Sonja´s Own Blog

Master´s Thesis update

2009-04-13T12:50:00.002+03:00

As the months have passed by I´ve been examining the self-direction among this precise web course which is my target. I´ve been creating tables and graphs but also used SPSS to do for example Paired Samples T-Tests.

Now I´ve been writing the theory part and results. Deadline is getting closer and there is still a lot to do but I will get this ready!

Review of "Russia in News" -blog

2008-12-02T17:56:00.011+02:00

The first page created nice and calm atmosphere, the appearance was in harmony.

But the first but came quite soon: what is the subject? D-Ladies is the highest heading but I know that it is the name of the group. Next heading which bounces up is General Information. But about what? Based on the front page, I thought the subject is "How smart you are?" since it is the only link which has actual name, others are just some typical links like Articles and History.

Next thing that confuses me is that the left navigation bar contains a bit different links than the table of contents which is placed on the right side of the front page. As I looked closer, it was only a matter of different order, otherwise the links are same. Then there is also Menu at the upper right corner.. It contains only two links, both find on the other navigation elements too. Where to start?

I decided to start on the History-link, I thought it would be about the subject´s history and maybe it would also enlighten what the actual subject is. The last mentioned did get some enlightenment: the subject has something to do with news about Russia. The history-page was about the history of the group work. Since I´m a nitpicker I have to say that the outline of the text was a bit indistinct, some clear paragraphs would have been nice. But I am what I am ;)

Then I continued with the left navigation, since the table of contents seemed to be only on the front page.

Sources-page was nice and clear. Though there was a slight misunderstanding because of language.. With "English news Channels" you think about news channels from England. But in this case it was about news channels in English since the mentioned channels were all from USA (Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today). Russian news channels in English were Itar-Tass, Prime-Tass, RIA Novosti and Russia Today. Estonian online newspapers were Postimees, Eesti Päevaleht, Äripäev, Eesti Ekspress, Õhtuleht and Rahvusringhääling. French-ones were Le Monde and Libération.

The Articles-page was really full of articles! Shame that I understood only those in English. But the categories were well picked and the listing was easy to read. It would have been nice if the news were in time order, then the listing would also have been a time line.

The actual fruit of the work is in the Analysis-page. It was interesting to read that Estonian articles didn´t have analysis on them, they were more like neutral story and the reader gets to decide what is his/hers opinion. Compared to English articles which were more analyzed and gathered a whole from different points of view. One of the group members had lived in the USA for a while and was surprised how much more she got information and Estonian media lost its reliability in her eyes. It was nice that the group also found a possible reason for this style of Estonian media: people are busy and want to read their news as short, compact fact.

While telling about internal things in Russia, it also pointed out that the group had followed the news about Russia for ten days. One of the biggest issues was the Russian presidential term extension in Russian Duma. In Estonian media this was seen a lot. Also English (USA on my opinion..) and French new agencies brought this issue up. The two last mentioned kept the subject in fact of what is happening -level while Estonian media mentioned also who are against the new constitution.

Also United Russia -party got attention in media. English portals mentioned Putin at the same context. Half of the articles were quite identical. Other issues were Russian army reform (it was mentioned in Estonian, Russian and English media), Kasparov (Estonian media doesn´t give that much attention, RIA Novosti and Reuters do), Politkovskaja (a lot of attention all around), Russian economy (gets quite well attention), Ukraine (only Russian media brings it up), Estonian and Russian relationships (Estonian media had several articles about the issue, others didn´t mention Estonia), Georgia (all selected channels talked about it, English media had the most details) and Russia and international relationships.

This last mentioned is a big issue in Russia, there seems to be a lot to say about other countries. Estonian media talks about NATO quite a lot, Russia almost not at all, English some. The new president of USA was a popular subject in every media. Estonian media also brought up Czech’s prime minister thoughts about European Union and the tariff rise of wood. Russian and English media had some articles about the American missiles in Poland. English media brought up also AIDS-issue.

