Capturing the Captcha

A CAPTCHA or Captcha (IPA: /ˈkæptʃə/) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer (Source: Wikipedia). During my search for new, interesting technology based learning solutions it's often needed to create an account to take a closer look. In most cases I need to confirm that I am real human by entering a Captcha. However, spammers already found possibilities to crack the Captcha coding and create usernames by a robot (e.g. at Live Hotmail). This is probably one of the reasons why Captcha's are increasingly difficult to read. The ultimate consequence is that the human reader cannot identify the characters he needs to enter. Only this week I had two experiences in creating test accounts in which a Captcha confirmation was included. Both times I was not able to read the Captcha code the first time right. It took me three times before the Captcha code I entered was right. Is this just my subjective impression, do I need glasses, or is this something that other also encounter?

Reflecting on the financial crisis

I just submitted my conference presentation for NOC 2008, so I thought I take a moment to reflect on some remarkable issues in the financial crisis. Although I don't experience any personal damage yet, it all looks quite distressing if you would only look and listen to all the news flashes. Nowadays, it should be quite easy to select a number of RSS feeds in order to get you into a deep mental depression. For someone who is really working in the financial business, I can imagine that it must be quite depressing to see how things drop down for days in a row. The thing that happen seem to go beyond their span of control. On the other hand, I sometimes get the impression that the 'panic of the crowds' is the only leading driver for everything that is going on. I wonder if there is really any reflection, or is it just blindly following the crowds in a sort of belief that this will get you into a save place where you can wait until the crisis is over. Another factor I noticed is the role of the media. Listening to radio interviews I sometimes get the impression that it is not interesting enough to make a report on companies that are doing relatively well. The tone of voice also contributes to how news items are perceived by the public. For example, the 6% decrease of the Nikei index on Oct. 28 was considered "dramatic" and "historical". One day later, the 6.4 % increase was mentioned only a "light recovery". If I would only have read the header, I would think about an increase of 1 or 2% maybe, but not 6.4! This is not helpful to create a more positive context in which structural recovery of the damage can be established. It's not a coincidence that the possibilities for short selling have been restricted.

The financial crisis has already infected some real 'economies', such as the automotive and hospitality industries. A rather unexpected thing is that - so far, so good - the ICT business is not mentioned very much (read a Dutch review on this by Irma Borst). In the 2001 crisis we got the full blow. But what about this time? Will we remain in the periphery of this financial hurricane? Cutting costs on training and education is one of the things that are always a risk, unless there is a clear business case that supports the idea that the benefit will be larger than the costs. Especially for the e-Learning business the definition of clear business cases may become essential drivers for investments in the near future.

Microsoft as a virus distributor?

Reading today's newspaper I noticed a small article about Chinese computer users who are angry with Microsoft. What's new you might think? Well the case is that Microsoft has developed a Windows Genuine Advantage application that is automatically installed through Windows updates. The program detects whether or not you have a legal version of the Windows OS. If not, the user gets a black wallpaper every hour, during 45 days. You may change it to a wallpaper you like more, but it will be replaced by the black wallpaper in the next hour. This type of computer behavior reminds me of a typical, rather innocent category of computer viruses. It's Microsoft's way to strive against illegal use of their OS. On the one hand they may be right to protect their legal rights, on the other hand it is questionable whether they have the right to infect millions of computer users this way. It seems like taking the law into their own hands, instead of sending out legal claims. Trying to imagine how this would be in a more physical metaphor I can think of a situation that a manufacturer would come into my house to shut down my cd player, so I cannot play copies of CD's anymore. How would that look like? You cannot pop into somebody's home and do things that you believe are right, it would be considered trespassing. Is the Microsoft example a case of digital trespassing?

