Elgg Interviewed!

Elgg - social network software for education:
An interview of the founders of Elgg

I heartily recommend the Elgg Learning Landscape to any teacher and/or professor who wants to use blogs with their students. To learn more, you can click the link at the top to read an interview with Elgg's founders. Elgg itself is both free and very user-friendly. I recommend giving yourself some time to explore it. I also suggest that, if you decide to use it, you ask your students to explore it and see if any can find aspects that you've missed. I've learned a lot that way.

What makes Elgg particularly recommendable - (Is that a word? Oh, well, you know what I mean.) - is that the individual user can set their own level of privacy for each of their own postings. Students can set their post as "Private" and no one, not even the Community Owner/teacher will be able to see it. They can also set it for just the community, or just the logged-in users of Elgg, or make it completely "Public" - at their own discretion. I like that (except when some students don't understand "Private" and can be upset to get '0' on their post) and the students like it. I sometimes am shy when I think about certain people reading what I'm saying. Although many of the student generation are very (too?) casual about who might be their audience, there are some that appreciate the "walled garden" approach to posting their thoughts on the Web.

Last term I used an Elgg Community blog with a class, and it gave me a view of how the class was working that I'd never had before. I gave a combination of guidance on what to post on and the language etiquitte required, and the freedom of their own casual 'voices' plus the freedom to go beyond the topic guidelines. What I got to see was their thinking, including problems, and, delightfully, how they were helping each other both think and accomplish assignments. I believe the Community blog encouraged more of a community experience for the class members. They were also required to use a wiki (on Wikispaces) and post their assignments there, which gave them a larger (and consequently more 'real') audience than just the teacher!

I also use Elgg for a blog of my own where I explore the pedagogical implications of this new communication medium, Web 2.0.

I am part of a more loosely-joined community. Elgg is designed so that I can designate other Elgg members as "Friends". How I use that function is by clicking on "Friends Blogs" (see the menu bar in the image above under the forest and railway image) and I get to read an aggregated collection of the posts of the people I have designated as friends. Here's what part of my Network page looks like:

You can see, above, some of the people whose blogs I follow. It was through Dave Tosh's blog that I found the reference to the interview link that I started this post with.

And yesterday, I noticed the menu bar's "Friends of" link and discovered who was connecting to my Elgg blog! When I checked out their profiles, I could see that we had interests in common, and added many of them to my Friends list. Thus I'm gaining a loose community of people interested in ideas, and possibilities that we can share.

As you begin to think about the fall and your teaching, I recommend you check out the possibilites of Elgg for your class and for yourself.

technorati tags:Elgg, blogs, Class_Blogs

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Stephen Downes & The Shifting Semiosis

We are seeing people create more (and better) multimedia. It is easier to create a short audio or video message than it is to type a message, and once storage and delivery cease to be problems (as we are seeing today) there is less of an incentive to create text. True, there will always be a need for text, especially among academics, but much (if not most) popular communication will be audio and video.

The challenge will be to effect a transition between the textual world and the multimedia, to communicate complex ideas in a manner accessible to people using audio and video. Neither medium favours the abstract (and neither do their consumers today) and each medium imposes channel limitations (you can't skim an audio or video file).

It will be necessary, in my view, to evolve a form of language that combines audio, video and text, to in other words combine the subtlety and expressiveness of text with the emotion and immediacy of audio and video.

Half an Hour: mLearning Tools

Yes! Once again Stephen Downes has articulated a vision that I share. Yes, multimedia is getting easier. Anyone who can use a phone can dial into AudioBlogger and post a message on a blog. At a slightly more sophisticated level, you can use the freeware Audacity and/or Apple's GarageBand to create an MP3 and link it to a blog and/or create a podcast.

And webcams and digital video cameras come in all levels of sophistication, with some very cheap and easy. YouTube and OurMedia make sharing video easy. You can even see an example of audio and video and text combined with certain presentation software, for example take half an hour to look at Nigel Paine talking about  Podcasting, wikis and blogs at the BBC using datapresenter software. (Ignore the overlong silly Ninja bit, and just get to the content.)