The Interviews-page was about some interviews made to Russians who live in Estonia. The group got two answers which are shown at the blog (anonymous).

Ideas-page was a kind of brainstorm the group had in the beginning of the group work.

The last link of the left navigation is How smart you are? It goes to an almost blank page, is this a promotion of some project? I remember we talked about something like this in one of our Skype-chats (of this course); I managed to forget to answer to the questionnaire.. Maybe I´ll do it now :) EDIT: *buahhahhaa* Seems like I´m not that smart :D
I´m too impatient ;D

All in all, interesting subject! And the analysis-page was really very well done, though the analyzing could have gone more deep. I would very much like to read more this kind of follow ups about news considering a certain country! Good idea to do a study like this.

The blog

Chapter XX: Copying Restrictions

2008-11-17T12:50:00.005+02:00

On my opinion copying shouldn´t be allowed without mentioning the source properly. No matter what the thing under copying is. Really, when you think of copying, what actually is the difference between copying a book or a piece of music? Or a painting? Text seems to be so easily copied, music or art enjoy more respect or how to say - copying them usually makes the copier feel at least a bit guilt. Just that an author has most definitely seen a lot of effort in writing the book, and to be able to write a book actually requires some talent too. Of course it is different than more artistic talent needed for making music or to paint. And writing source code, it also requires certain kind of talent.

So, is copying good or bad? As I said above, it is not bad if you respect the actual source. And to be precise, that is only quoting. When thinking of copying a whole product then it gets a bit tricky. Since if thinking of a musician his/hers income comes from the music, is it correct to copy his/hers work without paying? Of course not.

When lining the copying to source code the GNU GPL is just excellent. This kind of voluntary sharing works very nice since everybody knows the situation. And why not in other industries also, it just has to be clearly stated to everybody participating.

Chapter XVIII: Open Access

2008-11-10T11:38:00.009+02:00

For example Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) has ruled open access to all research papers which are published under its funding. There is also a time frame: all the papers must be available within six months of first publication. The papers should be put in an open access repository. IRCSET includes this open access to its terms and conditions of offering and providing funding. And it is not a little sum which IRCSET funds: in 2008 it will allocate approximetely 26 million euros.

This choice of the IRCSET lines with international practice which aims to enhance access to publicly-funded research.

Also some Irish universities are providing open access repositories of their own. Even a national open access repository system is developing, it will connect the universities´s and other participating institutions´s repositories.

Open Access Repository system does include the usual copyright and fair practice. And publication on it doesn´t stop from publicating also in a research journal or commercial publication.

What does this gain? As it is said in the source: “The intellectual effectiveness and progress of the widespread research community can be continually enhanced where there is recourse to as wide a range of shared knowledge and findings as possible.” So this kind of Open Access repositories enhance intellectual effectiveness, more people can access the materials and perhaps benefit from it in order to make research of their own.

This is an excellent opportunity to reduce Digital Divide. It makes things available, enables access to those who can´t afford to buy. Maybe this even better ensures the advancement of scientific research and innovation, as also said in the source, with this openness duplication of research effort is deducted.

And to this can also be quoted what Steven Levy has written in his book: "If you don´t have access to the information you need to improve things, how can you fix them?".

Source

After writing this I heard from the news that Life-magazine publish photos for free, it was also something to do with Google. But as you can read from the magazine´s pages, it is free to use their photos. This really is such a nice service! Of course you can copy whatever picture you want from the Internet, but still I feel this is nice, copying is done with permission.

Chapter XVII: GNU GPL

2008-11-10T11:36:00.006+02:00

"The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works."

GNU GPL is there to use, change and share. Only thing "restraining" is that the version you make from it has to be free also and that those who receive your version know that it is under the GPL and they can also do some modifications and so on.

Strengths
Freedom; since everybody can have the product and modify it if they want to. Sharing; since that is a way of getting diversity to products and lots of talent fixed to develop things.

Weaknesses
??

