Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Social vs. Individual Learning
Should we resist the tempation to throw all of our eggs into the social learning basket?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
What's wrong with podcasts?
Hopefully the advantages of podcasts go without saying, but what about the disadvantages?
In particular, what are the disadvantages of long podcasts?
Well, if you're like me and your job / learning requires you to quickly scan and extract information from many many sources per day then you'll quickly find the limitation of podcasts:
In particular, what are the disadvantages of long podcasts?
Well, if you're like me and your job / learning requires you to quickly scan and extract information from many many sources per day then you'll quickly find the limitation of podcasts:
- They are a slow source of information dissemination, and in particular
- They are serial information sources
Friday, October 23, 2009
The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Open Source, Linux, etc.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond is worth reading. It shows how the power of an online developer community was harnessed to develop one of the world's most successful, open source, products: Linux. It also includes a case study that copies this approach to develop another open source product.
The article includes many useful points that could be applied to many online communities, including e-learning and social networking / learning.
Here's some key extracts:-
One point that comes out of this is that lots of users can work wonders and, at times, exceed your expectations. So perhaps the moral for e-learning might be to have a large social networking system that allows users across courses to interact with each other.
"keeping ... users constantly stimulated and rewarded - stimulated by the prospect of having an ego-satisfying piece of the action, rewarded by the sight of constant (even daily) improvement in their work."
"The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better." - This also matches up with the above point about recognition and reward.
"Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong."
"When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is convince potential codevelopers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future."
"To make the bazaar model work, it helps enormously if you have at least a little skill at charming people."
"where developers are not territorial about their code, and encourage other people to look for bugs and potential improvements in it, improvement happens dramatically faster than elsewhere."
The article includes many useful points that could be applied to many online communities, including e-learning and social networking / learning.
Here's some key extracts:-
One point that comes out of this is that lots of users can work wonders and, at times, exceed your expectations. So perhaps the moral for e-learning might be to have a large social networking system that allows users across courses to interact with each other.
"keeping ... users constantly stimulated and rewarded - stimulated by the prospect of having an ego-satisfying piece of the action, rewarded by the sight of constant (even daily) improvement in their work."
"The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better." - This also matches up with the above point about recognition and reward.
"Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong."
"When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is convince potential codevelopers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future."
"To make the bazaar model work, it helps enormously if you have at least a little skill at charming people."
"where developers are not territorial about their code, and encourage other people to look for bugs and potential improvements in it, improvement happens dramatically faster than elsewhere."
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Sys admin: Ubuntu/Windows Shared Folder
To get a folder in Ubuntu shared in Windows:
- Right click folder, click sharing
- Install required s/w if prompted (Samba)
- In the VirtualBox running Ubuntu change the network interface to the Bridged type
- Get server address using ifconfig
- In Windows go to the IP address of the Ubuntu server and select the shared folder (could also map this to a drive letter)
On-line / Off-line Collaboration Spectrum
Online collaboration, social networking and social learning are the current "in" topics. But we should recognise that out in the big wide world of demographics there are a range of skills and personal preferences.
Some people are very IT literate and others are very hesitant to use IT; with a lot somewhere in between the two extremes.
Some people prefer one-to-one face-to-face meetings, some prefer group meetings, and some are happy to do everything online. A lot prefer to have a mixture of these.
One rigid online social networking / learning / collaboration system might not address the full spectrum of skills and preferences.
Some people are very IT literate and others are very hesitant to use IT; with a lot somewhere in between the two extremes.
Some people prefer one-to-one face-to-face meetings, some prefer group meetings, and some are happy to do everything online. A lot prefer to have a mixture of these.
One rigid online social networking / learning / collaboration system might not address the full spectrum of skills and preferences.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Elgg: server admin: mod_rewrite
To fix the mod_rewrite problem:
- In /etc/apache2/apache2.conf add:
<Directory /var/www/*>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
- Make sure rewrite is enabled:
add a link to /etc/appache2/mods-available/rewrite.load in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Towards an Elgg Dev System on my Desktop
As part of the Elgg project there's a need to learn and experiment with an Elgg server. The approach selected was to develop a desktop environment:
- Sun's virtual machine: Virtual Box
- Ubuntu
- Elgg installation
- mod_rewrite not working? e.g. this post
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Masses of Unstructured Text
The web is great - loads of information on every topic. So what's the problem?
Masses of unstructured text!
Many "authors" just contribute solid paragraphs of text. Some put their entire submission in just one paragraph! No formatting; no white space!
Who wants to read everything?
Having to read entire articles on the chance of finding something useful is a daunting prospect. Why can't people make an effort to structure their work?
Helpful Structure:
It's nice to use structure, headings, bullet points, etc. Make it easy for the reader to find what they want, and to quickly understand what the article is about.
Masses of unstructured text!
Many "authors" just contribute solid paragraphs of text. Some put their entire submission in just one paragraph! No formatting; no white space!
Who wants to read everything?
Having to read entire articles on the chance of finding something useful is a daunting prospect. Why can't people make an effort to structure their work?
Helpful Structure:
It's nice to use structure, headings, bullet points, etc. Make it easy for the reader to find what they want, and to quickly understand what the article is about.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Video Lazy?
As the Internet bandwidth grows to support more and more video there is a growing trend to use this in education. There's little doubt that video can be very useful for some contexts and for demonstrating particular concepts.
But, is video becoming a lazy way for people to provide information?
Many videos are just of people talking; and the quality of the information provided depends on the quality of the talk, and the usefulness of its content. There may be a danger of thinking that because video is a new thing - on the Internet - that it is always useful.
Students, and lecturers, could reflect on the following question:
Have you ever been to a lecture that was useless? And, will an online video of that lecture make it any better?
But, is video becoming a lazy way for people to provide information?
Many videos are just of people talking; and the quality of the information provided depends on the quality of the talk, and the usefulness of its content. There may be a danger of thinking that because video is a new thing - on the Internet - that it is always useful.
Students, and lecturers, could reflect on the following question:
Have you ever been to a lecture that was useless? And, will an online video of that lecture make it any better?
Thursday, October 1, 2009
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