For sure, the rapid development of photosharing sites such as Flickr show how important visuals are to the general population. But I take some issue with Stephen when he says "there will always be a need for text, especially among academics, but much (if not most) popular communication will be audio and video." According to the Pew research, at least 12% of the (North?) American population blogs, and about 39% of  us read blogs. If you add in reading books, etc. it's obvious that text is profoundly important. I also believe the act of writing has a different learning and psychological insight impact that results from  speaking and then viewing and/or hearing   recordings of it. I think writing helps you move forward in your thinking and understanding in a way that recorded speech and visuals don't.

Maybe what I'm saying is that language is my path. If I stop to think of people I know who aren't as text-oriented as I am, and who are more aurally or visually oriented, then maybe then can learn, think, and understand in a more multimedia environment. Heck, maybe I'm part of the last print generation and the transition. So maybe I don't have an issue with what Stephen says, especially when I re-read the second paragraph in the quotation where he mentions the abstract. As Roseanne Rosanna Danna used to say: "Never Mind ;->"

Once again, Stephen has sparked my thinking through a concept, not simply accepting what is written, and I think that's one of the wonders of what text allows and invites.

technorati tags:Downes, multimedia, text

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A summer Idyll

Walking in the summer ...

Or staying in my air-conditioned study ...

Could life be sweeter?

Elgg vs the LMS

Web 2.0 vs the LMS

Web 2.0 is increasingly making the use of Learning Management Systems anachronistic. Blackboard, which has taken over WebCT has been granted a patent for a whole whack of LMS functions, as Harold Jarche lists in his post quoted from and linked below.

From Harold Jarche's Blog -

I think that it’s important to consider that these kinds of functions can be found not just in LMS but also LCMS and even some non-traditional online learning systems. Is there an online learning system, proprietary or open source, that does not include ANY of these functions?

Update: On reviewing these 44 items, I would say that Elgg Learning Landscape does not use any of these. So, I guess that makes your decision easy. Choose Elgg if you want a lawsuit-free learning system ;-)

Harold Jarche » Blackboard Sues D2L over LMS Patent

Who Needs LMSs?

I believe that this is the corporate system about to topple from its own weight. I teach using an Elgg Community blog and a course wiki. I used to use WebCT. I prefer the blog and wiki as teaching tools; they're simpler to use, much, much cheaper, and students learn how to use software they might encounter again in their futures. The only thing I miss from a LMS is being able to post the students' marks securely, and I assume something that will be developed sometime soon. Till then, I can make do with some old-style approaches.

I challenge the LMS researchers to find out how many of the possibilities available in their systems are actually used by how many teachers. I suspect many courses are shells, easily replaceable by community blogs (even on Blogger) and wikis, which can be made private. So only the student mark tracking is missing, and why pay thousands for that?

Elgg Plus

Take a look at the OpenAcademic site, as described by Elgg's Dave Tosh to see a completely different social and economic ethos, where time and effort goes into improving the learning and teacher experience, not into lawsuits.

technorati tags:Elgg, Jarche, LMS

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Education and Creativity

Some excellent advice on making presentations from Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users, one of my favorite bloggers.

However, what I really loved from this post was her link to the TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson.

What he says about the problem with our current educational systems is very important, but the man could have a career as a stand-up comic, if he weren't in education. For an educational and amusing 20 minutes (approximately) - watch & listen here. It's really worth your time!

technorati tags:KenRobinson, KSierra, presenting, education

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The U.S. DOPA Legislation

Damming the Ocean!

US House Resolution 5319, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), was passed by a 410 to 15 vote tonight. If the Resolution becomes law social networking sites and chat rooms must be blocked by schools and libraries or those institutions will lose their federal internet subsidies.

Techcrunch » Blog Archive » US House: Schools must block MySpace, many other sites

This American move could have a huge impact on Canada, and the world, and the Web, but I think they are simply trying to dam the ocean. It's too late. And it's totally ironic.

