Technology

information & communication technology

Recommendations for Photo-blogging?

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A local New Brunswick blogger is looking for a good photo-blogging application for his site. Any suggestions? Please post your responses on Brikwall’s blog:

I want easy to use yet highly-customizable software for my new photoblog. However, I’m having trouble finding something that meets my needs.

I tried PixelPost but it won’t install properly on my host’s servers. It uses “index.php” for the home page, which the host does not permit (although, oddly, they do allow “index.php3″ and “index.php4″).

I currently have Sylverblog installed but I’m having some trouble with it. I’ll probably have to dump it.

I looked at Movable Type but it’s too bloated, requiring upwards of 100MB for a proper install. Besides, although highly-customizable, it requires several PhD’s in computer science simply to change the blog’s title.

I’m not certain that WordPress will meet my needs, either.

I’d prefer to have dedicated photoblogging software, if at all possible.

Any suggestions?

New Social Media Company in New Brunswick

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I just came across Radian6, a start-up in Fredericton that is focused on the analysis of online social media:

Radian6’s core technology, SentimentLive, is designed to identify, correlate and deliver the following elements from Social Media:

Topic
A topic represents the key concept being tracked such as a brand, product name, movie, sports team, politician, country, or celebrity. SentimentLive applies advanced proprietary analytical techniques that go beyond basic keyword searches to identify topics with minimal false positives or spam. Social media is gathered, indexed and presented to the user in summary form as it is posted to the Internet, in real-time.

Sentiment
As topics are identified, the system derives the sentiment around the instance of the topic. By applying advanced sentiment analysis, users are able to see trends in attitudes and opinions relating to their topics of interest, which in turn enables them to make more informed decisions.

Influence
As SentimentLive identifies topics, it also calculates the relative level of influence associated with each posting and with each consumer that posted about a specific topic. This enables organizations to apply resources to areas that will have the most influence on their business – either positively or negatively – and also provides a view into the top-most influential consumers who yield the strongest word-of-mouth (WOM) influence over specific topics.

In typical Dot Com fashion, there is not much more information on the website, and no evidence of any two-way web tools to allow the company to interact with its market. In reading what is posted on the website, I wonder how this offering differs from free tools such as Technorati, Alexa, TagCloud, BlogFlux or dozens of other web applications that anyone can use to monitor the Internet buzz.

There’s always room here to post a comment ;-)

Global Text Project

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The recently established Global Text Project, managed by the University of Georgia, has the following objectives:

The goal is to create a free library of 1,000 electronic textbooks for students in the developing world
The library will cover the range of topics typically encountered in the first two years of a university’s undergraduate programs
The global academic community and global corporations will be engaged in creating and sponsoring this library

The project is similar to Wikipedia but there will be more control over the editorial process to ensure that the texbooks adhere to academic standards. You can engage in the conversation, as this project grows beyond its initial two texts, through the Global Text Project Blog.

Given the level of control, it will be interesting to see if this project achieves wikipedia’s popularity and whether the texts gain widespread use. I also wonder if these books will wind up being used in North American institutions as well.

Texts will be published under a Creative Commons license.

Aliant connection speed – the saga continues

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I’m currently on hold with Bell Aliant technical support to complain about my very slow DSL connection speed, for which I pay $85.00 per month (plus tax), as part of a bundle that is called, “Value Package Ultra High Speed, Unlimited Can/US LD & Cellular”. My monthly recurring costs, including taxes are $136.53.

I’ve now listened to short versions of every standard maritime folk song at least 5 times each, as I wait, because “your call is important to us” according to the automated voice on the phone. Thankfully I have a speaker phone so I’m typing as I listen to this cheesy music selection.

FYI, my download speed is usually 1,200 kbps when I am supposed to get up to 8,000 kbps.

[later]

The technical support rep checked my account and will be sending a technician to my house on Saturday. He was very helpful and friendy as we did some troubleshooting on the system, and he agreed that my upload/download speeds were slower than they should be.

