tech-ed collisions

the Panopticon gets that little bit closer

Telstra's Whereis Everyone service is bound to raise a few eyebrows. It's great if you want to locate a few friends and they are happy for you to be able to locate where they are at anytime but..... what about any privacy concerns? Are you happy to be located anywhere anytime? The press and commentators, as usual, is going to town on some of the more alarmist uses. We have very little privacy left in our lives - some would argue that it disappeared some time ago. Anyway, here's another example of technology with the potential for intruding further into our lives. Telstra has some great sales pitches - its certainly nice to be able to know your kids are on their way home or how you can find your misplaced phone (is it really that accurate?) but are we becoming immune or blase to these invasions of privacy? If we know we are being monitored so closely will that affect our behaviour in any way (as in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon) or are we simply past caring?

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Wikipedia also has an interesting modern definition of the Panopticon. I had a rant about this previously after reading "John Twelve Hawk's" "The Traveller" (must have a look to see if the sequel is out yet). Anyway, if you are interested in this type of technology from legal/policy/social perspectives, you might like to go along to UNSW's free one day seminar 'You are where you've been - technological threats to your location privacy' on 23rd July. Just don't forget to turn your (Telstra) phone off before you go ;).

Filed under  //   identity   privacy  
Posted July 8, 2008

Domain name big bang solving lack of addresses?

Over the last few days I have seen this reported in newspapers and online (here's a couple of online ones - ABC, ZDNet). The articles generally say that ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is set to remove restrictions on domain name suffixes. Currently we are restricted to suffixes that denote countries (eg .au) and a some generic types (.com, .net etc). The new regulations will open this up to allow suffixes such as .pepsi, .paris etc which certainly allows a massive increase in the numbers of useful names that could be created. These articles then go on to imply that this will solve the problem that we have with domain addresses set to run out in 2011 or thereabouts. It's my understanding that this is not the case. Domain names are not Internet addresses. Internet addresses are the numbers we often see in our browsers such as 123.456.789.098. It is these numbers which are set to run out. These numbers use an addressing system called TCP/IPv4. IPv4 is running out of available numbers. Numbers are released in blocks to regions around the world and available blocks of numbers are becoming a scarce commodity. Many of these numbers that have been allocated are not in use and it would be useful if there was some way of recovering these unused ones. Many organisations and governments are working on a numbering system called TCP/IPv6 which dramatically increases the number of available Internet addresses. It is the implementation of IPv6 that will solve the problem of lack of Internet addresses - Domain names are simply aliases for these numbers. These aliases make it easier for us to navigate around the Web as they are meant to be easier for us to remember than the numbered addresses. Cheers, Jerry.

Filed under  //   Internet  
Posted June 30, 2008

mashing up virtual worlds and interactive whiteboards

Every now and then you come across something that really inspires or impresses you. That's what happened to me when I came across Edusim3d, an open source virtual world designed for use with classroom interactive whiteboards. The best way to describe Edusim3d is simply to link to the video on their website and let it speak for itself. Cheers. Jerry

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Filed under  //   virtual worlds  
Posted June 30, 2008

open source virtual world

At the VET eStandards Expert Group meeting yesterday there was an update on the four projects selected for the emerging technology trials. The one that I was really interested in is the trial Canberra Institute of Technology is doing on Virtual Worlds. The platform they have selected is Croquet, an open source development environment really worth looking into if you have any sort of interest in virtual worlds. Have a look at the Croquet website, the people behind it (such as Alan Kay) and you will get a feel for why this platform is worth some serious consideration if you are considering your own virtual worlds project.

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Filed under  //   virtual worlds  
Posted June 19, 2008

ePortfolios - supporting lifelong learning

I had an opportunity to present at our ePortfolio Symposium the other day and gave a brief presentation on what form ePortfolios could take if we were to support them from a lifelong learning perspective. I think one of the challenges for many ePortfolio implementations is that they are bound to individual organisations rather than learners. While some (many?) may offer access of some form after learners have left the organisation - does that access really benefit the learner in the best way possible? To be successful from a lifelong perspective, ePortfolios must be 'learner owned and learner controlled'. Implementing this has its own set of challenges. The presentation seeks to identify what some of those challenges may be such as policy, trust, who can or should provide such services, access, ownership, the short lifespan of many of the technologies we are using (much shorter than the length of our careers), standards and interoperability etc.

