Nice clear explanation by Anand Rajaraman about how his 30+ person business (Kosmix - a company that is developing a pretty impressive topic-focused search engine - example 1; example 2) uses blogs, wikis, and instant messaging for internal communication. Plenty to emulate there for many organisations.
According to Desire2Learn, Blackboard Inc.'s forcefully worded motion for contempt against Desire2Learn was denied by the court in Beaumont, Texas, yesterday. Blackboard has apparently failed to convince the court that the changes made by Desire2Learn in Version 8.3 of its VLE are "only transparently cosmetic", and "do not design around the claims of the ’138 patent". Blackboard had sought explicitly coercive damages in its motion for contempt:
"Blackboard suggests that for each day following this Court’s order that Desire2Learn uses, sells or offers for sale version 8.3 or associated services, Desire2Learn should be ordered to pay Blackboard $23,000.00. No litigant can be permitted to simply choose to pay a sanction and continue to violate a federal district court’s injunction, however. If, after five days, Desire2Learn continues to defy the order, the daily sanction should double to $46,000.00. And if, after five more days, that sanction is insufficiently strong coerce Desire2Learn into compliance, it should double again. The sanction should continue to increase until Desire2Learn complies."
so the failure - even if it is only a temporary failure - must come as a relief for Desire2Learn. Expect more on this in the next few days on the Desire2Learn and/or on the Blackboard patent information pages, especially once the full judgment from the case is published. Conceivably this may have a sting in its tail for either company.
Source: US National Archives
Advance personalized learning is in pretty august company as one of 14 grand challenges for engineering (alongside, for example, Make solar energy economical, Provide access to clean water, Prevent nuclear terror, and Provide energy from fusion) chosen earlier this year by a panel of luminaries including Ray Kurzweil, Alec Broers , and Google's Larry Page. (The picture, from the Grand Engineering Challenges web site, is of a one-room 1950s US school-room where lessons were individualized, since classes included children of different ages.)
There are two short video interviews from panel members: Calestous Juma (Professor of the Practice of International Development, Harvard University), and Wesley Harris (Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
The rubric about the personalized learning challenge is interesting for the way challenge is posed; and the fact that personalisation is seen as a long-term challenge - on a par with fusion power - does act as a useful caution to the current UK policy emphasis on achieving extensive personalisation using technology right now.
Via this article about James Evans's work in the Economist, referring to Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship, published yesterday in Science, I came across this (poorly produced!) National Science Foundation short video of Evans discussing why researchers cite fewer research papers despite having access to more. Blurb:
"Thanks to the Internet, scientists now have access to an astonishing number of research papers, scholarly journals and other papers. But according to new research conducted by James Evans, a professor sociology at the University of Chicago, researchers are actually citing fewer papers than ever, and they tend to cite newer papers that are also cited by many of their peers. In this interview, James discusses what got him interested in the topic, how he conducted his research and what he believes are some of the implications of this trend."
The key cause of the change - which Evans alludes to towards the end of the interview - is surely "search", and in particular the ranking technologies that search engines employ: once a paper on the Web has a lot of citations from articles also on the Web, then that paper's search ranking rises; if its search ranking is high it is more likely to be cited. You wonder what account is being taken of this by proponents of metrics-based assessments of research excellence.
The Schools Open Source Project is looking for practising senior teachers to serve on the project's advisory committee. The committee will meet 3 or 4 times each year, receive reports from the project team and provide advice and guidance to ensure the service meets the objectives of the project and its customers. Here is an excerpt from the project web site:
"The Schools Open Source Project is a Becta funded initiative to help schools with awareness, adoption, deployment, use and ongoing development of Open Source Software. A number of schools are already realising the benefits of OSS within their ICT strategy. This project will work to share their experiences along with good OSS practice from other sectors with the wider community of educational practitioners, including teachers, decision makers and IT specialists.
From September 2008, we will provide an authoritative, informative and impartial website that will raise awareness of how OSS can be used to enhance teaching and school infrastructures. The project will then develop and support a community of practice that engages those who are currently using OSS and welcomes and supports new members."
