Fortnightly Mailing

Jakob Nielsen: schools should teach lifelong computer skills, not specific applications

This February 2007 piece by usability expert Jakob Nielsen hits the nail on the head. Excerpt:

"Teaching life-long computer skills in our schools offers further benefit in that it gives students insights that they're unlikely to pick up on their own. In contrast, as software gets steadily easier to use, anyone will be able to figure out how to draw a pie chart. People will learn how to use features on their own, when they need them -- and thus have the motivation to hunt for them. It's the conceptual things that get endlessly deferred without the impetus of formal education."

Ambitious e-learning blog by Epic plc

From time to time I've covered developments at Epic, the Brighton-based e-learning company; and in July 2005 Epic published an e-interview it did with me. Epic has now started an ambitious business blog, which flatters me with a link, as well as taking a tough line on e-learning patents. Later this year Epic says it will start an e-learning wiki. Finally it looks likely that the company will make its well-regarded white papers freely available on the Internet.

Previous posts about Epic:

• September 2005 Epic plc taken over by Huveaux plc;
• June 2003 Epic Group White Papers.

David Miliband's web log: Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" being sent to all schools in England, with 'support materials'

David Miliband, Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, is unusual in having a frequently updated, and from the tone of it, personally written, web log. So you could imagine this making Government spin-doctors a bit jumpy. The comments on Milliband's 2/2/2007 post about the decision to distribute The Inconvenient Truth are i) numerous, and ii) mainly positive; and there is enough in it of general interest to make it worth subscribing to its RSS feed.

New Scientist interview with Jimmy Wales

Well written, interesting interview by Paul Marks with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. Extract relating to WikiaSearch (see also this post from January):

Why are you developing a search engine?

Transparency is what I'm really after, the idea that we can go in and see exactly how web pages are being ranked. We need to have a public debate about it. We just don't know if there is any dishonesty or strange incentives in today's algorithms that rank searches. Since news of this venture broke (see search.wikia.com) we have been contacted by more than one second-tier company that develops search engines. They recognise that acting individually they are going to have a hard time catching up with Google, because Google has so much money and so many great people.

What's your plan for search?

It's too early for specifics, but one thing that has worked is an alliance in which people contribute to a free software project. We saw this succeed with Apache, the open-source webserver. Apache was a tiny group of volunteers, yet the vast majority of its code has come from companies who paid people to work on it. It's essentially an industrial consortium that has been able to fend off Microsoft's closed-source webserver. So it makes sense for second-tier search companies who are falling behind Google to contribute to a free search software project that will make us equal to Google in terms of search quality.

Blackboard issues "Patent Pledge"

Updated 3/2/2007

On 1 February 2007 Blackboard Inc. issued a Patent Pledge in which it commits not to assert US Patent Number 6,988,138 and "many other" pending patent applications against the development, use or distribution of Open Source software or home-grown course management systems anywhere in the world, "to the extent that such systems are not bundled with proprietary software". As part of the pledge, Blackboard "promises never to pursue patent actions against anyone using such systems including professors contributing to open source projects, open source initiatives, commercially developed open source add-on applications to proprietary products and vendors hosting and supporting open source applications". Blackboard also extends the pledge to a number of specific Open Source initiatives including Sakai, Moodle, ATutor, Elgg and Boddington.

Blackboard's media release, and its letter to the community contain supportive statements from Educause, Sakai, and the Australasian Council on Open and Distance Education, as well as from a number of individual institutions. Sakai and Educause today issue their own joint statement [44 kB PDF], distancing themselves somewhat from Blackboard. Extract:

"...... Sakai Foundation and EDUCAUSE find it difficult to give the wholehearted endorsement we had hoped might be possible. Some of Sakai's commercial partners and valued members of the open source community will not be protected under this pledge. Furthermore, EDUCAUSE and Sakai worked to gain a pledge that Blackboard would never take legal action for infringement against a college or university using another competing product. While Blackboard ultimately agrees that such actions are not in its best interest from a customer relations viewpoint, it could not agree for reasons related to its existing legal case. Our organizations will remain vigilant on this point as protecting our member institutions is of top priority."