Opportunities
As pointed out in the strengths, this kind of sharing and freedom draws certain people who has abilities and expertise; the product will be diverse and continuously developing.

Threats
In a way, certain directions might try to make it hard to distribute the product. And maybe in the future some copyright laws might create some problems, the freedom could get attacked.

GNU GPL

Chapter XV: Different Schools of IP

2008-11-05T14:09:00.003+02:00

There are two schools of intellectual property (IP), the Anglo-American and Continental European. What they have in common is their historical origin, copyright stem from feudal law licensing printers to publish books. Censorship and prior restraints were the crux of it. Nowadays publication is legitimate, but information freedom can be seen relatively new concept. When national law systems and legal codifications emerged it meant the end of medieval feudal law and it also points the moment when different national regimes of IP law became more clear and diverge.

One of the commonalities between the two schools is the idea/expression dichotomy: IP protects expressions of ideas, not ideas as such. Both schools also protect inventions (patent), writings (copyright), trademarks, trade secrets, design and models.

But what is the divergence? The Anglo-American school of IP is utilitarian and economic while Continental European focuses to the author´s moral rights, to integrity of the person. Anglo-American contains only limited rights of authors to the integrity of their person as expressed in the work. So there is a common ground but in the Anglo-American school is the economic right of an author highlighted in the expense of their right of personality.

Actually this purely economic perspective has been condemned (also in the US) since it questions freedom of speech. There have been examples of limiting radical satirical critiques of American society. Also state claims hardly at all power over information and enables the private sector to control it. This is not so evident in Europe, there is less contradiction between public and private. The US regime IP is contradictory because it forbids state action which imposes prior restraint on speech and limits restraints on it after publication but at the same time copyright law operates prior restraint on speech.

What is Intellectual Property?

IP Australia: What is Intellectual Property?

Eric Engle: When is Fair Use Fair?

Chapter XIII: Beginning Legal Issues - Starting with IP

2008-10-27T17:06:00.012+02:00

Brian Martin starts his third chapter (of Information Liberation) by presenting some basics of copyrights and intellectual property (IP). He describes how the situation is corrupted through government´s power to grant monopolies, how intellectual property has kind of got out of hands with some big owners. He uses a good metaphor to enlighten the IP: shoes. One pair of shoes can be used only by one person at a time. Instead a poem can be copied a thousand times but the creator, the one who has the original, has still the full use of it. Patents exist in order to give the inventor the right to make, use and sell the invention. But there are also some cases where patents have been blocking the improvement, even used to suppress innovation. Martin gives the examples of radio and fluorescent lights, how certain companies collected the patents for years.

One interesting example is how nowadays even biological information can be claimed as IP. As long as some artificial means are used, things from nature can be patented; so some companies have patented genetic codes.. And to go further, for example soybeans have been patented; this has caused inhibition to research (by non-patent holders), and Third World is exploited by transnational corporations. Rich countries could really do as Martin suggests: give the Third World countries permission to provide ideas of rich countries free.

Another problem of IP is that even though the financial returns is said to inspire individual, they are quite seldom benefited; especially in companies since the inventor doesn´t get the patent, it´s the company who gets it. The deeper problem of the IP behind the above mentioned symptoms (privatization of government information, suppression of patents, ownership of genetic information and information not owned by the true creator) is that "Intellectual property is a form of private sovereignty over a primary good -- information." as quoted in Martin´s text.

There are good examples of the problems in Martin´s text, including how a Scottish newspaper went to court to stop an online news service from making a hypertext link to its web site. How crazy is that?

Martin presents also some critique to standard justifications of IP made by Edwin C. Hettinger. The obvious argument is that even if you share intellectual objects you can still use it. And the common justification is that people are entitled to things they have done. But as the text points out: how about the people behind this certain guy/girl? There are always quite a bunch of people supporting the actual work - teachers, parents, other writers/inventors and so on. Every intellectual work is always done based on something that already exists. And why to prevent others from using it? Also the market value of a piece of intellectual work is not a reasonable indicator of the contribution.

