it’s the guy now known as ‘Tourist Guy’ – becausethey often get generic names like that – photographed on top of the World TradeCenter and you can see the airplane in the background. And this ischaracteristic of this sort of media manipulation where you take two photos,one of an airplane and one of a guy on top of the World Trade Center, and putthem together to create some sort of odd statement.

And of course once one of these things gets going it reallygets going – there’s Tourist Guy in front of the Hindenburg, and there’sTourist Guy, and the plane is still there, but now you have Kanye West jumpingin to say that “Pearl Harbor was the greatest attack.” And you can see here howthe memes, the concepts, the ideas, the images merge, remerge, fold over eachother, shape and create new kinds of meaning. And then people share them, andwhen they share them, they’re creating some kind of meaning out of thattoo. Aren’t they? Because they don’t doit for no reason, it’s not rational to suppose that they do it for no reason.

These are languages. This sharing of the resource is theexpression of meaning in a language. And there are all kinds of languages.These digital photographs, these videos and that, are just a few of the manymany languages we use in day-to-day discourse.

Body language, for example. Everybody reads body language,some better than others. Me, I’m practically illiterate in body language.People have their strengths. Clothing, uniforms, flags – we’ve been watchingthe Libya thing, one of the very first things they did was to revive the oldLibyan flag, the red green and black flag with the crescent and star symbol onit. These things have meanings. The hats, the headgarb that people wear, theyhave meanings. The drapery in the back of the room has meaning. How many peoplebelong to the jeans and t-shirt set? That’s almost a uniform.

Maps, diagrams and graphics have meaning, and they don’tnecessarily have literal meaning. Here we have a graph of the social networkenvironment from 2007 and what it’s doing is using the language of maps inorder to talk about something that is very much not mappable. Except that it ismappable, because here’s a map of it.

What I’m saying is that this sort of thing underlies ourthought processes in general. This is a picture on this slide of a drawing on acave wall in Kakadu National park. I took this photograph in 2004, and if youlook at it really closely it’s a fish and fish guts. You might ask, why wouldan aboriginal draw a painting of fish guts on a cave wall. And the answer ofcourse is that he – I assume it’s a he – wanted to communicate something aboutfish guts to other people and this was the mechanism for doing it. It wasprobably a description of what you’ll find inside a fish, what you can eat,what you can’t eat. Etc. Whatever was important about fish to them.

And we do this in general. We use these – I don’t want tosay ‘representations’ because that’s too strong a word – but we use thesedrawings to communicate with each other. The LOLcats, the YouTube videos, thecave paintings on the wall, the body language, the maps – all of these arefunctioning in the same way. This means that when we’re talking about media,and we’re talking about communication, we have to get beyond the way we talkabout text and books and chapters and papers and publications. We have to getbeyond that very narrow discussion because when we talk about ways wecommunicate as being very simply text and books and publishers and things likethat we talking only about a very small narrow segment of it.

What is this kind of talk that we need to get away from?Think about the assumptions that you may have had not only about educationalresources but about communications in general. Something like, “messages have asender and a receiver.” In the world of the internet that makes no sense. Itreally doesn’t. “Why did you publish that picture of a cat with a hot on it?”“Because I could.” “Who did you send it to?” “Well I don’t know.”

Or conceptions like “words get meaning from what they represent.”Not so. Words – anything – get meaning from pretty much anything. Or “truth isbased on the real world.” Or “events have a cause and causes can be known.”“Science is based on forming and testing hypotheses.” All of these are thingsthat are true in this static, linear, coherent, text-based semiotic-basedpicture of the world, but it’s a picture that, even if it was once correct, isno longer correct. The world is just no longer like that.

And this very point, this very distinction is the distinctionbetween what we might say are old and new depictions of open educationalresources, or educational resources generally.

The picture that I presented top you earlier of openeducational resources as things that are published, things that are presentedby publishers in a very formal manner, probably charged-for and commercial,that’s the old static coherent linear picture of the world. It’s not the modelthat we want to use for open educational resources.

We need to think about open educational resources not ascontent but as language. We need to stop treating open educational resources oronline resources generally as though they were content like books, magazines,articles, etc., because the people who actually use them – the students andvery often the creators – have moved far beyond that. Each one of these thingsis a word, if you will, in this very large post-linguistic vocabulary. They arenow language. They are not composed of language, they are language.

And that’s why they need to be open.

Think about it for a second. Suppose that everyday wordsthat you wanted to use like, say, ‘cat’ – to pick a word at random – were owned by, say, Coca-Cola. Now we haveallowed a certain limited ownership of words in our society, but by and largeyou can’t own words. You can’t own the use of words to create expression. Andeven more particularly, imagine if you had to pay royalties to use certainletters. So you could only use the letter ‘o’ if you paid money to Ford. Youcould only use the letter ‘i’ if you paid money to Apple. The effectiveness oflanguage would be significantly impaired.

And the thesis here is that the effectiveness of languagewould be impaired in exactly the same way the effectiveness of communicationwould be impaired, in exactly the same way the effectiveness of a network isimpaired if you break down or block the links between entities.

So how do we understand this new media? What – I don’t wantto say ‘skills’ – what do we need to know in order to know how to deal withthese open educational resources, with these online resources generally?Because, if it’s a language, there are going to be linguistic elements.

I’ve come up with this frame, it borrows from CharlesMorris, who gives us syntax, semantics and pragmatics, Derrida a little bit,Lao Tzu a little bit.

Syntax isbasically our understanding of the shapes that things can take. It’s not justrules and grammar. Rules and grammar is a way of talking about language andlinguistic expression, text-based expression. Syntax can be archetypes, can bePlatonic ideals, can be grammar, logical syntax, procedures, motor skills,operations, patterns, regularities, substitutivity, eggcorns and tropes, etc.Any of those words is well worth looking up.

We think of rules of language – and it’s funny because wethink that the rule tells us what to do, but the rule really is just a patternand has come to be a rule because we’ve observed it over and over and over.Cause and effect is like that. And the skill here is in seeing and recognizingthese patterns. Recognizing them and then being able to manipulate them.

A guy called Saul Alinsky wrote a book called Rulebook for Radicals. One of the thingshe said was, “use their own rules against them.” Because the established orderhas ways of doing things, and if you follow the ways of doing things you canactually subvert the established order. The trick here is to see what thoserules actually are. And then to be able to manipulate those rules to your ownadvantage.

Semantics. Notjust theories of truth, because the minute you get into theories of truth youget into all kinds of things, all kinds of issues: what makes a sentence true?What makes a picture true? What makes a cartoon true? I look at Family Circusand I nod to myself and say, “true.” And I know that the characters depicted inFamily Circus are completely fictional. It’s not just thta, though. What is themeaning, the purpose or the goal of a communications artifact? The connotationor implication of what was said? Or if I send you a picture of a very largeturkey, I’m not telling you to go get a turkey. I might not even be calling youa turkey. But depending on our context, there might be some shared meaningbetween us on that. Three strikes in a row – bowling reference, maybe.

Semantics may be based on interpretation, it may be based onfrequency, it may be based on what we’re willing to bet. Frank Ramsay came upwith a theory of probability based on how much you’re willing to wager.Probability P is ‘4’ if you’re willing to wager 4 dollars to get 1 dollar back.

And more: forms of association, contiguity,back-propagation. Meaning, semantics and networks. Decisions and decisiontheory – you talk to the political scientists and economists and they will timeand time again go back to a world view based on decisions and decision theory.

Pragmatics. Whichmeans use, actions, impact. J.L. Austin wrote a book called How to do Things with Words. When peopletalk about freedom of speech, usually they mean ‘freedom of expression’, not ‘freedomof doing’. But there’s so much with speech that we actually do – you stand at the altar and you say“I do”, you’re not just making a statement but you’re actually committing anact. If you ask a question, you’re not simply uttering some words, but you’recreating an expectation of a response. Wittgenstein said meaning itself isbased on use.

Cognition. This isanother element of this framework. I’ve defined cognition in four major areas;other people may do it differently, which is fine. Description, definition,argument and explanation. And basically what cognition means the way wetransition from one thing to another thing to another thing in our language.It’s about the inferences that we make, the explanations that we make, how wego beyond a mere statement of “what is” to a statement of “what must be”, to“what could be”, “what may be”, “what we ought to do”, “what we ought tothink”, etc.

Context. This hasto do with environment, placement, localization, language, culture, reference.A lot of late 20^th century philosophy was based on discovering thecontextual sensitivity to everyday things. Explanation, for example, exploredby people like Hansen and van Fraassen. If you say “the roses have grown well,”or if you ask, “why have the roses grown well?” what you mean is “why have theroses grown well instead of growing poorly?” Or “why have the roses grown wellinstead of tulips?” Or “why have the roses grown well instead of aliens landingfrom outer space?” The answer we get when we ask for an explanation depends onwhat we though the alternatives were. And that’s context.

