Chisimba filters - part 6 - Filemanager embed codes
1365 days ago
Filemanager embed codes are filters provided by file manager for known file types that can be embedded in a webpage.
Chisimba filters - part 5 - Coloured boxes
1366 days ago
Chisimba filters - part 4 - YouTube filter
1367 days ago
Here is the latest video about Chisimba filters. Please review the first three if you have not watched them yet. This one will only make sense if you see at least the first two before watching it.
This post has not been tagged
Chisimba filters, part 3
1368 days ago
Here is the first video of the Chisimba filters series, this one showing a practical example of using filters. In this example, you will see the del.icio.us tags filter, the IFRAME filter, and the SlideShare Wordpress style filter.
Next time we will look at Filemanager's preview filters.
The evils of the NON-COMMERCIAL restriction revisited
1370 days ago
It seems that I have to remind people of the evils of the NON-COMMERCIAL restriction on Creative Commons licensed content. I am thinking seriously about even dumping the SHARE-ALIKE protection, perhaps even just using a PUBLIC DOMAIN dedication for the things that I do. I will never use NON-COMMERCIAL, unless there is an extremely good reason for it. It is counter intuitive, which makes it seem OK despite the fact that it has bad consequences. It does not do what you think it does. It is like heroin, feels nice, but has horrible side effects.
See also this blog.
See also
Keats, D.W. 2006. Implications of the NonCommercial (NC) restriction for educational content licensed under a Creative Commons license. The Southern African Journal of Information and Communication, Issue 7, 2006, pp. 74-81. URL: http://www.researchictafrica.net/images/upload/074-81-SAJIC06.pdf
license non-commercial
Chisimba filters, part 2
1373 days ago
This is part 2 of the Chisimba filters video. If you have not watched part 1, I suggest you do so first. It is in yesterday's blog post.
Chisimba filters, part 1
1374 days ago
This is the video I should have made before the last one. It introduces Chisimba filters. It is in two parts. I will add the second part tomorrow.
Using YouTube videos in your Chisimba content
1375 days ago
Challenges and benefits of digital preservation, Part 1
1375 days ago
I inserted this video as a means to make a video to illustrate using Chisimba filters. My next post will include the video.
The filter is:
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8LmKuUG-W8[/YOUTUBE]
This post has not been tagged
10 Ways Generation Y Will Change the Workplace
1381 days ago
Here is an interesting article, entitled 10 Ways Generation Y Will Change the Workplace, which came up in a workshop wiht Clive Simpkins. The focus is on corporate America, but it makes for interesting reading.
[RSS:limit=10]http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=Clive%20Simpkins[/RSS]
generation-y
M. David Merrill discusses how to make instruction with technology effective, efficient and engaging
1386 days ago
I like the idea expressed in this video clip, that learning can focus around a problem, instead of around content. Problem based learning has enormous potential in eLearning, and it is only just beginning to be tapped.
M. David Merrill- Utah State University
Note that copyright terms for this video is available by visiting its
eLearning
Stephen Downes on Beyond Management: The Personal Learning Environment
1396 days ago
In this presentation, Stephen Downes mixes the presentation of the theory - chaos, complexity and mesh networks - with the practical technical development leading toward the personal learning environment. It is from the Ed Media conference in Honolulu, Hawaii on June 24, 2009. Audio, etc. at http://www.downes.ca/presentation/225
Below is some information that I have assembled from various sources on the web by using Apture Embed Builder, one of many Web 2.0 tools that can assist with building a personal learning environment. This tool and many others are available to us at Wits, but do we want to use them in a connectivist paradigm, or in a traditional instructivist paradigm?
If you are on Twitter, and you want to talk to us about PLE, then please tweet with the hashtag #PLE in your tweet. Below you can see what people are tweeting regarding PLE.
[RSS:limit=10]http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23ple[/RSS]
connectivism PLE personal learning environment
Slidecast - Private cloud and datagrid for Wits
1399 days ago
This is a short presentation that I did to Academic IT Subcommittee today regarding our plans for a cloud computing infrastructure.
cloud chisimba architecture datagrid
The e-learning skills gap by Clive Shepherd
1402 days ago
This presentation came to me via a link on Facebook. I found it quite interesting, and somewhat thought provoking. Particularly so with respect to connectivism. The presentation by Clive Shepard explains how many learning and development professionals have fallen behind in the skills they need to engage effectively with new media.
Is it applicable to us in Universities, especially research intensive universities such as Wits?
eLearning connectivism
Updated private cloud architecture
1402 days ago
This is the updated private cloud architecture following on from our strategic planning meeting and discusssions with a cloud engineer from Sun Microsystems.
cloud chisimba architecture datagrid
A little IT humour: Medieval helpdesk in English
1406 days ago
Helpdesk support back in the day of the middle age. This is a remake of the of the Norwegian version shown The original version was written by Knut Nærum. See the YouTube page for more information.
The Potential for Education 3.0
1409 days ago
Here is a presentation that builds on the ideas in the paper that Philip Schmidt and I published a while ago on Education 3.0.
Our work on Education 3.0.
education 3.0 eLearning
Private cloud and datagrid for Wits
1416 days ago
This is the proposal that I made for an architecture based on private cloud and data grid to be used for email, website and portal, eLearning, hosting for researchers, and digital archiving and preservation.
The principle is accepted and we are now investigating feasibility and cost.
cloud chisimba architecture datagrid
Podcast:Archive and reuse of conference presentations
1417 days ago
Here is the audio from the presentation I gave in Addis Ababa at the 1st International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-1).
Conference presentations are a form or academic output that are seldom captured in useful ways by institutions, even those which have institutional repositories. There are commercial, online services, such as SlideShare and Scribd, that provide for the ability to store and reuse presentations, but they are not institutional, and there is no guarantee that what their services will be sustained. This creates an opportunity for a rich application that can provide some of the functionality of these services, but that integrates with institutional repositories for long term archiving.
The African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources project (AVOIR) was created in 2004 to build capacity in Software Engineering in African higher education through Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Within AVOIR, a project was started in 2007 to create an online presentation sharing system that would enable presentations to be uploaded, inter-converted between formats, made available under a variety of licenses as well as reused in various online formats. David Wafula, then at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Nairobi, started adding realtime presentation and classroom capability to the system. In 2009, Wits joined AVOIR and the Wits Library implemented this system as a presentation repository (http://presentations.wits.ac.za). It is in the process of being connected to the DSPACE institutional repository so that there are long-term archives. The software is FOSS and is available for download as part of the Chisimba framework from http://avoir.uwc.ac.za.
This initiative demonstrates the value of collaboration in Africa, and what we can accomplish when we work together to achieve innovation. The talk is an appeal for more collaboration among African libraries in the area of the processes and technologies that support our operations and allow us to innovate.
presentation collaboration
Archive and reuse of conference presentations: How collaboration in Africa can produce innovation in libraries
1419 days ago
Here are the slides from the presentation I gave in Addis Ababa at the 1st International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-1. Please note that these slides are being served off the presentation server to whcih they refer at
http://presentations.wits.ac.za
I am pleased dto say that it was well received, and some doors to further collaboration were opened. I enjoyed the conference, first time I have been to a conferece with mostly library people. It was an interesting change! The podcast will be available shortly. Also, quite a bit of the talk was done using a version of the software running on localhost, so it is not included in the slides. I may do some screen captures later and add them.
africa chisimba AVOIR collaboration conference
Day 1 of the 1st International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives
1422 days ago
I am at the 1st International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-1), which is being held from July 1-3 2009 at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The rationale for the conference is that Africa as a continent is lagging far behind in the global drive to build digital libraries and archives. As a continent, it has not engaged in any significant discussions and dialogue on strategy and policy for preserving and accessing its resources in digital form. According to the conference announcement, there is urgency to these policy discussions as major digital initiatives involving African content are currently being undertaken by non-African organisations without widely accepted protocol and agreement on issues of ownership of intellectual property rights, local African access rights, and long term sustainability.
The aim of the conference is to bring together key African and international stakeholders to discuss critical policy issues and explore approaches and challenges facing Africa in relation to the digitisation of African resources; and promote ways of strengthening, coordinating and forging stronger links between African digitisation initiatives, networks, projects and policies.
Wits is well represented at the conference, with Felix Ubogu chairing the event, and Michele Pickover and myself here as his assistants.
The first day of the conference was supposed to take the form of a Strategic Roundtable with key African regional and sub-regional organizations to advocate for the inclusion of significant library services and other knowledge input elements in African development strategies and programmes. It was organized around the theme: Building on Knowledge: IFLA Roundtable with Intergovernmental Organisations on Putting Libraries on the African Development Agenda. There were some good presentations, but there was very little discussion about the actual theme, or at least it was very tangential. It was more like a normal conference presentation set than a real round table, although there was a short discussion period at the end, where some interesting points were raised. One of them was a woman whose name I did not catch, who emphasized the need to digitize African content.
After the political opening statements we were treated to a presentation on Knowledge Management by Prof Kingo Mchombu from the University of Namibia. He urged African governments and institutions to adopt a knowledge management strategy. THen Mr Abraham Azubuike, the Chief Librarian gave a bit of a motherhood talk entitled 'Knowledge-oriented developmet: a fresh start for Africa'. I am unconvinced by some of the conclusions he drew, and I think there was some potential for mixing cause and effect. But his message was clear. Africa cannot develop if it does not take knowledge more seriously, and with that I absolutely agree.
I had a medical appointment, so I missed the talk by Prof Emmanuel Nnadozie, the Senior Economic Affairs Officer with NEPAD and UNECA. His talk was entitled 'Harnessing knowledge to accelerate the implementation of NEPAD'. Having had a project that was listed in the NEPAD Science and Technology Plan of Action, and not being able to get any response from anyone in NEPAD as to what it means or how I can use it to help NEPAD achieve its goals, I am uber-skeptical about anything NEPAD related. Before the beast can eat, it needs to wake up.
Dr. Bakri M Abul Karim, Head of the Knowledge and Virtual Resource Centre at the African Development Bank talked about all the services that his organization renders using mostly imported knowledge resources, and imported proprietary technologies. It would be nice if organizations such as the African Bank could collaborate with other African initiatives such as AVOIR and help them grow, but one of the greatest challenges to building knowledge in Africa is the failure of African organizations to take a risk and invest in African-led initiatives. Still, his organization offers an amazing array of services, and even have credit cards issued so staff can purchase proprietary licensed content online.
This was followed by a late afternoon discussion session during which various members of the audience made their own speeches, and asked a few questions of the speakers for the day. I will not try to repeat it here.
It is interesting to come to this conference after attending PASIG in Malta last week. The contrast between what we talked about in Malta, and what is happening in Africa is stark. It feels like coming from a workshop on advanced functional programming and sitting in a the first lecture on introductory visual basic, so stark is the contrast. We have the technical capacity to do awesome work in this area in Africa, but we lack the political will and organizational desire to pull it off. And so we talk some more. Perhaps tomorrow will prove me wrong. I hope so. I would love to be wrong.
Here are my tweets from the conference. Unfortunately, I will have to save them up and send them all at once because there is no Wifi in the UN International Conference Centre, despite this being 2009!
[RSS:limit=10]http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23ICADLA[/RSS]
digitization libraries conferences Africa
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