abject learning

Vancouver Art Gallery shared CC by Camilo Arango

When we decided to hold the Open Education Conference in downtown Vancouver, it was our hope we would take advantage of some of what the area had to offer. I’m especially excited to be partnering with the magnificent Vancouver Art Gallery (right next door to the OpenEd Robson Square location) on three special bonuses for our beloved conference delegates and volunteers.

First off, the much-anticipated but little-hyped full-day dialogue between Stephen Downes and David Wiley will be held in an old courtroom at the VAG August 11th, the day before the conference officially opens. I’ll be honest, I have only the dimmest idea what these two guys will be talking about, but I’m quite sure it will not be boring. We can only accommodate 40 attendees, so sign up now.

Second, we are pleased to present a special panel on “Expression, appropriation and the law” with screenings of clips from a variety of copyright-conflicted works, as well as a discussion led by Vancouver-based artists and policy experts. This session will be hosted at the VAG on the Thursday evening of the conference (August 13th), 7-9, and is open to the public with free admission.

Finally, I am am very pleased to say that your OpenEd Conference badge will get you one FREE pass to see the exhibits at the Gallery any time while the conference is running August 12-14. There are some amazing exhibitions coinciding with OpenEd 09, including Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art. And as a Vancouverite I would urge you to check out the works of Emily Carr and Jack Shadbolt as well.

I should note that we can only offer the free Gallery pass to conference attendees who have pre-registered online. Pre-registration closes this Saturday, August 8th. Are you really going to miss out on this?

Hermosillo, Mexico shared CC by pmoroni

I was little surprised to find that yesterday was the hottest day ever recorded in Vancouver. In no small part because the record temperature rang in at only 33.8 degrees C (92.8 F): warm, no question, but a normal summer day where I grew up in Saskatoon.

It put me to mind of my first day flying to my new job in Hermosillo, Mexico eleven years ago. In a sense, a job that marked my introduction into the field of education technology. I boarded a plane on a pleasant July day in Vancouver, changing planes in Phoenix. I could feel an unfamiliar intense heat coming through the walls of the airport concourses of Sky Harbor, and I knew I had entered a wild new climactic experience. A couple hours later I landed in Hermosillo. I was at something of a low point back then, career-wise, so when this opportunity came my way I was determined to make the best of it. But when I felt that blast furnace hit my face walking out of the airport I went a little weak at the knees, wondering what the hell I had just done. The number I remember bandied about as the temperature high that day was 48.5 degrees (119.3 F). Which would mean, if this particular edit of Wikipedia is correct (other data in the entry indicate records as high as 55 degrees), that I arrived in Hermosillo as it was achieving its own record high. That was a revelatory drive into town, tires were exploding just from contact on the sticky asphalt.

The city doesn’t have the best set-up for its climate. The ubiquity of concrete and pavement just intensifies the sensation, and most houses are made of cinder-blocks, which means homes heat up like brick ovens and don’t really cool off at night. My first house had one loud but ineffective A/C rack in a back bedroom, so there really was no escaping the heat, all you could do was sit in a shady spot outside drinking Tecate cans served up in bags of crushed ice and feel your brain melt into the sand.

That all said, I have nothing but fond memories of Hermosillo, la ciudad de mas macho. Fun people, fantastic cheap carne asada taco stands seemingly on every corner, ranchera and banda music blaring loudly from cars, storefronts and houses. Every observation seemed charged with near-hallucinatory intensity. On a day like today, I even find myself wondering what 48 degrees would feel like…

I wanted to spend some real time with the site before blogging about the Free Music Archive, and over that time my admiration for this project has continued to grow. The FMA describes itself thus:

The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.

Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright laws that were not designed for the digital era. Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio? A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won’t put your audience to sleep? A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples? Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist? The Free Music Archive is a resource for all that and more, and unlike other websites, all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators.

I’ve been disappointed by most other ‘open music’ sites for various reasons, some having to do with the difficulty in using text search to quickly find sounds. It reminds me of the old line (with many reputed sources) that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. And the FMA does not offer a quick fix to that dilemma. But the other problem has been the generally uneven quality of open source music. The FMA deals with that problem beautifully.

First off, this is not a site of user-generated content. It is a curated site, with content submitted not only by the mighty WFMU, but a host of other cool sources. So while the music on the FMA is wildly eclectic, and not for all tastes, it is generally pretty good. I can select a genre of music I like — say, Krautrock — toggle for “interestingness”, and hit the “play page” button. The music quality is more than listenable, and if I don’t like a song I can skip it, and if I do like it (and I’m logged in) I can quickly ‘star’ an item, essentially bookmarking it for future reference.