Same thing with meaning. Willard van Orman Quine exploresthe question of meaning, the possible range of translations that could takeplace if we encounter a new language for the first time. Derrida explores thealternatives in a vocabulary space. Frames, as described by George Lakoff. Etc.All of these constitute an understanding of context.

And then finally, change.There are many different ways of depicting change ranging from old Taoism, theI Ching, logical relation, to flow, the idea of change as being directional,change as being manifest in history, Marshall McLuhan examining the fouraspects of change. Logic is a study of change. Gaming theory, simulations, andthat sort of thing, is a theory of change. Scheduling, time-tabling, activitytheory, learning as a network, all of that is looking at things as based inchange.

So we take all of this together, wrap this all up – wetypically think of knowing, learning, if we don’t think of it as retainingcontent (and I think most people don’t any more) we think of it as acquiringskills. Henry Jenkins describes skills like ‘performance’, ‘simulation’, ‘appropriation’.But these things are all actually languages and should be understood in thesesix dimensions. Any of the things that we’re trying to teach people, any of the things – science,mathematics, social studies, Egyptian philosophy, whatever – should beunderstood as one of these languages.

So here’s an example of one of those frames using Jenkins’sskills, so we have ‘performance’, ‘simulation’, ‘appropriation’, and in ‘performance’we have the elements of syntax, semantics, pragmatics, context, cognition andchange. And then for each one of these boxes we can analyze what the detailsare of that aspect of that language. So what is the syntax of performance, forexample? There are the different forms, patterns, rule systems, operations andsimilarities in performance. From something very simple as “knowing your lines”to presentation acting, method acting, Stanislavski’s system, ritualperformance, all of these different ways of formalizing performance. And thatconstitutes ways of understanding performance.

The (Open) Languageof Learning

This reaches the third and final thesis: fluency in theselanguages constitutes 21^st century learning. Being able to speak andwrite and perform and act and share and whatever these different languagesconstitutes learning in the 21^st century. We use to think there wasjust acquiring content and we use to think there was just acquiring skill butit’s much more involved than that. Actually being fluent in these languages,where being fluent means mastering or being capable in the semantics, the syntax,the pragmatics, the context etc., of these different languages.

And that brings us back to what we want to think about inopen educational resources. Open Educational Resources are a network – no, Idon’t even way to say it that way, that trivializes it - Open EducationalResources are individually the words that we use in whatever vocabulary we’reusing to conduct whatever activity it is that we’re doing or that we’reundertaking. They are the signals that we send to each other in our network.

If that is so, then what openness means in the context ofopen educational resources is whatever is meant by openness in a network, wherewe think of openness in a network as the sending of these signals back and forth,the sending of these resources back and forth.

When I think of openness in a network I come up with fourmajor dimensions. There may be others. I don’t pretend to be authoritative onthis, or even original, but these are the ones that I see:

- Autonomy – each entity in the network isself-governing
- Diversity – the entities in the network areencouraged to have different states, to be different things, have differentopinions, say different things
- Openness – in the sense that signals can be sentfreely from one entity to another, and entities have access to signals that aresent from one entity to another, that membership in the network itself is openand fluid, and then finally
- Interactivity – that what is learned by thenetwork is not constituted in the signals that are sent back and forth butrather what is created by the network as a whole that is emergent from theactivities that the entities in the network undertake.

What I mean by that is that what is learned by a brain, forexample, is not a bunch of electrical impulses. That doesn’t make sense! Whatis learned by a brain is what emerges when these impulses are sent back andforth between ten or a hundred billion neurons.

What is learned is greater than the content of theindividual messages. And that is key andcrucial to understanding open educational resources. The resources are notcontent we expect people to assimilate. The content of these resources is notthe learning. The learning is what happens when you take these resources andstart interacting with them in a network.

That’s the basis that George Siemens and I used to create themassive open online courses. The idea of these courses was that, and is that,we provide as much material for conversation as possible and set up thisconversational network where the exchange of this material can take place. Sothe course itself becomes a network, the open educational resources are theconcepts, the words, the vocabulary that people in this network use tocommunicate with each other. And that’s in fact exactly what happens.

Somebody signs up for the course, they start reading stuffbeing sent by other people, so the idea is we create this network, enablepeople to communicate using these open educational resources within thisnetwork, and the learning people undertake is not the content of theseresources, but whatever they learn as a consequence of interacting with otherpeople in this network using these resources.

So I’ve described a process, and again it’s one of thesethings where there are four easy steps: aggregate, remix, repurpose, feedforward. So this is the process that we recommend to people – nothing isrequired in one of these courses, but this is what we recommend as the fourmajor steps of working with the resources. You gather the resources, you remixthem, join them together, mash them up, repurpose them, localize them, adaptthem, mark them up, tag them, review them, lipdub them, do whatever with them,and then send them forward, communicate them to other people in the network.

That’s where we stand now with open educational resourcesand open learning. And there’s a whole world ahead. Our capacity for languageshas greatly expanded in the last 20 years and in the next 20 years is going toexpand again. We haven’t even touched in a serious way on the internet thewhole idea of Big Data, the Web of Data, sensor networks. We may have twobillion people online. Imagine adding to the internet 20 billion sensors,machines, and other things that can send signals.

There’s the whole way of representing information from thesemantic web – RSS, geography, Friend-of-a-Friend, so on, a whole open learningecosystem and not just a smallish network, still waiting to be grown. Peopleare using more and more complex ‘words’ in this new language and we’re findingthat we don’t need the publishers, we don’t even need the academics in manycases, to create these resources.

And insofar as the academics and the publishers create theseresources in the old linear static linguistic traditional manner they’respeaking at cross-purposes in any case to the new form of learning that’shappening now. The idea of using these resources to learn has as much to do withcreating these resources as consuming these resources and it’s in the creationof these resources that we acquire the greater capacities and skills that weneed in order to function in this environment.

And that’s where I leave it now. It’s a story unfinished, it’sa story of communities still finding themselves and forming themselves,languages half-written, unwritten, undeveloped, partially developed, an ecosystembeginning to grow, and a challenge ahead.

You Turned Out OK?

2011-11-05T13:16:00.000-03:00

Scott McLeod wrote,

Here's a statement that I'm getting really tired of hearing:

"We didn't have computers when I was in school and I turned out okay. There's no reason why kids today need 'em."

My response is always along these lines:

“You turned out OK? Wait a second…

“The world is badly overpopulated. Poverty and slums are rampant. People are dying in the streets. Wars rage around the planet. Natural resources have been depleted, there are few fish in the ocean, the forests are being destroyed. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. OK…?

“Don’t you think that maybe things could be better? That people could have the means to make for themselves a safe and sustainable world where people don’t starve and wars don’t rage? Don’t you think that maybe what you are calling ‘good enough’ simply doesn’t work for the 21st century?

“The fact is, we need to do so much better. Our students today need to know a lot more than just the basics. They need to be literate, they need mathematical and financial acumen, they need to understand logic and computation, they need to comprehend science and engineering. They need these things, not just to do their jobs, but to be responsible citizens, to vote responsibility, to participate in their communities.

“You didn’t have computers in schools when you were a kid and look how the world turned out. We don’t get to make those mistakes a second time. We need to get it right, now. That’s why we need computers in schools.”

The Metasociety

2011-11-04T16:50:00.001-03:00

Responding to An Open Letter to #OccupyWallStreet

When the OWS people say 'we' they do not mean it in the sense of 'we who are camped out' but rather 'we' as in 'we who are not among the financial elite'. When they say 'we are the 99 percent' what they are saying is that there is a small group of people - the one percent - who own most of the economy, and then there's the rest of us.

The OWS people are the social equivalent of somebody running through the halls clanging on a lid and yelling that the building is on fire. He doesn't want everyone else to start clanging lids, he wants them to get out of the building. It's not a question of how much people 'support' him, he's sounding the alarm. When he says 'we are in danger' he means not simply the 'we' who are clanging on lids, but everybody in the building.

OWS isn't a political entity. It doesn't need your support. It's sounding an alarm. Whether you heed it is up to you, and you ar the one who will gain or suffer as a result of your actions. Not them.

Having said that, the numbers are quite stark and should be as convincing as a smoke-filled room to anyone. A very small percentage of the people own most of the economy. And while they have become exponentially richer over the years, the rest of us have lost ground. And moreover, these rich are acting in ways that will make the poorer even more so, by using up the environment, eroding political and economic rights, and entrenching corporate power.