Sakai re-visited

My career at the University of Twente is now exactly 10 days behind me - it was a nice "say goodbye" reception by the way - and I shifted to 6th gear in working for Stoas Learning. The past few days I contributed to a proposal for an enterprise learning solution based on Sakai. Last Wednesday we had an intensive 5-hour information session with representatives from our potential customer. Besides taking a close look at Sakai, they were also very interested in the way Stoas may act as a partner organisation, making the implementation of Sakai a success. Yesterday and today I have been working on the contents of a proposal together with some colleagues at Stoas. In the meantime several additional questions popped up, which also need to be addressed in our offer. It was a deja vu to re-visit familiar webpages like confluence, collab and jira, and to take a closer look how Sakai 2.5.3 has developed, compared to the last version (2.3) I have worked with. Some new tools in combination with GUI skins and didactical templates for deployment of Sakai sites (both developed at Stoas), gave a promising perspective. Of course we have to wait if our proposal will be accepted, but if so, it will probably mean quite some Sakai-related work for us.

FireFTP

One of the things I do in my spare time is the maintenance of a few websites such as www.tsdekker.nl. In a technical sense it's a rather straightforward site, basically some .css, .js and a bunch of .html files, that can be easily adapted by using e.g. FrontPage. Up until a few years ago I used WS FTP for uploading new files to the server, a rather straightforward easy to use FTP application. Nothing fancy, but quite reliable. After that I moved to SmartFTP. The nice thing about SmartFTP is the functionality to open different FTP servers at the same time. You can switch between them just by clicking on tabs. It was not a big problem to use SmartFTP for free, as an educational license. However, at certain moments it was necessary to do a re-install the program. Not a big problem you might say, but the removal of a previous version was never 100% complete as some entries remain in your Start menu. Recently SmartFTP launched their 3.0 version of the program, but also introduced license restrictions. After 10 years they are no longer able to provide SmartFTP as a free service. I managed to download a trial version, which would expire in 1 day... Well, 1 day is enough to make the most urgent uploads to the website, but it became very clear that I should look for an alternative. I already heard about FireFTP, a free FTP add-on to your Mozilla Firefox browser. It's a relatively small add-on and promises to give you easy and intuitive access to your FTP server. What I like about it is (1) that it loads very quickly and (2) it simply opens another tab in your active Firefox browser. Compared to SmartFTP, which is a separate application, loading FireFTP saves you a lot of time. In one half of the screen you can see the contents of your local computer, in the other half the contents of your FTP server. Just as in SmartFTP it's very easy to select the files you need to upload. After uploading your files, simply switch to another tab to see the result on your live website. So far it works great: it does all the things I expect it to do.

Making the next step

As mentioned in one of my previous posts my career is moving ahead to the next step: senior consultant e-learning at Stoas Learning in Wageningen (NL). September will be a sort of transfer period in which I start working for Stoas, but I also have to finish some work at the University of Twente. The main issue that has to be worked on in Twente is the writing of an implementation plan for Blackboard. As you may have read elsewhere (www.utwente.nl/elo) the university has decided to choose for Blackboard as their next VLE. This means that TeleTOP will be phased out in the next couple of years. The writing of an implementation plan is not as easy as it seems. It's not only setting up the infrastructure, but also a support organisation and the training of end users. Moreover, it's an interesting issue for the University of Twente to collaborate closely with the colleagues from the Technical University of Delft. They already have a lot of experience with Blackboard in their organisation and are also actively involved in the Bb user group in the Netherlands. The collaboration with Delft is also interesting from the perspective of integrating Blackboard with OSIRIS, the new student information system for both universities. Well, the challenge is to deliver a 1.0 version of the implementation plan by the end of september. In the meantime I started working for Stoas. At first for two days a week, but it will build up rather quickly towards the end of september. Obviously a lot of impressions and meeting new colleagues. It felt great so far, and as I understand there won't be a big problem in finding challenges that need to be worked on at Stoas..;-) I'll keep you posted.