Another argument is that people deserve the rights since they have worked to get it done. But what really people deserve? This is tough question even to philosophers. According to the text it´s usually said that the reward should be in balance with the effort, risks and moral. There is just the but of the fact that intellectual work is also about natural talent and luck - people doing things according to their talent or pure luck don´t deserve anything? And on the other side of the coin: being natural talent doesn´t give the rights to own everything in the field of the talent or developing a product doesn´t give the rights to own everything related to that.

Response to third argument - private property stands for privacy and personal autonomy - is that privacy can´t be protected by owning it, you just need to keep it to yourself, not to reveal it, if you want to keep it private.

IP is justified because its needed to promote the creativity, to have more ideas. So IP gives financial help. With this fourth argument Martin and Hettinger see that it is the only one which has some reason. There is still some controversy because in order to promote creation and development of ideas you need more freedom, not restrictions of use. It should also be noted that innovation really is a collective process, best way to support it would be open collaboration or tacit cooperation.

Martin also talks about the marketplace of ideas, which means that ideas compete for acceptance in a market; good ideas will win since people will recognize their value. This of course demands fair competition. The text asks a good question: why would the ideas be owned? And on the other hand, marketplace of ideas is quite vulnerable, it doesn´t work all in all, since some groups just don´t commonly get their viewpoints presented and some directions rule over others. So the biggest reason for the failure is inequality. Economic inequality can´t be solved even with intervene of governments.

And the point of all this is that intellectual products shouldn´t be owned. As isn´t language and almost all scientific research. But what would happen then? Plagiarism is quite feared since copyright law isn´t that good protection against it even now. Royalties are a way to get some more money but hardly no one gets them enough to make living; and to those few could be paid salary, grant or bursary instead. So what would be a good incentive to create? Well, quite many are making their inner real, they don´t do it because of money and fame. Without IP there could be greater equality in economic and politics. Freedom and diversity.

How to get to that point? To start the change in thinking, the term should be changed to monopoly privilege. Doesn´t sound that good anymore does it? After this Martin points out that IP should also be discussed not in terms of property and trade rather than in terms of speech. Things shouldn´t be taken off their context. The frames of a product makes big difference in how to relate to it. Next step would be revealing all the costs around IP. These figures would most likely shock the fountains of it.

Martin also plays with the thought of piracy, if you want to use such a biased term. People already do it everyday, it is so easy. Just that it isn´t that effective as is ever any sort of theft. But a better way is to refuse to cooperate with IP; to boycott for example. Third parties can be won over by this open action, civil disobedience is strong especially when masses are behind the cause. In India it is said to be happening a mass discontent, maybe it would start a snowball effect?

A kind of continuum to this is promoting non-owned information, from which freeware is an excellent example. The Free Software Foundation is really taking this thinking out, as the text quotes: "-- is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on people's right to use, copy, modify and redistribute computer programs". They also highlight the so called copyleft which requires those who pass on a program also to include the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the code.

Also what to do according to Martin is to develop principles to deal with credit for intellectual work, including guidelines how to respect other´s work. In this it is important again to underline the fact that intellectual work can´t be done totally independent, it is always collective. This is why IP can be seen as theft.

Brian Martin: Information Liberation, Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property"

Chapter XII: Social Engineering

2008-10-20T13:39:00.003+03:00

An example of social engineering
One story of social engineering happened a couple of years ago. ".. group of strangers walked into a large shipping firm and walked out with access to the firm’s entire corporate network". And how easily was that done! They managed to obtain small amounts of access, one bit here, other there, from different employees. They used some detective work to find out things about the firm; a call to the HR (Human Resources) and they had the names of the employees which were important for their cause.

They got in from the front door by pretending they´ve lost the key and to the security area they got in again by pretending, this time to have lost their identity badges. In both places a employee opened the door for them. The strangers planned their attack so that the CFO was out of town so they entered his office and since his computer was unlocked they got financial data off it. They also dug through the trashes and found different useful documents. The friendly janitor gave them a garbage pail - it was easy to carry all this material out of the building in it.

