Beta, data and more

Here’s what I learned on Twitter this past week: @literacyadviser “The only truly effective web filter is an educated mind.” via @ jonhusband @dweinberger “The only way I know to solve big problems anymore is to do it in public.” — “Training for future use of a skill is pretty much pointless.” by @JaneBozarth — [...]

Elgg: it’s a community effort

This weekend I noticed a tweet from Alec Couros about some issues with the Ning social networking platform. That post is over a year old but from the comments as late as last fall, there seem to be ongoing issues on how Ning treats its customers, users and their data. This brought me to reflect, [...]

Where’s your data?

I wrote about the importance of owning your data for blogging a while back and last week’s Twitter crash coupled with the demise of an URL shortener only reinforce that in my mind. The case of tr.im may not be so obvious to some, but whenever you use a URL shortener, that connection gets stored [...]

Friday’s Finds #1

In an attempt to make my finds on Twitter more explicit, this may be the start of regular posts on some of the things I learned this past week (weekly seems better than monthly). Numbers & Measurement From Charles Green at The Trusted Advisor: If you can measure it, you can manage it; if you [...]

Selecting OS learning technology platforms

Dave Cormier has written a great article on selecting a content management system (CMS). Dave discusses three platforms, all of which I have used – WordPress, Moodle, Drupal. All are open source and there are a variety of hosting models available for most budgets. Like Dave, I’m not crazy about Moodle because it replicates the [...]

Drupal for Education and E-Learning

Bill Fitzgerald has written a comprehensive technical guide for the Drupal open source content management system with a focus on its use in formal education. Drupal for Education and E-Learning, by Packt Publishing, walks you through the setup of a Drupal installation, step by step. This is a how-to book, covering everything from themes to [...]

Open source for learning costs less

In my 2009 predictions for eLearn Magazine I said that “There will be an increased interest in open source software as well as tools and methods that enable online collaboration.” Ryan Cameron took me to task on open source in the comments: Open source is not, actually, free. Someone has to build it, someone has [...]

Innovation and Learning

In Innovating in the Great Disruption, Scott Anthony suggests three disciplines necessary to foster innovation in difficult economic times – placing a premium on progress; mastering paradox; and learning to love the low end. He also discusses the importance of learning; Innovators will need to continue to find creative, cheap ways to bring their ideas [...]

Best open source social networking platform

I’ve been a fan of Elgg, the open source social networking platform, since I first saw it. Not only do I like the technology but also its underlying framework of user-centricty (which also means learner-centric). I came across Elgg while working on a project to support several professional communities of practice working in a health [...]

Open Up

Martin Weller mulls over the notion that the Open University or OU should call itself the Open U, with an emphasis on “open”: Open Source Open educational resources Open API Open content Open courses Open participation In an inter-networked society, open is the only way to remain relevant. Most newspapers have realized this by opening [...]