Randy, Wayne, Chris (and Stephen for the slideshow on the other thread, and for suggesting "what we shouldn't build")
Thanks so much for this. The thing which puzzles me in all of this (talk about sustainability) is why the engineers & software developers in the NRENs are left out of the conversation. If we are trying to come up with a sustainable (virtual) org, and. If most of the attendees here come from an institution which is probably attached to a National Research and Education Network, then surely one primary aim should be to encourage the (wonderful) geeks who provide the NREN backbones to work together and provide what a global group like this one wants. That is, as opposed to, or in addition to, just providing the bandwidth between institutional servers, in which each IT manager has to duplicate his peers, using "free software in education" of course; at the edge of an NREN. The old paradigm of institutional client/server seems such an antiquated model, especially when you reflect on this Googlelized global communication space (which is supported by advertising). If you consider the new context we want to live in, where we (an institutionalized global group) have a (joint) production tool which we are comfortable with, just as others in different domains use an identical one (wikipedia, citizendium). If we do believe that "Research and discovery, meanwhile, does not consist of striking insights and critical experiments, but is rather a community practice of dialogue and interplay". http://www.wikieducator.org/OMD/MPII/Assignments#Project_Numbers then progress here, I would have thought, is about improving the communication between peers in institutions and domains. Surely the way forward here is to forget about the production of information (i.e. content) for just sec, and spend some time in asking the NREN engineers to come up with a way that we (the global groups which span NRENs) might use Internet Protocols to come up with a cheap way to chat, talk, conference and (in brief) opencast. http://www.opencastproject.org/content/about_opencast We might ask our National Librarians to help these engineers systemize things by inventing a directory to the combined I&C networks of "similar" global groups, instead of their local institutions. Our institutional librarians might even get an idea of how this new model might encourage "their" authors to upload their papers in an appropriate group's database, so their institutions aren't forced to pay Elselvier and its peers billions for doing the aggregating of a global (subject specific) group's papers.. Randy, i do appreciate comparisons like this one. http://www.wikieducator.org/OMD/MPII/Assignments#Course_Development:_Wiki_Production_Model But I can't imagine any lecturer using it to justify a reduction in their income, or more work. We are all employed by institutions, and if an employee can't see the benefit and fun in understanding a wiki (or moodle, or whatever joint production tool they prefer) culture (and including their students) then we just have to leave them to complain about "no hours in the day". Philosophically, it's the difference between pedagogy and andragogy. OK I won't go on. Let me just point at this wiki page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_research_and_education_network Just so you know who your NREN is. They are all very different. You also might want to do a search on Planet Labs, and notice how they 'slice' networks I'll also point at the an entry which gives you an idea of my thinking about the OCWC conference theme = Content as Infrastructure. I'm using OCWC as they provide the biggest OER umbrella I've found. http://me.edu.au/b/Simonfj/entry/wet_wet_wet_it_must Lastly, cause Stephen is one of my heroes and usually I agree with him. Slide 16 . "Governments produce institutions". Definitely NO. They just fund something which needs to be done and then an "institution", full of regular routines, gets down to doing something, like educating communities or providing them with sewerage. And technology always changes the way in which "they" do it. In education we're at the point where the pan man is still picking up from the outhouses. Trouble is, now we live in a globalising world. So "we" have to get the groups in old National institutions, which National gov's individually fund, to collaborate, and be seen to be collaborating. There ain't no relevant global institution for education, unless you believe the UN and its agencies have it covered. Its quite a challenge, but the new (inter-institutional group/ community) model seems to becoming clearer now (at least in this burnt and flooded country). regards, simon PS Excuse the rave. Cabin fever. We's had floods --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