These strangers also knew how to imitate the voice of the CFO and got his network password by phone, pretending to be in a hurry (from the ADP-support I guess). And after this they just used some hacking tools and managed to get super-user access into the system.

Sounds really way too easy! Well, there were some obvious mistakes from the firm´s behalf, for example you should never let a stranger inside the firm.. Always ask something you can double-check from some other. And hey, who leaves his/her computer unlocked?

Source

How to fight against social engineering
As I wrote before, never let strangers inside the firm. There should be a certain protocol for the employees what to do if they have lost their key; some direction has to be around to let them in, someone who can make sure who they are. And that double-checking is also effective, to ask who he/she comes to meet, maybe even offer to show the way.. At least to call to this mentioed person and ask if the guest has arrived.

Yes, people want to believe that others have good intentions and feel themselves intruders if they need to ask something from a stranger. A janitor is good in this case, all the strangers trying into the building should go to him/her, introduce themselves, fill a form of some information themselves and the cause of the visit, and so on. This happens in some companies and it´s effective.

Doors to employees rooms should always be locked and so should their computers be also. And no notes on the table considering the password..

And of course the systems needs to be as secure as possible, at least passwords and different levels of access to information.

What is social engineering? Wikipedia´s definition

Chapter XI: Hacktivism

2008-10-20T12:50:00.003+03:00

Wikipedia says that hacktivism is "the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends. These tools include web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft, web site parodies, virtual sit-ins, virtual sabotage, and software development."
Source

In that same Wikipedia article are some interesting examples of hacktivism. Bronc Buster got my attention the most since I feel a country shouldn´t restrict the use of Internet from the people. And it seemed funny that this incident happened almost precicely ten years ago.

On Wikipedia it was told that Bronc Buster disabled some firewalls so that Chinese people got uncensored access to Internet. When I put his name on Google to search for Finnish pages about him, I got only a page that told he is a cracker who managed to change the web pages of government of China concerning human rights to a page which judged strongly the Chinese government and got links to pages which critisize the Chinese human rights politics. The page Bronc Buster made is in here.

Bronc Buster made his attack almost immediately the service got opened (26.10.1998) and mocked also the security of the pages: he said that it took only two minutes to break into the service.

Bronc Buster is said to be a member of Legions of the Underground, at least in this page it is said so. And in this page is it said that he is a member of Hacktivismo.

Here is also an interesting article about this occasion.

Master Thesis: Outline

2008-10-14T17:36:00.012+03:00

New

• Title
Development of Self-Direction Through Self-Reflection in a Webcourse

• Introduction
The work to create this Master´s Thesis began when I was asked to do my study about an eLearning-course which has took place in spring 2008. I was asked to collect material written by the students in their weekly reflections.

After I collected the reflections from the students´ blogs to excel-files I started to look different relations between the answers. I´ve got interested about the students self-direction when participating courses myself and I feel that it is quite essential for the success of the student in online learning. I wanted to find out how and also how teachers could support it. This is why I focused to different elements of self-direction also with the materials of this precise course.

Studying the self-direction also brought up the usage of tools, so I studied the relation between them. The more familiar the student is with the tool/tools he/she uses the easier it is to be self-directed. But the usage of the tools is just one part. In this process I noticed that the essence what I would want to find is how to help teachers/tutors to keep the students in the courses and studying actively. Self-direction is a big part of it.

• -existing work
!!!
• -research question
Does self-direction develop in time? Is it so that who is self-directed stays so, who not does not develop? What is the identification of self-direction in self-reflections?
• -hypothesis
Self-direction can develop in time. Most students self-direction doesn´t develop. Self-direction can be seen in self-reflections through choices of student, developing of ideas and use of schedules.
• -goal
The goal is to find out how self-direction might develop in time and how self-direction is identified from self-reflections.