It's Too Late

Pandora's Box has been opened, the genie is out of the bottle, this new semiosis will not be stopped, as long as there's electricity, computers, and networks. If/When those are destroyed, we'll have more to worry about than MySpace!

It's Totally Ironic

Guess who created the ancestor of the Web? The American military during the Cold War, wanted a way to make sure they could keep controlling their fighting forces even if all major cities were wiped out, so they created ARPANET, and from ARAPANET came the Internet, followed by Tim Berners-Lee's development of a visual interface, and, thus, the World Wide Web, and, currently Web 2.0, the Read/Write or Social Web, where the fearful MySpace is located.

Net Neutrality and the American Internet Regulator

The video, with sound, will start to play after you click - almost 5 minutes - on YouTube and Jon Stewart - It's funny, but it's terrifying because the people making the rules appear to know so little.

Net neutrality, BTW, is a different issue than DOPA - it's the attempt of commercial interests to make the Web less democratic, to set up a two-tiered, or multi-tiered system where some sites would be less available than others depending on your service providers whims, or business deals. And this could affect Canada directly too, as Michael Geist has pointed out:

Websites, e-commerce companies, and other innovators have also relied on network neutrality, secure in the knowledge that the network treats all companies, whether big or small, equally. That approach enables those with the best products and services, not the deepest pockets, to emerge as the market winners. Internet users have similarly benefited from the network neutrality principle. They enjoy access to greater choice in goods, services, and content regardless of which ISP they use. While ISPs may compete based on price, service, or speed, they have not significantly differentiated their services based on availability of Internet content or applications, which remains the same for all. In short, network neutrality has enabled ISPs to invest heavily in new infrastructure, fostered greater competition and innovation, and provided all Canadians with equal access to a dizzying array of content.

Michael Geist - The Search for Net Neutrality

But I digress.

To Learn More About DOPA, go here -

and find this section and read the links

I’m not the best person to analyze this though. Here’s who I recommend:

• Declan McCullagh at ZDNet has posted a very thorough background article on DOPA.
• Andy Carvin writes Learning Now, a blog about education and technology for PBS, and has set up a page called DOPAWatch to aggregate blog posts on the topic.
• danah boyd is probably the web’s leading expert in analyzing the politics of MySpace and youth social networking.
• Will Richardson’s Weblogg-Ed is a great source for all things Learning 2.0
• Vicki A. Davis is a Christian school teacher in Georgia who uses blogs, wikis, podcasting and more in her classrooms. Vicki has written a number of powerful posts on DOPA

Techcrunch » Blog Archive » US House: Schools must block MySpace, many other sites

The most important communication development since the printing press, maybe even since the creation of writing, is being threatened! The most significant education tool is being blocked because some people misuse it. Why not ban cell-phones instead, because way more people misuse them!

What Is Needed

People of all ages need to learn how to use the Web safely and intelligently, because it isn't going to go away. The older and/or less Web-aware need to learn more about how it works and what it can do for them. The younger and supposedly Web-adept (but often strangely Web-naive) need to learn about b.s. detection (academically known as critical thinking) and privacy-protection. IMHO.

technorati tags:DOPA, Net_Neutrality, Geist, MySpace, TechCrunch

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YouTube Shifts Our Semiosis

"Now with the advent of the internet we have the first medium that is oral and written, private and public, individual and collective at the same time." Derek de Kerckhove - from The Skin of Culture, 1995.

And, as Tom Scocca describes in The YouTube Devolution from The New York Observer, we have a medium that preserves and shares moving visuals, clips from TV, movies, and home videos that are searchable and replayable in a way we humans have never seen before. For a world-wide audience too, as I described here. YouTube allows us to find and watch as many times as we want videos - in a manner similar to how we can find text(s) in libraries or through Web search engines.

Scocca says:

Memory has always been a shaky witness. But writing was checkable, to one degree or another. There could be differences of taste or opinion, but there was the text lurking, waiting to settle the question. If you told someone else a piece of writing was good (or gorgeous, or moving, or persuasive), that claim would have to survive the other person’s reading of it.