To illustrate some of these points I look at a few services on the Web that are being used by learners to enable some form of eportfolio related services then have a look at a services model for ePortfolios based around a model originally put forward by the JISC in the UK.

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Filed under  //   eportfolio  
Posted June 13, 2008

Have your say on the future of the Internet

The OECD is having a Ministerial meeting in Seoul on June 17-18 on 'the future of the Internet economy'. Can't afford to get on a plane and head over there to give your opinion? Well, they're offering you the chance to have your say via YouTube. There is a YouTube channel inviting people to send their opinion/question in and there's a chance that these leading policy makers will respond to it as part of the conference. If you've got something to say that you think will make a difference, why not give it a go?

Filed under  //   Internet  
Posted June 6, 2008

Social Media explained

Looking for ways to explain what social networking, Twitter, podcasting etc is all about? Commoncraft do a great job of this with simple, cartoon like videos where they manipulate paper cutouts and a voice over using clear, plain English. Here's one on social media:
Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo. CommonCraft offer a number of free to use videos from their commoncraft show as well as licensed videos that you can purchase. They do a really great job of explaining concepts that might be complex to some, in a really simple easy to understand manner.

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Filed under  //   Web 2.0  
Posted June 3, 2008

Google should buy Twitter

Well... not really but one of the biggest problems that I have with Twitter (which is a great idea) is its reliability. I just experienced not being able to get into it yet again. This follows closely from problems I had yesterday and on what seems like many previous occasions. So why do I mention Google? Basically Google is my Internet health check. It's just always there - fast and reliable. If I can't access Google I know I have network problems. Twitter could learn from this commitment to reliability and performance. Either that or someone with the financial might and commitment to performance/reliability should just buy them out and sort it out. Cheers, Jerry.

Filed under  //   Google   Twitter  
Posted May 21, 2008

so Google wants to crawl Facebook

From ZDNet comes a post reporting of Google's CEO pleading to crawl Facebook.  Quoted as saying "If it's not searchable by Google, it's not open, and open is best for the consumer,".  Hmmm, best for the consumer or marketer?  Eric Schmidt is quoted as then going on to say that people should be able to move from place to place on the Web with their data.  I fully support the notion of me being able to do that and am pleased to see the OpenSocial initiative however that is quite different to a site being 'crawlable'. Its kind of strange seeing Facebook being portrayed as some sort of champion for protection of people's data given the way that many Facebook apps work and their past experiences.  Anyway, it would be nice as a user to be able to make that choice myself.  Do I want Google to crawl through my Facebook data or not?  Why should it be the choice of Facebook and/or Google?

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Posted May 2, 2008

nice post on ePortfolio standards

From the Learning Futures Eiffel team blog here's a nice introduction on standards to consider for ePortfolios. It gives a nice summary of the major ePortfolio specific standards to consider and importantly, mentions related specifications such as OpenSocial which I believe those interested in ePortfolios should start to at a minimum, become familiar with. From the article:

Today, even if few ePortfolio suppliers are engaged in the implementation of existing specifications, those doing it generally do so within the context of a specific community, using what is called application profiles, i.e. an adaptation of a base specification to the particular requirements of this community. This adaptation adds a level of complexity to the issue of interoperability, as different application profiles of the same base specification do not necessarily interoperate...
Our own experience in this area certainly backs this up. Some time ago, we developed an Employability Skills ePortfolio and used the IMS ePortfolio specification to build it. The IMS specification itself is (well) quite comprehensive to say the least which added some complexity to our work but in developing a profile specifically for employability skills, we in effect lost interoperability with other IMS ePortfolio conformant applications unless they used the same profile as us (highly unlikely). In the past I have discussed the need for simple to implement standards and concentrated on specifications such as RSS, Atom and microformats. The Learning Futures article references hResume, an interesting format used by LinkedIn. Compare the definition for that with a heavy duty specification and see which one you would rather implement.

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Filed under  //   eportfolio   standards