• Main part
• -method
Quantitative datacollecting, qualitative analyzing, focus groups
• -description of media project
!!!
• -synthesis and analysis of material/data
!!!

• Conclusions
!!!
• -outcomes
!!!
• -evaluation of the outcomes against the hypothesis
!!!
• -evaluation of the outcomes against the goal
!!!
• -implications
!!!

Literature & other:

Brockett, R. G. and Hiemstra, R. (1991) Self-Direction in Adult Learning. Perspectives on theory, research and practice, London: Routledge.

Brookfield, S. (ed.) (1985) Self-Directed Learning. From theory to practice, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Candy, P. C. (1991) Self-direction for Lifelong Learning. A comprehensive guide to theory and practice, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hayes, C. (1998) Beyond the American Dream. Lifelong learning and the search for meaning in a postmodern world, Wasilla: Autodidactic Press.

Jarvis, P. (1992) Paradoxes of Learning. On becoming an individual in society, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Knowles, M. (1975) Self-Directed Learning. A guide for learners and teachers, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall/Cambridge.

http://www.tash.org/mdnewdirections/selfdirection.htm
http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-selfdr.htm
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr200.htm

Chapter X: Minorities

2008-10-13T11:16:00.004+03:00

All the different minority groups can experience how to be treated as "normal" in Internet. This is because of a simple fact: in Internet all you (must) give is text. Just if you want to you can show a picture of yourself, but an avatar can also be for example a cartoon character. It´s quite easy to "hide" behind text, it´s up to you what you want to reveal about yourself.

One interesting group is blind people. In real life they are spotted immediately and other people behave in a certain pattern when communicating with a blind person. You try to give the blind person space and not to stare him/her and maybe you treat him/her a bit like he/she wouldn´t understand so easily what you say..

But online a blind person can surf around almost like any other. With a editor which reads texts and pictures (so everybody who makes webpages: remember the alt tags in the pictures!) he/she can browse easily and with a certain keyboard a blind person can write just like that. Nobody notices that he/she is blind.

Chapter IX: Hackers

2008-10-13T11:15:00.005+03:00

Bagbiter
I had some hilarious moments with the alphabets if the Jargon File. There were many phrases that caught my attention, for example "Airplane Rule", "Alice and Bob", "Banana Problem", "Control-C", "Easter Egg", "Gang Bang"...

But Bagbiter kind of suited nicely to my situation - fighting with my laptop. This really is such a bagbiter, working extremely clumsy! This term is funny, I would have never guessed or figured out such; how does biting and bag even get together :D Thinking of somebody biting a bag is quite a weird image when taking it literally, really funny that these words have come together and got a definition like this. Well, the roots of this term are at the sixties and seventies and refer most likely also to scrotum, so..

Bagbiter is not only an annoying computer, but also a person like loser. Hmm.. I have to remember that next time I feel the need to use the word loser, bagbiter would get more attention ;)

The Jargon File

Hacker Ethic
By Steven Levy there are seven features:

Access to computers should be unlimited and total
Well, in today´s world we are getting close to this - as long as we think of like Europe, USA.. In poor countries this isn´t happening so fast than in others. Thirst for knowledge is real and can be seen everywhere, but the positive attitude is a bit of a question mark since people tend to be so busy and lazy nowadays ;) But I think that the world really is full of fascinating problems to be solved. And pragmatic altruism is really worth of seeking! "No problem should ever have to be solved twice". Amen to that. Freedom? Well, it is shouted at every street corner nowadays.

Always yield to Hands-On Imperative
The point is clear: hands on. Do it, don´t just plan and analyze. If something can be done, do it. This would be so lovely to see more in action! I just hate the heavy wheels of decision making in companies.. You need to fill this paper to get that and the other paper to get that.. Do this plan and that analyzis.. Think of it for a month, are you really sure you want to do it?.. Blaah.

All information should be free
Well, everybody can have access to quite many kind of information, but this feature isn´t really happening in today´s world, especially when you connect it to the previous feature: you should also be allowed to improve and add things.