OWS isn't about solutions. That said, when asked, a few things have been discussed. Among these:

- an end to corporate personhood, which would make corporate owners responsible for the debts (including, for example, pension plans that have simply 'evaporated') and legal liabilities (eg. the costs of environmental harm) caused by corporations. Because as it stands now, corporations constitute the archetypical 'tragedy of the commons', with nobody stepping forward to take responsibility for their excesses.

- a small tax - on the order of 0.04 percent - on financial transactions. This would on the one hand result in the financial community giving contributing *something* to government, and on the other hand would create a little bit of friction on financial transactions, making it much more difficult for huge investors to profit by holding national economies (such as Thailand in the 90s and Greece today) hostage.

Will these solve all the problems? Probably not. The OWS movement recognizes that we aren't facing problems that can be addressed by political rallies positing simplistic demands. We face much deeper issues created by the widespread intransigence of the business communities on social issues. We need to redefine our priorities as a society. As AdBusters magazine (which was a force behind the initial OWS protests) used to ask, "Is 'economic progress' destroying the planet?"

Right now we live in a society where this question cannot even be posed - advertisements run by AdBusters along these lines have been refused by national media, magazines, even transit services. The discourse is so skewed in the direction of economic realism, where the will of the financially elite is represented as some sort of immutable force - that we do not even have the capacity to discuss these issues, let alone resolve them. OWS is about changing that discourse - 'we are the 99 percent' is, at its heart, an exercise in reframing.

I've spent some of my time at OWS camps, but mostly my support has been from afar. I get no sense that anyone expects anything otherwise. What's more important is that I become a part of the dialogue. That I participate in the raising of these issues.

Because - as I see it - OWS is only one small part of a much larger movement. It is the movement made up of community groups and NGOs, trade associations, special interest groups, community co-ops, environmental groups, rights groups, online activists, artists' collectives, and more. The metasociety. The community of communities. If you've signed a petition to stop a dam, contributed some cans to a food bank, received a flyer from Amnesty, helped at a Medicins Sans Frontiers dinner, or any such activity, you've been touched by one of these groups.

When we say 'we are the 99 percent' we are also saying something about how we would like to be governed. Today, we have an elaborate architecture of government that exists mostly to transfer wealth from the 99 percent - that's us - and to the 1 percent. What we want is a form of government that doesn't do this - a form of government that is not only directly constituted of the people, but one that also works in direct support of the people. What that government will look like is undefined - trying to articulate it more clearly right now is premature.

But what what we do know - again - is that a simplistic measure will be insufficient. A program along the lines of 'tax the rich' will not succeed, and is not desirable, simply because it leaves in place the mechanisms of government designed to enrich the rich. And even if government itself were redesigned, it will be insufficient, because the rich have the means to supply purchase for themselves access to whatever levers of power remain. If we want our money and resources to help ourselves, we need a comprehensive rethinking of government. Not empty platitudes and slogans.

Again, though - this is not a matter of whether you believe OWS or support the cause. It is a matter of empirical fact as to whether or not your resources are flowing away from you and toward those who are already better off, or not. The most anyone can do is make you aware that your current involvement in society is enriching the rich while leaving you further and further behind. What you do about that, if anything, will no doubt be a matter of personal decision.

And that's probably the most important point. Though it is typically depicted as such, OWS is the opposite of a mass movement. There are no leaders who can be co-opted, no manifestos or doctrines that can be corrupted. It is a network of awareness coupled with the creation of an environment for personal engagement. The OWS camp in New York was a perfect example; if you saw my photos you'd see the meditating circle, the people banging on the drums, the people 'knitting for the 99 percent', the people contributing food and distributing resources, the people taking pictures, the people engaged in discussions and education sessions, and myriad other activities.

OWS is, at its heart, a change in the way we view social change and political action. It's a recognition that the placement of too much of anything - power, money, influence - into the hands of a few is ultimately damaging to society. It's an attempt to create enough social friction to make the accumulation of so much wealth and power unbearable to the few who possess it. And its an attempt to understand how we govern ourselves in the coming era after we have rejected the attempts of the rich and powerful to do our governing for us.

QRApplets

2011-11-03T21:33:00.000-03:00

*QRapplets*

I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. Though to be honest, I don't know whether they will work - but I see no reason why they shouldn't. Here's the idea:

- QR codes are used, among other things, to encode URLs. Using a QR code reader, you photograph the image, and then are taken to the encoded URL.

- Web browsers typically take HTTP addresses as input URLs. But as power-users have long known, you can execute Javascript applets with URLs as well. Clicking on the URL javascript: alert(2+2); will pop up an alert box with the answer. Try it!

You can see where I'm going with this: encoded Javascript applets in QR codes, or, as I so name them, QRApplets.

Just to make life easy, here's a page of some commonly useful Javascript address bar applets.

Take the source of these applets, and enter them into the QR Code generator.

Pictured below is the Download PDF bookmarklet used to download web pages in PDF format. Again, I don't know whether it will work on your smart phone - but some should (or if not, smartphone web browsers should make them work).

Try it. See whether it works. Here's the 2+2 applet:

And here's the Download PDF QRApplet:

The One Percent

2011-10-23T05:58:00.002-03:00

Props to New Scientist for highlighting this report, which identifies a network of 147 tightly clustered entities that control 40 percent of the world's wealth. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Here's the direct link to the study, found in PloS One: The network of global corporate control

From my perspective, not only is the concentration of ownership exceptionally dangerous (as Cory Doctorow says, "one disaster could sweep like wildfire across them all") it is also deeply undemocratic. These companies and their directors answer to nobody, and there is no electoral process to unseat them. Asserting pressure economically is also not an option; these people are the economy.

So long as they have allowed sufficient wealth to the rest of us they have been left alone, but with the world's resources being depleted and environmental change impacting economies, they are increasingly on a collision course with the world's poor - the 99 percent of us who do not have a say in how these companies are run and who do not share in their wealth.

The article explains:

"The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

"The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues."

Czech Course Followup Questions

2011-10-18T09:56:00.000-03:00

I was asked the following questions after my presentation to CZ Course RVP_VT21 yesterday:

(Elements of Coop.) How to ensure any educational outcomes in accordance with short-time curricular aims? Students having autonomy do not usually feel about the aim the same way as teachers. Is it a call for a curricular change?

This is like asking, "how do you have freedom, and still control people?" In an open educational environment, you cannot "ensure any educational outcomes", nor is it desirable to do so. I said during the presentation there is no core curriculum; this is directly contrary to the idea of ensuring educational outcomes.

I think that parents and administrators need to rethink what they want students to learn and how to teach them. Look at this post: http://www.downes.ca/post/56473

Notice that though there are no curricular outcomes, the instructor is able to lead students towards the things he thinks are valuable by modelling the process. The students are also given more incentive by having their work posted online. A wide variety of persuasions and inducements are available.

(Distributive vs. Connective): How to ensure one isn't gonna be disturbed receiving so many stimulations from the others or we won't get parallel outcomes when students don’t know who’s working on what? I see it’s not contra-productive from the educational point of view but once a teacher wants their students to work um some comprehensive topic, I have my doubts about the result.

I'm not sure what it means to be "disturbed by receiving so many stimulations from others." You could always turn off the computer! But beyond that, you can select to receive input from only a few sources, as opposed to many.

It is important to understand that in a connectivist environment the *learner* is responsible to selecting media and resource sources. It is not the case that the teacher or school sends a whole lot of things to them. Rather, the learner selects the content sources, and makes the decisions about what to read or not to read.

Over and above that, being able to select relevant materials from a large body of materials is a skill that should be cultivated in a connectivist environment. I have talked in the past about knowledge as recognition. This is the same sort of thing. As a person becomes more adept in a certain subject area, he or she is much more able to recognize which materials out of a sea of materials are worth reading. It's exactly the same process as recognizing your child's face out of a sea of faces.

Over time this sort of perception will be aided with technology, just as we are aided in visual recognition by glasses and telescopes and video monitors. Filtering systems, content recommendation systems, analytics and other tools will make the task of recognition easier. But in the end, it will still be necessary to select relevant material by recognition, and the effectiveness of such selection will improve as a person's expertise improves (and, indeed, is a measure of that expertise).

Don't we produce "information mess" this way? Everybody just writes, doesn't read, speak and doesn't listen (a nice metonymy to the academic world by the way) as if our purpose wasn’t to learn how to cooperate but to win ourselves some recognition.

In my paper 'Educational Blogging' I point out that the first step to successful blogging is to read blogs. In my paper 'How to Be Heard' I recommend that people use other blogs and articles as starting points for their own creative activities.

It is in fact extremely difficult to be creative in a vacuum. The very possibility of creativity implies the existence of a stimulating environment to remix, repurpose, and to create with. Just as the academic will work against a literature or tradition in his or her field, so any creative person will work against a similar creative environment.

