Monthly Archive

William Lucas is a colleague at Otago Polytechnic. He teaches English to Adult migrants, and is the first social web contact I made at Otago. He and I share a serious concern for peak oil and often wonder what we should do in preparation for increasing economic and resource pressures down here in Dunedin…

William dropped off a CD copy of Robert Newman’s History of Oil today…

Now I’m recommending it to everyone here

At first, I didn’t know what to make of it… William noted that he was very funny… but at first I thought this guy wasn’t funny at all, boring, rapid fire, monotone,… what was William talking about… but I muted the useless TV (dunno why we bought that thing), put on my headphones and concentrated…

This guy is hilarious! All I had to do was tune in.. after that, I was absorbed.. and that’s a sign of a good performer in my books. But he’s more than a performer, he’s performance is a lecture, a call to action, an awakening, a very interesting point of view…

In the void that is the absence of anything sensible otherwise - Robert Newman offers very thought provoking and hard to ignore 100 mile an hour perspectives on the state of affairs in global politics, resource wars and depletion. But with a unique angle of comedy (for these topics anyway).

Well worth a watch. Up there with Zeitgeist, only better I reckon. Certainly better than the crap on your TV…

Ken Burgin from Profitable Hospitality just posted a useful heads up to the Tourism and Hospitality Education Network this time to the Jing Project from Techsmith. Tis worth watching their video tour, though it didn’t stream down too well for me - dunno why they wouldn’t post it on Youtube and see it spread faster..? When I saw this, I thought back to the communication I was having with Techsmith back in October 2005. I haven’t found any attribution to me and the ideas I was conveying to them there.. maybe they’ve never heard of Creative Commons or maybe talking to me was so long ago and the Jing Project has come a long way since.. oh well. At any rate, it looks like a pretty neat little application.. if only I could post the recordings to Youtube and other video sites as well as their own…

Personally, I think I’ll stick with my tried and true method for creating and publishing screenrecordings.

1. Camstudio (free and open source for Windows) for the screenrecording
2. ScreenHunter to quickly grab stills out of the video and make a print version
3. Videora or SuperC to compress the video for Internet
4. Hey!Spread to distribute the video across multiple video hosting services

You can catch examples of my work at http://screencasting.blogspot.com (not all of them have the print out extras though)

Bill Kerr has begun what I hope will be an ongoing critique of Web2 in the more thorough and thoughtful BK way. Unlike the rise of general and non specific criticisms of the idea of Web2 that seems to have been emboldened by Keen’s book and attention, Bill manages to articulate his critique without calling a class of people monkeys.

It’s better that everyone has their own interactive medium and chaos reigns, than the alternative of Big Media or traditional School alone. If we want radical change in the media and education then there is no alternative but to go through chaos. “Web 2.0” won’t change School dramatically if it doesn’t also change society dramatically.

Bill then goes on to peg expertise as the more important question facing Web2. Personally I’m not so sure. As Weinberger points out, there’s plenty of room in the read/write web for experts to flourish, arguing that the popularity of web2 makes it harder to find experts doesn’t fit. The mistake that the critics seem to be making is persistently seeing web2 as one massive thing. Its a bit like saying Youtube is hopeless because its full of teenagers exploding soda and bikini this bikini that… some people see value in that for many reasons, and who knows what expertise that might lead to. But even if Youtube seems to be flooded with silly stuff, that has no impact what so ever on my Youtube experience, simply because I’m not much of a browser of Youtube. Personally my Youtube experience has nothing to do with Youtube as a whole, my Youtube experience is made up of recommendations from experts I already trust.

I don’t know if my attempt to explain why thousands or millions doesn’t equal nothing, or even if Youtube was a good example, but its enough to say that Weinberger, no! Benkler is more of an expert than I am.. I’m just doing my bit at pointing him out and helping Google help those who remain blinded by the massiveness.

