Whilst learning about Flash (AS3) I came across the ability to use Flash run time libraries.
This seems worth doing (if it works well) as it makes maintaining Flash products easier: only one set of libraries need to be bug fixed (or enhanced) and whole online suite of products is fixed in a jiffy. No need to worry about updating and re-distributing every product manually.
Friday, December 11, 2009
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.
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