World Mind Map

A few days ago I was invited by a friend to contribute to a new thing he developed together with a colleague. It's called World Mind Map (www.womima.com). The idea is relatively simple. I think most of you know the concept of mind mapping: using associations to relate a set of concept to one another. Often succesfully applied in brainstorming sessions. The additional value of Word Mind Map (as I understand it) is that you can immediately relate to associations that others have already made (and which are stored in the WoMiMa database). So I registered for a user account and made a first try-out. The very first word I entered immediately displayed a mindmap of all the concepts that appear to be related to that word. I was surprised. At this moment the mindmap that appeared is rather clear. I wonder what will happen after a few thousand members have entered their associations. Will there still be a clear overview? Sometimes I noticed that some of the words were displayed on top of each other which makes it difficult to read. The founders claim that this new concept can be a powerful way to make a map of your business and it's context. At this moment it's only in Dutch, but there are plans to make translations (or should I say associations) to other languages as well. For example the word 'computer' is the same in Dutch as it is in English. Well, if you became curious, just take a look and see what happens.

Give way to math education

After a long period of writing a coherent development programme, together with the department of applied mathematics, we finally received a 'go' on a series of four projects in the field of math education. The past years have painfully shown that a lot of students have trouble with their math subjects like Calculus. Although in most cases they achieved reasonably well scores in their final exams in secondary education, the math entrance test at the very beginning of their university career is often a great disappointment. Another issue that comes up during the curriculum is that students who have enrolled into a to a science curriculum also have to take some obligatory math courses. One of the questions they ask themselves is: "do we really need this?", i.e. there seems to be no clear relation between what is learnt in the math courses and what they will need in the further parts of their science curriculum. The math is given on a much more abstract level than they are used to, which makes it difficult to imagine how it can be applied in the context of their major curriculum. As a result some students tend to develop a negative attitude towards math and postpone taking exams in these math courses, sometimes until the very end of their bachelor program.
One of the projects in the new development programme aims at developing context-specific cases. However, this will be addressed in a much more integrated way in the sense that the abstract math theory will be part of a face-to-face introduction. The cases will be presented right after this introduction causing that students do have to apply their fresh knowledge in a context that relates to their main curriculum. So, a student in construction technology receives a different case than a student in chemical technology, although in both cases they may follow a course called 'Calculus I' for example. Besides an expected improvement in transfer of knowledge, we hope to find a spin-off effect in the sense that students may develop a more positive attitude towards math subjects, and possibly spend more time on the subject. And as we know from previous projects and research: spending more time on a subject is positively related to the results that will be achieved. The projects will be started during the summer. The first products (cases) should be available already in september 2008.

Back in blog-business

It has been quite a while since my last post. A number of reasons - which I will not bother you with - caused that I simply didn't have the time to maintain my blog. Hopefully this will change from now on. This week two important things came up, which made me decide that I should pick up blogging again. The first thing is that I will move to the next step in my career. As of september 2008 I will leave the University of Twente and start working as a senior consultant e-learning at Stoas Learning. A lot of interesting challenges over there in both the business as well as in the educational market. I am well aware of the fact that a commercial environment is completely different, but from previous job positions I think I know what choice I am making right now.

The second thing is the university board has made a final decision for the next VLE at the University of Twente (see www.utwente.nl/elo for more information, partly in English). For outsiders it may seem rather surprising that the board made a decision for Blackboard. Well maybe it is. If you asked me four months agon what it would be, then I would have said 'probably SharePoint'. However, our SharePoint reports listed a lot of critical remarks and risks that need to be addressed in case a VLE will be based on MS SharePoint. Moreover, a united group of students wrote an open letter to the board of directors in which they criticize the possible choice of a Microsoft solution. Although Blackboard (6.3) was not considered 'good enough' in 2005 the board asked the project team to take a good look at Blackboard 8 and see how the newest release would meet the main decision criteria. Thanks to the close collaboration with our colleagues from the University of Delft we managed to conduct another quickscan within a very tight time schedule. Besides the fact that basic Bb functionality will be sufficient for the majority of our instructors and students, a great advantage is that we can collaborate with 'Delft' on the integration with OSIRIS (the new student information system for Delft and Twente). I think it's good that a choice has been made, it's time to move ahead to the next step. In my final weeks at the University I will be closely involved in the development of an implementation plan.

