http://www.reusablelearning.org/index.asp?id=26

Based on a reference in a recent intro to learning objects I went back to a site I thought I new, but instead found this newly developed resource that the Eduworks folks produced for the NSDL. It is really worth spending some time on, for both newbies and old hands alike. The section on "Fostering Reusability in the NSDL" is very helpful, and the Reusability Framework is, I think, top notch and I would be surprised if I didn't start to see it show up more as a canonical reference. - SWL

8:22:30 AM    

I'm having afew issues with my new Wiki system, TikiWiki, but here's where the list of freely available scholarly (I think) higher-ed ed tech journals will go.

Big thanks to Martin and Chris for the pointers :o)

Here's the updated list:

• Australian Journal of Educational Technology
• International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning
• Journal of Interactive Media in Education
• Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks
• Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology
• Journal of Computer Mediated Communication
• Educational Technology and Society
• Global E Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Education
• Electronic Journal of eLearning
• Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education
• The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment
• Journal of Distance Education
• International Journal of Educational Technology
• Interactive Multimedia Electronic Journal of Computer Enhanced Learning
• EDUCAUSE Review
• Educational Technology Review

8:21:28 AM    

Following up on my recent wiki investigations I thought I'd do a run down of the wikis I've looked at, thought about and played with and my 'conclusions' at this stage. Probably worth noting before starting is that there really is no 'best' solution... my thoughts are very much influenced by my personal preferences and pedagogy, I have no rubric (nor would I like any ;o) and I will probably change my mind down the track... so that said, here goes:

Task: Choose a wiki system to use with a large, fully-online, undergraduate cohort studying computer science. The group is already supported by a fully featured CMS (WebCT Vista), however, this does not include the functionality for collaborative editing and creation of documents or, as a longer term project, the development of an organic 'virtual-organization' which can be used as a context for project management and IT Practice related tasks and which can develop with use.

The Contenders: I figured there needs to be some sort of structure here so I'm adopting what I used before in the 'Hosted by someone else / Hosted by us' approach. I've also not featured CourseForum, Confluence or any other major vendors as, well, nobody will give us the money... also given that we are working with a current CMS it doesn't make a whole heap of sense to get another one (however much it needles you ;o)

Hosted by someone else:

Swiki.net Swiki.net appears too good to be true, it's got all the funky stuff from locking pages to email notification of changes of pages, to different levels of security for pages, user maintenance (extending invitations, changing accesses) and easy upload. It even conveys these by an icon system. Swiki.net will even host a ton of different projects for you giving you 50MB to play around with! The only problem is that it is too good to be true I cannot emphasize enough the fact that I was unable to access material for up to a week and that since then I have heard other stories of this. Whatever you do... don' risk it! However, Swiki does have an 'install yourself' version... which is probably worth a shot as it has all of the above but presumably no hosting issues.

editme editme is ace... it gets round the problems with 'Wiki meets everyday person... everyday person looks confused, shakes head and walks away' problem by providing a snappy WYSIWYG editor and a menu button called 'New' for a new page (you don't know how cool that is!) It has a nice facility for email notification (although not as simple and Swiki... and it'll send notification for the entire site rather than a particular page). The only teeny-weeny issue is that it costs (although $5 a month isn't something you should fret about too much) and, as they host it, you have limited 'control'. I'd recommend this to teachers with small classes wanting to use a Wiki though, not fir us but full of potential!

TeachingWiki TeachingWiki is a lovely idea (along the same lines of School Blogs) and full kudos to the people behind this project which aims to provide teachers with Wiki facilities to support their teaching. It's powered by OpenWiki (see comments below for this).. the problem with using this hosted service is that, well, there's no individual accounts, no 'privacy' or 'unity' of space and no real 'control'. This is a great place to play around, and if you're looking for something that doesn't swiki.net on you for something small then this is a good place to start!

Hosted by us:

MediaWiki MediaWiki is the Wiki used for Wikipedia which is a good start! It's got a nice text editor thingy with a good insert image tool, no email or xml :o(, but does allow users to 'watch this page' through MediaWiki. Especially neat is the way it encourages logging in (but doesn't require it) and adds extra stuff (signatures, page watches, preferences, 'user talk page' [which is nice!] for your keystrokes]. It doesn't allow for any 'administrative' control (in terms of locking pages etc.) but you could argue that if you had that is kinda against the nature of it all... and it's easy enough to 'rollback' to previous versions if things go wrong. This has the added advantage of a. being current and in development b. having worked well with large groups of people before. Installation is just MySQL and PHP... so that's a breeze too.