NYO - Off the Record

And ...

The Internet left writers more exposed than ever. If you were published from the mid-90’s onward, you ended up in a text-based panopticon: At any time, someone, somewhere, could conceivably be reading something you had written.

NYO - Off the Record

(I love the word "panopticon" - it is so brutal, and so descriptive of what the Web is.)

Writing text led to the development of indices and, consequently, to libraries, and the Web is not the enemy of libraries but part of their natural evolution.

These opportunities represent, in part, a surprise victory for library science. As we plunged into the digital age, one of the great fears was of format obsolescence: People would throw out old-fashioned paper in favor of electronic archives, only to suddenly find that they had all the works of human knowledge stored on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies and nobody was making floppy drives anymore. But with Web video, people are raiding their personal, inaccessible stashes of VHS tapes, winding through them till they find the important bits, and transferring them from a near-obsolete medium to a current one.

NYO - Off the Record

YouTube is a bold new step into the culture we humans are creating with our media -

YouTube stands as the opposite of old television because, above all, it’s easy. It doesn’t demand that you install a player; it doesn’t crash your browser. It embeds in blogs and plays there, freely.

NYO - Off the Record

YouTube and similar sites are taking us into a new semiosis, away from text which demands analysis and a distancing objectivity, the stalwart standards of our academic culture, into the sensational media that provides the experience without demanding the analysis.

I recommend Scocca's article - The YouTube Devolution.

technorati tags:Scocca, YouTube, semiosis

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Grey's Anatomy - My TV Fav

ABC.com: Grey's Anatomy

I watched two back-to-back episodes yesterday evening. I'd seen both before, but I still totally enjoyed them. Why? Because they show people behaving badly but trying to do their best. And they might be simplified psychologically, but they aren't widely inaccurate, as many TV shows are.

Take Meredith, the central figure. She has a difficult but brilliant mother with Alzheimer's, and Meredith has to struggle to be responsible. she's no plaster saint, but she's understandable, and she tries!

The same thing with her love interest and his wife. The situation's is acknowledged, but all three try to behave with as much grace and ethics as they can, and their struggles are heroic, IMHO.

Then there's Sandra Oh as Christina. I absolutely love her. She's beyond difficult, and she knows she is, but she accepts herself, and still works at becoming more human. The way she connects with her friends and Preston Burke enthralls me. She's my favorite character/actor in the cast.

Dr Bailey is my second favorite. I guess I like testy women who take no prisoners. She (the character) is blunt and firm, yet ethically-based, rather than power-hungry or ego-biased. She is a really positive female role model.

I like the men too, especially George as he surprises himself as he develops into maturity. In some ways he's the most overtly immature, but all the characters in this show are facing their developmental challenges and trying their best in human (as well as surgical) terms.

Watching the episodes for the second time through the summer re-runs, I see that this was a fully thought out set of episodes, with character consistency clearly evident. As you can tell, I like it a lot!

tags

Grey's Anatomy

TV

Design and Ugly MySpace

the show with zefrank - 07-14-06

The video linked to the page linked above (did you get that?) Anyway, the video with the image shown below is amusing and insightful. zefrank, as this blogger calls himself, gives the big picture of what is currently happening with design, and tells us why. It the accessibility of the tools! When design tools were rare, expensive, and demanded a high level of skill, a small group could define what good design was. With the democratising of the tools, the small group no longer rules. A new definition of good design is emerging as more and more people play with the new tools.

Or that's what I thought he was saying/showing.

Link to his blog post and see what you think!

technorati tags:zefrank, MySpace, design

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An Artist Reports From Beirut

Mazen Kerbaj sends out words, images, and music from Beirut at http://mazenkerblog.blogspot.com/

This appears not to be a political site, but rather stories and descriptions of being in the middle of a war the blogger doesn't want to be part of.