Do open source learning solutions really stand a chance?

This evening I was reading the blog of Andreas Wittke who brings up an interesting and the same time somewhat worrying perspective. I think he is quite right in his analysis that higher education institutes have a sort of default procedure when they consider changing to another VLE. Basically the process starts with setting up an extensive list of requirements, followed by a request for proposal (to which companies can subscribe). After the companies have provided their information a small number is invited to make a commercial offer. This whole procedure has to be done according to strict European rules (and takes part mostly behind closed doors). Basically this is what happened in the decision making process of buying a new student information system (SIS) at the University of Twente. For open source communities it is much more difficult to make a bid and offer their proposition in this kind of procedures. The Sakai board tried to enter the Dutch High Education market in 2007, e.g. by setting up a meeting with members from the boards of directors and not to forget by organizing one of the Sakai World Conferences in Amsterdam. It was not a great success in the sense that only a few institutes went along with Sakai. The criteria that Andreas Wittke mentions sound very familiar. Annual turnover is one of them. Companies fall out of the buying procedure, just because their annual turnover is too low. This makes it impossible to compete for small or relatively young companies, which don't have a very good track record. And what about market share? Microsoft claims to have a 95% market share, but this can also be part of their sales strategy in order to keep up a high score on this criterium. An analysis earlier this week at the University of Twente shows that 27% of our VLE users use Firefox as a browser, which is surprisingly close to the share mentioned by Wittke. Perhaps we may set our hopes to our government. The Dutch parliament is nowadays very critical about the sales procedures on software applications. The recent disasters in large governmental ICT projects will make this even worse. A few weeks ago the government stated that in case of equality of software applications (I wonder how they will measure equality...), governmental institutes (which then also applies to higher education institutes) should choose for open standards and open source. Among a lot of other issues we did mention this in our final evaluation report on MS SharePoint. It seems that Google Sites might be(come) an interesting alternative. Our board of directors has to make up their minds on what to do with our current VLE TeleTOP. But what will it be? Take the 'easy' way and go for a migration project with a big and reliable multinational? Or maybe not... Whatever the choice, I think it is time to make a choice, any choice. After three years of doing research, running pilots, analysing where the real problems are, it is not done to postpone the decision again. The first group of students who gave their input on what needs to be improved (system integration!) are moving quickly towards their bachelor or master degree. So they won't benefit anyway...

Another fine for Microsoft

Yesterday EC commissioner Kroes anounced yet another fine for Microsoft, this time for an amount of € 899 million. This is the highest fine so far and sums up to a total of € 1.7 billion. The reasons for this third fine are basically the same. The EC ordered Microsoft to provide technical information on their server software products in order to enable other companies to develop applications that can run smoothly on the MS platform. However, according to Brussels Microsoft is asking way too much money for this information. Just recently, Microsoft announced to be more collaborative. Technical information on their main server products would be made available for free. The EC was not impressed, since Microsoft did not show any collaborative attitude so far. Brussels is still also looking into complaints of producers of other web browsers like Opera and Firefox. It is very well possible that these complaints may lead to another fine.
The EC announcement comes at a moment that we are finalizing our Quickscan SharePoint final reports (deliverables are due on Feb 29th). One of the issues we are addressing, is that a choice for SharePoint automatically sets course towards vendor lockin, especially on the server and maintenance side of the product. It is suggested that e.g. Firefox end-users can also take advantage of full functionality of MS Sharepoint (MOSS2007), this is not the case, however. For some functionality it's possible to install a Firefox plugin, but this does not provide an equivalent solution compared to IE users. During the site visits it was suggested that Microsoft showed a tendency towards more openness, thus providing better opportunities for interoperability. However, the news as summarized in the first paragraph does not give very much faith that substantial strategy changes indeed can be expected in the near future. Our conclusion to this point is rather straightforward: if you want the optimal SharePoint solution, it means you have to move to a MS infrastructure.