"While this pledge offers a formalization of Blackboard's past claims about the intent of its patents, it does not speak to the quality or validity of the patents themselves. Sakai and EDUCAUSE maintain the position that Blackboard’s U.S. patent number 6,988,138 is overly broad, and that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) erred in granting it to Blackboard. Furthermore, we believe that this conclusion will ultimately be decided by the re-examination of this patent through the USPTO and in the current litigation."

Certainly, the pledge represents a distinct and most definitely welcome change of course by Blackboard - though it is something that Blackboard's Chief Legal Officer Matt Small had more than hinted that the company was considering when he spoke at the Sakai conference in November 2006 [190 kB PDF].  But to my mind the pledge has the potential, firstly to leave Desire2Learn (and others) out in the cold, and secondly to draw attention away from the issues of i) software patents in general, and ii)  patents based on "prior art" developed collaboratively and openly by people based all over the world in a diverse range of public and private sector organisations. My heart is still with Educause's 26 October 2006 call that Blackboard should "disclaim the rights established under your recently-awarded patent, placing the patent in the public domain and withdrawing the claim of infringement against Desire2Learn".  3/2/2007 update. In relation to "prior art", Desire2Learn adopts quite a confident tone  in its recently released 26/1/2007 "Preliminary Invailidity Contentions" (a document submitted to the East Texas Patent Court), which is available as a 360 k B PDF from the Desire2Learn web site.

Note. Other posts about the Blackboard patent:

• 1 February 2007 - Blackboard issues "Patent Pledge";
• 25 January 2007 - United States Patent & Trademark Office orders re-examination of Blackboard Patent;
• 9 December 2006 - Two contrasting views about software patents. A debate between Eben Moglen and Blackboard's Matt Small;
• 2 December 2006 - Blackboard: two separate re-examination requests to the US Patent and Trade Mark Office; and an application to the Court from Desire2Learn for a stay in proceedings;
• 27 October 2006 - EDUCAUSE on Blackboard: "patenting a community creation is anathema to our culture";
• 16 October 2006 -  John Mayer interviews various lawyers with patent knowhow;
• 10 September 2006 - The new "post-patent" environment for e-learning: a perspective. Guest contribution by Jim Farmer;
• 9 September 2006 - Blackboard's work for IMS;
• 8 August 2006 - Did the US Department of Justice know about the patent when it cleared Blackboard's acquisition of Web CT?;
• 26 July 2006 - Blackboard's US Patent 6988138.

 

Mobile phones in Africa: short Economist article on TradeNet, a "simple sort of eBay for agricultural products"

Source: International Telecommunications Union

Africa's surge in mobile phone use (above), which runs hand-in-hand with rapid increases in the  proportion of the population with network coverage, may unleash a dotcom style boost in business energy, of which TradeNet is one potential example, reports the Economist.

Source: TradeNet web site

United States Patent & Trademark Office orders re-examination of Blackboard Patent

Updated 26/1/2007, and 27/1/2007

Earlier today the US Patent and Trade Mark Office assented to the Software Freedom Law Centre's 17/11/2006 ex parte request for the re-examination  of Blackboard Inc.'s Patent Number 6988138.

The odds were that the request would be granted, so little should be read into the decision. The re-examination may now take anything up to 2 years to complete.

You can track progress on Desire2Learn's inter partes re-examination request from this link on the USPTO web site, and you may be interested in this long current perspective on the Blackboard Patent, by Dave Nagel, based on interviews with Blackboard's Matt Small and the Software Freedom Law Centre's Richard Fontana.

Note. Other posts about the Blackboard patent:

• 1 February 2007 - Blackboard issues "Patent Pledge";
• 25 January 2007 - United States Patent & Trademark Office orders re-examination of Blackboard Patent;
• 9 December 2006 - Two contrasting views about software patents. A debate between Eben Moglen and Blackboard's Matt Small;
• 2 December 2006 - Blackboard: two separate re-examination requests to the US Patent and Trade Mark Office; and an application to the Court from Desire2Learn for a stay in proceedings;
• 27 October 2006 - EDUCAUSE on Blackboard: "patenting a community creation is anathema to our culture";
• 16 October 2006 -  John Mayer interviews various lawyers with patent knowhow;
• 10 September 2006 - The new "post-patent" environment for e-learning: a perspective. Guest contribution by Jim Farmer;
• 9 September 2006 - Blackboard's work for IMS;
• 8 August 2006 - Did the US Department of Justice know about the patent when it cleared Blackboard's acquisition of Web CT?;
• 26 July 2006 - Blackboard's US Patent 6988138.