To avoid the spin of more political blogs, and to see how it feels to be in Beirut now, check out this blog.

tags
Beirut
Blog_art

For Your Entertainment!

Play films - Focus on Animation - ONF

Canada's National Film Board has produced some amazing animated films. Here, for your personal enjoyment, you can watch some of them. I like to search by title - on the left, and check out the description, on the right, before I play them.

The Big Snit is especially topical right now!

technorati tags:Canada, Animation, National_Film_Board, NFB

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Generosity

Steve Rubel says in his blog Micro Persuasion: Only Generous Bloggers Influence and I agree.

The generosity dynamic that exists in the blogosphere is really important.

Micro Persuasion: Only Generous Bloggers Influence

Being generous is an act of creativity. In an interesting way, blog generosity is, in my opinion, a good metaphor for how generosity works in life-off-the-Web.

There's no way around it. You have to lavishly dish out links, advice, news, ideas, commentary, freebies, you name it. It's up to you.

Micro Persuasion: Only Generous Bloggers Influence

When you help people connect with others or ideas relevant to what they want to/need to do, you help them create by linking them. That can happen on the Web, and, as I said before, in life-off-the-Web. This is also the pattern that makes a good teacher or learning community member. I think it is more innate or socially patterned in some people than others; I also think it can be learned.

A major difference between generosity on and off the Web is that in life-off-the-Web generous people can be burned. I remember, in my late twenties, feeling really ripped off by a few people whom I had been friendly and generous to, but who just didn't bother to help a mutual friend when it would have been easy to. I started feeling like I had been designated "the server of others" by them. I decided to try to limit my generosity to those who I had received generosity from, or whom I had seen being generous to others.

Maybe I'm making an artificial distinction between life on and off the Web. Rubel also notes about selfish bloggers and reacts much like I did -

They focus solely on themselves and not an iota on others. I have unsubscribed from all of these blogs. They're just not worth my time.

Micro Persuasion: Only Generous Bloggers Influence

Targetting  my generosity is the choice I make. I don't want to throw my energy into the service of the greedy and neglectful. I try to be conscious of receiving generosity, and only welcome those who also share.

technorati tags:generosity, Rubel

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Out of Left Field

The dream comes again, but this time

there's a space for me, and the powerman

listens.

I hide my nakedness and offer

the one I fear for

as champion.

I am afraid

I am required.

technorati tags:poem, dream

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

If you like

• the bar scene in the original Star Wars,
• the tragic musical monster of Phantom of the Opera,
  
• Jedidiah, the Gyro Captain in Road Warior,
• Johnny Depp channelling Keith Richards,
• Orlando Bloom's cheekbones,
  
• Keira Knightley's feistiness,
• a fantastical plot,
• lots of explosions, and
  
• nasty villians,

and you don't require

• characters with depth, and
  
• a meaningful plot,

then this movie is for you.

technorati tags:Pirates, Dead_Man's_Chest

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The New Social-izing

The online culture is socially-driven, but it's a different kind of socializing. In some ways it's a million Speaker's Corners, where some have megaphones of varying amplifications, and some speak (write, record&play) in a soundless chamber.

The aggregate is beginning to have power, even though many individuals may not. Chris Anderson, in the large megaphone he is editor in chief of, Wired, writes about People Power and says -

Now we have armies of amateurs, happy to work for free. Call it the Age of Peer Production. From Amazon.com to MySpace to craigslist, the most successful Web companies are building business models based on user-generated content. This is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of the second-generation Web. The tools of production, from blogging to video-sharing, are fully democratized, and the engine for growth is the spare cycles, talent, and capacity of regular folks, who are, in aggregate, creating a distributed labor force of unprecedented scale.

Wired 14.07: People Power

Yup. This is how we people amuse ourselves, writing into the void for the pleasure of writing to find out what we think. Is it work? School and business have taught us that writing is work, and there are certainly skills and mind-work required (I believe) but is writing about what we want to write about really work? Or is it the equivalent of the social chatting for pleasure rather than the formalized, constricted, purposeful 'social' interaction of  meetings or political interactions?