I finally made it up to Dave Wiley in my terribly over crowded news reader… only to be let down by him I found a volley of blogged considerations and thoughts going on over at Dave’s blog (all these links so far) about the very same issues with Share Alike restrictions that I attempted to raise with the same network more than 2 months ago.

I blogged about it, I argued til blue in the face with the Wikiversity, Wikieducator and TALO crowd, I emailed and commented in on Dave asking for his thoughts on the issue as I prepared the article, I even spoke about these concerns at the same conference on the same day as David. But somehow all this has missed his valuable commentary, nor have any of the comments to David’s recently expressed concerns about the Share Alike license referred to my work on the issue… these are my peers, the ones I like to think I am connected to in some way, clearly the issue interests them - just not when they are raised by me…  its about now that I sink into a state of pathetic, self loathing depression as I realise I truly am just a raving ozzy living with a bunch of non plussed kiwis, and that I’m doomed to talk to myself and go crazy hermit doing so.

I’m an outsider, alienated, incomprehensible, irrelevant and dismissed by the ones I respect the most, and remembered for the contributions I like least.

It just occurred to me that Second Life is a bit like playing Barbie Dolls… admit it! you played and dressed up Barbie just as much as your little sister!

Not much in that really - replace Barbie with lego, or Gi Jo or any other little extension of your mind’s space if you’re a little sensitive to the connotations of Barbie. I suspect it has already been talked about at length already.. I haven’t looked yet, just logging it here for now…

This is not intended as a put down to SL - exactly the opposite actually. Must look into the possible connection and what playing through such objects has to offer our ideas about learning… clearly, playing with dolls offers a lot for kids, and more and more I wonder just how different adult education is or isn’t..

I’m having a great old time with Slideshare’s new audio synch feature. Have been reviving old presentations from 2005. Here’s ye old Networked Learning with a nice soundtrack from Melissa Welch.

Slideshare just became the killer app for teachers! Synchronised audio with slides!! Thanks Alan for the heads up.

For example:

Google alerted me to a new connection the other day. This time it is US linguist and edu blogger Mike Caulfield. Mike’s post that sent a Google Alert to me was about his discovery of a ring of others criticising the Learning Management System. Apart from being interesting to see what Mike makes of his discovery of our little network of LMS nay saying, he links out to a very interesting perpective he has on why the LMS is no good:

So it’s no surprise that the modern LMS developed under what I would call a “container model”.  We “upload files to” it. We have discussions “in” it. And if the “outside world” needs to see something “in there”, we give them “access”.

And the students? Well, they’re “in there” too. At least the piece of the student that belongs to that class is. You know, the English major slice. The part of the student that is a science minor is in another box, and the part of a student that is looking for a job or hanging out with friends doesn’t have a box at all.

So here’s one of the paradoxes of HASA-based LMS systems:  they follow the grain of of our thought, and at the same time they profoundly fracture our experience. The unintentional message of the HASA LMS is what goes on in class stays in class — that it is seperated zoologically from the personal and the professional aspects of a students character.

Its great to have Mike in the loop now. I’m going to enjoy reading what else he discovers in our footprints, and enjoy more his linguistic takes on the LMS and other things!

Welcome Mike

Thanks to Artichoke and Rose for the heads up to what is for me absolutely hands down, one of the best presentations about connected knowledge I have seen in a long time.
Serendipity 2.0: Missing Third Places of Learning - Teemu Arina

[Someday Sunshine and I will find our way to Finland and everything will be ok...]

I thoroughly recommend watching the 30 minute screenrecording of the presentation. Not only is it a fascinating and refreshing perspective on the ideas of connected knowledge, the images and even the accent will make it fascinating.

Thanks to Teemu for putting so much work into it, for communicating to me in the only language I can understand, and for giving me more access to the kind of thinking going on in Finland.

