Academia

Advanced Free Software Tools

My friend and colleague Henrik Sandklef will be offering a really cool course at Göteborg University. Check out Advanced Free Software Tools:

Advanced Free Software Tools prepares you, theoretically and practically, for working in a distributed FLOSS development environment.

So, if you want to learn about motivation behind FLOSS, basics of copyright and other legal concepts, licensing, code evaluation, code coverage, profiling, coding practices, development infrastructure, release management, version control, test environments, communication with projects and developers … and much more?

Send an email to sandklef@ituniv.se to get more information

Posted on by mklang

Virtual marketing for university course

Since being given permission to hold a course on the Vulnerable IT-Society I have been very busy in trying to market the course. The course was approved far too late for it to be included into the ordinary university course catalog so I have been left to my own devices. Basically I have had two months (last date for applications is 15 April) to make people aware and to get them to apply to a course that has been totally unknown.

The attempts to market the course have kind of taken a life of their own and I think that it may be interesting to write an article on the way in which university marketing may work. The first thing I did was to start a blog on the 23 Febuary. The content of the blog mirrors the topics which the course will address and over the last weeks I have added pages of information of literature, course information, lecturers and web2.0 stuff.

A couple of days ago I started a Facebook group and added information to the site. Actual spamming has been relatively low impact and has not resulted in all too much visible results. Finally I have posted notices around town and at various university libraries the results of this have yet to be measured. At the begining of the course I intend to poll the students to find out which information the students found and which had the most effect on them. My hopes for the course is that it will be a big success even in the number of applicants.

The figures so far (all based on the blog stats)

Total views up until today: 2,890

Busiest day: 248 views (February 27, 2009)

Total Posts: 74 & Comments: 70

Over 250 views of the about the course page

All in all this has been a successful blog but will the blog transfer to applications? And will the applications eventually turn into students attending the course? All remains to be seen.

Posted on by mklang

Mozilla e-learning course

This came in the mail:

Mozilla Foundation launches online course – Hands-on open education 17 March 2009

The Mozilla Foundation (in collaboration with ccLearn and the Peer 2 Peer University) launches a practical online seminar on open education. This six week course is targeted at educators who will gain basic skills in open licensing, open technology, and open pedagogy; work on prototypes of innovative open education projects; and get input from some of the world leading innovators along the way.

The course will kick-off with a web-seminar on Thursday 2 April 2009 and run for 6 weeks.

Weekly web seminars introduce new topics ranging from content licensing to the latest open technologies and peer assessment
practices. Participants will share project ideas with a community of peers, work on individual projects, and get feedback from experienced mentors. We will also take a close look at some of the most innovative examples of open education projects, and speak to the people who designed them, including:
* The Open Source Software courses at Seneca College;
* David Wiley’s Introduction to Open Education;
* The open blog infrastructure at Mary Washington University; etc.

The course is targeted at educators who want to help shape the open education future. Participants should have some knowledge of web technologies, or open content licensing, or open pedagogy (or all
three), but don’t need to be experts.

Interested in participating? Head to the course wiki, and submit your project idea!

Course outline: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Education/EduCourse

Sign-up page: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Education/EduCourse/SignUp

For questions about the course or the sign-up process, contact:

Philipp Schmidt
Peer 2 Peer University
philipp@peer2peeruniversity.org

Contact Mozilla Foundation:

Frank Hecker
Mozilla Foundation
hecker@mozillafoundation.org

Contact ccLearn

Ahrash Bissell
ccLearn
ahrash@creativecommons.org

Posted on by mklang

Open Database License beta

The Open Database License is

The Open Database Licence (ODbL) is a licence agreement intended to allow you to freely share, modify, and use this Database while maintaining this same freedom for others. Many databases are covered by copyright, and therefore this document licenses these rights. Some jurisdictions, mainly in Europe, have specific rights that cover databases, and so the ODbL addresses these rights, too. Finally, the ODbL is also an agreement in contract for you to act in certain ways in return for accessing this Database. (okfn blog)

Here is a clip from the latest Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter (No. 10) concerning the developments in the Open Database License:

BETA VERSION OF THE OPEN DATABASE LICENSE (ODBL)
================================================

As we announced in January the OKF has adopted the Open Data Commons
project. As part of the project Jordan Hatcher has been working on a
new Open Database License (ODbL) – which is now in beta.

Beta version of the Open Database Licence (ODbL)
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/03/16/beta-version-of-open-database-licence-odbl/

Open Database Licence (ODbL)
http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/

Comments on the license can be made here http://www.co-ment.net/text/844/

Posted on by mklang

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

Thanks to jill/txt I found a briliant presentation given by Michael Wesch where he presents “An anthropological introduction to YouTube” at the Library of Congress. In case you missed it Michael Wesch is the man behind the great film (among others) which explained Web 2.0 in under five minutes called “The Machine is Us/ing Us”

Wesch does not only have a deep understanding of the mediun he studies but he also is very good at using the medium to explain its importance.

watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU

And for those of you who missed the other film:
The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)

watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

Posted on by mklang

Iceland tomorrow!

Tomorrow I am off to Iceland! This is really cool even though I wish I was staying there for a longer period of time. But it’s cool enough. I fly up tomorrow, have meetings on Tuesday and fly home early on Wednesday. The meetings should be very interesting since I am there to participate in discussions on Tryggvi Björgvinsson‘s thesis, there will be meetings with the Icelandic Society for Digital Freedom. Also I should be able to squeeze in some sightseeing between airports.

Posted on by mklang

Pluto is a planet again, at least in Illinois

The government of Illinois has declared that Pluto is a planet.

RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that as Pluto passes overhead through Illinois’ night skies, that it be reestablished with full planetary status, and that March 13, 2009 be declared “Pluto Day” in the State of Illinois in honor of the date its discovery was announced in 1930.

In 2006 the International Astronomical Union resolution created an official definition for the term “planet”.  But since Pluto did not meet the criteria (Pluto had not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit) it was demoted from full Planet to dwarf planet. This decision was not without a serious amount of angry arguing amongst astronomers, amateurs and others.

Obviously the Government of Illinois disagree with the IAU – but why? Well the person who discovered Pluto was born in their state so the demotion of the planetary status also demotes the local pride and tourist value (seriously? is there a tourist value in being the state where the man who discovered Pluto was born?)

This is really cool – imagine if states began randomly redefining nature to suit their political needs?

Well its a good way to begin the weekend with a smile.

(via Discovery Blogs)

Posted on by mklang

Political Economy of Innovation

Here is another interesting book available for download under a Creative Commons BY NC SA license. Its Transforming Global Information and Communication Markets: The Political Economy of Innovation by Peter F. Cowhey and Jonathan D. Aronson. Download it, buy it and check out the blog for extra material.
download-graphic2

Innovation in information and communication technology (ICT) fuels the growth of the global economy. How ICT markets evolve depends on politics and policy, and since the 1950s periodic overhauls of ICT policy have transformed competition and innovation. For example, in the 1980s and the 1990s a revolution in communication policy (the introduction of sweeping competition) also transformed the information market. Today, the diffusion of Internet, wireless, and broadband technology, growing modularity in the design of technologies, distributed computing infrastructures, and rapidly changing business models signal another shift. This pathbreaking examination of ICT from a political economy perspective argues that continued rapid innovation and economic growth require new approaches in global governance that will reconcile diverse interests and enable competition to flourish.

The authors (two of whom were architects of international ICT policy reforms in the 1990s) discuss this crucial turning point in both theoretical and practical terms, analyzing changes in ICT markets, examining three case studies, and considering principles and norms for future global policies.

Posted on by mklang