MoinMoin MoinMoin is 'nice an easy' (to quote them!) It doesn't have a text editor (or much clear formatting help) but it does have some neat user options...not least being the ability to subscribe to a particular page for email updates (with accompanying little email icon :o) It doesn't have a 'comment on this page' facility (which quite a few of the others have) but does have a nice 'n easy attach file thingy. I like MoinMoin... but it feels a bit 'wiki raw' and doesn't have the things (like xml) which makes me excited about OpenWiki. It's also 'Python Powered' which means that, again, my hosting service and the University won't support it... sigh.

PHPWiki PHPWiki is a simple, straightforward wiki... not a bad place to start.. especially if you're interested in what wikis are, how they work or are a wiki purist.

WakkaWiki This is probably because I can't get my head around a lot of the admin in other wikis but the nice things about WakaWiki is that it looks and feels very very very customizable! It's also got a nice comments feature and a lovely way of tracking users by IP addy if you don't sign in. Nothing on the editing front though and not a hint of email but it does have xml :o)  It's got access controls which are pretty cool and is PHP / MySQL which is also good. Apparently it will also "Support multiple sites running off the same Wakka installation". As the page says it's still a baba and would need a lot of things on the text editing / uploads / explanation / icon / user features front before I'd take it on with a bunch of undergrads but it's got a heck of a lot of potential!

TikiWiki Now... Tiki is something special, very special, you can have your wiki, some blogs, a discussion forum, a chat room, a shoutbox... oh and there's also content management, polling, multiple stylesheet options as they say "Your quest for a full-featured CMS/Groupware has ended!" You pay for it in MB (my installation is about 37MB... to start with) but wow... it does everything and stuff you didn't know you wanted to do. It's also got a strong community... is very current... is PHP / MySQL based and ... well, it's rather good. There is a drawback though... it's too good. You couldn't just sit down a bunch of teachers and say 'hey, use this'... they'd be very scared.... you could give them simple wiki spaces to use but the extra functionality is just around the corner waiting to scare them (and if they can't play / change / explore then they can't without, well, getting scared). Getting people to use Tiki, I imagine, is like getting people to use WebCT or Blackboard... it's a cultural thing... a developing thing... a 'commitment' thing. I want to use it but don't know if I'd inflict it on others until I was going to say 'hey.... here's your new 'everything'... if you know what I mean... but I am tempted (an could well be wrong!)

PMWiki PMWiki is nice but there's no simple 'User Preferces'... it says it has email notifications, page protection and alike but I'm confused as to where these are or how I could set them up. I guess it's a bit like PHPWiki but a bit more dressed up (keeping to WikiPhilosophy)... but from my perspective suffers from the same problems. It's got a nice cookbook thing for stuff you can do with it though... not for the non-geek like me though :o(

Friki is nice, it's especially nice that it's being developed by Frank Carver who feels like he's just round the corner :O) It's pure wiki simple and, more excitingly "a pure-Java web application which can be installed as simply as dropping "friki.war" into any modern servlet container or Java application server." Which appeals to me! Not really in the feature game though... which will make some people happy... and some people less so.

OpenWiki Has the instant appeal of XML feeds, which, together with a some nifty 'help' pop-ups for formatting etc. at the top of an edit page make this a serious contender. It doesn't have an email update facility (which is a problem as, let's face it, 0.001% of the world knows how to aggregate XML / RSS etc.) and it's 'page controls' are, well, not there. The feel I get about this is that it's a bit of a geeks / group-of-geeks dream but wouldn't work that well with a wider audience / bunch of newbies. It's also Windows installation which means that it's a no-go for my web-host, organization and... well, basically I'll need to become a geek before I can use it :o)

So... what's the final conclusion?

Well, first up, because this is an 'institutional thing' and people want control... all of the ones hosted by other people are out of the window, so byebye editme, Swiki.net, editme and Teaching Wiki... and also Friki (I think).

Secondly, we can only do PHP & MySQL so ta ra Swiki (install yourself), MoinMoin and OpenWiki.