This is high order stuff for me.. and while I enjoy being in that space - I watched this in work time, research. All the way through I was trying to relate the observations and ideas into my own context. Adult education and training, mostly with vocational goals. Teemu showed at least 2 very thought provoking examples of projects applying his line of thinking. One of which was Network Oasis.

netWork Oasis is a collaborative working, learning and development environment. It is a space designed to inspire spontaneous and guided encounters of different individuals. Versatile environment welcomes actors, specialists and groups from various companies, research and development organizations and communities. Billing is based on the actual logged usage of the facilities. The price includes all 1200 m2 of space and services. Laptop and a cell phone are the only necessary tools for working – Internet, printers etc. are provided by the services.

That is something I can look at more closely and see how solid I can get the concepts before testing them out here, in lil old Dunedin…

Teemu finished his presentation with these questions:

• What does it extend?
• What does it make obsolete?
• What is retrieved?
• What does it reverse into, if over-extended?

My attempt to answer them in my own vocational education and training context before I’ve had any time to reflect on them:

What does connected knowledge technology extend in vocational education and training?

The ability of a business, company or organisation to service the education and training needs of itself, through informal learning models, but facilitated through technologies. In saying that however, some sectors will be a long time coming compared to others. Office work and organisational work and the like could be the first - already having the sorts of technology available to them, and being the closest to being conceptually ready to adopt these methods. Trades and industry maybe some of the last cabs off the rank, if at all as many have very little access to the types of technology available now to connect knowledge, or the media literacy levels available to make the most of it. I could (and hope I am) be wrong about this though. The hospitality and service sectors are an interesting possibility… but I’m aware that Teemu is pushing me to think for more informally and less compartmentalised with knowledge and skills development… I am, its just hard.. community building within and across sectors maybe a way to establish fertile ground for connected learning.

What does connected knowledge make obsolete in vocational training and education?

Well, if informal and networked learning models became popular and successful for workbased learning initiatives, vocational education and training services could become a lot more unnecessary. Within the voc ed service sector itself, traditional curriculum will slowly dissolve into more integrated and relevant micro learning, with holistic learning principles and ethics being left to … dunno what…

What is retrieved in connected knowledge models for vocational education and training.

I think the apprenticeship model will become the familiar vehicle to promote connected learning. Only the master will be a distributed role over a network, or local community of learners or trades association.

What will be lost or what will be the negative if we go too far with connected learning practices?

We disrupt local knowledge workers at a pace, rate and philosophy that alienates them even though they are or would be valuable to this new practice. We risk adverse affects of assessing and awarding approval to practice when skills or experience are not as good as thought (but the social and open learning should counter this). We get caught up in techno futurism and loose site of many current and historical issues that need to be delt with. And we think in terms of data or ethics that are foreign to our number 1 learning space - family and local community…

Janet Hawtin in TALO sent through URLs to the slides of a workshop for the Education Network Australia by Ken Price…

Web 2.0 and education: best friends or worst enemies

[seems there are still many people in our "leading" education agencies still waking up to this Web2 thing while some of the "early adopters" start pulling each other apart Keen style.]

Ken’s presentation is a good overview. Does the usual (but necessary) overkill-to-hammer-the-point-home on the many many useful tools out there, but more importantly he posits a few questions and considerations… nothing too heady… nothing that questions the very fabric of education and the like.. just everyday questions for everyday people getting by day by day.

About half way through he posits the idea that schools go through 5 stages when presented with a technology:

1. Some online tool becomes available freely available
2. Students use it at home and school
3. Some educators may (validly or otherwise) see this tool as a threat. They respond by restricting, renouncing or simply banning it.
4. Tool becomes widespread in wider community (Gladwell’s Tipping Point reached?). Student use or expectation reaches critical mass, education sees its potential and the need to provide it securely
5. Education responds with a secure and manageable replacement… And everyone breathes a sigh of relief….

Now, I’m not sure if Ken was hinting at something there with that last line ending in a … , and later in the presentation it becomes a little clearer, but I’m personally not feeling clear enough on this…

It does appear in education to be the common road to take - responding with a “secure and manageable replacement”. Why is that the default, and why am I the only one who continues to take issue with that?

