The ETUG Fall 2008 workshop stated off with a dynamic presentation by Brent Lee from Vancouver Island University in which he introduced many internet based services that are freely available and provide a way of moving beyond our personal computers or institutional data centres. You can get a list of URLs for all those services he introduced in the "Our workshop resources" section of the ETUG wiki, found online at:
http://etug.pbwiki.com/
Most of those links can also be found at the delicious social bookmarking (http://delicious.com) by searching for the tag "etugfall08".
These services provide a way to work and learn "in the cloud" - a lovely metaphor for the internet. Although I have been involved in many aspects of using the internet for over 20 years, this term had escaped my notice. If you are interested in more background, have a look at the entry in wikipedia for "cloud computing" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing).
Are these applications and services new to you? How do they or might they expand your boundaries? What possibilities do they offer you or your students to "Learn on the Edge"?
EDUCAUSE recently released a book entitled The Tower and The Cloud that addresses some of the promises and pitfalls presented by resources that exist 'in the cloud'.
Richard Katz, the book's editor and Educause VP, indicates that the book is “a celebration of what is possible and what is becoming possible,” but also “a cautionary tale.” further adding that “...we don’t know really what happens when you make your infrastructure interdependent with Amazon or you place your data in the care of Google”
They are clearly walking the walk with OER as the entire book is available as a PDF from their site.
Thanks for that reference Grant! I suspect that we could have a discussion about the content of the book after giving it a read. Let's keep that thought on the back burner.
There seems to be more and more movement towards this kind of openness which makes me hopeful there is a real shift going on in higher education.
It brings to mind several conference presentations that I attended a couple of years ago - where the faculty and graduate students presenting were celebrating the fact that they had collaborated(!) on the research they presented. That was a dramatic contrast to my experience as a graduate student (nearly 20 years ago now) where the dominant interaction was to "out-do your colleagues" in a competitive environment that didn't support collaboration.
The Commonwealth of Learning has recently published several other books online related to international and online education. You can read about them and download copies from http://www.col.org/
Laura
There seems to be more and more movement towards this kind of openness which makes me hopeful there is a real shift going on in higher education.
It brings to mind several conference presentations that I attended a couple of years ago - where the faculty and graduate students presenting were celebrating the fact that they had collaborated(!) on the research they presented. That was a dramatic contrast to my experience as a graduate student (nearly 20 years ago now) where the dominant interaction was to "out-do your colleagues" in a competitive environment that didn't support collaboration.
The Commonwealth of Learning has recently published several other books online related to international and online education. You can read about them and download copies from http://www.col.org/
Laura
The Richard Katz quote Grant posted "we don’t know really what happens when you make your infrastructure interdependent with Amazon or you place your data in the care of Google" is sure loaded with questions and considerations.
The patriot act, a topic raised in the "boundaries and barriers" thread is a big one. Another is related to the risks of losing content stored on private service sites. This blog post from Vicki Davis describes a dilemma that is quite common. Some of these services allow ways to keep copies of your content locally.
What to do? What criteria do we use to decide if a service is reliable?
The patriot act, a topic raised in the "boundaries and barriers" thread is a big one. Another is related to the risks of losing content stored on private service sites. This blog post from Vicki Davis describes a dilemma that is quite common. Some of these services allow ways to keep copies of your content locally.
What to do? What criteria do we use to decide if a service is reliable?