Successful Blog

Open Source Education — GELC

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Open Source

We know open source is only as good as the folks who contribute. It can be as successful and adaptable as Linux. It can be helpful as all of the WordPress plugins.

Open source can also get mired in policy and minutiae — you can trust the definition at that link; it’s by the experts on the subject. Such issues have to be what shut down Zeal.com. I had to take the insane Zealot test four times a day for days, until I passed it. The questions were about such tiny details my mind couldn’t absorb them. (See Dear Wikipedia and try being an editor for the DMOZ.)

Enter the GELC

Enter the GELC, something really exciting. The Global Education and Learning Community. Some really smart, talented, experienced people are working together on it. It has the goal of an open source learning curriculum. It could be as powerful as Linux. I sure hope it is. Right now, Dr. Barbara (“Bobbi”) Kurshan, Executive Director of GELC is trying to prioritize some ideas via her blog. [The formatting is mine.]

Several ideas include

  • a repository to build and distribute open source textbooks – which are probably the first curricula ever developed for teaching and learning
  • a place for assessing the progress of a learner
  • a virtual design center for creating a curriculum from open education resources
  • a repository of courses
  • and a community for discussion about open source curriculum.

. . . all of these ideas will become part of GELC. But, which one is unique? Which one will make GELC the “thought leader” in the open source curriculum arena?

What would you answer? One comment said, . . . drop this area. It’s a big turnoff currently. Is that what you think?

–ME ‘Liz” Strauss

Related in some way
Dear Wikipedia . . .
Out WikiPedia, Hello Encyclopedia of Stupid

Trendspotting: How to Crawl into People’s Heads

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Your job — should you decide to keep working here — is to figure out what our customers want NEXT.

Trendspotters

Trendspotters 101 logo

I belong to a networking group which requires endorsements. As I was editing my profile last night, I came across this endorsement from a client.

” . . . Liz can spot an emerging trend before it is even on the horizon. — Blake Education, Australiaâ€?

It’s true I often can. My friend, Chartreuse BETA, is phenomenal at trendspotting, as is our friend, Copyblogger. Scot Karp is excellent at seeing what trends are about to happen. Sometimes it depresses him. Don’t leave out Tom Peters. . . . How exactly do we do that?

What does it take to spot a trend before it takes root and actually happens? What does a person need to watch for? Seeing trends seems to be a factor of intelligence, learning style, and world view. Allowing that you have the prerequisite intelligence — we’re talking business acumen, common sense, and people smarts, not rocket science — the rest is a matter of doing the work and being open to what’s happening. This is lesson 1 on being a trendspotter. [Read more…]

Net Neutrality 5-23-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

The Internet Inventor Speaks Out!

At one point in the comments, [Tim] Berners-Lee says something that absolutely tickles me!

“Suppose your ISP runs an online auction: is there any reason why it should support traffic to eBay at all, when it has its own auction service? Suppose it runs its own on-demand movies – why should it have to allow through HBO packets? Suppose it has its own search portal — why should it give preference to Google’s packets, when the customer has available its own search service? Suppose the degradation happens now, not only to Skype traffic, but traffic from video sources of stations with particular political views? What happens when your ISP’s platinum partners establish favorable treatment for packets from sites with particular views on evolution? It is a slippery slope, and the bottom end is not nice at all. If there is a way of influencing the browsing choices of people, even slightly, there will be money in it, and when there is money in it there will be unscrupulous people trying to get that control. Do you really want to us to set off down that slope? Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.â€?

User Friendly.org Cartoons

THIS IS USER FRIENDLY.ORG
THIS IS USER FRIENDLY.ORG WITHOUT NET NEUTRALITY.

Vile and Revile

I don’t know how there is no law against this. Also, it’s so pathetically transparent that this group is corrupt when their member organizations include Cingular, the American Conservative Union, AT&T, BellSouth, and so on. A tagline like “Join Us and say NO to government regulation of the environment� is sick. I’m so sick. It’s as bad as using religion to play on people’s emotions for political and monetary gain.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-22-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

NET NEUTRALITY – by Gar Lipow on MaxSpeak, You Listen!

You (or your host if hosting is being donated to you) will not only pay your current ISP (who in turn uses part of your money to pay for backbone). You will be charged by your customers’ ISPs – which they already pay for. Perhaps you will be charged a third time, by some of the backbones your ISP and customers already pay for. Alternatively, if you don’t pay this extra ransom, MaxSpeak will suddenly become vvveeerrrry ssllooww for most of your readers. They may start getting time-outs and be unable to read it at all.

Bear in mind that you would not be suddenly paying for something you now get for free. Someone hosts MaxSpeak and pays for the high speed internet access that allows it. Whoever owns the hosting server pays a monthly fee that includes only a certain number of bits. If that number of bits is exceeded, host access will either be shut off, or an additional fee will be charged. (This may not be explicit; but I’ve known people with “all you can eat� agreements cut off when their usage grew too high.)