Ken shows a long long list of free web based tools with examples of their uses (as we all do). I didn’t see any “secure, manageable, replacements” in his list, and I certainly can’t imagine a school, or even a centrally controlled agency of the State like EdNA or Department of Ed successfully “managing a secure replacement”. The only example I can think of is email, (I won’t even acknowledge the arsed up attempts with LMS and SharePoint!) and even email is going back the other way as we all start adopting gMail accounts for the better functionality than the State email provides. I know for sure that if they did try and provide a manageable and secure replacement, it’d take so long to get through, and be so crippled and unpopular by the end of the process, (the millions of dollars spent by NSW on webservices anyone? check the history, what a flop!) that it could never even hope to be web2 (needing popular participation and all!). What is this security we keep noding to as though we all know what it is? Is it a mish mash of network computer security and duty of care? I reckon its the terrorism we all know is waiting at every airport and bus stop… fear - paralysing fear.

Ken does list risks later on though… are these the things he/we refer to when we say secure?

•  Where is your data?
•  Who else can get to it?
•  Does the application encourage inappropriate use?
• What happens if the service provider has technical problems, goes out of business?
• Usernames and passwords – how to manage them all?
• Security risk if you use same username/pwd as on your own systems? Need for different levels of password
• Data volume and bandwidth requirements

These are risks, some of them I think we just need to get over really, but all of them have a range of management strategies possible in the practice of Web2 before we expect our underpaid, and over worked IT managers to provide a “manageable and secure replacement” - that by the way, should be as cool and popular as all the web2 tools we are already using…

Poor guy, by the time he gets through all the red tape to get a project going that simply investigates this web2 thing (because he hasn’t found time to keep on top of the RSS feeds the past 3 years), the deal he’s been negotiating with Microsoft Sharepoint, Elluminate and Blackboard over the past few years has finally started to look possible… and by the time he gets all his staff up to speed with this Web2 bubble, it will have tp’d off to the Second Life and virtual worlds crew who will have figured out a way to integrate Web2 with Web3D and the 2nd wave teachers watching Ken will be asking for a “manageable and secure version” of Web3D too!

Ken’s presentation is worth looking at. Its nicely self contained so you don’t feel like you need him there to talk you through it. It raises some good questions - perhaps tries to answer them too much, and covers a good range of issues for schools to be thinking about.. while the rest of us think about how to get those issues out of schools.

I’m hanging out in New Zealand statistics tonight, trying to find any lead on what NZ actually spends on software imports. We all have a hunch that its big, and some have a theory that raising awareness of free and open source software would help reduce what ever it is..

So far I have found Information and Communication Technology Supply Survey of 2005/06. Thanks to a google chat and a failing on search prowess on my part. But this report seems to only look at exports! Impressive as the export stats are I can’t seem to find a clear answer to my question.

Closest I get is:

Total sales of information and communication technology (ICT) goods and services rose 7.9 percent to $17.6 billion in the 2006 financial year.

Which is a staggering amount for a country with a population just over 4 million… but what does total sales of ICTs measure?

So, am on the hunt for a nice clean answer. How much does New Zealand spend on software imports? Actually, I could get more specific but I suspect the answers will somehow get harder to find.. how much does New Zealand spend common office software?

Of course it doesn’t help that many computer sales are made with software bundled, a quick chat to my local computer sales person revealed that even if I wanted free software options it wouldn’t reduce the price tag on a new computer in fact the only tangible difference that free software makes to off the shelf computers that I can see is the ability to go for a “home edition” at a lower price, and adding OpenOffice to it later to make up the “pro” difference..  I have no idea what Vista’s impact will have on this little price saver..

