New Media Consortium Summer Conferrence

in

UBCWiki: SmallPiecesLooselyJoined/AboutSmallPieces

Colloboration via the net does not necessarilty require monolithic, expensive tool suites that aim to do everything under one umbrella. We will share and demonstrate the use of readily available, mostly free, discrete sets of "small" and "loosely joined" technologies - weblogs, wikis, instant messaging, audio/video chat. The loose joining means that how they are connected are not necessarily in the programming of the software, but the ways people can use them in a social context that is an environment of dynamic, changing relationships and connections, rather than the rigid, limited ones defined by computer code...

Alan Levine, Brian Lamb and D'Arcy Norman will be presenting a very interesting session at the NMC 2004 - New Media Consortium 2004 Summer Conference. They are looking for participation by others who will not be at the session. I will be taking part in a video chat session during the session.

I like the idea of encouraging and experimenting with the use of free/low cost and readily available technologies such as weblogs, wiki's, and chat. I also like the philosophy behind this experimentation... Maybe they can add a tool such as Flickr to the mix. More later...

VoIP for Mobile Users...

in

TheFeature :: VoIP goes Mobile Here's how the MG-3 works: first, you have to sign up for VoIP service with a company that resells i2 Telecom's hardware and network access. You'll get the MG-3, a little plastic box stuffed with microchips, which you plug into your broadband connection and existing phone line. Then, when you want to make a long distance call with your mobile, you just call your home number. The MG-3 will recognize the mobile's number using Caller ID, and connect you to i2 Telecom's VoIP network. You get a second dial tone, and you can make your overseas call. Want to talk to somebody in China? You'll get charged 5 cents a minute. Cingular has been having a great time charging you $3.49 a minute for making the same call. (Wanna bet they're screaming at their lawyers right now to cook up a way to kill this in court?) [by way of: Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

The Feature has an interesting article about a company that has developed a system for the use of VoIP by your mobile phone. Am thinking if something like this could be used in schools. In Portland, very few classrooms have telephone access. I know that our IT folks are looking at VoIP as one method of providing this to our teachers. Adding mobile phones to mix is interesting.

Street Maps in Political Hues

in

If you are curious about your neighbors political donations, a new Web site follows the money in your hometown, address by address. Not everyone is pleased. [NY Times Technology]

This is pretty amazing... Type in your zip code and see who in your neighborhood contributed to which candidates, and how much... or type in a name and see if that person contributed how much to which candidate...

Why Will Thinks Linux Has a Long Way to Go in Schools

in

But if you take my fairly high-tech, well supported (technology-wise) school as an example, it just ain't going to happen here any time soon. Call it dancing with the girl you brought to the prom (or whatever that silly metaphor is,) but Linux on it's surface just seems too "out there" when you've got something that works pretty well already, the resources to change are slim, and no one has any time to learn something new. [weblogged News]

Will's latest post points to Tom Hoffman's discussion of his installation of the SUSE Linux distribution. Will wonders outloud about the viability of the use of Linux in school environments. I think the key point here is...

But if you take my fairly high-tech, well supported (technology-wise) school as an example, it just ain't going to happen here any time soon...

when you've got something that works pretty well already, the resources to change are slim, and no one has any time to learn something new.

Tom, and our mutual friend Ben, are working with very limited resources. Machines that will barely run Windows 98, let alone XP or Longhorn. Linux is a very viable and proven solution. The Linux Terminal Server Project is built from the ground up for use in the K-12 environment. For an excellent example of the use of Linux in a high school, see Paul Nelson's work at Riverdale High School in Portland.

As for Will's list of terms and acronyms that seems to be confusing his technicians? I'll add to the list...

Blog
Feed
RSS
Radio
Manila
MoveableType
Blosoxm
Atom
Furling
and my favorite... Moblogging :-)

Not Dave Kingman

in

The Dave Kingman Web SiteTonight my son and I were playing catch, or as some folks say... having catch. Anyway he wanted popups. So i start to throw him popups. As he catches them he asks which of the Chicago Cubs he caught it like. So as he made catches he'd ask... "Which one?" I'd say..."Andre Dawson"... "Billy Williams"... "Adolfo Phillips"... "Sammy Sosa"... "Jim Hickman"... and the game would continue. When he would drop one, or not quite get to it he's ask, "Which One?" and for some reason I said ...."Dave Kingman" Now Kingman did hit a lot of home runs, 442 to be exact... but for some reason I have visions of him in left field at Wrigley having trouble with some flyballs. Anyway, the game we play is now called... "Not Dave Kingman..." I'll make a point of showing Nando the Dave Kingman web site, and point out that he was a pretty darn good hitter...

"Woe is Me" and MT3

in

But just a minute-- It is not like any of our beautifully running installations of MT 2.6 and earlier will suddenly blink out or self-destruct in 5 minutes, Mr. Phelps. This insane rush to upgrade or jump seems awfully.... hasty. Sure down the road, there are going to perhaps be compelling technical, feature reasons to upgrade or switch blog platforms, but there is nothing wrong with staying where you are at. MT 2.X still works, eh? It's not broken, eh? [cogdogblog]

Alan Levine sums up very well the whole MT 3.0 bloodletting.

The New Blogger...

in

Bryan Bell points to this post (Stopdesign | The New Blogger) by Douglas Bowman about the new Blogger role out and some of the design considerations that went into the redesign. I launched my Blogger account and took a look around and was very impressed. Comments are now an option, along with file uploading. With all the talk of the new licensing pricing of MoveableType, I'm thinking I may just go ahead and have my students in my Pacific University class set up a Blogger site for use in the class. They can get a free spot on Blogspot, or if I do some planning, I can create each of them a directory and ftp login on my server and have them post their class weblog there. More MoveableType: Lots of discussion going on about the new MoveableType 3.0 licenseing. As Liz Lawley noted, it looks like the SixApart folks are aware of the use of MT at educational institutions, and how their new pricing makes use of the 3.0 version prohibitive. Hopefully they get this right. But, as it has been noted, there are quite a few OpenSource solutions out there.

The 2.6x version of MT works very well for us at Lewis, and I plan to continue to use it. But I will spend some time this summer playing around with some other tools. Tom is very high on Plone, also Drupal looks like a very feature rich tool. Will suggests Manila. I have experience running a Manila server. For about a year and a half we hosted several teacher support sites using Frontier and Manila, but Manila is not an option for us at Lewis. For one thing we have our site hosted and don't run our own server. Another reason is cost. I really want to work with a tool that will not have ongoing licensing costs.