Preliminary conclusions

Earlier this week we held our information session on the Quickscan Sharepoint project, which is running towards it's end. Sir Bakx (Information manager at the University of Twente) was invited to give a brief opening session. He presented a brief historical overview about relevant previous projects and about related projects (such as the implementation of a new student information system) that have to deliver their results in the spring of 2008. The university board will then have to decide how to move on to the next phase. One of the main questions obviously will be what will be the future of our current VLE: TeleTOP.
After Sir's opening speech I presented an overview of the site visits we have made at Dutch Higher Education institutes: INHOLLAND, Wageningen University, Hogeschool Arnhem Nijmegen and Technical University Eindhoven. The final reports will be available on Feb. 29th, 2008. The summary report will also contain a separate summary in English. Some preliminary conclusions will be addressed here. First, MS Sharepoint (MOSS2007) includes a lot of functionality, but you need to invest a lot in tailoring it to your needs. Sharepoint by itself is not a classic VLE such as TeleTOP or Blackboard. However, the site visits have shown (and also a pilot at our own university) that you can build your own lists and views on data in order to build a VLE-like interface. Advanced MOSS users can achieve a lot without the need to develop software code in C#. A second major issue is that you need serious investment in change management. Training of end users is one thing, but you also need to achieve acceptance for the new environment. The third point that can be mentioned - and which relates back to one of our first projects - is the possibility to integrate with other systems. The site visits and our own technical research show that a choice for MOSS2007 would be in line with a service oriented approach. The ICT department at the Technical University Eindhoven has high expectations that a MOSS based solution will be able to communicate with an Enterprise Service Bus. On the one hand to communicate with other TU/e systems, on the other hand to be able to community with the outside world, more specifically the 3TU Federation. Two technical issue that are of major concern is performance and upgrading. All sites that have started with SP2003 indicate that performance is a critical factor. You need to monitor the performance and decide for upgrades on your servers. The other one is that you may encounter serious problems when upgrading from SP2003 to MOSS2007. Tailor made adaptations may be lost or may have become a standard function in MOSS2007.
The fourth point is related to the strength of the community. This was also a major criterium in the Sakai project we have conducted in 2007. The impression so far is that the sites we have visited have run their projects by themselves, sometimes supported by external consultants and/or developers. However, there was hardly any exchange of resources or collaboration in the sense that e.g. webparts have been developed in a joint project. The Dutch Special Interest Group so far is just a platform where information and experiences are shared, but is not a joint development group. The interesting question is whether there would be enough support for a virtual 'institute' in which participating institutes can only join if they provide let's say at least 1 fulltime developer or consultant.
You may find some pictures of the information session on Flickr.
You may also be interested in the minutes of this meeting (only in Dutch). Here you can also find our powerpoint presentation.

2008

First of all I'd like to start with wishing you a very happy and succesfull 2008. From an ICT in education perspective I truly hope the new year will bring some solutions we have been waiting for so long. In the 3TU consortium we have a big challenge to meet in which the process architecture (designed in Archimate) needs to be mapped on (non) available application components in the three institutes. Will we truly make steps in interoperability and data exchange so 3TU students can look into their required information files, at all locations? Will they be able to manage their own study process, supported by an integrated study planning system? It's inevitable that the 3TU's need to make choices in order to make this happen. A second major challenge is today's official start of the new Student & Education Service Centre at the University of Twente. The service department (ITBE) in which information technology, library and the educational department were combined is now completely closed. Former ITBE units are now implemented in different shared service centres. Of course, a lot needs to be done before things will run smoothly in the new organisation: new departments, new procedures, clear internal and external communication, and last but not least new colleagues are just some of the issues we have to deal with. A new start provides new chances, 2008 is the year to prove it!