But still, there must be a clear clean stat out there on office software imports? Even one for operating systems? What about content and learning management systems? I just want a figure to start from…

Bill Kerr perplexes me. A voice in a growing chorus of non specific Web2 in education criticism, his post Don’t be too proud of Web2 has me a little confused. On the one hand he is calling for deeper thought, but on the other is reluctant to model it in this brief critique and uses the throw away language that he holds others to task for. In his observations of the web2 movement being a bit full of itself:

Global village idiocy, like the uncritical promotion by some of conspiracy theories of history on the TALO list

And that’s why I’m writing up Bill’s post. He’s talking about me there. Me and a couple of others in TALO that found Zeitgeist to be a film worth considering. Bill came in on that TALO thread and dismissed the film as conspiracy theory and reckoning that the US leaders are not that organised and that history is not that simple, but he didn’t try to back that up and has only watched half the movie selectively…

I’m not defending the movie, I still have little idea if the claims in the movie are true or not, that doesn’t matter to me as much as Bill’s all over dismissiveness. Its not village idiocy to want to discuss the film. Surviving the deflation of Bill’s mere conspiracy theory, the counter was to talk about the film in terms of it being a device for motivating inquiry learning or encouraging questioning generally. I’ve started a wikieducator page around the movie for just that very purpose. If Bill’s not energised enough by the movie to start looking into its claims, then maybe the global village will have a go.. Off list Sean and I had a go at the Wikipedia bureaucrats who deleted the movie’s article, which is one of many many topics that can spin out of Zeitgeist discussions…

I find it perplexing that of the hundred or more claims in the movie, and the thousands of details behind Web2 really, that Bill is calling others proud fools… and being dismissive without being specific. Bill?

At last! Someone has blogged a brief look at an ‘alternative’ education method and considered it in terms of adult education - the Montessori methods. I’ve often wondered why secondary and tertiary education doesn’t discuss the other methods more often.. well, at all! Otago Polytechnic lecturer David McQuillin is though.

The online context is well-suited to a range of self-directed modules/exercises that the students may choose to move through at their own pace.  There are some limitations to this model.  Our professional assocation requires specific competancies to be held by graduates, and it’s likely that other professional assocations have the same type of requirements.  This means that while we can provide some flexibility we cannot allow students to completely follow their own path of learning.

In our work developing resources in Wikieducator, we are slowly building a number of learning activities for a single learning objective. Could it be that these activities present the choice for self directed that David considers?

A new connection to me - made via pingback comment, is with New Zealand blogger Rachel at Contented. I quick scan of her recent posts reveals a pointer this this little beauty - BigPod, a New Zealand podcasting service. We need more of these services in God’s Country… according to the IT support guys here, our bandwidth costs are more and less reliable when we post and drag content from foreign servers. So - provided BigPod keeps in servers on home turf, this Podcasting service might be a more reliable tool.

Bill Kerr pulls together a few images that paints a great picture on the status of the One Laptop Per Child Project

In preparing for my one laptop per child presentation at CEGSA (Computing Education Group of South Australia) this Thursday I did a google search of images of its use in different countries. Here are some of the images I found

There’s a little storm brewing over here in Australia/NZ edublogging land, and its over the often contraversial wikipedia deletion policy. Sean FitzGerald makes a valid point:

Does anyone else see the contradiction here? The irony even? Wikipedia - the poster child of user-generated content, citizen journalism and the wisdom of the masses says that extensive reference to a topic on blogs, forums, chat rooms and wikis does not constitute notability.

If that is true… then what the policy is saying is that Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source!

The issue in question is the hastey deletion of a new and helpful entry for Zeitgeist the movie. If you look into what remains of the discussion relating to the deletion you will find a rather concerning point - that the page (and all its history and discussion) was deleted within 3 minutes of the creator (Squarepush3r - no details) asking for a hold on the action!! The tagger for deletion (Matticus7 argues that the hold should have had a discussion post relating to the reasoning for the hold, the creator argues that 3 minutes was not enough to create that reasoning post. The deletion was done by Stephen - no further details.