The curation is further enhanced by the ‘blogs’ that each user on the site gets, including some of the key curators. Write-ups by WFMU DJs like Lou Ziegler (who turned me onto this) put flesh on the bones. A lot of my interactions with the FMA start to feel like WFMU-to-go, an incredible repository of hipness I can take with me and reuse as I wish… Most of the music is relatively obscure, but there is a strong and growing trend of ‘name’ artists providing sampler tracks and in-studio live versions of their material. Hopefully that will continue.

The site interaction design is pretty good, worth a look by anyone who is interested in the idea of sharing and distributing open content. You can treat the FMA as a socially networked streaming service, or as a repository of free tunes. If you are logged in the site tracks what you have listened to, and it is easy to assemble sharable playlists based on recent listens or favorited songs. I also like that you can immediately download a track (usually in very good 320 kbps format) even without creating a login. Here’s the first playlist I created, which is a mixed bag, but gives a good idea of the diversity of sounds to be found.

There is a certain urgency to the project. The FMA was conceived in the wake of some disturbing and threatening attempts to strangle web radio in the cradle, efforts that are ongoing:

It’s damn easy to view the FREE MUSIC Archive as just that, an already large (and continusously growing) library of free (as in “free beer”) and awesome music downloads. However, a recent flurry of activity and articles concerning copy-left and Web 2.0, file-sharing court cases, and the ever-present performance royalty debate, has reminded me of why I got involved in the FMA in the first place, and it has just as much to do with viewing this archive as a bastion of free (as in “free speech”) cultural interaction.

Part of the FMA’s explicit mission is to re-imagine/design the function of traditional radio for the digital era by continuing to allow the public free access to new music. Internet radio, and now your local AM/FM station, may benefit greatly from a resource like this, as the government continues to debate over how the public accesses (or “consumes,” depending on how you view it) culture, and who owes what to whom.

And yes, the FMA was conceived and pushed into existence largely due to the efforts of a keynote speaker at this year’s Open Education Conference, WFMU station manager Ken Freedman. What do I have to do to convince to come to Van Rock City next month?

Just a quick note that today is the last day to snag the ridiculously cheap early rate for this year’s Open Education Conference, August 12-14th in Van Rock City. If you have not already, I urge you to take a gander at the program we have lined up – I can’t imagine anything that could speak more powerfully to why this is a must-attend event… This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to spend some time with many of the most accomplished and dynamic people in the field, in a relatively intimate and informal environment.

As the planning of this sucker progresses, I am also excited how this event will play out in downtown Vancouver at a time of year which usually showcases this gorgeous and energetic city at its very best. As I mentioned earlier, the conference BBQ the evening of Wednesday August 12th will be taking place at Second Beach in Stanley Park. And while I cannot announce the details just yet, we have laid the groundwork for an event the evening of Thursday August 13th that will be a lot of stimulating fun, set to take place at the Vancouver Art Gallery (next door to the conference site). As an aside, the VAG will be exhibiting Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art (and more) while the conference is on.

But to tap a metaphor I know a little too well, it’s last call for happy hour today. Register now!

I know Novak Rogic well enough to know that when he gets this enthusiastic about some new development that it’s worth paying attention to. So what’s the deal with the Section Widget WordPress plugin?

This plugin is basically an improved version of the built-in text widget. It allows you to display some arbitrary text or HTML on your site – but instead of showing it everywhere on your site, it allows you to limit its display to certain section(s) of your site, including fine-grained per-page control. This plugin features an easy-to-use widget interface and there is no coding involved (check out the screenshots).

OK, let’s check out those screenshots:

Looks handy indeed. And it seems that there’s more of this rich chocolatey goodness on the way. Kudos to all involved!

I wrote in an earlier post that one of our goals with the Sixth Annual Open Education Conference was to present a program that somehow expanded how we conceived and thought through what open education means. So imagine how thrilled the organizers were to read Alan Levine’s idea for a session entitled Amazing Stories of Openness:

While open courseware is important, there is much more that happens to us as individuals as we break old conventions and actually freely share our content online.

I want to help promote the concept of wide open sharing by highlighting examples of Amazing Stories of Openness– things that people have gained from that were initiated from putting something they made, wrote into the open space of the web, stories of things that would not have ever happened without this space.