Having said that - there is a subtext to this question which suggests that content needs to be organized, the best content selected, and a mechanism put in place to ensure that people follow and pay attention to this content. I would suggest that such a mechanism will create more harm than good, as the process of selection will distort the normal selection and reading of materials, and will create a disincentive to create unpopular or unsanctioned work which would never be selected.

In an open communicative environment, where people depend on each other for ideas and inspiration, and where a mesh-like network of connections between these people develops, a form of organization emerges of its own accord. This phenomenon is well known - look up 'clustering' in the network literature.

Finally, the question addresses the idea of a purpose of being to 'win some recognition'. I think we can certainly detect and distinguish between those people who are attempting to work cooperatively and those who are attempting to win recognition. It is the distinction between those people whose communications are intended to benefit other people, and those people whose communications are intended to benefit themselves.

In the world of broadcasting, controlled media, corporate or institutional publishing, and group-like structures, the self-promoter may well be successful. This occurs when they are able to obtain a privileged interaction with managers or those responsible for broadcasting. This is an instance where the community as a whole suffers. People are unable to avoid broadcast media - this is what the self-server is counting on. He will *push* his way into their consciousness.

But in a network-based cooperative environment, the self-serving communicator is unable to obtain success. Because the learner is responsible for the selection of his or her own media, they will select materials that hep themselves, and do not serve the interests of the sender. It's exactly the same process as selecting useful content instead of advertising. That doesn't mean self-selection will be perfect, and the self-promoter may be able to obtain some traction in such an environment. But where the recipient makes the decisions, the generous, rather than the selfish, will tend to become more popular.

What amount of time does it take the students to work cooperatively when they're not used to it? It seem it would (will!) take a lot here.

There is no fixed amount of time. Or, another way of offering the same response: it will take whatever amount of time they are willing to put into it.

The question appears to presuppose a model where a person learns content 'XYZ' in some number of hours. The suggestion is that it will take more hours to learn 'XYZ' if working cooperatively. But the question really doesn't make sense in this context.

Let's suppose I want to learn how to program a 'bubble sort' in Python. Given a teaching resource - perhaps some sample code with instructions - it will take me maybe half an hour to learn the procedure. In order to impress it into memory, I would need to revisit the process at regular (and increasing) intervals over time. So, say, a total of two hours.

This would be the case whether or not I was working in a cooperative environment. The actual learning time for something simple and focused like that is unchanged, because the materials and process are the same. We could talk about how better or worse to design these materials, but that now leaves the domain of cooperative versus collaborative learning.

But now, in cooperative learning, I do something I don't do in other forms of learning: I document my learning, and make it available through some feed-forward mechanism, to a wider audience. This takes more time. And the benefits to learning are indirect.

We can suggest that perhaps one's own learning will be entrenched through documentation of learning. We can suggest that some ancillary skills, such as documentation skills, language and presentation skills, and the like, would be developed. As John Stuart Mill commented in his autobiography, he never learned something so thoroughly as when he was teaching ti to his younger brother.

But the greater benefit of one person learning this way is felt by *another* person. Prior to even learning how to conduct a bubble sort in Python, it is necessary to locate and select an appropriate learning resource. In a broadcast system there may be one available resource, but it may cost to much, may be inaccessible, or may be unsuited to your learning preferences. In a cooperative system, a wider selection of such resources will be available, many often more suited to your needs and preferences.

But even here, I do not want to assert that you will find better resources more quickly. You may still be slowed down by the greater selection and difficulty of choice. But you are benefiting in indirect ways - you are seeing the same subject from multiple perspectives, you are seeing it in a wide variety of applications, and people will address the subject from many different contexts. In the direct method, you will learn how to conduct a bubble sort, but in the cooperative environment, you will learn the *meaning* of a bubble sort, by observing its use in a variety of contexts.

Won't the borders between different school subjects get blurred in the connectivist manner? It seems like one great Project-based learning model to me since students work mostly according to their own scheme.

Yes, the borders of different schools will become blurred. That is a good thing. It enables students to communicate with a much larger number of other students, and to learn and appreciate the true diversity that characterizes society.

You can think of it as a "great Project-based learning model" if you wish; that description would not be disagreeable to me. One's home school would provide resources, environment, coaching and support. It would be a base of operations. But one's actual learning would take place in the wider community, not only from other schools, but from the community as a whole. This is a good thing.

In just the same way, the borders between school subjects will also become blurred, and int he same way, this is also a good thing, for two reasons:

- first, no subject is independent. Every subject is related to every other subject. People sometimes talk about 'math across the curriculum' or 'critical thinking across the curriculum', but in fact, we could just as easily talk about 'chemistry across the curriculum' or 'political science across the curriculum', as these two subjects, like the others, are embedded in every other subject.

The division of learning into subjects is, to my mind, an improper abstraction and idealization of some subjects, and some subject descriptions, above others. It resides in the view that there are some 'core' subjects on which all other subjects depend. But knowledge, include the knowledge received from an education, is not structured that way. By fostering an understanding based on 'core' subjects we foster an improperly abstracted and ultimately incorrect view of knowledge and the world generally

- second, it may be the case that there are core patterns or regularities underlying all disciplines, but these are not such that they can be abstracted and taught in isolation, but rather learned only through a process of pattern recognition. each learner will identify different regularities and different patterns, depending on their points of view. And they need to be engaged in a program that combines multiple disciplines in order to be in a position to identify these patterns regularities.

(As an aside, I am not specifically advocating discovery learning here, though there may well be an element of this. I don't expect students to detect the patterns in this by themselves, with no assistance. They should be given tools, support, assistance and encouragement. Instructors and colleagues would be prepared to show them where to look, or how to look. But this is very distinct from an environment where the instructor says 'this' is the underlying regularity, 'this' is the foundational principle. What counts as foundational., underlying, or regular ought, in the end, to be determined individually by each person.)

Ruse and Hate Speech

2011-10-17T17:31:00.000-03:00

Michael Ruse addresses the American First Amendment with a deft argument but with a base of knowledge that does not extend to actually dealing with the hateful. He writes:

I detest laws that restrict freedom of speech. Apart from anything else, like banning drugs they only exacerbate the problem... Let him speak and ignore him, I say. Show your contempt by saying nothing."

There is not a widespread majority wanting to spread hate the way there is wanting to use drug - and if there were, Ruse might be singing a different tune. But from the perspective of one who has run discussion forums, it sometimes _seems_ like there's that many people spreading hate, and I can tell you surely, letting them speak and ignoring does not make the problem go away.

The problem is, hate speech is like poison. It contaminates and ruins any discussion into which it infiltrates. Think about how far you read into YouTube comments before turning away repulsed at the misogyny and hatred. Nobody lingers for a discussion in a forum filled with Nazi propaganda. The attack dogs of the neo-right have perfected the art of destroying public places with hatred.

I support the Canadian approach: shut it down. Even more, I am inclined to shut it down more quietly - filling the newspapers full of Ernst Zundel's opinions doesn't help anyone. On my own website I remove the comments silently and without explanation. If you don't like my policy, start your own website.

The point is, hate speech is not free expression. The utterance of hate speech is an _act_, just as surely as striking a blow or shooting a gun. And this is something Ruse, who is a philosopher and must surely have read J.L.Austin, must know. Hate speech is the manipulation of bits or print or sound waves not with the intent of creating dialogue or meaning, but with specific intent to shut down, to hurt, to destroy.

Anyone who has run a discussion forum knows this. They know that people on the forum are not 'more free' when someone starts venting hate, they are less free, because the entire forum is poisoned. They know that ignoring the hateful will lead only to a hundred more hateful posts. They know you can't argue with hate, can't reason with hate, because hate is just another manifestation of the barrel of a gun. That's why they kill spam and hate speech before it gets out of hand. And that's why I say that Ruse speaks with knowledge, but without experience.

Occupy NB Moncton - Results

2011-10-15T14:13:00.001-03:00

We had a good crowd of about 500 people in Moncton, which is quite large for a city this size (the same proportion would be 20,000 people in Toronto). Zero police. A lot of horns being honked in sympathy. Loud drums. Union support. No politicians (none!). A lot of media, who were gone after a half hour or so. Link to photos below. As I write the protest continues, with diminished numbers, in a gale-force wind (really really unpleasant weather). Here's the photo set on Flickr.

Here's a video (made by hummingbirdstew)

Occupy NB Moncton

2011-10-14T14:56:00.000-03:00

The Moncton demonstration will most probably be small, but I will be there, and hope many others will be, as we do our small part in the global 'occupy' protests October 15th.

I just saw in +Daniel Lemire this link to a Bloomburg post http://buswk.co/nyYUCA about how Google shifts its profits to Bermuda in order to avoid paying taxes. More here http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/10/14/1420201/irs-auditing-google This is just the sort of thing that we have to put a stop to.

