Technology

information & communication technology

The Internet and Real-Time Evaluation

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Liz Lawley in Many2Many discusses the merits of blogging conference presentations, and describes the different types of presentations, from good speakers & good content to the reverse. The privacy of IRC or other media encourages criticism, and some critical thinking, as well as plain old heckling. I see this as a pretty good method to evaluate conference presenters, either as formative evaluation for improvement or summative evaluation, to ensure that they don’t get invited back if they can’t cut it. Blogging and chat seem to be better evaluation tools than "smiley" sheets that few attendees complete …

This reminds me of Conor Vibert’s competitive intelligence class at Acadia University, where he has students giving presentations on a business, while others are going online to question their claims, and other students are using chat to discuss the points without interrupting the speakers. It’s exciting to watch Conor’s classes in action at the Acadia Real Time Case Competition.

Open Source is a Credible Option for the Big Guys

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Even CIO magazine, read by most IT professionals, is coming out in favour of open source, with its recent article on The Myths of Open Source. This is a balanced article, clearly showing that open source does not mean free. Six myths are debunked, such as the idea that there is a lack of support, or that open source is not ready for mission-critical applications. In the end, open source is about standards, like HTML, which are necessary for any kind of collaboration. If you need to collaborate, you probably need open source.

Leadership for the Information Revolution

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Peter Levesque, in Democracy & Socioactive Software and Technology [dead link] discusses the effect of the Internet in connecting an unprecedented number of people, who in turn have created a variety of community-based initiatives, such as open source, open content and more flexible copyright rules, like the Creative Commons.

He continues on the Cluetrain thread that markets are conversations, and these conversation must be genuine. This should mean that corporations have to “get real” in order to connect with their markets, as many communities do. But Levesque goes on to say that communities have not been as successful as corporations in producing certain kinds of societal benefits.

Levesque calls for new leadership for the information revolution. “I suggest that the leaders will be found among the aggressively intelligent citizenry, liberated from many tasks and obligations by technology freely shared; using data, information and knowledge acquired from open source databases, produced from the multiples of billions of dollars of public money invested through research councils, universities, social agencies, and public institutions.”

I would suggest that business models that will allow the leadership to prosper will be essential. These potential leaders, from the “aggressively intelligent citizenry”, need to be free from corporate non-disclosures or government gag orders, and the most effective business model could be the free agent working within a peer network. As tenure was essential for academic freedom, so an unfettered business model may be necessary for future leaders. If all individuals had the rights of today’s corporations, what kind of societal benefits would ensue?

Thanks to Stephen’s OLDaily for pointing to this.

Blogs, Markets & Conversations

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According to Lilia, in Mathemagenic, blogging is about conversations, and "Conversations are different from publishing, they require listening to others, require investment of attention and energy". This is also the central premise of the Cluetrain Manifesto, in that "Markets are conversations".

In order to have a lasting relationship between producers of goods and services and their markets, conversations are essential. This means listening, not just sending out marketing hype. There is a simple way to determine your markets. They are where you have the best conversations. Now figure out a business model around these conversations. Blogging can help you open these conversations.

Currently, my blog is mostly publishing, not conversations. Some of my previous blogs have produced some good conversations, and my aim is once again to publish enough blogs, so that I can get the conversations going. I participate in other blogs, where I am part of larger conversations about those things that interest me – learning, work systems, technology, sustainable development …

Who is Using Open Source?

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Scott Leslie posts on who is using open source course management systems and makes the suggestion that the open source community advertise itself, and become more accesible to the mainstream learning community. Have we reached the tipping point for OSS yet? I noticed that as of today, there are 29 Canadian organisations using Moodle; mostly academic and many in the K-12 sector. Atutor’s clientele seems more eclectic, while dotLRN has fewer installations posted, but the international Greenpeace site is pretty impressive, and yes it includes RSS feeds.

Laptop Schools

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I have generally been against the use of technology for technology’s sake, and this includes laptops in schools. An article in Syllabus has raised a good point to make me question my anti-laptop stance. According to the author, having laptops available to all students provides more opportunities for advanced students. "As the schools embrace full access to online resources, they are importing services and resources. They are also giving kids access to online Advance Placement (AP) courses that are produced and distributed by colleges and corporations. These school districts could never afford to support as many AP students as is possible electronically." Perhaps I’ve been wrong.

Open Content

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Thanks to Stephen Downes’ OLDaily for pointing this out. The PEW Research Centre states that 44% of American Internet users put content online for free. I think that there are a couple of inferences that one can make. First, that it is possible to have content online without paying someone. Second, that if you are going to launch a business that offers content for sale, then it has to be better in some way than all of the free content out there. As I’ve said before, just putting content online is not a viable business model.

RSS & Aggregators

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RSS (really simple syndication) is a means of keeping track of the web logs that you read. It’s a push technology so you don’t have to keep checking for news, it comes to you. I use bloglines, a web-based aggregator, and my blog subscription is publicly accessible. There are many other services available, free and for a fee, some which use client software on your computer.

If you’re interested in the use and future of RSS, go to Stephen Downes’ discussion: "So, RSS could succeed. It will probably succeed. But it is important to keep our focus on what it does well: it allows an individual to scan, filter, and pass forward. That’s all it ever has to do. The network will do the rest."