August 5, 2011
Interview with Rick Schwier – connectivism
James Johnson,
The Blog Herald, August 1, 2011.
This is totally what Google+'s hangouts needed - the capacity to support a live YouTibe audience. I can easily imagine using one of these in a MOOC. The Blog Herald describes the setup thusly:
- Start a Hangouts session in Google+ and invite your contacts to join you.
- In a separate browser tab, head over toYouTube.com/Live and select a live stream of your choice
- Copy the YouTube video I.D. of the selected live stream. Not sure how to find it? Just click on the share link below the video. You’ll get to see a link like – the cryptic code after the slash is the video I.D.
- Switch back to hangouts, open the video tab and search for the I.D.
- Click play, and you’re all set.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Connectivism, YouTube, Video, Google]
A taxonomy for measuring the success of open source software projects
Amir Hossein Ghapanchi, Aybuke Aurum, and Graham Low,
First Monday, July 31, 2011.
Open source software is a lot like education: everybody wants it to be successful, but there's no definition of what counts as success, and traditional definitions ('sales', 'grades') are wholly inadequate. This paper in the most recent First Monday looks at what constitutes success in OSS, and comes up with a taxonomy of six dimensions and a list of five success metrics:
- user interest - traffic on the site, downloads, number of developers, etc.
- project activity - number of releases, patches, source code lines, etc.
- project effectiveness - task completion (bug fix, feature request, and support request)
- project efficiency - measure of inputs (eg. developers) to output (downloads, development, etc)
- code quality - understandability, consistency, maintainability, etc.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Project Based Learning, Open Source, Quality, Online Learning]
Platforms for Collective Awareness and Action
Unattributed,
European Commission Information Society, July 31, 2011.
This is a new European Commission Information Society project intended to create online environments to support collaboration. "The vision is that individuals can "save the planet" if they are given the opportunity to act socially, based on trusted information. The key is enabling access to trusted knowledge about the state of their environment, the actions underway in their Communities to improve that situation, and the impact of their own actions." I think there is merit to the underlying idea of feeding external data and information into social communities. "You can post your interest and express your ideas on this website (see "Open Forum"), and help us organising the first workshop on the subject." See also the Paradiso website. Simon Fenton-Jones suggests they'll probably stream the presentations, but suggests presentation tips for the organizers (I couldn't agree more).
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Project Based Learning, Video, European Union, Information]
Digital Fluency: Empowering All Students
Liz Losh,
DML Central, July 31, 2011.
I too agree that digital literacy is more than just learning a set of skills. It's also more than the 'logical self-defence' approach that characterizes critical literacy. If anything, I would associate literacy with fluency - a natural facility in a language (whether digital or otherwise) characterized by pattern recognition, creativity with meaning and intent, use and employment, situational awareness, inference and discovery, and adaptability. Is there more?
The Access Copyright Interim Tariff Opt-Out List
Michael Geist,
Weblog, July 30, 2011.
Here's an update to last weeks post on Canadian universities withdrawing from Access Copyright. Based on this list, I would say that that the demand for substantially increased rates may result in the organization's demise. A good object lesson. Some history:
- The rate increase
- The University of Alberta opts out
- The end is near
Background and action paper on OER
Paul G. West,
pbwiki, July 30, 2011.
Comprehensive report on Open Educational Resources (OERs) written for the Hewlett Foundation. It was "not the intention of this report to re-research what has been done before, but to rather provide a condensed summary, background and action paper for use by institutions and agencies that are considering expanding their work in Open Educational Resources."
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Open Educational Resources, Research, Hewlett Foundation]
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