I'm a feature-feeder... not junkie, just needer :o) So ta ra PHPWiki and WakaWiki for the moment.

Which leaves MediaWiki, TikiWiki & PMWiki. Personally, I'm going to use TikiWiki as my online CMS... much as I'd like the 'simplicity' of OpenWiki or PMWiki I find myself just carving features and functionality. I think Tiki will meet many of my needs... we shall see. However, I wouldn't, at this stage, force it on anyone else who wasn't ready to go the whole hog... certainly not x tutors and 500 undergrads. If I could find a working good example of PMWiki doing email updates then I'd be tempted towards it but even then... if it's going to be used in specific projects over short spaces of time (no 'ad hoc' stuff... just a one or two week exercise) I think the features that MediaWiki offers in terms of text editing and clarity of use (to a non-technical user) seem to keep it up there. Also, MediaWiki is being used by a very large group of not necessarily tech-savvy users in Wikipedia, and in that used very successfully... and so, for this trial, MediaWiki it is... I'll report back :o)

8:19:20 AM    

No, it is not Potted Meat Food Product, just down the shelf...

Wikis: The Next Frontier for Spammers? Wiki maintainers can expect an increase in spam after a webmaster newsletter highlighted the effectiveness of Wiki spam in raising a site's Google ranking. WebProNews described how a webmaster improved his rank in a search engine optimization (SEO) contest using links in Wiki "sandboxes" - pages where users are urged to test drive the format and learn how to use it.

All kinds of body enhancement products, hormones, elongation devices, chemicals, mortgage deals, ebay tips-- all now veering for your wikis!

Head for the hills!

8:17:31 AM    

There are three immutable and unpleasant truths about information technology staffing and retention that make outsourcing the dodge of choice for the incompetent and lazy: 1. Turnover is expensive; 2. Retention rate is the most accurate indicator of leadership quality; and 3. Recruiting is the hardest job an IT manager has.

Gregoire closes by saying:

So, what kind of IT organization do you aspire to have? If you yearn for adequate results on vanilla systems in pursuit of dial-tone regularity, forget about talent shortages and go find yourself a good contract lawyer. If, on the other hand, you still believe IT can make a competitive difference and that even the more mundane tasks can be a channel of competitive advantage given a little creative effort, then developing and retaining a professional organization should be your number-one goal. If it is, I thank you and wish you the very best.

I think this is too strongly worded. In my opinion, the job of the CTO or CIO is more generally to recognize top talent and try to leverage it for the benefit of their organizations. Sometimes that talent sits outside of your own organization within an outsourcer (and without a doubt, turnover with outsourcers is expensive just like people turnover). No IT organization of any size can maintain the highest level of expertise in everything. I also think that some "mundane tasks" will never make a competitive difference no matter how much "creative effort" is put behind them. Why would you ever want to do the IT behind payroll, for example, when you can outsource to companies like ADP? In the end, I think it's all about picking your outsourcing vs. insourcing battles. Outsourcing nothing seems as much an ill-informed strategy as outsourcing everything. There's a balance somewhere in between. [Chad Dickerson]

8:14:55 AM    

This notice went out to our faculty today:

After a year and a half of extensive review and evaluation of course management systems, the project's Executive Sponsors unanimously approved the move from WebCT to Desire2Learn, pending budget approval. Dozens of faculty and staff, representing most colleges and campuses of The Ohio State University, were involved in the rigorous selection process. Evaluators were impressed with Desire2Learn's ease of use, intuitive interface, and the functionality and features it provides. Among these is a learning object repository that will allow faculty to import and export educational content to be shared across course sections or even departments. In addition, Desire2Learn will enable more seamless integration with other campus systems, including those of the library and Registrar's office so that students and faculty can access a wide array of resources and tools.

The new system will be introduced gradually to minimize inconvenience to faculty. We are working to assure that:
1) most of the material in current class web sites will be converted into the new system for faculty;
2) faculty and staff will be provided ample training opportunities, robust documentation, and extensive support to ease the transition;
3) WebCT will continue to be an option for existing users through at least the end of Spring 2005. Almost everyone will still be using WebCT for Autumn 2004.

More details and definitive timelines for implementation, training, system availability and conversion of current sites into the new system will be announced in the months ahead. Once funding is approved, we will initiate a weekly update to keep the campuses informed.

8:13:15 AM