I find it quite disturbing. Not helped by the fact that I think the movie is significant - if only for its value in agitprop. But also because the transparency of the deletion process is not all that clear, in that the original page is gone and blocked from starting again! along with any chance to discuss its significance or to review the deletion process…

PS. I forgot to add the link to GodlessLibralHomo’s pretty thorough overview of the issue.

I am seriously reconsidering everything I do and think after this. I must keep love in mind, heart and hand while I fend off the overwhelming fear that much of this movie brings to me..

This is a long movie, and one that I recomend you download rather than stream. You better be comfortable, warm and secure when you watch it, and have time to spend with yourself and then loved ones afterwards.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

Thanks Sparker for the pointer. I dunno what to think - in search of the truth…

A week ago I was contacted by Andrew Schwatz from Custom Writing. He was offering me $25 per month to put a link on my website to his. Naturally I was flattered to think that someone out there thought that my blog would be a good vehicle to promote another webservice, and I was curious to know what that service was.

Boy! was I surprised and riveted by the audacity! Custom Writing is a service that will write you an essay that is guaranteed to be free from plagiarism and to not get picked up by plagiarism checkers like turn it in.

Custom-Writing.org offers professional academic research and writing services in any field of study. We guarantee highly qualified, confidential essay writing strictly in accordance with your instructions. When ordering paper writing services from Custom-Writing.org, you can have your essay completed in 12, 8 or 6 hours! Custom-Writing.org organizes own work using simple formula: Quality Writing + Responsibility + Personal Care = Success. When ordering essay writing services, rest assured, we are fully dedicated to your academic success!

We Guarantee:

— Quality research and writing
— FREE plagiarism report
— FREE unlimited amendments
— FREE title page
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— 24/7 Instant Support
— 275 words per page
— Double-spaced, 12pt Arial
— Essay within 12 hours!
— Fully referenced
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— PhD and MBA writers
— Discounts for returned clients
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Check out their pricing! Not too bad at all!

So I’ll add a link alright, and I’ll do it for free! This is thoroughly interesting stuff and right down my alley, in terms of pressuring education and academia to rethink its role and practices.

So I replied to Andrew and asked for an interview. Within a few hours he replied with a, “yes, send the questions through..” I buzzed my office with the disturbing news of a service that will write essays for you, and the questions came flying. I noted them down and sent Andrew the list. He had the answers for me next day. Here they are:

Is this a kind of plagiarism? Does your service get around the plagiarism checkers like ‘Turn it in’?

Yes, the papers we provide are plagiarism free – neither TurnItIn, nor any other plagiarism detecting software cannot find any plagiarism. Papers are 100% custom written, so the only way to find out that the paper was not written by a student is to compare the regular writing style of a student with the writing style in the paper. Still, at our writing service, a student can upload samples of own work for writer to review – so, the possibility for a teacher to find out is really minimal and for a teacher to prove – virtually impossible.

How do you see your role in the field of education?

No person can be equally good at everything – if he/she is, then this is the wrong path, a student talent is lost. There are people who are good at Math and IT – let them develop their skills in this field instead of torturing them with writing assignments. What is really the point of this, if students must waste hours developing skills they will never be professional in instead of concentrating on the field their future career will depend upon? I really see the role of custom writing services in education as a relief for those who have already chosen their career, who know their path, and have already somewhat succeeded in it – since services are somewhat costly and in order to buy a custom written paper, a student must have a job (the most part of our customers). Furthermore, academic writing services spare time for students to develop in the field they chose to, so, to some extent, this is a plus for their education too.

The very existence of custom writing services shows that educational system is imperfect: assessment tools are not objective. Writing services simply indicate that a problem in assessment techniques exists and push educational system forward to development and innovation by making them analyze the appropriateness of writing assignments as an assessment tool.

How much do you think your service potentially subverts assessment in education?

Do you really know any widely recognized tests that assess writing skills, aside from assessment of students majoring in writing? Student knowledge simply cannot be assessed by off-class writing assignments. I do not think that assessment in education is subverted by the work of writing companies. Instead, it points out the possible failure of academic assessment techniques and, by doing so, makes a favor. Essay writing is not an effective assessment tool with or without existence of custom writing companies.