At the end of our conversation, I asked him to search on Google for “aliant connection speed”, which he did and was surprised to see that my blog post, Marketing Hype & Reality, complete with comments and complaints, was the first search result. It was due to these comments that I decided to take up the issue again. As one reader posted:

Welcome to Aliant my friend. This is how it works, aliant has several packages.

High speed, 1.5 meg

and ultra, anywheres from 3 to 7 meg.

You pay for ultra, but they will NOT switch you to the ultra circuit until you complain about 15 times, then they click the button and you get your ultra speed.

For about amonth, when they switch it back to 1.5 thinking you won’t notice.

I’ve been an Aliant customer since vibe began, and have been an ultra customer since they started offering it. This is how it works, and I’m a tech for the government so I know what I’m doing, and I know exactly what is going on.

Aliant does not have the bandwidth to support the dedicated connections it sells, so it screws most people, and they don’t notice.

A few notice like us, and spend the rest of our lives fighting them to get the speed we are paying for.

We’ll see what happens.

Update: Saturday, September 9th. The Aliant technician showed up at the house in the afternoon and spent a couple of hours troubleshooting the system. He checked the DSL router, the jack & switch, as well as all of the lines in the house. He was friendly, informative and thorough.

Overall, I was impressed with the service. I also found out that the technicians who show up at your house are trained employees of Aliant. On the other hand, the customer service representatives on the telephone are employees of a different company, and Aliant just outsources this lack of service. That’s why no one acted on my complaint about slow connection speeds last year (July, 2005).

After checking everything in the house, including the testing of a new modem, the technician then went out on the telephone pole and checked the speed of the line passing by the house. Everything was OK, but still no improvement in my speed. He then went to the main DSL switch in town and changed the port. Still no improvement; but he was clear that I have not been getting the high speed ultra that I have been paying for.

The ticket has now been advanced and another technician is supposed to be here on Monday. At the very least, Aliant owes me a rebate.

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Update 2: A senior technician arrived this morning and checked out the connection again. After about 45 minutes, and a few phone calls, he determined that I was not subscribed to the ultra high speed service. One flick of the switch at Aliant and my download speed has tripled.

Now why did it take so long? I’ve been paying for this service for over a year.

Statistics

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I switched to WordPress as my blogging software last March. Later that month I installed the Akismet spam module, which has been working very well. Akismet is a free plug-in that learns from the actions of all its users so that it is constantly up to date. I’ve found it to be very effective, blocking over 10,000 comment spam since installation in late March.
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The other interesting stat I’ve noticed is that since I started this two-way website, in Feb 2004, I’ve received almost as many comments as I’ve made posts. I know that many of the comments are my responses to other people’s comments, but it makes me glad to know that there are some real conversations embedded in this website. It’s a learning experience to go back and re-read the older ones.

I’d like to thank everyone who has joined in the conversation and helped me learn along the way.

LMS circa 1999

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I was digging through some old files on CD and came across a report that I did when I worked at the now defunct Centre for Learning Technologies at Mount Allison University. It was called The Design, Development and Delivery of Internet Based Training and Education, dated March 28, 2000. I had worked on that report during the Fall of 1999. Part of the report examined what I described as “Asynchronous Group Learning Capable Environments”. This report was the second evaluation that we had completed at the CLT, but I can’t find a copy of the earlier one from 1998/1999.

From the report’s introduction:

The landscape of web-based learning environments has become more complex over the past few years, and this is further complicated by mergers, acquisitions, new versions of existing products and new products on the market. No one knows exactly how many learning environments exist, but the 40 that we evaluated provide a good view of the spectrum currently available. The Centre for Learning Technologies (CLT) examined these environments as part of a collaborative project effort by the BC Standing Committee on Educational Technology, the Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology, the Office of LearningTechnologies, and TeleEducation New Brunswick.

The environments were evaluated from the perspective of functionality only.

Each environment, or LMS, was examined against a number of functions, as follows:

N= Not applicable
0= No support
1= Some support, but not a strength of the product
2= Adequate support, a secondary feature of the product
3= Full support, a primary feature of the product

I’ve picked a few of the functions out of the tables to highlight how many other commercially available systems were on the market at the time. These had all been in production and on the market for several years. You will note that many had functions that Blackboard claims were unique to its system in 2000. Note that Blackboard was known as CourseInfo at the time.

