Anywhere Working Week

This week is ‘Anywhere Working Week‘.

It’s a flexible working initiative led by a consortium of partners, including Microsoft, Nokia, Regus, TFL, Nuffield Health and supported by DfT, TUC, Mumsnet and WWF. The idea is that you work anywhere (home, local coffee shop, remote worker hub) and in doing so save time and money. The week is being wel;l supported and one company involved in the initiative is actually opening up their office for a day and have invited me to work there – they have desk space, free WiFi and coffee and pastries on demand! Obviously as I live in the South West and their office is in London it’s not ideal for me, but I appreciate the gesture!

If you work somewhere different you can track the impact this has on your time and money, as well as the effect you have on the environment using their Anywhere Working Savings Calculator.

The Anywhere Working is full of useful resources including case studies and tips and tricks to help you work better. They also have daily news and have a Facebook site and Twitter account.

One last thing…for those who’d like to get their hands on the ‘Ultimate Anywhere Working Kit’ (which includes an ASUS Zenbook, Nokia Lumia 800, Arc Touch Mouse and Vodafone’s latest 3G Mobile Broadband dongle) Anywhere Working are running a competition. To enter you simply write a blog post titled ‘My Anywhere Working Tips’ and send them the link. I might just have a go!

Massive Open Online Course crib sheet

I found the above Massive Open Online Course crib sheet on Flickr. It was created for a workshop being presented at ISTE 2011 on using a MOOC model for professional.

The Meaning of Open Content #ioe12

I have to admit to breathing a sigh of relief at the smaller number of resources given for the Open Content module on the Introduction to Openness in Education course. An opportunity to make up some time?

The Wikipedia article gave a good overview (open content is a creative work that others can copy or modify). The term initially referred to works licensed under the open content licence but now covers a “broader class of content without conventional copyright restrictions.“. Basically any items that can be reused, revised, remixed and redistributed (the 4Rs Framework) by members of the public.

It’s important to note that the concept is a different one from free content, which is content that “has no significant legal restriction on people’s freedom“. I would interpret the difference as being around the area of commercial use, and free content being in the public domain, but then the wikipedia entry goes on to say that:

“Although different definitions are used, free content is legally similar if not identical to open content. An analogy is the use of the rival terms free software and open source which describe ideological differences rather than legal ones.“

It’s a very hazy area…and I’m getting a little confused!

It seems that the terms are changing in meaning and “openness is a ‘continuous
construct’“. Nevertheless the basic idea is that open content is out there to be used by anyone, though not necessarily in any way they chose.

The Wiley article explores this further:

“What does “open” mean? The word has different meanings in different contexts. Our commonsense, every day experience teaches us that “open” is a continuous (not binary) construct. A door can be wide open, mostly open, cracked slightly open, or completely closed. So can your eyes, so can a window, etc. “

The video resource was interesting as back ground knowledge – David Wiley talking about 10 years of open content at the iSummit conference in 2008. Open content’s roots are in the open source movement and spring from a moment when David Wiley realised, while working on an online calculator, that “Digital content is magic because it is non-rivalrous“. He then decided that he wanted to make an open licence for materials and discussed it with open source gurus who insisted that he decided between ‘free’ and ‘open’ – he opted for ‘open’ and created the open content licence, which he later developed into the open publication licence. He admits the licences were a good idea but poorly executed, however they did allow Lessig and co to learn from his mistakes and create the Creative Commons movement. Wiley concludes with some of the current issues with CC licences, such as remixing licences, compatibility issues, and future work.

It appears that it is incredibly difficult to understand the terms used in the open movement without understanding some history and background. In the post on open source (Open Sourcing for #ioe12) I asked some rhetorical questions at the end (areas I’d like to explore more). I said “Do the people who (now) use open source software and openly licensed materials care about the ideology behind their resources?” Unless they look back at the history behind these ideas they’d struggle to understand the concepts anyway, Hmmm, it all requires a lot of effort, is there no such thing as a free lunch?

Where am I? Introducing the Satnav Blackspot Widget

In the past I’ve talked about use of GPS data (for example by Google street view). I’ve also mentioned Augmented Reality (AR) and helped edit the Augmented Reality for Smartphones report in May last year, authored by Ben Butchart, Edina for the JISC Observatory. However sat nav isn’t one of my favourite technologies. Nonetheless things are moving on in this area and interesting work is being done collating user information on sta nav black spots.

