Tama’s eLearning Blog

James Farmer announced today that nonscholae.org was up in draft form, which is:

Non scholae sed vitae discimus

We learn, not for school, but for life - Seneca, Epistulae

We believe that these tools and resources should not be blocked or banned from schools. As educators, we should be familiarising learners with these technologies, supporting and facilitating their responsible use and equipping our students with the skills to keep them safe and savvy in the online world.

It’s a concerted group effort to maintain a certain ideal for educational blogging, especially in schools.  Great idea!

Wesley Fryer has some interesting thoughts on podcasting at the moment. Expanding on his useful article “Tools for the Teks: Integrating Technology in the Classroom — Classroom Audio Podcasting”, he makes two further points that I thoroughly agree with: firstly, that student podcasts are an excellent method to allow student peer review through listening to and analysing each others’ work; and secondly that podcasting (by students, and others) can provide an excellent oral history record which can meaningfully be expanded by students (for example interviewing survivors of WW2 since many of their voices will continue to be lost over the next few decades).  Of course, in such a scenario it is important to make sure that educators equip students will ethical and balanced interviewing skills before setting them loose on an unsuspecting public!

Professor “Free Culture”, Lawrence Lessig always gives a powerful and straight-forward arguement when addressing the import legal questions surrounding digital culture. Lessig has been a champion of Google’s Print/Book Search as fair use, and has put together a wonderful (if rather large) quicktime movie (mp4) build using a recent presentation that asked the question: Is Google Book Search Fair Use?
Due to its size you can only download the presentation via bittorrent, but I strongly encourage you so; this is a concise argument about why Google Book Search matters and why it should be supported, not just for Google’s sake, but for the sake of users across the board in our digital culture. Read more at Lessig’s blog.

Oh, and Lessig is also using this presentation as an experiment in ways of putting presentations together … I think it works admirably!

Update: Leon Felipe Sanchez has posted several smaller versions of Lessig’s presentation, including one optimised for the Video iPod and a much smaller download (for those on dialup, especially) of 320×240 (13.5 MB).

With all the furor and debate over Wikipedia recently, there’s an excellent opportunity to discuss what it can do well, what it can’t, and how we should approach using Wikipedia. Coversations should be happening. The least useful, most pathetic and childish response is WikipediaClassAction.org who are trying to organise disgruntled people who are unhappy with their entries to sue the Wikipedia Foundation. That achieves nothing and is a sad indication of a culture more inclined to sue than to think. In happier news, the BBC noted an analysis by Nature comparing Wikipedia and Britannica, finding:

However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica’s coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule. The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three. [...] Yet Nature’s investigation suggests that Britannica’s advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature’s news team. Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.

Nature’s mature approach, to investigate and suggest ways of improving Wikipedia is the sensible path. Childish court action against primarily a collection of volunteers is not.

Update: Both Futureman and Leigh Blackall of Teach & Learn Online have had very rude responses from the Wikipedia Class Action website to the extent that I’m wondering if it’s actually some sort of spoof or hoax?

Update 2: Danah Boyd’s thoughts on the Wikipedia debates are spot on:

I am worried about how academics are treating Wikipedia and i think that it comes from a point of naivety. Wikipedia should never be the sole source for information. It will never have the depth of original sources. It will also always contain bias because society is inherently biased, although its efforts towards neutrality are commendable. These are just realizations we must acknowledge and support. But what it does have is a huge repository of information that is the most accessible for most people. Most of the information is more accurate than found in a typical encyclopedia and yet, we value encyclopedias as a initial point of information gathering. It is also more updated, more inclusive and more in-depth. Plus, it’s searchable and in the hands of everyone with digital access (a much larger population than those with encyclopedias in their homes). It also exists in hundreds of languages and is available to populations who can’t even imagine what a library looks like. Yes, it is open. This means that people can contribute what they do know and that others who know something about that area will try to improve it. Over time, articles with a lot of attention begin to be inclusive and approximating neutral. The more people who contribute, the stronger and more valuable the resource. Boycotting Wikipedia doesn’t make it go away, but it doesn’t make it any better either.

While I think the Wikipedia is a fantastic resource, I’m often skeptical about it’s day-to-day reliability. In most cases when students ask, I suggest they use it as a starting point but try to find other sources and references (which, luckily, most Wikipedia articles tend to link to). “Podcasting“, though is a tougher question because the Wikipedia defintion is almost always cited as the definition (something that only really happens with digital culture stuff). That said, the current debates over who did what to start podcasting, when they did it, and what the Wikipedia says, are extremely relevant in seeing how well the Wikipedia can cope as a communally authored social lexicon.