I’m posting this to show that Blackboard’s claims of patenting a unique “course-based system for providing to an educational community of users access to a plurality of online courses”, do not reflect the online learning technology marketplace at the time.

Here is a sampling:

“Analysing and tracking tools include facilities for statistical analysis of student-related data and the facility to display the progress of individual students in the course structure”
3: eAdministrator, Generation21, KOTrain, LearningSpace, VCampus
2: CourseInfo, and several others
1: WebCT, and several others

“Authorisation tools that assign access and other privileges to specific users or user groups.”
3: WebCT, eAdministrator, FirstClass, Generation21, Knowledge Planet, KOTrain, LearningSpace
2: CourseInfo, and several others

“Course monitoring includes facilities that provide information about the usage of course resources by individual students and groups of students.”
3: WebCT, VCampus, Pathware, KnowledgePlanet, Generation21, KOTrain, eAdministrator
2: CourseInfo, and several others

Course customising includes the facility to change the structure of the course and its assignments, exams, etc. This may include guides, templates, and related product support and training.”
3: WebCT, CourseInfo, Knowledge Planet, Generation21, LearningSpace, Pathware, Quest, Trainsoft, VCampus

“Managing records includes facilities for organising and keeping track of course-related information.”
3: WebCT, WCB, Virtual U, QuestionMark, LearningSpace, KnowledgePlanet, Generation21, eAdministrator, CourseInfo

“Progress tracking includes some facility for the student to check marks on assignments and tests.”
3: WebCT, Pathlore, Norton Connect, VCampus, Pathware, Mentorware, Learningspace, KnowledgePlanet, eAdministrator
2: CourseInfo, Serf, TrainSoft, WCB

At the time, this was a public report, available on the TeleEducation New Brunswick site (now defunct, too). I do have a copy, though.

Elgg Reviewed by R/WW

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Read/Write Web has a good overview of Elgg Learning landscape and an interview with Dave and Ben, the co-founders. [I had mentioned that I believe that Elgg is one of the few online learning systems that is not affected by the current Blackboard LMS patent suit, though there are other Blackboard patents that may be a cause for concern].

The overview is a brief look at what Elgg currently offers and what is coming soon, including Elgg Spaces. This article is excellent for anyone unfamilar with Elgg, as Read/Write Web is not about educational technology, so they don’t assume that the reader knows everything about the field.

Corporatism run amok

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I am beginning to think that corporatism is the root of much evil.

It starts by focusing on profit above all else. There is nothing wrong with making a profit, as I even try to do this, so that I can feed and clothe my family. The problem begins when you do this “above all else”. When corporations were granted rights of persons, without any social or moral obligations, we started down a slippery slope as a society. Now we have too many people making their livings on behalf of a disembodied entity that only wants to make profit.

Add to this amoral mix the notion that ideas can be owned and patented. For instance, software programs, consisting of nothing more than lines of code, are ideas. So now we have an information society, moving into a knowledge society, where some greedy people think that corporations should own ideas and make profits off these ideas for a very long time. The problem is that we cannot grow as a society without the free flow of ideas. Patenting ideas will slow down our collective ability to learn. However, the US Patent Office thinks that it is a good thing to protect ideas, as do other national patent offices.

Take for instance a software company that has bought and borrowed ideas from multiple public sources (processes, code, how-to) and put a brand on it and called it a unique idea. So far, no one has taken the idea to patent the concept of zero and stop further development of any computer programs (see The People Who Owned the Bible, for another analogy). In the case of computer code or ideas, it is impossible to say where the original idea started. In the case of ideas, pretty well everything is based on some prior art.

I have been accused of being an “open source evangelist” for several years. My support of open source as a system for innovation and sharing of ideas stems from my short, but intensive period in the corporate world. Here I saw many cases of greed and arrogance wrapped in the corporate flag. I saw little original thought and many corporate entities had the capability to suck the humanity out of those who climbed the ladder. The open source community is transparent, rewards merit and gives everything back to the community. That cannot be said for any corporation.

