Harold Jarche

The Drupal Alternative to Proprietary Courseware

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Charlie Lowe at Cyberdash has a presentation available on Teaching Writing, Collaboration, and Engagement in Global Contexts, using the Drupal CMS. According to the presentation (which I reviewed in OOo Impress 2.0 beta), a traditional LMS "Privileges course administration and content management over class community interaction, configuration flexibility, and usability", whereas students and educators need systems that integrate with the Internet and allow more collaborative learning that reflects life outside of academia.

Two slides on user needs provide an excellent synthesis of why proprietary LMS’s do not meet the needs of higher education.

Students & Educators Need:

  • Online platforms that better enable social constructionist principles of collaborative learning.
  • Students need an early opportunity to learn professional communication using real world software systems.
  • Better integration of current and cutting edge Internet communication technologies such as weblogs and RSS.
  • Increased flexibilty through more extensive customization and configuration options.
  • The choice of whether to make the class space private or public.

Institutions Need:

  • Web application platforms that can be used for a wider variety of purposes.
  • Increased opportunity to adapt the online course component to the institutions’ needs.
  • Reduced total cost of ownership would be nice.
  • No vendor lock-in.
  • Reallocation of funds from site licensing fees into learning opportunities for students. [I like this one!]

This presentation is a good review for anyone in education looking at their technology options. It is more a review of proprietary versus open source, with specific Drupal examples. The argument is clear, and there are a lot of screenshots from sample sites.

Update: Charlie follows up with some suggestions on how to use the money that is saved on license fees.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta Review

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I recently downloaded the OpenOffice.org (OOo) office productivity suite, version 2.0 Beta. The suite includes Writer (word processor), Impress (presentation), calculator (spreadsheet) or other parts that I don’t use yet. Given that it’s a Beta, there are still some minor issues – e.g. the application gets hung-up sometimes, but not often, and you have to close it from the Windows Task Manager [All of my comments are for the Windows version].

Overall I would say the OOo is ready for prime time, especially once release Version 2.0 becomes available in the next few weeks. The interface is much more intuitive, especially for those used to applications like MS Word or WordPerfect. This recent version continues from previous ones with its ability to open, edit and save in Microsoft formats, or in the less bulky OOo formats. Saving docs as PDF’s is even easier, and you now have more compression options. If you have documents in an older version of OOo you will have to save them in the new format in order to use all of the newer functions, something I learned in OOo Impress with its newer and better slide sorter.

A great new feature with Writer includes the ability to open WordPerfect documents. I noted that Writer 2.0 also handles MS Word tables much better now, which was my primary complaint with OOo 1.x.

Those used to MS PowerPoint’s multiple layout options and clip art galleries may not like OOo Impress, but there are always open source image galleries like Wiki Commons available. You should also note that the new format (.odt, .odp, etc) is not backwards compatible, so if you save a document as "xxx.odt", someone with OOo Version 1.x will not be able to open it.

I have previously recommended OOo to my more computer-literate friends but now can wholeheartedly endorse it for the average home or business user. Remember that it’s free; you can install it on as many computers as you want; and there is no Microsoft End User License Agreement requiring you to give up "quiet enjoyment" and various other rights. If you think that saving a lot of money and having greater flexibility with your office applications is a good thing, then get OOo 2.0.

Skype Journal Launches

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Stuart Henshall at Unbound Spiral has launched a new community around Skype, the free Voice over Internet Protocol system that lets you speak from one computer to another computer anywhere in the world. You can also call regular telephone number for a very low price.

Concurrently Skype growth has accelerated with over 2m active online and some 40m minutes a day. New products both hardware and software for Skype are emerging daily. Each day Skype adds another 130000 users. With 24+ million Skypers the majority early adopters, computer literate, these are the current change agents for the communications society. While for the most part tied to desktops and headsets they will become part of a mobile social communications revolution.

This burgeoning market needs representation, and a vehicle for sharing news, product updates, industry views and counterpoints. Skype is also proprietary, it is pointed out again and again that it is not SIP, and similarly security and business applications are frequently raised (usually by competitors). These are important issues, and the blog world has enormous power to influence where a company goes and how it develops. I’m listening for counterpoints!

I find it interesting, and very McLuhanesque, that this company has launched to support a community that uses a proprietary software application. It’s third-party marketing, customer lobbying and developer support all rolled in one; and the company (Skype) is not even involved in this venture. However, Skype could really benefit in an active relationship with Skype Journal, and I’m sure that they understand this. Definitely one to watch.

Aliant Mailserver Down

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Aliant’s mailserver has been down all morning :-(
There is no information about this on their website, which gives you the Aliant stock price, but nothing of use to a customer. Time to change ISP’s!
News on the radio says that there is a power problem, which will be fixed today, tomorrow, or whenever.
15:30 local time – server up and running :-)

I’m still available: hjarche at gmail.com :-)

Do You Have a Company Blog Strategy?

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According to the Wall Street Journal, "Blogs Keep Internet Customers Coming Back – Small Firms Find Tool Useful for Recognition, Connecting With Buyers".

Instead of maligning blogs as being written by a million guys in pyjamas, the WSJ states:

The blog as business tool has arrived.

