Fortnightly Mailing

The case for and against laptops in classrooms

There are more good web logs than you can hope to keep tabs on. One of the ones I do not look at often enough is John Mayer's CALIopolis.  (John runs CALI, a long-standing consortium of US law schools that research and develop computer-mediated legal instruction and support institutions using technology and distance learning in legal education.) I enjoyed two recent pieces by John [I - FOR - 28/1/2007 , II- AGAINST - 30/1/2007] concerning the case for, or not, banning laptops (or cutting internet access) in law school classrooms.

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.

 

Re-Engineering Assessment Practices (REAP)

The Re-Engineering Assessment Practices Project, funded by the Scottish Funding Council, has got a new web site, from which you can get more information about the project, and, in particular, access a range of research into, and resources about, assessment practices and methods.

New UK study examines the effectiveness of interactive whiteboards

The DfES has just published a new large-scale evaluation of the impact in London schools of interactive whiteboards on pedagogy and pupil performance. The study, which was immediately used by the London Evening Standard as a stick to beat the Government (see How £50m went to waste on a whiteboard), is by Gemma Moss, Carey Jewitt, Ros Levacic, Vicky Armstrong, Alejandra Cardini, and Frances Castle, and was commissioned by the DfES from the Institute of Education. It provides a case-study rich snapshot of practice in London schools, along with an inconclusive statistical analysis of pupil attainment data.  The study can be freely downloaded as a PDF. I include the "findings summary" in the continuation post below, and the "detailed findings" section of the report's 6-page executive summary is worth reading. In short, as you'd expect, interactive whiteboards are no panacea; their novelty soon wears off; used badly they reinforce bad teaching, and may detract from good teaching: and in some circumstances they slow down rather than speed up learning. Are they worth the money? This issue is simply not addressed in the study, which, disappointingly, is devoid of any economic analysis.

Demos publishes "Their Space - Education for a digital generation"

Thanks to Josie Fraser for spotting and reviewing a new Demos report, by Hannah Green and Celia Hannon, Their Space - Education for a digital generation, available as for download as a 300 kB PDF. This ~80 page report, which has its main focus on school-aged learners, is worth reading closely. In particular, it calmly disposes of some of the myths that dominate current thinking about technology and education, for example:

1. The internet is too dangerous for children.
2. Junk culture is poisoning young people and taking over
   their lives.
3. There is an epidemic of internet plagiarism in schools.
4. We're seeing the rise of a generation of passive consumers.
5. All gaming is good.
6. All children are cyberkids.

And the report, whilst avoiding being prescriptive, hits several of the right nails on the head, for example that the Internet, and the freely available tools, ways of working and connecting, and the content that it provides, makes a pretty good (albeit incomplete) learning environment.

The software-sorted society

One of those ideas that makes you jump, by drawing clear attention to something that you already knew, without having appreciated its significance.  Specifically, when you interact with a service online or by phone there may be software in action that mediates how you experience the service: by sorting you.  Live in a high income postcode? Get routed to a sales person more quickly than if your IP address makes you look as if you come from a less promising area.  On record as an awkward customer or "time-waster"? Then wait in the queue.  These issues are being examined by Stephen Graham in a British Academy Readership Project: Rethinking the digital divide: the software-sorted society.

And from the same University of Durham research group is Multispeed cities and the logistics of living in an information age, a project that is examining the differences in how different communities use and interact with technology. 

Dead link removed, 5/6/2011. Link made to Steve Graham's new place of work, 26/11/2012.

World Wind - an Open Source sibling for Google Earth?

Images from the World Wind web site

NASA's World Wind is an Open Source educational tool that "allows users to explore many aspects of the Earth and Moon".  Summary of World Wind's main features. World Wind is a 60 MB programme, and currently only available for Windows XP/2000, although a Linux release is reportedly due in 2007.  As World Wind's own thorough, even-handed, and "Google Earth friendly" comparison between Google Earth and World Wind makes clear, World Wind and Google Earth are in effect complementary siblings, with different purposes.

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.