Last year I asked, “Is intellectual property an oxymoron?“. Using property laws for ideas only serves the lawyers and the existing power structure. It does not advance individual freedoms nor the public good. Now I am certain that intellectual property laws must be changed if we are to advance as a knowledge society. We cannot have corporate interests defining the direction of our society by patenting ideas that belong to all of us.

This is a big issue; but we citizens, voters and taxpayers have to frame the conversation with our elected officials. Let’s start with one fundamental concept – Ideas cannot be patented.

Update: here is a new site, No Education Patents! that may become a rallying point for the learning community.

Blackboard Sues D2L over LMS Patent

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Well I guess the rumours are true. Not only did Blackboard receive a comprehensive patent (US and other countries) on LMS technology, but they have filed a suit against Canadian company Desire2Learn – their main competitor in the academic market. The Inquirer has posted a PDF of the suit, filed on 26 July 2006, which states:

“… including but not limited to all D2L products based on the D2L learning system or platform, such as the D2L eLearning Technology Suite, which includes the D2L eLearning Environment, Learning Repository and Live Room, and all services supporting these D2L products, such as hosting services, training services, help desk support services, implementation and customization professional services, and content services.”

Personally, I don’t really care if one corporation sues another, as that seems to be in their nature. I’ve also noted in my last post that the course online model may have reached the end of its natural life anyway. However, there is still cause for concern. If Blackboard wins the suit, then some open source communities, such as Moodle, may be next in line.

It will depend on how generous the courts are in determining the extent of Blackboard’s patent. Blackboard’s claim is extensive, comprising 44 claims with the US Patent Office:

1. A course-based system for providing to an educational community of users access to a plurality of online courses, comprising: a) a plurality of user computers, with each user computer being associated with a user of the system and with each user being capable of having predefined characteristics indicative of multiple predetermined roles in the system, each role providing a level of access to a plurality of data files associated with a particular course and a level of control over the data files associated with the course with the multiple predetermined user roles comprising at least two user’s predetermined roles selected from the group consisting of a student role in one or more course associated with a student user, an instructor role in one or more courses associated with an instructor user and an administrator role associated with an administrator user, and b) a server computer in communication with each of the user computers over a network, the server computer comprising: means for storing a plurality of data files associated with a course, means for assigning a level of access to and control of each data file based on a user of the system’s predetermined role in a course; means for determining whether access to a data file associated with the course is authorized; means for allowing access to and control of the data file associated with the course if authorization is granted based on the access level of the user of the system.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the instructor user is provided with an access level to enable the creation and editing of a plurality of files associated with a course.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files comprise an announcement file.

4. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files comprise a course information file.

5. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files comprise a staff information file posted to all registered in the course.

6. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files comprise a course document file posted to all registered in the course.

7. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files comprise an assignments file posted to all registered in the course.

8. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files comprise a dropbox file.

9. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files comprise an asynchronous communication file.

10. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files comprise a synchronous communication file.

11. The system of claim 2 wherein the student user is provided with an access level to enable reading of a plurality of files associated with a course.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the student user is provided with an access level to enable modification of a subset of the plurality of files associated with a course.

13. The system of claim 11 wherein the user is provided with an access level to enable creation of a student file associated with a file for which the student user is able to read.

14. The system of claim 13 in which the file that the student is able to read is an assessment file created by the instructor user, and the student file created by the student user is a response to the assessment file.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the assessment file comprises a plurality of examination questions selected by the instructor user to assess the ability of the student user.

16. The system of claim 15 wherein the examination questions are selected by the instructor user from a predetermined pool of available examination questions.

17. The system of claim 15 wherein the examination questions are created by the instructor user substantially at the time of the creation of the assessment file.

18. The system of claim 15 wherein the student file is reviewed by the instructor user and assigned a grade.

19. The system of claim 18 wherein the grade is made available to the student user.

20. The system of claim 18 wherein the instructor user collates a plurality of grades obtained from reviewing a plurality of student files, and wherein the collated grades are made available to all student users associated with the course.