Many of us will have been sent down the wrong road by our car’s satellite navigation system. I once ended up down a small windy lane grounded on a pile of rubble and ice on the way back from Bristol airport in a blizzard – not good! While satellite technology ensures that signal failure is almost always a brief annoyance rather than a recurring issue, not every satnav map is one hundred per cent accurate, and can offer some dangerously misleading information. This is where car insurance comparison site Confused.com have created a useful widget to identify the common and most dangerous sat nav blackspots in the UK.

The widget is compiled solely from user contributions; the hope is that gathering enough information in one place will provide a useful resource for drivers using satnav technology across the country. If you’ve found yourself directed down a one-way street or pedestrian-only area, or even to a road that no longer exists, this is a good place to share that information with other motorists.

Anecdotal examples of these malfunctions are widespread, and potentially damaging to both roads and road users – the Dutch Quarter in Colchester is regularly jammed with lorries attempting to navigate the narrow streets after being directed there by their sat nav. Edward Randell, from Swindon, has to constantly give directions to confused drivers who are directed down his dead end street.

While some errors can be irritating, like the examples above, others can be downright dangerous. In 2009, a man nearly drove over a cliff edge after blindly following instructions from his Sat Nav. Anything that can help alert people to these blackspots has got to be a good thing.

Confused.com are looking for information like this to populate the map and give a decent amount of coverage across the country, and hopefully prevent further accidents in future.

Open Sourcing for #ioe12

“Open Source: of or relating to or being computer software for which the source code is freely available.“

I don’t develop software and I don’t install software (apart from on my own machine with the click of a button) but the concept of open source is one I feel fairly at home with. A few years back I ran a couple of Creative Commons workshops (introducing people to the concept) and I got Randy Metcalfe, former manager of OSS Watch, along for support. Randy talked about the copyleft principle while I concentrated on the CC licences.

OSS Watch was launched in 2003. Since then it has done a fantastic job of supporting (they say they are not an advocacy group) the use of open source licences and helping institutions and projects who are using or developing free and open source software. JISC often mandates use of open source licences on software developed using its funding. Open source is no longer that scary, techy thing it used to be.

The open source module on the Introduction to Openness in Education course includes many of the key pieces of work on open source including the seminal work the Cathedral and the Bazaar.

The Revolution OS video gives the history of open source and an introduction to the ideology behind it (one of hacking, activism, relinquishing of control, moving away from ownership etc.) and is definitely worth a watch. Some key interviews from open source advocates including:

• Richard Stallman – Software freedom activist, pioneer of copyleft.
• Eric Raymond – Author of the Cathedral and the Bazaar, co-founded of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
• Linus Torvalds – Developer of the Linux Operating System.
• Bruce Perens – Co-founded of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

I also enjoyed the “Open Minds, Open Source” essay by Eric Raymond which is condensed overview of the ideology and history. It explains the connections between open source and science fiction:

“SF taught me to think of people and cultures as adaptive machines. SF also taught me that the universe doesn’t respect the neat little compartments human beings like to chop their knowledge into.“

A few key definitions:

• Open source – Open source involves using decentralized peer networks for verifying solutions to complex problems. Source refers to source code, programmers publish a programme’s source code for active peer review by other programmers. It involves collaborative software development resulting in software released under open licences.
• Code secrecy – An approach used by companies for economic reasons, customers are locked in to use of code and support from a company when they cannot access the code themselves.
• Closed source – The opposite to open source!
• Brooks’s Law – Axiom of software engineering which observes that “adding more programmers to a late software project makes it later.” Led to isolated teams and code secrecy in commercial software production.
• Hacker vs Cracker – Hackers build things, crackers break them!
• GNU – GNU’s not UNIX (a recursive acronym) – an operating system similar to Unix, developed by the GNU project.
• Linux – Operating system developed by collaborators based on Unix.

The Annotated Open Source Definition is useful for accurate definitions and gives the full distribution terms of open-source software. It must comply with the following criteria:

1. Free Redistribution
2. Source Code must be available
3. Derived Works must be allowed
4. Integrity of The Author’s Source Code must be shown
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor – the software can be used for commercial gain
7. Distribution of License – the rights are redistributed to all additional parties.
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral

The Cory Doctrow video gives a real insight into the mindset behind the commercial companies and the pointlessness of their attempts to control the current digital copyright situation.