Let me be clear. I have no objection to people or companies making money. But it is not right for them to earn so much money they distort the democratic process, and it is not right that their profits come at the expense of education, health care, housing and food for the world's population.

Some Occupy NB resources:

CURRENT OFFICIAL LOCATIONS MONCTON: 655 Main Street (City Hall), October 15th 12:00pm Link: http://on.fb.me/q35gAc SAINT JOHN: In front of City Hall & Board Walk, October 15th 9:00am Link: http://on.fb.me/pzIWap FREDERICTON: 397 Queen Street, (City Hall), October 15th 12:00pm Link: http://on.fb.me/ppR4rz *** Remember that the times and locations may change!

Occupy NB Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OccupyNB
Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=227951283925510

Times and Transcript article announcing the event for Moncton City Hall at noon: http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/news/article/1447562

CBC article, same time and date: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2011/10/12/nb-occupy-moncton.html

Someone has set up an OccupyNB Twitter feed http://twitter.com/#!/OccupyNB but unlike David W. Campbell http://davidwcampbell.com/?p=4672 I would not regard it as in any way authoritative - the protest in NB is not about shale gas.

Purple Violet Press, another anti-fracking interpretation of the protest. http://thepurplevioletpressnb.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupy-nb-organizing-for-fredericton.html Really, folks, it's not about anti-fracking.

The New Brunswicker speaks with Jared McRae about Occupy Fredericton 100 2942

Charles Leblanc interviews an OccupyNB person: Occupy New Brunswick is confronted by the Blogger

DRN: Downes RDF Notation

2011-10-14T08:37:00.001-03:00

The usual disclaimers apply: although I'm creating this myself, it's probably not unique to me, someone else probably thought of it first, and I don't expect anyone in the world to actually use this, though if it is in fact new, when it's reinvented by someone at MIT or Stanford all credit will revert to that author.

DRN: Downes RDF Notation

I've done enough coding of permissions systems to know that they're a pain. So I like this proposal for an RDF-based permissions model.

But as I read the article, I am reminded again of the RDF community's general failure to develop readable syntax. This post presents the comments in Turtle, a synonym for TRTL, an acronym of Terse RDF Triples Language. It's better than native RDF, but you still get long convoluted senseless statements.

Having read yet another statement in some language that look like this:

resource:r1 per:read domain:domain1, domain:domain2,  domain:domain3;
        per:create  domain:domain1, domain:domain3;
        per:update  domain:domain1, domain:domain3;
        per:noread  domain:domain4;
        per:nocreate  domain:domain5;
        per:noupdate  domain:domain5;

I declare an end to ridiculous RDF syntax.

So herewith, DRN, 'Downes RDF Notation.

DRN is composed of two major sections, the 'declarations' section, and the 'statements' section. In the declarations section, we associate terms with namespaces, while in the statements section, we make statements using those terms.

The Declarations section consists of a series of statements, each of which associates a namespace with a series of terms. Like this:
     namespace1: term1, term2, term3, term4;
     namespace2: term4, term6, term4.
As can be seen in the example, the namespace URI is followed by a colon, terms are separated by commas, and each declaration is separated with a semi-colon.

The namespace is like a dictionary. It is another document written in DRN (or DERN, or DELRN, see below) that provides additional information about the term. Thus, if you use the term 'robin', you don't need to specify every time that a 'robin' is a 'bird', that it 'flies', that it is not a 'rock', etc; this is all done in the namespace.

Proper names are terms that are defined by a proper names registry, which is simply a namespace used to define proper names.

The Statements section simply uses the terms in a rational manner. Like this:
    term1 term2 term3.
    term4 term5 term6.

As the punctuation implies, terms are separated by spaces, and statements end with a period.

You can use commas to create sequences of terms. As follows:
   term1, term2, term3 term4 term5.
   term5 term2,term3 term6.

That's the notation!

A couple of footnotes. First, white spaces (spaces, carriage returns) are used only to separate terms in statements. White spaces inserted after punctuation for clarity are ignored.

Second, while nothing prevents the use of the same term twice, from different namespaces, such usage obviously creates ambiguity. Hence, when the same term is used twice, the last or most recent definition of a term by a namespace is taken to be authoritative.

While there are no a priori constraints on the order or nature of terms, the typical sequence of terms is 'subject verb object'. The creation and use of passive verbs, such as 'is_created_by', is strongly discouraged. It's much better to write statements of the form 'x creates y' rather than 'y is_created_by x'.

Finally, a space in the defined term becomes part of the term, and not part of syntax. Thus, for example, the term 'blue jay' is treated as a single term; the parser is asked to think of it as though it were 'blue_jay'.

Note that it's very easy to construct a full logical system in DRN. For example:

   http://onto.domain.com: is,has,contains,creates
   http://animal.domain.com: robin,bluejay,grouse
     http://parts.domain.com: feathers,eggs

     robin is bird. grouse is bird. bird has feathers. bird creates eggs.

The proof of a notation is to write a parser and an inference engine, so I'll put that into my list of projects. But with only five syntax characters (white space, comma, colon, semi-colon, period) and one exception (ignoring the '://' construction in URIs) actual parsing is very simple.

DERN: Downes Extended RDF Notation

DRN will do almost everything people creating large and complex RDF structures may want to do. However there will be cases where an extended expressive capacity is required. Hence, DERN defines a set of ways of creating complex verbs using well-known modalities in conjunction with defined terms.

Modalities may be defined in the declarations section, though the default set (listed below) may be taken as as assumed. The purpose of a modality is to in some way modify the term being used. Here's the declaration of some modalities:

(Modalities)http://someurl.com:all,some,one,a,the,no
(Modalities)http://mynegation.com:not
(Modalities)http://mymodallogic.com:can,could,may,must,might,probably
(Modalities)http://mytenselogic.com:will,was

If I every create a formal version of DERN I would create the complete set here.

The effect of defining modalities is to create a superset of terms containing white spaces. It also allows a parser to define a set of inference rules based on these modalities.

For example, suppose we have defined the following:
   (Modalities)http://someplace:com:some,the,a;
   http://birdnames.com:robin,blue jay

The parser creates a superset of possible terms based on these definitions, consisting of the following:
   some robin,the robin,a robin,some blue jay, the blue jay, a blue jay

Note that the modality always precedes the term in question.

As before, there are no a priori constraints on the nature or range of modifiers; anything may be used as a modifier, and a modifier may modify anything. However, it should be clear that the use of the same string as both a term and a modifier can result in ambiguities. For example, defining 'not' as a term and then 'not' as a modifier may result in ambiguoous understandings.

As a rule of thumb, in such a case, the doubly-defined term should be understood as a modifier. However, persons wishing to recreate Continental philosophy may force the issue by defining the modifier first, then the term, invoking the rule that the 'the last or most recent definition of a term by a namespace is taken to be authoritative.' If you want to talk about 'the not', feel free (but don't expect to be understood).

Finally, modalities may be quantified. To quantify a modality, place the quantification in brackets after the modaility itself. Some obvious examples:
    some(14) bird
    probability(45) is

Quantifiers may include units. For example: (14 grams), (45 percent).

DELRN: Downes Learning Extended RDF Notation
This part of DERN is intended to enable inference. It makes use of the basic logical forms to create compound statements from which conclusions may be drawn. I will express the basic logical operators in CAPS for clarify, though they are not natively case-sensitive.

For any statements (represented with statement) the following basic logical operators may be defined:

   statement AND statement
   statement OR statement
   IF statement THEN statement
   NOT statement
   statement IFF statement
(IFF is the same as IF AND ONLY IF).

A DELRN inference engine would apply well-known logical principles in order to generate new statements from existing statements, or (more usefully) to evaluate the truth of proposed statements against the body of known statements. For example, there is a well-known rule of inference:

   If A then B. A. Therefore, B.

Given the first two statements (those preceding the word 'therefore') then we generate the third statement (the statement following the word 'therefore').

What is significant about learning rules is the employment of variables. This saves us the necessity of repeating the same rule over and over. So, for example, instead of saying:

   IF a bluejay has wings THEN a bluejay is a bird.
   IF a robin has wings THEN a robin is a bird.

and so on, for every term defined in the system, we can say:

   IF x has wings THEN x is a bird.

In order to implement DELRN, we first implement DERN, and then add the inference component after it, as follows:

First, a statement that defines variables:

   Variables are x,y,z,a,b,c.

Second, a set of rules. These rules are in addition to the standard rules of inference (the subject of another document) such as modus ponens and the rest of them. These are rules of inference specific to the present document or set of documents.

For example, a rule might be:

   IF some x is a bird THEN the x eats some(5 grams) seeds.

