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 [...]
Filed under: OpenSource | 2 Comments »
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 their online versions. Closed archives don’t get [...]
Filed under: Learning, OpenSource | 2 Comments »
Dave Snowden relates an experience with Wikipedia where the inner circle decides that the actions of a user are not appropriate and he is subsequently banned.
I don’t know all of the details here, but my interest is in the underlying model of Wikipedia. There is a major difference between open source and a free Web [...]
Filed under: OpenSource | 6 Comments »
Another new tool found via Benoit Brosseau is Deki Wiki. This product from MindTouch is open source and seems to have all the right attributes to make it wildly popular:
Similar to CMS web frameworks like Drupal, Mambo, Joomla and DotNetNuke, Deki Wiki delivers a remarkably extensible platform, but it’s a wiki in nature; therefore making [...]
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My friend Benoit Brosseau told me about Mahara, which seems to fill a growing demand for e-portfolios in education. I like their approach:
What makes Mahara different from other ePortfolio systems is that you control which items and what information (Artefacts) within your portfolio other users see.
In order to facilitate this access control, all [...]
Filed under: Learning, OpenSource | 2 Comments »
This week I attended the Social Media Meetup in Moncton and had the opportunity to spend some time with guest speaker Jevon Macdonald and several other folks, hosted by Steve in his new business digs. I met Steve Mallett over five years ago when I gave a presentation on open source at the local Cybersocial. [...]
Filed under: Communities, OpenSource | 2 Comments »
I’ve long been an advocate of open source (the business model and the software), as well as openly accessible educational content and the right to freely share ideas. On the eve of the fifth anniversary of Jarche Consulting, I feel that it’s time once again to put my money (or lack thereof) where my mouth [...]
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It seems that some folks have seen a business opportunity in developing an open source social network platform. From Insoshi’s website:
Insoshi is a product and a project. The product aims to be the best open-source social networking platform. The project is to make the product!
I posted my perspective [...]
Filed under: Communities, OpenSource | 3 Comments »
I’m preparing a workshop for later this month and one of the topics will be the rise of open source and the business models around it. Here are some interesting sites and comments that I’ve come across lately:
Matt Asay: “The benefits of SaaS [software as a service] also point to its greatest flaw: it’s the [...]
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RWW features a story about DimDim, which is an open source web-conferencing platform. I’ve used it and it compares well with the various proprietary systems around. RWW talks about DimDim’s three business propositions:
Big company - cut your Webex/GoToMeeting bills by 50% or more
Established online venture that needs online meetings to close sales with end users [...]
Filed under: OpenSource | 6 Comments »