This session has so many of the classic CogDog elements. The Web 2.0 storytelling using any number of tools, the multiple means of participation (contact him via webform or the wiki to work something out) the kickass metaphor with the unmistakable aesthetic. I’ve got a couple ideas I intend to submit, and whether or not you will be at OpenEd I urge you to as well.

On that note, the schedule for the conference is now up, and if you care to take a look you’ll see why I’m so excited about this sucker. We have an incredible selection of presenters that represent mainstays of the movement as well as some newcomers to the conference who will bring some welcome energy and fresh insights. This really is an open education dream team – if you don’t believe me, check out the program for yourself.

I should also note this event will be held in downtown Vancouver in mid-August, and we are planning a number of activities to take advantage of this incredible location at its very best time of year. Expect a post soon on our opening night BBQ at Stanley Park’s Second Beach, which is going to be a corker… I urge you to register soon – the almost obscenely affordable early bird rates end July 20th. (And I should disclose that the person limit for the BBQ is lower than for the conference (capped by Parks Vancouver), and it’s possible that later registrants won’t be able to join our Pacific sunset feast on the beach.)

Just a quick note how flattered I am to be one of the guest speakers for next month’s workshop hosted by SFU’s Summer Publishing Workshops series, Web Content Management. I can’t do a better description than the blurb:

Digitization is the word on everyone’s lips this year, and there is much talk about how to get your content into digital formats. But publishers need strategies for managing that content. That’s where this workshop comes in; it will provide you with the orientation you need to make strategic and economically responsible decisions for managing content digitally.

Unless you’re still setting metal type, you have digital content already. But folders full of InDesign files aren’t going to get you very far anymore. Luckily, most digital content can be handled by a range of free, web-based tools. Web content management isn’t just for websites, it’s for all kinds of digital media, destined for all kinds of outputs.

Sincerely humbled to be included in a veritable who’s who of relevant expertise (scroll down to ‘Faculty’), so many people whose work I’ve admired for some time. I was privileged to take part in a planning meeting with most of these people some time ago, and it was truly mindbending. I hope I’ll be allowed to sit in on the other sessions. It’s a special treat to be invited by John Maxwell, one of my favorite people on the scene. John may not remember this, but back in the late 90’s (when I was working for the Tec de Monterrey) I visited Vancouver for the first time and met with him – he gave a most impressive demo of some XML transformation wizardry, I recall almost being freaked out by it all. (I can’t resist noting that John is just one of the amazing speakers we have lined up for OpenEd 2009.)

I am on tap to discuss open content and open culture and its implications for publishers – hence the “over my head” noted in this title. I feel like I have a reasonable grasp on the value proposition for openness in education, but this will be a very new audience for me. So if I seem to be dwelling on themes related to print publishing in the coming weeks — via blog, Delicious, or Twitter — maybe this commitment will partly explain why.

And if you or someone you know is working in publishing and is trying to make sense of digital media, do pass this workshop on. More detail on John’s Thinkubator site.

So, there is a certain amount of obvious irony to the revelation that Chris Anderson’s book Free contains significant unattributed copying from Wikipedia. The entire piece from Virginia Quarterly Review‘s Waldo Jaquith is worth a read (and I leave it to you to decide if Anderson’s response is appropriate), but I just want to fixate on one small detail from Jaquith’s article:

Though reproducing words or original ideas from any uncredited source is widely defined as plagiarism, using text from Wikipedia presents an even more significant problem than reproducing traditional copyrighted text. Under Wikipedia’s Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, Anderson would be required to credit all contributors to the quoted passages, license his modifications under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, note that the original work has been modified, and provide the text of or a link to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Anderson has not done any of these things in Free. [Bold text added.]

Now I don’t think “all contributors” implies that each editor to the relevant passage in Wikipedia would need to named individually. I dare suggest such a requirement would make it nearly impossible to accurately cite a passage (especially given the way MediaWiki tracks edits). The handy-dandy “Cite this page” link which fixes to a specific Wikipedia edit (example) doesn’t deal with individual editors. And the page on Citing Wikipedia says nothing about these Creative Commons rights. (Interesting to note that Anderson claims the absence of a good citation format was largely why there aren’t any citations.) But then why does Jaquith, clearly a very clever Waldo, suggest that quoting Wikipedia is “an even more significant problem” than a copyrighted text?

In any event, this passage in a widely-read online article sows some real confusion. And it concerns a process that needs to be absolutely confusion-free if it is going to take flight — especially in a domain like academia.