Does you your service subvert academia? - good bad, doesn’t matter, other…

To some extent, yes, but not without help of educational system itself. Since essays are used as an assessment tool, which is a wrong method for testing student knowledge, students are seeking the way out. This is not bad in itself, since, as previously stated, they receive an opportunity to devote themselves to the path chosen – whether Math, IT, or Dance, but this, perhaps, shapes a wrong worldview, as students have to deal with ethical dilemmas imposed by society, which should not have happened if academic institutions were to develop better assessment techniques and a more personalized, individual interests based educational program.

Does your company object to standardised assessments like essays?

Yes, definitely, yes. Take-home essays are simply pointless for objective assessment of student knowledge, especially if it is for classes like Economics or Math – where exact, subject specific knowledge is what does count.

Does your service undermine the quality of education and hence the work that people take on through their educational credentials?

Nope, do not think so. Once again – the question and the problem itself lies in effective assessment techniques, which definitely should not be in essay format. When it comes to applying for a job – experience and testing conducted by a hiring company – is what does count, not educational credentials. From this perspective, companies like ours only help – we spare the time for students to develop in the field they chose to, which will then be their career path.

Do you have alternative visions for knowledge creation and sharing?

With the advent of online social networks, I think that one could definitely come up with an alternative to regular writing assignments. Why not let students communicate and develop their own interest based social networks where they could stand up for their views in academic related subjects that do interest them? For students majoring and/or interested in IT or Math – let them discuss in a written form questions that interest them – both professional knowledge and writing skills would develop. Math and IT students need writing for communicating own ideas in a written form in a professional manner, perhaps, using specialized IT/Math vocabulary. What would develop their writing skills better than an open discussion on an education related topic of own choice? Academic institutions perceive Internet as a threat instead of enjoying all the benefits and opportunities it offers for improvement of education.

Without giving away your competitive secrets, how does your company work? what is the process for your creations?

Basically, we accept orders from customers through an online order form, where they fill out assignment details, provide a deadline. We then make the order available to our writers who work remotely for them to apply for the work. Once a number of applications is submitted, the best writer is chosen and the order is transferred to his/her personal work account. Students can upload files needed, communicate with writer directly to guide him/her. Once the work is completed, it is uploaded directly to our support team. We then check the work and send it to customer. That’s it.

Where do the people who write for you come from? What is their background? Are they paid well? What are their conditions (working from home?)

We have a large database of writers working remotely, primarily from home. Most of our writers come from UK and US. A few years ago it was rather difficult to find a good writer. Now, we receive 5-10 applications daily. Are they paid well? I guess enough for them to work for us, not to drop the work, and receive overall positive customer feedbacks. Not long time ago, we gave a try to foreign writers and, let me tell you – we were really surprised by the quality of work produced. You can get a PhD writer from India , who is a lecturer in a University, where all classes are taught in English, to produce a neatly written document that will get an A+ for a native speaker. Even though we are not yet switching to writers with PhD degrees whose English is second language – believe me, IT is not going to be the only field outsourced to India in the nearest future. Check out optimization forums, where content for most of US based websites is written by teams of writers coming from the Third World .

I imagine your service has to be fairly generic - how would you approach quite specific subject areas, where either specific knowledge or local dialect is needed?

You are a bit mistaken here, for off-line writing agencies – you are right, but for online – we have hundreds of writers who can log in into their accounts and apply for the work they are most skilled at.

Anything else you would like to add? what are the stats of people using your service? How many, where from? etc

Unfortunately, I cannot provide you with the exact stats of people using our services and even if I do, it will not be representative in terms of students overall, since the market share of company can hardly be estimated with a certain level of accuracy. Overall, most students are either US residents or foreign students studying in the US (about 70%). UK – the next country on the list (15%), Australia , Canada – the next ones (5%). Some – coming from Japan , China , Russia , Poland (10%). Most students who use our services are overloaded with work, have family problems, or are too busy with all the different activities. They are not cheaters; they are simply seeking a compromise in difficult situations and imperfection of assessment techniques helps to find it in custom writing companies.