ALT-C 2007 submission deadlines: 14 February (Research); 28 February (Other proposals)

In the other half of the week I work for ALT, and several contributors to Fortnightly Mailing are on the conference programme committee.  I make no apology for mentioning the programme committee for September's ALT Conference, ALT-C 2007: Beyond Control  where the keynote speakers will be:  Michelle Selinger, Education Strategist, Cisco Systems;  Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google; and Dylan Wiliam, Deputy Director of the Institute of Education).

Key deadlines for the submission of Research Papers and Abstracts:

• last date for Research Papers: 14 February 2007;
• last date for Abstracts for short papers, symposia, workshops, demonstrations and posters: 28 February 2007.

The online paper submission system for ALT-C 2007 is now open, from where you can also access the submission guidelines for research papers and for abstracts,  along with a "research paper remplate".

Home Access Taskforce: to ensure all children (in England) have home access to the internet

Picture reused from previous OLPC post

The BBC reports on the Schools Minister Jim Knight's 10 January speech at the BETT show (a largely schools oriented ICT in education trade show). Excerpt:

"The government is to set up a taskforce to ensure all children have access to the internet outside of school. The government says more than 800,000 children and young people in England are currently not online at home and wants to close the 'digital divide'."

"I am setting up a home access taskforce which I will personally chair. I want this to bring together key industry players, the voluntary sector, and education representatives to look at the issues, because ICT at every child's fingertips is not the be-all and end-all of our ambitions."

Echoes of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), but with the initial internal study by Dell, RM, and Intel, the impression is that there will be an emphasis on providing devices running proprietary "industry standard"  rather than open source software, and costing rather more that the OLPC machine's $100+. OLPC is directing its efforts at developing countries, but you would imagine that they'd not slam the door in Jim Knight's face if he was to open a dialogue, assuming he has not already done so. Personally I think the issue is as much about connectivity as devices. Increasingly, internet access is like a utility: if connectivity was ubiquitous and free (and there are examples of area-wide WiFi networks with the basic level of connectivity free, not to mention creative initiatives like Fon), then organising the provision of devices would become much more straightfoward.

Many DfES websites on the Government closure list

Over 100 Department for Education and Skills run/funded web sites are amongst the 551 sites closed or due to close under a far-reaching rationalisation of the UK Government's web site presence described in the Government's Transformational Government - Enabled by Technology - Annual Report 2006 [3.6 MB PDF]. One of these is reported to be the Further Education Resources for Learning web site, but my assumption - some readers of Fortnightly Mailing will know if this assumption is correct - is that its contents will be moved somewhere else. Also on the list are:

• National Grid for Learning, which closed in April 2006;
• Help is at Hand;
• ACLearn.net.

A key excerpt from the report is below. From the full list of sites earmarked for closure [795 kB PDF], it is pretty obvious that rationalisation is warranted, especially if the process of redirecting, re-using valuable content, and archiving some of it as cultural assets, is properly managed. However one could imagine that a cruder process of simple closure may actually be the approach taken.

"Website rationalisation

The Government’s objective is to have strong, strategically effective communications and service delivery via the internet, designed around the needs and lifestyles of citizens.

Ministers commissioned the main central government departments to review their websites and develop plans for their rationalisation and the migration of content to the Directgov22 website for citizens and the Business Link23 website for businesses. In the first phase of departmental reviews, 951 websites were considered across 16 central government departments. Decisions have already been taken to close 551 (58 per cent) of these websites; 90 sites have already closed. Decisions have also been taken to continue with 26 websites – although some of their current content will move to Directgov and Business Link – and decisions on the remaining 374 sites will be taken in the next six months. Further discussions will take place over the next few months in order to produce detailed implementation plans, confirm the role of departmental corporate sites, extend the review to executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies, and encourage further collaboration between departments. This will be completed by June 2007."