A welcome development, but you are left wondering what the link is between this Becta-funded activity, and JISC's Open Source Software Advisory Service. How will these two services avoid duplication of effort? How can the knowhow they are each developing be shared? Why not have a single cross-sectoral service? Readers with insights are welcome to comment below, or to write to me directly and I will summarise.
The Association for Learning Technology (ALT), for which I work half time, has just published the full draft programme for ALT-C 2008, which will take place in Leeds, England, between 9 and 11 September 2008. The programme [160 kB PDF] describes a wide spectrum of short papers, workshops, symposia, research papers, posters, and demonstrations. As reported previously, the keynote speakers are Hans Rosling, Itiel Dror, and David Cavallo. Invited speakers are Denise Kirkpatrick, Richard Noss, George Auckland, Lizbeth Goodman, George Siemens, Jane Hart, Gilly Salmon and Clive Shepherd. The deadline for booking is 15 August 2008.
You'll possibly have seen some of cultural anthropologist Mike Wesch's widely viewed pieces: as Information R/evolution, Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us, and A Vision of Students Today. Here, via Matt Jukes, is a long and gripping talk by Wesch at a University of Manitoba conference on 17/6/2008, in which Wesch manages successfully to trash the ghastly "digital natives/digital immigrants" dichotomy that currently plagues discourse about technology in learning.
Summary, from the conference web site:
During his presentation, the Kansas State University professor breaks down his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future.
Digital Ethnography course portal at Kansas State University. Thorough review of the Wesch's University of Manitoba talk by Matt Lingard from LSE.
Becta has just published Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008-14, an overall cradle-to-grave e-learning strategy for English education. There are some depressing charts on page 27, which contrast how children say they prefer to learn:
with what they say happens most frequently in classrooms.
(The second chart looks to have a poorly edited title.)
[Updated 14/7/2008]
I've focused on formative assessment in previous posts. I'm a member of the steering group for a short JISC-funded project about formative e-assessment run by the Institute of Education. The aim of the project is to "scope a vision for formative e-assessment". Here is a link to the PowerPoint slides of an introductory talk given by Dylan Wiliam [1.2 MB PPT] at the project's first "practical enquiry" day. (An MP3 file for the talk would be useful, and will be available soon.) Wiliam's introduction sets the tone:
"Much of the debate about the improvement of systems of educational assessment focus on binaries. Is reliability more important than validity? Are constructed-response items better than multiple-choice items? Is teacher assessment better than externally-set tests and examinations? Is continuous assessment through coursework better than terminal examinations? In this talk, I will argue that as long as the debate is conducted in terms of such either/or issues, then progress will be slow, if not entirely absent. Rather, progress is to be made by mapping out the shades of grey between these extremes, understanding how each end of the spectrum is useful in helping us understand the spectrum, and the tensions we have to reconcile, but lethal as a goal in itself."
and these statements about formative feedback make you think:
The project is looking for a spectrum of case studies of "formative e-assessment in action". Further details about the project.
Iain Doherty, Mark Bullen and two less identifiable individuals are contributing to Net Gen Nonsense a blog "dedicated to debunking the myth of the net generation, particularly as it relates to learning, teaching and the use of technology".
This three-page briefing in the Economist coincides with the imminent departure of Microsoft's founder Bill Gates. It provides a clear indication of the state of play in Microsoft: over 80,000 employees, net annual income of over $16bn, a market capitalisation of around $300bn (half as much as in 1999), with plenty of questions being asked about the quality of the Vista operating system. Whatever your role, the briefing is worth scan-reading for the summary it provides of Microsoft's direction of travel: towards products that support collaboration and interconnectedness over the Internet. Bear in mind that on Gates's departure, the boss of Microsoft will be Ray Ozzie, who was an early pioneer of online collaboration. Ozzie more or less invented Lotus Notes, and then went on to found online collaboration software company Groove Networks. Microsoft bought Groove in 2005, bringing Ozzie with it.