This tells the system not to attempt to find a namespace for the terms. It tells the system that any term being used may be inserted in the rule in place of the variable.

This enables full expressibility in predicate and modal logic.

DLEARN: Downes Learning Extended Adaptive RDF Notation

This adds one simple element to DLERN: it allows statements to become terms. Hence, we can talk about a statement as though it were an object. This allows us to make metastatements.

For example, suppose we have the statement 'A robin is a bird.' By enclosing the statement in single quotations, as done in the previous sentence, we can now treat the statement as a single term. This allows us to do something like the following:

   Variable: x.
   x is 'A robin is a bird'.
   x is probably(56 percent) true.

The statement from the start of this article? It looks like this:

somedomain.com: read,write,create,update.

somedoclist.com: r1.

domain1 can read, can create, can update r1.

domain2 can read r1.

domain3 can read, can create, can update r1.

domain4 can not read r1.

domain5 can not create, can not update r1.

That's clearer, isn't it? Though now we are left wondering whether the authors could simply have written:

somedomain.com: read,write,create,update.

somedoclist.com: r1.

domain1 can read, can create, can update r1.

domain2 can read r1.

Of course, with our greater expressive power, we could simply define a type of resource and apply permissions to that type. Or permission variables. Or a host of other permissions statements, all equally clear, and yet easily parsed..

Well, that's it. Over time, I may want to add a few things (bracketing to establish precedence, for e the basic language. It resembles natural language to a great degree, does not include pointless syntax and redundancies (such as the repetition of namespace names dozens of times in a document).

So - over to the readers. Who has already invented this? Where can I find an inference engine that uses it? Etc. Or - why won't it work? How is it expressively incomplete? Where is it ambiguous? What obscure notation from set theory cannot be expressed in this language?

A Conversation on Innovation

2011-10-10T11:48:00.001-03:00

This is a summary of the 'expert discussion' at the conclusion of Day One of the International Monitoring Organization conference. Each paragraph denotes a different speaker, the speakers are not identifies, the result being to produce a single more-or-less coherent document.

Re: the negative side of innovation, there's a pretty consistent assessment of innovation & technology, a pretty consistent statement, by the youth in the occupy movement...

But, negative side of what? Is there a negative side of progress, of change?

If we go one step beyond innovation, we have actually reached a cusp in the west. The economists don't have a theory any more. We are discussing the restructuring of democracy. These are crucial aspects of the times. The issue has to do with 'management of uncertainty' - we have reached it.

I would follow the suggestion coming from the Israel presentation. The problem is "for whom and why have we made the innovation." This isn't just academic, it's also practical. Who will implement this system? Who are they? The vast majority of managers would not support this program. Does the general population support innovation? All innovation?

We need to start thinking about 'innovation' and 'Innovation'. More people than ever are talking about the fundamental and deep flaws of our financial system. Cf. Herman Daly, 'For the Common Good' - social cost accounting and triple bottom line. The role of the capital markets effectively running the world. How do we reconceive at a deep level these things that are in place now - 'Innovation' in how we live, vs 'innovation' being faster, cheaper, smarter.

We will encounter deep generational conflict - we see a gap now between generations - gen Y, the freaks, the nerds, those who promote tech progress, and the gap between those who feel sidelined, feel overextended. And as long as innovation is tech development, not social development, we will leave them behind.

The big four dilemmas were very nicely worked out, and you stressed they are inescapable, and I agree, and yet these dilemmas are so destructive, nobody can survive it. One indicator is the epidemic growth of stress disorders, especially among creative people. And there are lots of people going bankrupt as a result of these processes. So how can we influence these dilemmas you brought out.

We need to repeat our understanding of the problems faced by young people, through real examples.

You have been working with dilemmas, and you translated it into in English, and you used the word 'contradictions', but there are other ways dilemmas exist. There may be antagonisms, but there is an incommensurability - they belong to separate categories, so they are not contradictory, and they may be unify-able, if we adopt a distinct stance.

This IMO project is (finally) developing a new momentum, testing a dialogue in a completely different manner. It's fascinating because when we speak about innovation as scientists, we are usually at least able to find the variance, but not we see we can no longer stick to this as the only possible view of innovation. It's a question about values now. Pure economic success is no longer a value a majority of the population wants to stick to. And people are now much more able to express their value systems between populations; the conflict is on a global level. But at the same time, we see in SE Asia practices like Taylorism implemented to an almost perfect degree. And many companies that reply on economies of scale are relocating to that region. What, by contrast, are our values and skills? Maybe managing diversity in a productive way, having a true credible understanding of differences in our society.

I think the framework presents what we knew about innovation in the last decade. So if there is a paradigm, I don't think there's a paradigm shift here. And this paradigm has produced acceptable results. So what would the new paradigm be? Many it relates to what has been said about values.

That's the problem. For whom and why must we innovate. Maybe we need to keep the term 'dilemma'. If we can do the same exercise looking at the 60s, they couldn't understand why these are dilemmas. Because then these were not dilemmas at all. In the 60s this was not believable and not understandable. And this is a clue to values, as to why they became dilemmas. There was a paradigm shift in capitalist development. Eg. the shift to think that full employment was not the first goal of policy. If you don't consider these real forces, the risk is of talking about a dream. Which kind of actors will support this? Which kind of frame?

This framework was developed to understand innovation forces within one organization, but we have been discussing challenges that cannot be solved within one organizational perspective. How can we address those challenges from a different perspective, addressing these challenges through networking and process within society. The other thing is to define what we mean by innovative capability, and it is still unclear how we define that concept.

Values - unfortunately so closely related to politics. Let's look at the origins, where the values come from. One is teacher training. We could come up with different kind of innovation - teachers are so powerful in harnessing the ways of harnessing knowledge, and through the hidden curriculum how and what people can use knowledge. Another compass is management, business schools. This also includes continuing education for managers. They teach future managers how to manage knowledge in the workplace - and again, the power play, who is supposed to use the knowledge, and how. We know that the power to innovate is in the people, and a lot of the potential is not put into place, and we have to ask, why is that?

Let's focus on what IMO's task is, it's not to give recommendations as to what an overall innovation strategy for Europe, it's to focus on knowledge and skills development. We cannot save the world.

And that's the problem.

There is the underlying dilemma, if I look at these eleven strategies, I look at them more or less as constraints. "You want to be responsible, but there's cost pressure." I hear the deeply held idea that you want to control things. Planning and control are difficult in a complex world where there are all kinds of constraints. You cannot have control and innovation at the same time. You have uncertainty. Control is the denial of uncertainty. We are going to solve the problem - and if there are negative sides, we don't want to see it.

I appreciate the task of the project, but everything is nested in a context, and if we focus on a non-shifting paradigm of innovation while society if on the cusp of paradigm shift, then you're really dooming innovation to irrelevance.

Planning and control. If we had been sitting here before the Arab spring, would we be having this discussion? I doubt it. Underlying the discussions here is that uncertainty can be planned for and controlled. To me the project plan now looks aged. It looks like a perspective that the financial crisis and other events have already passed. The dilemmas are still with us, but would we use the same strategies? Would we even use strategies? We certainly wouldn't put 'management of uncertainty' there.

Ten years ago it was very fashionable to have risk management - you didn't manage uncertainty, you accepted it and went with it. The possible generation conflict leads me to think of potential generational collaboration. Thinking of the very European values. The potential to avoid marginalizing large groups of society. Eg., an IMO project about innovative capacity in an era of demographic change. We need to investigate the ways to promote and encourage the multigenerational dialogue. Look at 2025, when the baby boomers push 80. What will the challenges look like there.

You mean cohesion. To avoid marginalization, means cohesion.

My point was to talk about the firm's perspective, to find advantage in some of the things we've been talking about. But we have been trying to come up with soltions that are larger than we can find within one firm. Coming up with strategies or other ways to network. This is perhaps a good model for everything good.

If the strategies are to be used by different organizations then there's just a different reference point. They are elaborated as a point of departure together.

Need to think beyond organizations. Beyond cohesion. These are dilemmas precisely because we are thinking of the good of the organization as posed against both the individual good and the social good. We don't need more cohesion, we need less. We need looser structures - but the problem is how to let go of the fabric that currently defines our structures today. Management is one of them, values another, common understanding another. We need to learn how to let go of these.

In terms of IMO, we need to raise questions in terms of agency. The question is, who is going to do it. Kids today have no faith that corporations will start a progressive innovative strategy any more. How do you get people to be able to redistribute wealth or whatever you need to get others to be able to join the conversation? Part of this IMO study should be to figure out who might be the agents.