Getting used to it

The project we are currently running on MOSS2007 is about halfway. Part of the project is to work with MOSS2007 ourselves, the other part is to gather information from site visits in the context of Dutch Higher Education. It's still to early to draw any conclusions, but there is one remarkable issue I'd already like to share with you. This issue comes down to changing one's working process, or one's habits if you like. MOSS2007 provides a lot of functionalitiy and especially advanced users (provided they have the corresponding rights) can make a lot of configuration changes to their environment, without the help of an ICT specialist. Another thing is that using MOSS2007 in the way it's meant to be used (at least I think it is), is that users should get all necessary information from the site, instead of receiving a whole bunch of attachments throught e-mail. If everyone puts down the documents in the Sharepoint site instead of e-mailing it, it would decrease current e-mail traffic a lot. So it's not only getting information from the site, but also putting your own information there. It's a two way interaction. However, in daily practice people have trouble to change their working processes according to the new paradigm. They are very much used to sending e-mails and attaching documents to it. Instead of attaching the files you want to share, you can include a shortcut link if you want to be of help to the receiver of your e-mail. Even better is to let users set an alert on all folders they want to receive notifications in case changes are made. In our experience the alerting function is not 100% reliable, and moreover, you don't know who has set an alert and who has not. So it's not bad to include the link. This way you'll force all group members to go to the Sharepoint site. Some guys have avoidance tactics, by sending you an attachment and ask you to put it on the site for them. Don't do that! You're not a secretary. If you are sure they have contribution rights on the site, ask them to put it on themselves. If possible you may want to instruct them the first time, but the message is that they do it themselves. This is the only way to change the working processes. During our site visits we have seen that institutes who have more years of experience with working with Sharepoint still have trouble to get users on to the 'new' paradigm.

Using Archimate modelling techniques

Last Friday (Oct. 19th) I attended an information session at Surf Foundation, focused on modelling your information architecture by using the Archimate language. (see http://www.archimate.org/). We are dealing with Archimate in our 3TU working groups in an attempt to describe the relevant business processes that have to be supported in a federative virtual learning and working environment. However, in our group we mainly focus on the top level of the Archimate framework (the business layer). The functional and especially the application layer is beyond our scope.
Well, back to the Surf session we were offered two presentations of tools that claim to support your modelling work in Archimate: Architect by BiZZdesign and ARIS bij IDS Scheer. Although I had some trouble in following the sometimes fast pace of the demo (including all the technical, architectural issues that were considered as prior knowledge) I saw clear differences between the two. Architect gives me the impression that it delivers results that are suitable for further communication (e.g. validation purposes) with stakeholders in your organisation. It delivers flows that can rather easily elaborated. ARIS seems much more complex (although it has an impressive track record in large industries) to handle and to communicate about for non-technical people. One specific weakness in the ARIS presentation is that the current version is not capable to show the designs in Archimate modelling components yet. This will be the case in the next release (to be expected in 2008-Q1).
Personally I was also more attracted to the presentation style of BiZZdesign. Their business proposition as a lean and mean orgaisation with a clear focus is more attractive that a large multinational and more commercial approach. The IDS Scheer presentation was much more of a commercial kind, and I'm not sure whether the listeners were really waiting for this. Several colleagues indicated that Dutch Higher Education is still at the very beginning of working under architecture and were wondering whether ARIS is the right choice. According to IDS this is the right moment to step in, but I never heard an argument why. So far, I believe we made the right choice to work together with BiZZdesign for our 3TU objectives.