The US Patent Office is currently re-examining the e-learning patent it awarded Blackboard early in 2006, following Desire2Learn's and the Software Freedom Law Centre's successful inter partes and ex parte re-examination requests. Dr Ray Mercer's 26 June 2008 evidence for Desire2Learn [450 kB PDF] - part of the supporting material to Desire2Learn's Comments by third party requester to patent owner's response in inter partes reexamination [570 kB PDF] - is not for the feint hearted. Ideally it needs to be read in parallel with Dr Mark Jones's evidence for Blackboard [320 kB PDF], to which it is, in effect, a response.
Step by step, Mercer sets out the extent to which, in his opinion, Patent Number 6,988,138 was anticipated by prior art, and thus should never have been granted by the US Patent Office. Mercer concentrates in his evidence on several different sources of prior art, including Serf, Top Class 2.0 and Virtual Campus (early on-line learning systems).
Most interesting to me was his consideration of the EDUCOM/NLII Instructional Management Systems Specifications Document Version 0.5 (April 29, 1998), which I wrote about at the end of August 2006. The feeling I get from reading Mercer's evidence is that Desire2Learn might have benefited from it during Blackboard's infringement case earlier this year (which Desire2Learn lost, comprehensively); and I'm puzzled as to why it was not obtained earlier in the process. (My eye has been rather off the Blackboard/Desire2Learn ball in recent months, and it is entirely possible that I missed an earlier Mercer document.)
Jonathan Feinberg's Wordle (via Kristian Still) is an elegant and flexible tool to create clouds from text. Wordle gives you a lot of control over fonts, font colours, and font positions. The one above uses the Executive Summary of the DIUS Higher Education at Work consultation document. The one below is from Lucy Kellaway's piece on the brainlessly upbeat language of business.
In September 2005 I wrote this:
"Epic plc to be taken over by the Huveaux plc. Epic plc is a major and successful UK e-learning company. I've occasionally reviewed Epic's often useful e-learning White Papers in Fortnightly Mailing, and some readers may have read an online interview with me which appeared in Epic's July Newsletter. Over the past few months Epic has had a friendly "suitor". At the end of July the boards of Huveaux and Epic announced the terms of a recommended share and cash offer [68 kB PDF - link now dead] for Huveaux, to acquire Epic, with approval to be sought for the deal from Huveaux's shareholders at an Extraordinary General Meeting, on 7 September. (Huveaux was formed in 2001 with the objective of "building a substantial publishing and media business focused on the creation and delivery of "must have" information across both the public and private sectors".) On 12 August, Futuremedia plc, another UK-based e-learning company, just round the corner in Brighton from Epic, also announced its interest in buying Epic, but by 18 August, Huveaux had gained control of Epic, rendering Futuremedia's interest irrelevant. Donald Clark, Epic's Chief Executive, will stand down from this role, and become a consultant to Huveaux."
I believe Huveaux paid over £20m for Epic. The offer valued the entire issued share capital of Epic at approximately £22.7 million.
33 months years later Huveaux has now sold Epic to successful entrepreneur Andrew Brode, for less than it originally paid (~£5m? ... which would imply an average loss of value since the original sale of over £1m per quarter). Jonathan Satchell, brought in by Huveaux in December 2007 to find a buyer, will continue as Epic's CEO. My guess is that away from Huveaux's largely print-based stable, Epic will thrive once more.
On Wednesday 21 May the Institute of Higher Education Policy released a report “The Bologna Club: What U.S. Higher Education Can Learn from a Decade of European Reconstruction.” One week later, 28 May 2008, two young European entrepreneurs, Manuel Dietz and Stéphane Velay, of the German company unisolution GmbH, described the collaborative work of 13 European software and service providers to automate administrative services supporting the emerging Bologna Process.
The report's author Clifford Adelman wrote:
What has transpired since 1999 cannot be but lightly acknowledged in the United States. While still a work in progress, parts of the Bologna Process have already been imitated in Latin America, North Africa, and Australia. The core features of the Bologna Process have sufficient momentum to become the dominant global higher education model [emphasis added] within the next two decades. We had better listen up.
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