I am both inspired by this and quite lost. There is a list of very important issues, but I don't connect what is written up there to what are the current hot topics. It's more, how to bring all these aspects we have discussed into some kind of order. There is a saying, form follows function. What are the forms of work organization? It depends on the goals that you've got. We've been reporting on these experiences. The question is how we transport these experiences into our lives, how do we change the paradigms here? We had much better strategies before the financial crisis; no we're not judging any more. We have to get it in line - the structures of our schools have to be different if we are to not hierarchically teach people, which means we have to change the schools.

A hammer slightly damaged is still useful. But it's not true that function follows form. We have to consider how these strategies come to be. After two and a half years of monitoring, etc., we had a huge amount of knowledge that was unstructured. I can't take 1000 pages of unstructured information to our government and say, "here, make a structure for yourself." It is structured - it is a map that defines what we are talking about. It may refer outside the scope of the IMO project, but it's a structure or pattern we can use.

I'd like to add a 12th strategy. We should add the actors. Eg., I don't learn from a computer course, I learn from a hotline. If I have a problem I call the hotline. I learn from colleagues. On the shop floor they learn from each other. We need to pay more attention to these new actors. Look at managers, one of the new roles of managers is to be coaches and trainers.

Of course, we have heard of the new actors, and these eleven strategies are not it, we have addressed as well various cross-sectional categories, the cross-section and cross-linkages of alliances. Targeting of knowledge, enabling and dispersion, of knowledge, etc.

It (the discussion of knowledge) complements the existing design.

Jay Cross and Harold Jarche were involved - they would say "to learn we need a certain amount of unlearning". I want to add a 13th strategy, the certainty of unmanagement.

Maybe we should join the other group and talk about uncertainty. The framework is an excellent compilation of how an organization could go about the project of encouraging innovation. But there is a problem - look at the research on resilience, etc. The models we are working on are growing so complex we cannot explain anything any more, because we cannot understand all the variables. Try to use the model to explain - we can't explain anything. When we go to companies, we show them the eleven points - but it's almost like a historical document - but companies don't want to hear the 25th version of the model, they are on the brink of performance level. We know that it's important to give people autonomy - but we're not doing that any more. Companies are working with only 10 percent of their resources, because they don't know what to do with the remaining 90 percent. This is a good starting point, but these discussions should happen with very diverse groups, not the academics any more.

I sometimes feel it's very necessary to compile and structure it. But to me what's necessary is to discovery the application - to research any apply is not a contradiction. To apply is a process of research. It's like children learning language - they do not proceed without uncertainty, reading all the grammar books - they just adapt. Adapting, applying and them making new discoveries.

Innovation is dynamic. Innovation carries obsolescence. And the third is that value and ethics need to be with organizations. And sustainability if going to be critical in the next few years.

Yes, sustainability was one of the dilemmas. And the definition of innovative capability includes this. And we have many different perspectives, from Russia to Canada.

Undercutting Industry

2011-10-04T15:51:00.000-03:00

Stephen H. Foerster write, on OER-forum:

> The logic is that it's inappropriate for governmentto undercut private industry.

There are many cases where it is appropriate forgovernment to, as you say, 'undercut industry'. For example:

- industry could make lots of money building roads andbridges and changing tolls, but government does this (usually without tolls)because it's a lot more efficient

- industry could make lots of money offering health care,but in many nations (such as Canada, my own nation) government provides theseservices, because it's more efficient, and many people could not affordcommercial health care

- private industry would make a lot of money offeringprimary and secondary school, but government offers this service to ensure aproper quality of education and to ensure all can attend

- industry makes money delivering letters and packages,but government also provides a postal service, because industry will not serveremote regions at reasonable rates

- private industry offers security and protectionservices, and would make a lot more money if not undercut by public police andfire services, but government provides these to ensure everyone in society isprotected

So...

It can be appropriate for government to 'undercutindustry', and these are cases in which industry cannot or will not provideservices at reasonable rates to all segments of society.

It is arguable that (a) academic and educationalpublishing is an essential service that ought to be available to all segmentsof society, and

(b) private industry is not able or willing to offerthese services to all segments of society at a reasonable cost.

In such a case, it is reasonable for government to'undercut industry' in order to ensure that the benefits of the educationalsystem reach everyone in society.

Indeed, I would go further and argue that in some casesthe government ought to block industry participation in some markets whereindustry participation is harming, rather than serving, the public interest.One such case is industry participation in academic publishing, wheregovernment-granted monopolies over the distribution of government-fundedacademic and educational materials are resulting in severely limited access toeducational and academic materials.

Six Ways the Rich Are Waging a Class War Against the Poor

2011-09-26T21:21:00.002-03:00

The article is wordy and a a bit too specific, in a misleading way. But it ultimately gets at six of the ways the rich are waging a class war against the poor. Here's my clearer, more pointed (and more international) list:

1. Attacking the Vote

It's not just about depicting voter registration as "unAmerican". The vote is being undermined world-wide, not only through disenfranchisement, but also through money politics, divestment of public goods and responsibility into private hands, and the corruption of politics generally.

2. Unemployment (without benefits)

The people no longer needed to produce consumer goods are depicted as lazy and slackers, and their unemployment is blames on their lack of a desire to work. This despite the fact that they are those who have historically contributed to society, and should have earned a share of its wealth.

3. Denial of Status

Because the poor have managed to amass some quantity of essentially worthless goods, their poverty is denied recognition. This is the 'everybody has colour TV so nobody is poor' argument.

4. Paternalism

The poor are blamed for their own poverty, and therefore measures - such as food stamps - must be undertaken so they do not deepen their poverty. These measures effectively disempower the poor and prevent their use of what meagre means they have in anything other than an approved manner.

5. Distraction from Cause

To hear the rich, the causes of poverty are legion: everything from single-parent homes to poor education outcomes to inferior cultural values. Consequently, anti-poverty initiatives are directed away from the actual causes of poverty. These, in turn, rather than becoming measures to reduce poverty, become mechanisms of transferring public wealth back to the rich.

6. Taxation

The bulk of the burden of taxation falls upon those who earn the least in society, this particularly when consumption taxes are taken into account. Wealthy entities, such as the rich and large corporations, function essentially tax-free; even those who pay taxes are eligible for support and subsidy programs unimaginable to the poor.

Posted to Googple+ here: https://plus.google.com/109526159908242471749/posts

Refuting Every Point

2011-09-23T17:52:00.003-03:00

It's not often that you get a serties of points like this just begging to be refuted:

> I don't think most of us want our dentists to be "out of the box" thinkers.

I do. I totally don't want my dentists practising the way they did when I was a kid, I appreciate the dentist who put "Where's Waldo" on the ceiling (this prompting one of my best insights about knowledge), and I think Nitrous Oxide and the iPod are the greatest boons to dentistry ever. All totally out of the box thinking.

> I don't believe that when teaching a pilot to fly 747s we encourage a "don't memorize facts, look it up" training.

Nobody wants 747 pilots to rely on memory. That's why pilots (and other staff) are given detailed checklists to follow. When new planes come on stream, or new procedures are implemented, we want the pilots to be "looking them up" instead of relying on remembering what they did when they were first trained.

> Do we really want the accountants preparing our taxes to take a constructivist route to learning new tax laws?

Yes. Tax laws change every year and there's not going to be anyone around to teach them. If they don't learn how to figure it out by themselves when they're in school, they will be hopeless as accountants - and will cost us money.

> Do we really want an engineer learning how to learn when she designs the bridge we travel over for work each day?

Yes. It's important to be alert for factors that might never have been taught in Engineering school. New materials with new strengths - and new weaknesses - are developed all the time. The engineer has to learn how to observe these new materials, to work in new environments - and to be able to pick up cues that may be very different from place to place. Not only that, engineers work for clients. They need to understand their needs and constraints. The first thing an engineer needs to do on any job is to learn how to learn everything he or she will need to complete the bridge.

> I shudder to think of a world in which hospitals were run like schools: every doctor allowed to do her own "thing" with no accountability or practices based on the best research and information available.

Doctors that simply follow procedure, no matter how "evidence-based", make the worst doctors. While there may be a great deal of similarity between one illness and the next, the reality is that every patient is different, and that the doctor has to make an evaluation based on the facts at hand.

That's not to say doctors are completely free-range, with no accountability whatsoever (though it certainly feels like it at times). Doctors, like teachers, are probably held more accountable than most other professionals. A doctor who loses all his or her patients will face the same sort of questions as a teacher who fails all his or her students. And actually - if doctors were as accountable as teachers,people would blame them when people become obese, develop genetic disorders, drive carelessly or drink too much alcohol.

> Every hospital does not need to be a research establishment, gathering data via "action research" related to any spurious brain-fart a teacher might have which could even remotely impact learning.