For that matter; if a road-owner does not like your comments, they may just decide not to deliver them altogether, regardless of what you pay. Right now all the big pipelines protest that they would never, ever, ever do that to you. But we have already have case of e-mail with certain sig lines or key words not being delivered.

Web inventor sees his brainchild ready for big leap

He [Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented and then gave away the World Wide Web] is also concerned about how some Internet providers in the United States have started to filter data, giving priority to premium data for which the operator receives an additional fee. They can do this, because they own the cables, the service, the portals and other key applications.

“The public will demand an open Internet,” he said.

On his blog, at http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4, Berners-Lee pays hommage to the democratic principles of the designers of the Internet who decided that all data packets were created equal. “I tried then to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform.”

“It is of the utmost importance that, if I connect to the Internet, and you connect to the Internet, that we can then run any Internet application we want, without discrimination as to who we are or what we are doing.”

Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall May 19, 2006 [via The Big News Blog]

Mike McCurry’s takeaway from his catastrophic effort to spin the blogosphere: blogging is “a primal scream in the darkness.” Like the scions Bourbon Restoration he’s remembered everything and learned nothing. People disagreed with McCurry about the net neutrality issue because people disagree about issues. People got so mad at him precisely because of this kind of patronizing attitude. He was peddling flimsy arguments as if it never occurred to him that the blogosphere is full of people who know a lot about the internet and could handle a grown-up argument (see a non-flimsy, though ultimately unpersuasive, anti-neutrality piece if you’re interested).

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-21-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

The Official Word from Snowe and Dorgan

“The internet’s open architecture allows access to the internet for everyone equally,� said Senator Byron Dorgan. “That access has been the cornerstone of the internet’s growth so far, and is vital to its continued success in the future. The Internet Freedom Preservation Act will ensure that the right to participate in the internet remains free and available to all, so that the innovation, economic opportunities, and consumer benefits it makes possible, will continue to flourish.�

The Internet Freedom Preservation Act would amend the Communications Act to ensure that consumers and online businesses can use the Internet without interference from broadband service providers. Broadband service providers must operate the network in a nondiscriminatory manner, but otherwise may manage the network to, for example, protect the security of the network or offer different levels of broadband connections to users. Consumers must, however, have the option of purchasing a “standalone� broadband connection that is not bundled with cable, phone or VoIP service.

Optimizing on billing

A key goal of the telcos internationally is to find a way to “upgrade” the internet from a network optimized on innovation (layer independence, unauthenticated use allowed, open interconnection) to one optimized for billing (IMS, NGN).

Hardware manufacturers also like upgrades (and billing), so it’s no surprise that 34 hardware makers sent a letter to the House yesterday in opposition to network neutrality.

It’s unfortunate that these manufacturers can’t take the long view. They can’t because their shareholders want quick results, and because they need to sell more and more boxes all the time.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-20-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

More on Underdogs and Net Neutering

Now it seems that while they didn’t quite get the substantive message, consumeraffairs.com has picked up some of the terminology. In a story posted yesterday, it lauded Rep. James Sensenbrenner for introducing a net regulation bill, saying “when it comes to the issue of net neutrality, Sensenbrenner is on the side of the underdog.�

At the risk of becoming repetitive, the underdog in this particular catfight includes the following companies (along with their rank on the Fortune 500 list):

Microsoft (48)
Intel (49)
Amazon.com (272)
Google (353)
Yahoo (412)
ebay (458)

Net neutrality field in Congress gets crowded

“Legislation that prohibits us from providing network management services for the benefit of consumers is a solution in search of a problem,” said Bill McCloskey, a spokesman for BellSouth, which opposes the bill and other regulatory versions like it.

The new bill, like most of its similar counterparts, does outline carve-outs from the rules for network management activities related to security and other consumer protection services.

Also buried in the proposal is a requirement that providers offer their customers the option of standalone, or “naked” broadband services without an obligation to subscribe to cable television, telephone or Internet phone.

Vested interest? Whatever do you mean?

“It is premature to attempt to enact some sort of network neutrality principles into law now,” says the letter, which was signed by 34 companies and sent to House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “Legislating in the absence of real understanding of the issue risks both solving the wrong problem and hobbling the rapidly developing new technologies and business models of the Internet with rigid, potentially stultifying rules.”

Oh yes, let’s all come to a real understanding of the issues, shall we? I know I for one would love to hear an explanation for what happened to the $200 billion in tax cuts and other incentives the telecoms were given to roll out fiber to the home by 2006 (see “We thought you said spend the $200 billion on ‘dark fiber’ “)?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE