Many of you will be aware of Second Life, the Internet-based virtual world, where users can react with each other via avatars, characters that represent their physical presence. The bid was successful and we were granted the luxury of an acre of space for one semester. My idea was to evaluate its use in learning & teaching and see if we might consider purchasing some land to create a virtual Chichester. Creating an avatar and using Second Life (SL) is free but ownership of land is required to create buildings.

Many universities in the UK and abroad already have a presence in SL. Some are using these as bases to promote their universities, some to build virtual teaching space and some to use SL as an imaginative base for a wide range of activities that are difficult or impossible to achieve in Real Life (RL).

There are a considerable number of issues surrounding the use of SL, from the technical to the social. PCs need to be powerful, SL uses high bandwidth and ports in the firewall have to be opened so security is problematic. Although most SL users are sociable, this virtual world replicates all aspects of RL. It can be like the Wild West, untamed, unregulated and with its share of potentially unfriendly characters.

After demonstrating SL recently (a session that was only partially successful), it’s clear that accessing SL from within the university can create several problems, not least due to the technical issues above. I’m sure there are lots of ways we might use SL in the future, so I’m suggesting that anyone who is interested, staff or students, might like to use a PC off-campus to meet up in our small area – email me if you’re interested. Software and accounts are available from: http://secondlife.com/

You can view an introductory video filmed in SL on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOFU9oUF2HA

My short discussion paper on the issues is available here – sl-and-chi.doc – comments welcome.

You can find virtual Chichester at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Campus/148/203/27/

My avatar, Piran Cazalet would be delighted to meet you there!

John Scriven

Q. What links all these companies & organisations?
A. They all use OpenID

Most IT systems nowadays use a form of single sign-on (SSO) authentication to remove the need for users to log into each separate secure system, eg network, email, portal, VLE. Etc. As well as making access simpler for the user, SSO has the additional benefit of making the system, which may consist of a series of entities, appear as an integrated whole. Many organizations use LDAP, where a central database contains information on users, applications and physical entities such as computers and printers.

Using LDAP within a system provides authentication within an organization but does not extend to access rights to systems that are external to that organization. Users may wish to access a variety of systems, such as alternative email, discussion groups and social networking sites that have no connection to the user’s work organization. The user is required to remember a whole range of username/password combinations in order to gain entry to these other systems.

What the user needs is a single authentication system that appears to be user-centred, rather than organization-centred, in order that a ‘seamless whole’ web environment can be achieved. OpenID is an attempt to provide this by means of a decentralized system.

Once a user has registered at an OpenID provider site, eg myopenid.com, they are given an OpenID identifier, such as fredbloggs.myopenid.com. This becomes the user’s trusted site and contains authentication details.

When the user needs to login to a new site using their identifier, the site is pointed toward the main identity-providing site. This site sends the new site the login credentials, so the new site recognizes the user. Some sites that use OpenID, such as Wordpress, automatically provide the user with an OpenID account, so the user can use fredbloggs.wordpress.com as their trusted site/identity.

OpenID in Higher Education
JISC is already investigating the potential of OpenID within HE. A university could be an OpenID provider and this would permit students to sign in once to their normal user account and have seamless access to any other site, such as Facebook or Flickr that uses OpenID.

To date, AOL, SUN, Verisign, Microsoft, France Telecom, Apple and many others have committed to OpenID making it a viable SSO solution for the future. Education is rather slow in following but some universities in the USA, such as MIT, are already acting as OpenID providers.

Eduserve meeting
There was meeting in London on 8/11/07 to discuss the role of OpenID in Education which I attended. This was organised by Eduserve and was well-attended. Interesting slides from all the presenters are available here:
http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/events/openid2007/programme
For a more wary review, Julian Higman, from Talis blogs some of the drawbacks at: http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2007/11/eduserv_openid_event_london_uk.php

What should Chichester do?
A single sign-on system that extends beyond the university and becomes user-centred has obvious benefits  – no need to remember an ever-increasing series of different username/password combinations.  There are issues of costs, management and security and some critics suggest a range of different usernames etc can help to prevent the extreme version of identity theft – identity cloning.

As a first step, users of a variety of sites might try OpenID, so they become familiar with the concept and evaluate if it has potential. My OpenID comes from http://myopenid.com Other providers are shown on the OpenID home site.
Secondly, we can wait for the report from JISC to see the ‘official’ line on OpenID’s role in UK HE

References & more links
OpenID home site – the What, Where & How of OpenID plus links – http://openid.net/
Ariadne article – http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue51/powell-recordon/
JISC background document to OpenID project – http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/funding/2007/10/identitymetasystemitt.doc
Scott Wilson from CETIS, covers the Eduserve meeting and other excellent things at: – http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/

Today, after four months of preparation, CLT finally launched Chichester’s e-Learning Benchmarking Project. We are one of twenty-five universities taking part in Phase II of this national exercise which is coordinated by HEA and JISC. The aim of the exercise is to look at e-learning while asking three questions:

• where we are now?
• where would we like to be?
• how can we get there?

We are using a range of research tools, including online & paper surveys for staff and students, interviews of key personnel, document analysis and ‘events’. These include Big Brother Video Booths run by the Student Union at both Chichester & Bognor, and focus groups. The exercise finishes in December, when we have to provide both an internal and external report on our findings. Further details can be found in the Benchmarking Blog, which can be found here.

It is hoped that everyone in the University will be able to be involved in the exercise and eventually benefit from its findings. As an added inducement, we are offering a prize draw for both the staff and student surveys, with prizes of vouchers totaling several hundred pounds! There are links from the front page of Portia.

John

Does this mean that Moodle will ultimately cherry-pick the best bits of Elgg, Facebook, Flickr, Bebo, MySpace, etc.? I don’t think that’s likely – Moodle links reasonably well to other software that share a common LAMP foundation (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). It is also flexible enough to allow both teacher-centred and student-centred approaches – whatever our own educational philosophy may be, Moodle is less scary to ‘traditional’ teachers than Elgg, yet provides space to allow them to be encouraged to adopt other approaches. I’m also sure that Moodle doesn’t want to become ‘bloatware’ – full of functions few need.  There is certainly a lot of interest in a more collaborative approach using Moodle – eg here and here.

It’s always dangerous to second guess where e-Learning will be in 5 or 10 years time, particularly when deciding on which tools to invest in. Moodle seems to be a wise choice for us as it has the advantages of being open source and reasonably standardised (SCORMs/LAMS, etc), and most impotantly having a large user and developer base. To a lesser degree, the same goes for Elgg and Drupal and the other extensions we may add to the online learning environment – although they each require an investment in personal development time, knowledge gained is frequently transferable to future work.

John

As a piece of social networking software, Elgg bears some resemblance to My Space and FaceBook. It allows users to set up their own spaces and communities and provides a means of sharing information, ideas and interests in a searchable form that can be as public or as private as you like. It’s also easy to embed a range of file types including mp3s, Youtube videos, etc. This first installation will allow us to set up a small pilot to evaluate its potential use. One area of posible interest would be in using it as a base for PDPs or e-portfolios.

CHI-INFO – our version of Elgg can be found at http://chiuni.info/elgg-0.8/ and you are welcome to explore the public areas. Contact me if you want to investigate further.

John

Now’s the time to take a deep breath – no, a really deep breath….

According to gotoweb20 there are actually 1608 Web 2.0 apps, all potentially excellent/disastrous adjuncts to learning & teaching.

Which shiny accessory do we use to pimp our pedagogical ride? Where do we start? Or do we run and hide? Running & hiding is not bad for a temporary option, just to escape from technological madness (I recommend dogwalks in foul weather) – and on returning things don’t look quite so fearsome. In a clearer state of mind you can see what others are looking at, using and evaluating.