Previous industrial ages were built on the backs of individuals, too, but in those days labor was just that: labor. Workers were paid for their time, whether on a factory floor or in a cubicle. Today’s peer-production machine runs in a mostly nonmonetary economy.

Wired 14.07: People Power

We like to express ourselves in writing as well as in speaking.

This isn’t amateurs versus professionals; it’s each benefiting the other. Companies aren’t just exploiting free labor; they’re also creating the tools that give voice to millions. And that rowdy rabble isn’t replacing the firm; it’s providing the energy that drives a new sort of company, one that understands that talent exists outside Hollywood, that credentials matter less than passion, and that each of us has knowledge that’s valuable to someone, somewhere.

Wired 14.07: People Power

Yup, even if we don't write/talk strongly enough to be heard individually, we can make enough noise together to talk back to the powers-that-be in a way they can choose to hear. And that's something, I guess.

technorati tags:peer_production, Wired, Chris_Anderson

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Popular Culture: Crazy & The Devil Wears Prada

Here's my current favorite song/video - "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley - the link is to YouTube and begins playing immediately.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgKUnhCANTY

I enjoy the visuals & the lyrics as well as the music itself.

_______________________________________________________

The Devil Wears Prada - no spoilers

• Anne Hathaway is good at doe-eyed naif-ness
• The boyfriend is mostly one note.
• Stanley Tucci is believable and likeable
• The romance plot is standard, as is the business plot
• The clothes are fairly restrained (for the fashion business setting) and beautiful

BUT

• Meryle Streep is beyond amazing!

I totally enjoyed the experience of watching it.

technorati tags:Crazy, Gnarls_Barkley, Meryl_Streep, Devil_Wears_Prada

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Long time, No Write

My life is distributed in blogs. I have two main blogs, one that is a space to be kind of a PD person, making suggestions about how to operate on the web and informing people about what I have gleaned from my Bloglines collection. Another overlapping one is more academic in nature, aimed at teachers who are interested both in scholarship and in educational technology. Plus I belong to a couple of communities that have blogs, and there's a course blog. Then there's this long=neglected one.

Since last I wrote here, I have retired from college and started teaching occasional courses at university. And today, I just pulled myself out of a contract that I am just not suited for. I feel badly, but I hope I've learned that if my intuition says I won't like something, I should listen. 'Cause my intuition knew, but I used my willpower against my intuition, and that was dumb. As I've now proven to myself, and probably to others.

So here I am, feeling better, slightly poorer, but still in a wonderful place in the universe! Which blog do I use to proclain my psychic news? I think it might become this one.

Plagiarism - in the web world

Found someone plagiarising text for a school-assigned website. When I googled, the student's text was found on at least five other sites. The student used someone else's text word-for-word, but so had others outside the school environment!

We know about peer-to-peer with music and movies, we wink at image re-use, and cut-and-paste is leading to more and more plagiarism. Is intelligent, meaningful, and well-designed content, irrelevant of its sources, the way of the future?

In this new communicative space with its ease of reproduction, what rules are appropriate? And what is the relevance of a source when cropping and altering have been applied?

Keeping Up and Choices

Spent the day reviewing Stephen Downes emails, catching up.

There is so much, and developments are exploding possibilities.

I can't try everything; I have to chose what to play with. Stay with a limited JotSpot, or shift to Drupal? Be serious about using Backpack to plan, or let it drift away? I have chosen to commit to Furl, and it's working for me. FLickr, to a limited degree too. I should start looking at the urls posted by others who have matching urls to what I've chosen - using the social web.

I need to learn more about trackback, and use the Creative Commons.

Never enough time!

No Change

Nothing has changed;
everything has not changed.

Did I not get what I wanted, or
did I not get what I wouldn't have wanted?

Is that rationalization,
the self comforting herself?

And if so, is it self-deception, or
merely constructing a different ending?



Cassandra: Blind and Mourning from http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Cassandra.html