Every hospital does act as a research environment, participating in clinical trials, training interns through hands-on practise, monitoring reactions, effectiveness of procedures, and the rest. There's nothing wrong with collecting a lot of data and subjecting it to analysis, provided (a) privacy and security are protected, and (b) it's not used as a club to punish employees who had no power to control the outcome.

> Children are not rats on which educational experiments should be endlessly run. Until we have a body of evidence, hopefully gather by lab schools or non-commercial researchers, we ought to be following best practices as outlined by our professional organizations.

Children are lab rats on which endless experiments are run. Coaches try out new practice regimes, advertisers try out new commercials, toy companies test out new games, media companies experiment with new genres (and retread pop idols), clothing manufacturers try out new fabrics, and hospitals try out new treatments. There's no way to get the evidence other than by experimentation - demanding "best practices" with no experimentation is inherently self-contradictory.

> Educational technology experts may be doing both students and themselves a significant disservice by advocating a single, unproven approach to educational practices.

They would be, if that's what they were doing. But for the most part, if not entirely, education technology experts are not doing that. The things advocated by technologists - everything from serious games to social networking to online writing to immersive simulations - have been tried and tested. We know they work. We don't say 'everything should be a simulation' or 'all students must blog'. Nobody does that.

> Mr. Warlick and Mr. Richardson, I am a huge fan and appreciate the challenge. But don't discount the value and honor in learning a craft or a research-based profession and doing it very, very well.

Maybe think about how this craft was learned. Most teachers, although they went to school and university, learned much of what they know about the classroom is a slow, painstaking, hand-won fashion, from the time they were student teachers, trying things out with real students, to the time they were veterans, learning some new technology along with their students.

Every time a teacher faces a new class in September, the learning begins again. The students don't come with any 'best practice' manual (though if the teachers communicate well there might be some reports). What worked in a research environment might well fail with the current group - there's no way to know except to try.

> I want our schools so serve those who wish to be future plumbers, mechanics, and nurses as well as future politicians, bureaucrats and school administrators. Those folks who need a actual body of knowledge and skills that they can apply reliably and effectively.

There is no such thing as a "body of knowledge" that characterizes the education needed by plumbers, mechanics, nurses, politicians, bureaucrats and administrators.

If you even think about that for a moment, you see how ridiculous such a statement is. Take me, for example. I'm 50. When I would have been learning plumbing or mechanics or the rest, it was the 1970s. Back then:

- there were no PVC pipes in wide usage, aluminum wiring was just fine, asbestos was widely used for insulation and fireproofing, and building codes covered a fraction of what they do today. Even the knowledge of 'how to seal pipes' or 'proper drainage for a house' changed in that time.

- the '351 Cleveland' was the engine of choice, there were no electronics or computers in cars, ABS brakes didn't exist, and farmers used purple gas

I have written on numerous occasions that to learn how to be a plumber or a mechanic or anything else is not to memorize some 'body of knowledge' - not only would this knowledge be useful just a few years out of school, that approach to learning would render you an inflexible, and ultimately terrible, plumber or mechanic.

What the evidence tells us (if people would just look at it) is that becoming a plumber or a mechanic or whatever is to adopt, and embody, what Wittgenstein would call a form of life - a way of seeing the world, a way of looking at problems and learning solutions, a way of experimenting, communicating, imagining and thinking.

It's when we rely on an old set of 'best practices' that are anything but that we do the most damage to children and students. It's when we think we know, but do not, that we callously commit the most grievous damage.

One Bad Experience

2011-09-23T15:36:00.001-03:00

It's funny how one bad experience can make you feel disempowered and helpless and frustrated.

Andrea and I have been struggling with one doctor for several years now (no, not our family doctor, a specialist). Obtaining appointments has become an exercise in continual frustration. Today was just the latest in a long string of incidents.

We understand that the doctor is busy, and that there's a waiting list. We understand that we have to make a special effort to see the specialist. But there are unnecessary difficulties and these have made life miserable for us over the last four years.

At most places - like the dentist, the optometrist, the family doctor, the blood clinic, my CPAP specialist, the Honda dealership, and pretty much everyone else except medical specialists here in NB - you make an appointment, and then when the day arrives, you go to your appointment.

Often, the service will give you a call a day or two ahead of the appointment, as a courtesy. One of our dentists even has an automated calling service which makes the call at night, when the office is empty. We confirm the appointment and, most of the time, make it without a problem.

Not so the specialist. Instead, his secretary keeps all the information to herself. Instead of making appointments ahead of time, she calls people to tell them they have an appointment at such and such a time. Her calls can give you as much as a week of warning, or as little as a day or two.

If you are referred to this doctor, you don't set an appointment. You sit and wait. When the time comes, you receive a phone call. You cancel whatever your plans were, and show up to the appointment. You are not supposed to call them and ask - you get increasingly terse responses telling you to be patient.

When I asked the secretary about this, she said "it's more efficient." She tried setting up appointments ahead of time, she said, but people kept missing them. So she just calls them at the last minute. What about reminder calls? I asked. She doesn't have time for that, she said.

Even granted that it's more efficient (which I do not believe) it is still a very difficult system to work with, very hard on people waiting for care, and very unstable.

We waited 18 months to get the first call. 18 months after the referral, and the call never came. I went in and was told there was never a referral. Fortunately, our family doctor keeps records, and the referral was down on paper. We had simply been missed, and were never going to get a call, and just didn't know it.

Once on the list (for we were put on the list right away once we brought it to their attention) we faced a second waiting period for an actual appointment. Time passed. We were told, again, that it could be 18 months. So we waited another year an a half. When I went in we were told that we had been given some papers at the previous meeting to deliver to the hospital, and since we hadn't done so, the paperwork never came back and so no appointment was made.

No problem. We would get a call in December for an appointment for surgery in early January. Finally. Most of December came and went, and I went into the office a week before Christmas to find it in a state of disrepair. All the staff had taken the month of December off and the office was being renovated. I left the office growling about lawyers and politicians and how heads were going to roll.

When I went back in the first week of January, I was told that the hospital time had not been available and so the appointment could not be made. So they just never called. In fact, the hospital time would not be available, somehow, until March.

Now we're in follow-up mode, one ankle down and one to go. But I found out today that we were back into the "we'll never get a call" cycle. Apparently (so I'm told) we were called in August for an appointment in August, and that it had been missed, so we were off the 'to be called' list. If we hadn't inquired, we would never have heard about the scheduled follow-up.

Now I am supposed to have been the one to have taken this call. Readers will recall we were camping in Prince Edward Island for the month of August. But the secretary stared me straight in the eyes and said I had taken her call. So - I suppose it's possible. We did come home a few times to feed the cats. But I have no recollection of such a phone call. And it's not like there's a piece of paper that says "here's your appointment" that can prove the case one way or another.

Anyhow, now we're back into the 'we will call you' cycle again, where we are told, "If the doctor wants to see you, we'll get a call next Monday." If not - we're off the list completely, and we'll never hear anything about the second ankle.

I'm quite sure we're not the only people in this situation. Maybe it's normal that the people of New Brunswick have the time to sit around and wait for a call from their specialists, but we do not. We do things - we travel, we go camping, we make commitments. So do other people, which means when they get into a situation where they need a specialist, they have to go through this phone-call roulette.

To be clear: it's not just this doctor and this secretary. I have had to see two other specialists here in the province, about other things, and they both set up appointments the same way - don't call us, we'll call you (some time).

It's very hard not to think that there's something funny going on here. It's very hard to think that what in most jurisdictions would normally be a waiting list, where people make appointments and wait their turn, here there's a different sort of pecking order at work, where decisions are made behind the scenes about which patients get seen first and which must wait.

And when you're an immigrant to New Brunswick, with no relatives and no connections in the health care sector, and when you always find yourself waiting the maximum period, or shuffled off the list altogether, you really begin to wonder.

At the very least, we seem to be facing some sort of systemic incompetence. I'm even willing to admit that it might me our incompetence - it's not like I have a lot of experience dealing with health care systems and doctors. But the problem is, when there's nothing you can do but sit and wait for a phone call that might never come, there's nothing you can do to fix things, nothing you can do to make plans, nothing you can do to ensure that you are seen in a timely manner.

There's no excuse for not making appointments. There's no excuse for not making some commitment about the time it will take to see a specialist. There's no excuse for a process that makes it impossible to make any plans or do anything that takes you away from your home for more than a day or two. People who are in the medical system ought to have rights: the right to transparency about the process, and the right to fair treatment.

Right now, neither is the case in New Brunswick. I imagine most people here are too cowed and scared by the specialists and their secretaries that they don't do anything. But we're to the point where there's nothing to lose, where even if we complain we can't get worse service, because that's where we're at now.

So I'm muttering about lawyers and politicians and waiting for Monday, when I expect that the promised phone call will not come at all, again.