“Copying will only get easier. Your grandchildren will turn to you around the Christmas table and say ‘tell us again grandma about when it was hard to copy things in 2011, when you couldn’t get a drive the size of your finger nail to hold every song ever recorded’“

The main essence of Doctrow’s talk is that the powers that be are waging a war on general computation, he talks about SOPA and other related regulation.

A feeling that surfaced when reading and viewing the recommended resources is how ‘open’ was originally very much a state of mind and part of a wider social and political movement. As Eric Raymond puts it in the Open Minds, Open Source essay “OS raises some fundamental questions about not just the technological machinery of our computers but the social, economic and political machinery that surrounds software development“.

The question this then leads me to ask is: is it still about open minds? Do the people who use open source software and openly licensed materials care about the ideology behind their resources? The quote that is often banded about is that to understand the concept of open source you should think of “‘free’ as in ‘free speech’, not as in ‘free beer’“. Are people these days just after their free beer and unaware of the cost behind it? Something I’d like to explore more in future modules.

A final thought: Raymond explores the economic analogy in his articles and observes that “planned systems complexify until they collapse of their own weight.” I’m a practical person so simplifying systems appeals to me. A big battle I often fight in my working life is the esoteric nature of many of the areas I work in. I’ve heard “the people we want to listen to us aren’t interested” said many a time, the answer I often want to give is “because you aren’t saying it in a way that interests them, just a way that interests you“. Is openness a way to move away from this, to simplify systems by collaborative working? Something to chew on…

MOOC – The Online Trend for Career Pursuers

It’s now February and I continue to dawdle along on my Introduction to Openness in Education course (I’m currently learning about open source). While I assemble my thoughts for my next blog post here is Melissa Spears to tell you more about MOOCs.

Melissa Spears is a website content developer who loves to write articles and blogs on different subjects. Education is her favorite subject on which she loves to write blogs, articles and even guests posts. She prefers to research thoroughly before writing with the intention of letting let people know about new opportunities in education.

In her guest blog post Melissa Spears provides us with a further introduction (after my very brief mention a few posts back) to Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs. She tells us how students planning for distance learning can get real benefits from such courses.

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In today’s world, who wants to cling on to the traditional modes of education? Who wants to bear long stretching lectures and stare at blackboards for hours? The present world has been technologically enriched and now you are not required to head to classes and obey strict orders of instructors out of compulsion. With the passage of time, the learning trends are updating, and this is alluring plenty of career enthusiasts to pursue courses with interest and excitement.

Currently, the arena of open education has brought some trendy courses for career framers collectively known as Massive Open online Courses or MOOC. These career programs are absolutely unconventional and effective since they have been established on the theory of ‘connectivism’ as well as the theory of pedagogy in relation to network learning. What’s best about MOOC is that the majority of these career oriented programs are offered free. However, if you are looking for accreditation, some MOOCs will charge you. No specific requirements go for enrolling in such programs but certain timelines are provided for discussions on weekly topics.

MOOC – The Learning Process

MOOC or Massive Open Online Course is one where the course materials are all distributed across the web to students applying from various corners of the world. Now, this can be possible only if the course is open. Rather, the impact would be stronger if it’s a bigger course. MOOC is not an online gathering but a brilliant way of creating connections between qualified instructors and learners for discussing a common topic related to career enhancement. In other words, MOOC is an advanced form of online education that completely stands in contrast to formats based on posted resources as well as the learning management systems.

Popularity of MOOC

MOOCs have been alluring career aficionados in thousands in the past few years. In 2008 that the open educational program registered over 2000 candidates, 150 of which continued to interact throughout the programme.

Interactive and autonomous discourse is one of the biggest advantages of MOOCs that let students establish communications among participants.

Benefits of Pursuing MOOC

• It’s an easy going course that can be pursued with sheer flexibility. Applicants can make the course their own and share views with others.
• The curriculum has been designed in such a manner so that the participants can share and discuss the course lessons with each other.
• Taking help of social media, students can post discussions on diverse ideas, share resources and help each other sort queries related to MOOC programs.
• Applicants will be able to develop their knowledge regarding internet applications and learn in a better way.
• A wide array of assignments will be provided so that students can enjoy the freedom to choose any project of their choice.
• Participants would not necessarily have been allowed to enroll at the institution offering the MOOC but can still benefit from its teaching.
• There are no language barrier issues since distance learning students are able to access the website translation facilities.

So, if you are looking to opt for distance learning, MOOCs will take you through a new and unusual path to prosperity.