Beyond the VLE

Last week I visited the third SURF conference titled 'Beyond the VLE'. Some of the issues brought up were a follow up of the the Personal Learning Environment as presented by Scott Wilson at the second edition of this conference in 2006. An additional issue that was explicitly mentioned in the presentation of Nico Juist (Hogeschool INHOLLAND) is that we should also take into account the technical 'infrastructure' a student already has when he enrolls for a study program. His bag is not only filled with (note)books, but also with virtual things like a MSN, Skype, Google docs, a Hyves profile, and last but not least an impressive 5Gb mail account on e.g. Gmail. However, when a student enrolls we tend to prescribe a whole range of ICT facilities that can or need to be used as a facilitator for his work as a student. But does the student really need it? For example Hogeschool Zuyd made a clear choice in relation to an instant messaging function: students may need it for their group work, and if so, they can organise it by themselves. Many VLE's offer a (most times) limited chat function, but in daily practice students tend to use MSN. They're used to it, and it contains all their relevant contacts. So why bother to offer an instant messaging service? The same rationale may apply for offering an e-mail account. Why? To have an addiotional e-mail address that won't be used (or only for auto-forward purposes) and has a limited mailbox site of 200Mb? The discussion comes down to the fundamental question what we want to facilitate as an organisation. In addition to the PLE paradigm isn't it much more powerful when a student can create his own portal page, including those components ('web parts') that he needs. If for example Netvibes is your default carrier, you can organise a lot of things only by developing the right RSS-feeds for the user. He is responsible what he wants to see, where he wants to see it and how he wants to see it. I'm afraid it will take a real paradigm revolution before educational institutes will go this far. Many things of our current organisation are based on a sense of control: we want to monitor what happens and what students are doing. In a 'free' PLE format we feel that we loose this sense of control. Can we deal with that? Well think about this: there is already a lot of virtual communication and collaboration going on that we don't know about. It's naive to think that all learning and organisation processes happen inside the virtual walls of our institutional systems.

The speed of innovation

In 1997 Philips introduced the first flatscreen plasma television set, Sharp introduced GPS car navigation and Sony showed the first designs of mp3-like players, www was still an acronym for wait-wait-wait. Ten years later we have iPod, broadband internet connections (24/7), sophisticated smartphones, and mini memory cards that can easilty contain 8Gb of data. Ten years ago the University of Twente also introduced it's own e-learning platform TeleTOP (nowadays available from a commercial vendor), which was quite an innovation for that time. However, when we look at the way how the platform is applied today it is not fundamentally different from the way it was used in 1997. The traditional instructional model is supported by an electronic equivalent: planning information, reading materials and powerpoint slides are basically what is being provided by the course sites in TeleTOP. From a more negative point of view, one might even argue that education in general has not dramatically changed over the past 40 years. New educational paradigms are often approached with suspicion. The concept of 'new learning' (het nieuwe leren in Dutch), seems to be contaminated. The pure constructivist view that the learner creates all new knowledge by himself is passed. Some basics/fundamentals need to be developed first, before the learner is able to build new knowledge elements on top of it. The pessimists find arguments that educational innovation is equal to loss of quality. Just recently prof. Rob Martens introduced the concept of positive learning. Especially in this time frame where broadband connections and new media play such a dominant role in daily life it becomes inevitable to think about the educational value of new media. Teleac/NOT - for many years producers of educational media - has recognized this challenge and links to the academic world in order to provide a solid base for their future productions. How do learners process these new media, how can cognitive load be controlled and how does intrinsic motivation play an important role in achieving learning objectives. The world of game based learning also provides perspectives that new media can contribute to an experience in which learning can be fun. It's not likely I think that the development of new learning paradigms will catch up with the development of new technology, but it is at least somewhat odd to stick to old paradigms, while at the same time the outside world has drastically changed.

Wikipedia censured?