Some eight million Americans now publish blogs and 32 million people read them, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. What began as a form of public diary-keeping has become an important supplement to a business’s online strategy: Blogs can connect with consumers on a personal level — and keep them visiting a company’s Web site regularly.

Those inside the corporation/company/organisation/department may want to consider what Robert Paterson has to say:

Imagine you are a senior executive and one of your 20 old staffers asks you about whether we are going to have a Blog Strategy. You are surely going to be stumped.

I continue to be amazed at how busy people in corporate life are. The sad thing is that they are so busy that they don’t know what is going on and will find this a mystery

Blogs are not a mystery. You just have to start with the premise that markets are conversations, and go from there.

Comments temporarily disabled

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I’ve disabled comments on this blog for a while, as I’m still getting a lot of comment spam. It does not get posted to the site, but I still have to clean it up in my comment queue. I cleaned out 65 this morning. You can always contact me via e-mail: hjarche at gmail.com

What, if any, suggestions do you have for education?

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In answer to questions posed by our local district education council, I’ll submit a short list:

  1. Involve the community as suggested by Robert Paterson or as Dave Pollard says, "allow learners to connect and transact directly with front-line teachers, enablers, demonstrators, and real learning environments — on the learners’ terms"
  2. Add more play to our schools
  3. Focus on making learning enjoyable

Many of the graduates of our public school system do not have adequate critical thinking, problem solving nor media literacy skills, to name a few. We are preparing them to be passive recipients of a weak curriculum, when no curriculum can prepare them for the future. Why should one Minister of Education and few cloistered staff know more than the other 740,000 people in this Province? The Wisdom of Crowds tells us that as a collective we have the answers that have eluded those in charge, but no one is listening.

I don’t recommend more knee-jerk reactions, but the bottom line is that the school system works for fewer and fewer students. Tweaking the existing system is not good enough. Let’s start to experiment at a local level in some positive ways right now because we have nowhere to go but up.

OpenOffice.org 2.0

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For the adventurous, OpenOffice.org 2.0 (Beta), the free, open source office suite that is compatible with MS Office, is now available for download and testing.

This one is our candidate for the first OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta. It needs further testing and QA. If no showstoppers are found, it may be selected as our first public beta release. These builds need testing and your feedback. There are no guarantees.

It’s available for Windows and Linux, but not yet for Mac.

* March 4 – "The OpenOffice.org project is pleased to announce that the first public beta release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 is now available for download." This includes a Mac version.

On Education

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The meeting for this evening was cancelled, and I won’t be able to attend the next one, so here is my parting shot:

"We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet." (attributed to Margaret Mead)

One more reason why I believe that we have to focus on learning processes, not subject matter.

Our Own Reformation

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Robert Paterson has put together many of his thoughts on social software and societal reform in an excellent synthesis entitled, “Going Home – Our Reformation. Rob’s article begins:

I was in a meeting this week with a group of “educators”. We were talking about Communities of Practice. I mentioned blogging several times in the meeting. At the meeting’s end, one of the participants approached me and said, “Every time you mention blogging I get annoyed. It is only a fad and will never affect education.”
I believe that it is not a fad. I believe that Blogging, and its wider family of Social Software tools, will not only affect education but will shake our entire society to the core. I believe that our descendants will look back at its arrival the same way that we now look back at the advent of the printing press.

He continues with a number of current scenarios that show the desperate conditions we have created, and then goes on to show how targeted, local initiatives can get us out of this mess. The future that Rob sees for Prince Edward Island could happen almost anywhere, and he describes the kinds of grassroot projects that are possible and feasible. Rob’s description of the new schooling model is an example:

The School Revolution — As with seniors, the revolution in PEI schools did not happen as a result of any deliberate project to transform schools. What is happening is that a series of projects designed to engage children have taken hold. This work did not even take place in the regular school day but in the afternoon. The afternoon has become a place where children can do the one thing that they really love. They choose and then the community tries its best to find people who can take them to a place of great expertise.This idea had its start in two areas, Theatre and Sport. Theatre PEI began a community program in the afternoon to awaken kids to the thrill of theatre. At the same time, Sports PEI began a similar program to offer the average kids more opportunity in sport. All this work was organized and expanded by the use of local blog sites that were designed to engage the local community. The resources came from adults who lived close by.

Take some time to read Rob’s article and see if it makes sense to you. Either way; please make a comment. This is just the beginning and Rob has given us the first draft of the blueprint.
Here in Sackville, the town is going through a strategic planning process – once again. Our downtown is in decline, due in part to competition from the nearby Trans-Canada Highway development of fast food restaurants and drive-through shopping. The new highway also makes it easy to go to the big box stores and shopping complexes in nearby Moncton. Much of the discussion that I have heard to date is focused on the symptoms, not the root causes of the decline of the community. Instead of debating the problems for another decade, we now have some concrete examples of what we can do in Sackville (The Commons Network; The Media Revolution; Local Food Networks; Seniors College; and The Consulting Revolution) . Rob’s examples provide a starting point to initiate conversations on how to create our own future.

Thank you Rob, now it’s up to us.