Wikipedia’s entry for Web 2.0 is comprehensive – not bad for background but no use for sifting alternatives. One of the best I’ve found so far is the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies’ Top 100 Tools for Learning. This is based on the reviews of 107 learning professionals from around the world and has plenty of links & comments – much more useful if you’re looking for an educational Which Guide to Web 2.0. It doesn’t neglect more ‘traditional’ tools, such as Outlook and Dreamweaver and provides useful navigation through the swirling fog.

And now I’m off for a blustery dogwalk….

I recently came across an illuminating slide show (in 2 parts) that runs through a timeline from an ‘early Internet’ in 1746 when Abbot Jean-Antoine Nollet zapped 200 swearing monks connected in serial to a large battery (my favourite tale when I taught science in a Catholic School….) up to Facebook in 2007. The author, Trebor Scholz, is a German artist, media theorist, and activist now living in NY, so the slides are imaginative, amusing, informative and also offer a socio-political perspective of the roots of social networking. Probably heavy going to view both parts at once but still my recommended read of the week.

John

According to the survey, the conclusion is that potential university entrants think that technology should:

• support established methods of teaching and admin
• act as an additional resource for research and communication
• be a core part of social engagement and facilitate face-to-face friendships at university

Our e-L strategy would certainly seem to address the first two points and we’re already looking at additional ways of implementing the third (Moodle, Elgg, Drupal, etc). An important point seems to be the suggestion that potential students are happiest with standard face-to-face experiences, that they will need to be persuaded to leave their ‘comfort zones’ and that we should not imagine that ’students’ are a standard homogenous group, all texting away, all members of FaceBook, Second Life, etc. It appears that many will not be able to envisage the way they will actually use ICT during their university years. There are many factors that would influence this, including the ICT available in schools and colleges, home backgrounds, access and personal interests but it’s clear that a wide supporting community is what we should be aiming for.

The survey does seem to bear out our experiences at Chichester and I’m encouraged that we seem to be offering more ways to encourage imaginative use of ICT here. No doubt we will have a clearer picture of the student view after the Benchmarking Exercise.

John

1 The decision to make January to May an e-Learning Semester, kicking off with an e-L theme for January’s Learning & Teaching Conference.

2 To continue to develop our understanding of Moodle, ready for a launch in January

3 A pilot project using Elgg (see David’s item)

4 A pilot project using Second Life

5 Launching the Benchmarking Exercise itself

Watch this space for details!

John

The latest one for me is something from Microsoft. Is the evil empire getting better all the time? See my comments later. For now, watch this vid and be impressed.

Further links:
Seadragon – http://labs.live.com/Seadragon.aspx
Photosynth (downloadable software & BBC project) – http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

Original videos (when it was known as Photo Tourism):
Preview –
Download
Longer movie –
Download

The good news is that it’s superb software from Microsoft. The bad news (maybe) is that it’s still something from Microsoft….

It’s PC only (shame) and won’t even run in emulation on an Intel Mac….

I gleaned the following development info from the Xubuntu blog.
This project was originally developed by a team from the University of Washington (state, not DC) based in Seattle – and 5 miles from Redmond. Not surprising then that it gets grabbed by MS – and I’m not being anti-commercial about this – if it had been developed at Stanford, Apple might have been the proud owner. The sad thing is that the software originally ran on Linux and would have been an easy port to OS X and Apple do produce Windows versions (eg Safari and iTunes).

It may still be released as a cross-platform application – I note that MS have actually released a plugin for Firefox, so you don’t necessarily have to use Explorer.

Oh dear, is this the ranting of a sad Mac user? Possibly – but there is clearly a tension between working hard to produce something, releasing it as open source and possibly gaining respect, kudos and a dribble of money – or selling up, grabbing the cash and losing any control. The best option would seem to be selling to a company who’ll fund development, employ you to continue running the project and still release the code. Google is an example of this route but even they are inconsistent – some of their purchases still disappear without trace, eg the most excellent Wiki – Jotspot, which was acquired in October 2006 and vanished without trace

John