Fortnightly Mailing

2008 ALT Conference - title announced, and call for Programme Committee members

ALT, for which I work part time, has announced the title Rethinking the digital divide for its 2008 conference, to be held in Leeds, between 8 and 10 September 2008, and issued a call for people to volunteer for membership of the conference programme committee. This is reproduced in full in the continuation post below.

Running a Service Not a System. Terra Incognita posting by Dick Moore.

Substantial and interesting posting by Dick Moore, Director of Technology at Ufi/learndirect (one of the world's few really large-scale providers of on-line learning) about Ufi's e-learning platform and the part played there by open source tools and systems. Also contains plenty of interesting insights into the management of IT, and, in particular, the interplay between in-sourcing and out-sourcing.

Is Web 2.0 a manifesto for anarchism?

David Jennings, whose effusively endorsed book about digital discovery of music will be out soon, has written this a longish and thoughtful post/essay (which he describes as "thinking aloud notes"): Is Web 2.0 a manifesto for anarchism?. (Answer: probably not; but read David's post to find out why.)

"Avant-garde" is the French word for ....

Taken in Berlin on 19/7/2007 on (?) August Strasse.

John Denham announces new ministerial team at DIUS

4/7/2007 press release from the newly formed Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) showing which ministers are responsible for what in the new department. Meanwhile the DIUS web site is changing daily as the department gets underway.

Simon Willison's Google TechTalk on the implications of OpenID

Below, via Stephen Downes, is an interesting talk given on 25 June 2007 by the (fast-talking) Simon Willison on OpenID, a method of dealing with identity on the web that is beginning to catch on. Abstract:

"Simon Willison OpenID is an emerging standard that provides simple, decentralised authentication for the Web. OpenID follows the Unix philosophy, solving one small problem rather than attempting to tackle the many larger challenges posed by online identity. This talk will explore the implications of OpenID, and explore the best practices required to take advantage of this new technology while avoiding the potential pitfalls."

"Simon Willison is a consultant on OpenID and client- and server-side Web development, and a co-creator of the Django Web framework. Before going freelance Simon worked on Yahoo!'s Technology Development team, and prior to that at the Lawrence Journal-World, an award winning local newspaper in Kansas. Simon maintains a popular Web development weblog at http://simonwillison.net/."

Previous posts about OpenID

• 13 May 2007: OpenID - one reason why single sign on is risky;
• 20 May 2007: OPenID - decentralised single sign-on for the web.

Computers 'can raise attainment' - results published from Becta's ICT TestBed research

Source: ICT TestBed Final Report. URL below

According to this 24/6/2007 BBC report, issued before Becta has published the results, the final phase of Becta's 4 year £37m ICT Test Bed project (in which 23 primary schools, five secondaries, and three further education colleges have had substantial extra investment in ICT) shows that learning using ICT (in the ways provided by the schools and colleges) produces improvements in learner attainment. I'll reserve judgement on the report, which appeared today [790 kB PDF] on the TestBed project web site, and from which the chart above is taken, until I've read it. But my initial reactions were:

1. you'd expect improvement given the amount of additional funds the test-bed schools and colleges received - the key question is could the same amount, spent differently, have had a similar or greater effect?
2. how, in such a study, do you avoid a Hawthorne effect, in which the "shaping" of behaviour by the investigation process is partly responsible for at least some of the changes observed?

Becta press release.

Updated 8 July 2007 by the addition of a link to Becta press release, and the two concluding questions.

British Standards Institution seeks your views on e-learning standards

I have a small role in a contract that Schemeta has with the British Standards Institution to write a scoping study concerning the future development of e-learning standards. I know several readers have strong views about e-learning standards, their desirability, utility, and priorities for their focus. If you are interested in contributing your views to the study, please respond to this 20 minute web survey.

Disclosure statement

Openlearn. A conference in October 2007 at the Open University.

The OU is holding a conference in Milton Keynes on 30 and 31 October 2007: Openlearn - researching open content in education:

"The ways in which people can learn are changing with new opportunities to learn at a distance, to learn as part of global community and to learn using new technologies. Open and free educational resources are an important component in this expanded world of learning and major initiatives are now underway to provide such resources."

"This conference recognises the research challenge alongside the business challenge of providing, using and sustaining free and open resources and invites contributions and participation from those who are interested in how to research open content and what the findings are from those working in this challenging area."

Conference flyer [700 kB PDF] for onward distribution.

Blackboard v Desire2Learn - claim construction briefs filed

Image from D2L Claim Construction Response Brief

On 29 May Blackboard filed its Opening Claim Construction Brief [1MB PDF] with the Texas Court that is handling Blackboard's patent infringement claim against Desire2Learn. On 15 June Desire2Learn filed its Claim Construction Response Brief [200 kB PDF].

Both briefs link to a number of supporting appendices with back-up evidence, which include things like dictionary definitions of key terms, emails, and, in D2L's case, the Wikipedia History of Virtual Learning Environments [400 kB PDF] page originally created by Michael Feldstein, and to which several readers of Fortnightly Mailing contributed content during late summer 2006. As an aside, page 4 of the D2L brief has a nicely illustrated explanation of role-based access control.

I'm no lawyer, but as I understand it the purpose of the Briefs is to enable the court to rule on disputed meanings for key phrases in the patent (Blackboard and D2L are already agreed upon the meanings of other key phrases). So this is not about judging the claim, but about creating the framework within which the claim will subsequently be judged. So dry, wordy, and from the point of view of the protagonists, important stuff.

All the documents are currently available from the patent information area of the Desire2Learn web site.

Note. Other posts about the Blackboard patent:

• 26 February 2007 - US Patent and Trademark Office orders inter partes re-examination of Blackboard Inc.'s Patent Number 6988138;
• 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.