Meanwhile, the Pod/Cast/War rundown …
Adam Curry’s been outed editing the Wikipedia, but anonymously, removing key aspects of podcasting’s history which lessen his role.

Meanwhile, Dave Winer and Adam Curry are once again at each other’s blogging throats. Adam seems to have tried to brush it off, but that’s not something Dave usually lets happen!

To kick things up a notch, the mainstream news is taking an interest and Adam Curry is looking a little less saintly. Meanwhile, Dave notes that there has been a serious attempt to lock down who did what when in the origins of podcasting:

Adam Green did a podcast of the story of podcasting by splicing together podcasts from Adam Curry, Dave Slusher and myself. Very interesting way to tell a story. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

I think listening to that might clarify things a little … I’m off to download it in a minute.

In the Gadget sphere, Richard Giles is less than impressed by Curry’s antics …

In a more recent blog post, Adam had this to say, “I apologize to Kevin Marks for my history of removing this fact on WikiPedia. I really believed this was untrue”.

In August, before I submitted my chapter, I had Adam Curry proof read for accuracy (Dave Winer ignored any requests for his input). Adam replied “Looks great, reads well, is accurate.” So why does he claim that he thought the above statement was incorrect. This seems to suggest that he either ignored what I’d written, didn’t read it properly, or did know about Kevin because I bloody well wrote about it in the chapter he proofread.

I’d say something trite like, ‘history will decide’, but the whole point is, it won’t. The Wikipedia is the closest thing we have to a living historical entity and all these pod wars highlight is how integral debate is in trying to keep it healthy.

[Cross-posted from my personal blog, Ponderance.] 

The Washington Post reports in “Blackboard’s WebCT Deal Spurs Antitrust Questioning” that the WebCT/Blackboard merger is getting a lot of scrutiny from the sort of people whose litigation tends to seriously restrain digital goliaths:

A deal by educational software company Blackboard Inc. to buy its chief competitor has raised questions from antitrust experts at the Justice Department. District-based Blackboard and the competitor, privately owned WebCT Inc., each has received two requests for information from the Justice Department, Blackboard said in a filing Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Read more … [Via Online Learning Update]

[Reposted from my personal blog Ponderance and here only for it's value as a participatory cultural phenomenon worth documenting for educational purposes. (I'd never use this blog to suggest any activity that's of even dubious legality. Never. Really.)]

Tracklist

1. American Jesus (8:40)
2. Dr. Who On Holiday (4:57)
3. Boulevard Of Broken Songs (4:42)
4. The Bad Homecoming (Waiting) (3:265)
5. St. Jimmy The Prankster (2:22)
6. Novocaine Rhapsody (4:18)
7. Impossible Rebel (2:05)
8. Ashanti’s Letterbomb (4:32)
9. Green Day Massacre (3:43)
10. Whatsername (Susanna Hoffs) (3:28)
11. Boulevard Of Broken Songs (Dance Mix 2005) (6:17)

Released: Friday, November 18, 2005
Banned: Monday, November 28, 2005
“Gray” Tuesday: December 13, 2005

Sound familiar? It should. And it still matters. More here.

Fight the insanity of corporate media owners who don’t recognise the future when it asks them to dance.

[Tags: deangray | deangraytuesday | mashup | politics | citizenmedia | participatoryculture | darknet | december13 | thefuture | greytuesday]

EdTech UK points to Feedburner’s RSS & Blogs report which tells an interesting tale, but this telling image reveals most of it:

And I’m swimming head-deep in it! :) 

Dave Winer and Adam Curry really kicked off podcasting together. Their early podcasts together were amazing; their energy was the spark that started an extremely impressive digital engine. Dave and Adam parted ways with somewhat different visions of podcasting, although occassionally both seem to reminisce about the early days (way back, sometime in 2004!). However, after being mispresented elsewhere, Dave has taken the chance to clearly express his vision of podcasting, and it’s certainly one worth talking about. An excerpt:

I know some people think it isn’t important, but I want to carve out and reserve a space for people to be creative for each other. We have a cultural disease, the belief that only plastic imitation people have a place in the media. I believe in something different. I love the creativity of real people, and the creativity of the people I love. I want the flaws, that’s what makes it precious. I don’t care about your business model, that doesn’t mean you can’t have one. But I want to be sure you don’t roll us over just as we’re getting something interesting going.

Read the rest …