This morning there was a lot of fuzz on the news because it is assumed that Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau and/or her husband Prince Friso of Orange Nassau have made changes to a page on Wikipedia. But isn't that the basic idea behind a Wiki? Wikipedia itself provides the following definition: "A wiki is a collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it". The philosophy is that because so many people can edit these pages. there will be a sort of self-correction mechanism which eventually will lead to high quality pages. Research has shown that Wikipedia is able to compete with the quality level of a formally published encyclopedia like Encyclopedia Brittanica. Well back to Mabel again, the fuzz is caused because she has changed a page about herself. From a legal point of view there is no hard evidence that she did it herself. The only identification comes from an IP number that relates to the palace she lives in. But is she the only one accessing the internet from there, or are there others too? And what if she did edit the page? If her change is incorrect others will probably re-correct it again (and so it already happened). The thing that worries me in this specific example is that the Dutch royal information service (RVD) wants to make specific pages read-only. What is this?? It's fundamentally against the open source philosophy behind Wikipedia. Who decides what's the truth and what I may read or may not read? The truth according to the RVD or prime minister Balkenende? Or is it because Mabel is controversial, because of her past relationships? Large organisations such as the CIA, the Vatican and the Australian government are also known for making self-serving changes to pages on Wikipedia. Are we at the threshold of a new type of censureship here? What if I would make the change back to Mabels' version? Will I be in the news headlines tomorrow? If you don't want to have pages changed: print a book, put it in 5 layers of plastic wrap, store it in a safe deposit which is guarded next to the royal jewelry in the Tower of London.

The students have arrived!

Today is the start of the introduction weeks for our new bachelor students. The main campus road (Drienerlolaan) is blocked with a sort of market with all kinds of activities, music and of course most student societies try to attract new members. There was a long cue of students waiting in front of the main tent. Here they need to register for the introduction program and receive all the necessary information. Some students carry bags, backpacks or even a hard-cover suitcase, indicating that they also have to check in for their sleeping quarters, wherever that may be. Looking back at my own introduction period (which is 24 years ago, gosh I'm getting old...;-) it is an exciting period of adventure. For lots of students it's their first step towards living on their own. No mom or dad to rely on for their daily needs, making your evening dinner, do the laundry, etc. From an ICT perspective they probably have high expectations, assuming that all ICT facilities are prepared to handle their needs. Our University has an IT profile, so it must be well organised you may think. However, students don't know that new software releases or complete new applications are installed in the summer, literally a few weeks before they start. One may really get stressed when things don't go as smoothly as you would like. From experience it is known that there are always unforseen circumstances. This year is no execption to the rule. The instructors will have to prepare their lessons and make their course sites. Will it just be a copy of the previous site again, or will this year bring us a true innovation? In the past years we always succeeded to get everything up and running on time. There is no reason to believe that it won't be that way this year.....-);

Taking a look at MS Sharepoint

In July we have finished our final report on our pilot experience with Sakai and have presented this to our Board of Directors. As predicted we are asked to initiate a follow-up project on MS Sharepoint which is an important factor within the federation of the three technical universities in the Netherlands (3TU). The follow up project cannot be as extensive as the Sakai project, due to time restrictions. This means that it will be more or less a quickscan. One of the consequences is that we cannot organise pilot projects together with our faculties. Instead, we are planning to make some site visits at institutions who already implemented Sharepoint in their educational organisation. In order to keep our stakeholders involved we will invite some teachers and students to join the projectteam during these site visits. Besides the pedagogical/organisational criterium we also want to take a look at the technical features in the sense of web services, interoperability and the use of (open) standards. This must give us insight into the way Sharepoint may be linked into a broader ICT architecture in which it has to work together with other (3TU) applications. Currently, I am writing the project plan. We hope to start in september. The good news is that most of the Sakai team members will also be involved in the follow up project, so we have the same reference background in this matter. The 'bad' news is that we are asked to put all effort into the research of Sharepoint and leave Sakai for the time being. The final decision on which application components will be used to deliver the range of required services will be made in 2008. Will Sakai still be a serious candidate for this purpose? Time will tell.