21. The system of claim 13 in which the file that the student is able to read is an assignment file created by the instructor user, and the student file created by the student user is a response to the assignment file.

22. The system of claim 8 wherein the dropbox file comprises a plurality of files transferred to the server computer from one or more student users associated with the course.

23. The system of claim 22 wherein the instructor user is provided with access to the files in the dropbox file, whereby the instructor user may download, edit and upload the files in the dropbox.

24. The system of claim 1 wherein a user is required to enter a login sequence into a user computer in order to be provided with access to course files associated with that user.

25. The system of claim 24 wherein the user is provided with access to all courses with which the user is associated after entry of the logon sequence.

26. The system of claim 25 wherein the user is provided with a web page comprising a plurality of course hyperlinks, each of said course hyperlinks associated with each course that the user has enrolled in.

27. The system of claim 26 wherein selection of a course hyperlink will provide the user with a web page associated with the selected course, the web page comprising a plurality of content hyperlinks to various content areas associated with the course.

28. The system of claim 27 wherein said content hyperlinks comprise an announcement area hyperlink, a course information hyperlink, a staff information hyperlink, a course documents hyperlink, an assignments hyperlink, a communications hyperlink, and a student tools hyperlink.

29. The system of claim 28 wherein selection of the announcement area hyperlink provides a web page comprising a group of course announcements.

30. The system of claim 28 wherein selection of the course information hyperlink provides a web page comprising information regarding the associated course.

31. The system of claim 28 wherein selection of the staff information hyperlink provides a web page comprising data regarding the instructors of the associated course.

32. The system of claim 28 wherein selection of the course documents hyperlink provides a web page comprising a listing of documents associated with the course.

33. The system of claim 32 wherein the listing of course documents comprise active hyperlinks to the documents.

34. The system of claim 28 wherein selection of the assignments hyperlink provides a web page comprising a group of course assignments.

35. The system of claim 28 wherein selection of the communications hyperlink provides a web page comprising hyperlinks to a group of communication tools comprising an asynchronous communication tool and a synchronous communication tool.

36. An method for providing online education method for a community of users in a network based system comprising the steps of: a. establishing that each user is capable of having redefined characteristics indicative of multiple predetermined roles in the system and each role providing a level of access to and control of a plurality of course files; b. establishing a course to be offered online, comprising i. generating a set of course files for use with teaching a course; ii. transferring the course files to a server computer for storage; and iii. allowing access to and control of the course files according to the established roles for the users according to step (a); c. providing a predetermined level of access and control over the network to the course files to users with an established role as a student user enrolled in the course; and d. providing a predetermined level of access and control over the network to the course files to users with an established role other than a student user enrolled in the course.

37. The method of claim 36 wherein at least one of the course files comprises a course assignment, further comprising the steps of: e) the student user creating a student file in response to the course assignment; and f) the student user transferring the student file to the server computer.

38. The method of claim 37 further comprising the steps of: g) the instructor user accessing the student file from the server computer; h) the instructor user reviewing the student file to determine compliance with the course assignment; and i) the instructor user assigning a grade to the student file as a function of the determination of compliance with the course assignment.

39. The method of claim 38 further comprising the step of the instructor user posting the grade to a file on the server computer accessible only to the student user with which the grade is associated.

40. The method of claim 38 further comprising the steps of the instructor repeating the steps (g), (h), and (i) for a plurality of student users that are enrolled in the course.

41. The method of claim 40 further comprising the step of the instructor user performing a statistical analysis on the grades assigned to the plurality of student users.

42. The method of claim 41 further comprising the step of making results of the statistical analysis available to the student users enrolled in the course.

43. The method of claim 36 further comprising the step of providing an asynchronous communication tool accessible to student users enrolled in the course for enabling asynchronous communication amongst the student users.

44. The method of claim 36 further comprising the step of providing a synchronous communication tool accessible to student users enrolled in the course for enabling synchronous communication amongst the student users.

Sorry about the long blockquote, but 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 ;-)