New video service hey!spread helps you upload one video across many of the leading video hosting services! Teachertube not there so too bad for the compulsive teachers out there, but the following services are:

• YouTube
• MySpace
• Google Videos
• Yahoo Videos
• Dailymotion
• Blip.tv
• Photobucket
• Metacafe
• Bolt
• Putfile

And the Blip.tv users among us might be aware of Blips little distribution features that sends a copy of your video to archive.org so that’s just about all bases covered.

I’ve been after this for some time now, asking every firefox extensions developer I met to make me this tool, but thanks to Brent sending me a lil gTalk message - I have it now, and its oh so web2 user friendly! Actually, its quicker and easier to use than the upload interface of all the main video services!!
I’m not going to waste pixels explaining why I need to upload videos across servers so bad, but I’ll just call it promotion and backup.

One thing Hey!Spread (or upcoming competitors) need to add, is the ability to add my own file server to the upload options. Here in NZ, its pricey and unreliable to call files all the time from over seas servers.. so the ability to add a local server would be helpful for that.

I just got off one of those impromptu chats with Sean FitzGerald. Almost every-time I chat with Sean my world gets rocked a bit. He just sent me two links that gaze into the future of communications, and all I can say is that I feel like a roo in headlights!

Second Earth
The World Wide Web will soon be absorbed into the World Wide Sim: an environment combining elements of Second Life and Google Earth.

A thunderhead towers at knee level, throwing tiny lightning bolts at my shoes. I’m standing–rather, my avatar is standing–astride a giant map [SLurl] of the continental United States, and southern Illinois, at my feet, is evidently getting a good April shower.

Metaverse Roadmap Report
Our scenarios will be influenced by all of the broader concerns facing the planet. Ethnic strife, political instability and war, energy, water, and other resource issues, trade, globalization, economic growth and poverty, environmental degradation and sustainability initiatives, migration, scientific and engineering advances, education and the media, ancient drives for intimacy, individuation, and spirituality, our emerging digital and participatory culture, unknown surprises and catastrophes, all of these and more will shape the technology development and adoption choices in tomorrow’s Metaverse.

Most importantly for each of us, at this pivotal moment in human history, there are unique opportunities for enlightened corporate, political, and social leadership in Metaverse exploration and development. We propose that the best use of the Metaverse Scenarios and Inputs in this inaugural roadmap is not simply to consider them for near-term economic potential, but to ask how these technologies might help or hinder our ability to manage humanity’s larger concerns, both now and in the future. How might we use the various forms of the Metaverse to guide our response to global warming, and the emergence of “climate neutral” energy and transportation? How might we use these systems to avert a war, improve an election, reduce crime and poverty, or put an end to human rights abuses? How might we use the Metaverse, in the words of Jonas Salk, to become “good ancestors” to our descendants?

Who wants to help me gather some pros and cons about Moodle and Blackboard? Or point me to some?

• Feature Rich
• Usability (Staff and Students specific)
• Total cost of ownership
• Staff required in terms of development expertise
• Support (internal / external skill sets) also Service Contracts / Timely off site support
• Training and education to all OP staff
• Migration options / interoperability between each / course loading
• Hidden costs?
• etc

Off the top of my head (and not being a fan of any LMS) I have:

• Moodle’s design suites sequencing of learning activities more readily than Bb
• Moodle is the development base for many NZ tertiaries developing open educational resources (SCORM doesn’t always ensure successful transfer between LMS’s)
• More NZ Polytech’s use Moodle so finding experienced staff to support Moodle will be less of a hassle
• Bb is giving us grief with hyperlinking within the system (have been told that its because we are doing something that Bb was not designed to do - but hyperlinking is pretty common hey)
• Bb is uncool.. LOL