Mistrust authority - promote decentralization
Bureaucracy is a swear word if you ask me. I´ve worked in too many projects including different layers of bureaucracy.. But it seems to be like this today. And not all authority is a bad thing, as it is pointed out in this feature too. Just not to fall under authorities. And the end part of this feature complements the first half. Decentralization really is a central feature of the Internet and is one of trends in today´s world.

Hackers should be judged by their hacking
Equality is almost something worth gaining for, maybe someday it really works in world. Why would for example gender has anything to do with your skills? Or paycheck..

You can create art and beauty on a computer
This is obvious today. Today you even don´t have to be so good with fancy image editing tools, it´s quite simple to create things with your computer. Coding isn´t anymore the only thing considered art with computers :)

Computers can change your life for the better
Really they can. They can spare time for you to do something nice. For example you don´t have to go to a bank and line up for ages to get a bill paid, you can pay it from your eBank. You can meet new and interesting people in Internet. You can create things.

These are the classical features of hacker ethic.

Pekka Himanen has also made his own list:

Passion
Doing something from your heart. How important is that? Extremely. It´s a shame that so many has to work just to get money. How wonderful it would be to work through your passion!

Freedom
Really, the best results come from necessity and creativity. In some companies this is noticed, others still rely on strict schedules and boundaries.

(Hacker) work ethic
Irregular lifestyle is also flexible, but maybe it doesn´t work in every places :)

(Hacker) money ethic
It definitely sounds wise to spend some time to gather around the needed resources. And concentrating to ensure the broadest possible audience while choosing smaller immediate profits - how good example is Linux?! There is no need to explain.

(Hacker) network ethic
Freedom of word and thought is something which should be self-evident. And in a way Internet supports it: everybody has the chance of saying their opinion public. Resisting censorship is also quite wide-spread nowadays.

Caring
Humanity, caring of those who are not so fortunate. How self-evident should that be to everybody? Really, why would you want to have a lot of money? How about settling for enough and giving the rest to others who really need it for survival?

Creativity
And in the ground lies creativity. Use your own abilities in an imaginative way. Let the creativity run through you. Don´t hold back. Maybe this way you actually can give the world something valuable.

Looking these lists of seven´s you just wonder: why won´t we all become hackers?

Steven Levy: Hackers - Heroes of the Computer Revolution
+ our course materials

Chapter VIII: Ubiquitous Computing

2008-10-08T12:23:00.002+03:00

Actually this chapter didn´t have any "ToDo" :)

But our group is doing a study of this subject, it is developing in here.

Chapter VII: Digital Divide

2008-10-08T12:21:00.006+03:00

Digital Divide in Finland
Well, in Finland we haven´t got in media any cases about digital divide, at least I haven´t noticed. Maybe the situation in general is so good? Of course there are people in Finland too who are poor and can´t afford buying computers and so on or live in a place where Internet connection is hard to get (even impossible?) or just not interested in media and that´s why they don´t have the needed equipments.

But mostly it is their own choice, since even if you are poor (or otherwise don´t have your own equipments or connections) there are always the public computers and accesses to Internet, for example in libraries or some Internet Cafes.

So I´d say that digital divide in Finland is a choice.

And seems like it´s not only my opinion:
"As in other countries with high ICT penetration, closing the digital divide in Finland now seems to depend increasingly on citizens’ own choices. In addition to improved access and cost, computer and Internet use will depend on citizens’ perceptions of the value-added of online services, thereby further raising the stakes for improving e-government."
Source

Internet availability in Finland
Internet availability is very good in Finland - as long as you live in Southern Finland. It is so easy just to think this busy Southern Finland and forget that in the North there is a lot of wilderness.

I´d say that in North you do get to Internet if you want to, for example in a library. But connections at home might be more rare.

Even we had some difficulties having Internet connection. Or to get it wasn´t hard, but there was only one provider and the price was quite salty.. And we live only 60km North from Helsinki! But yes, we live in the country side.

Some statistics
Population: 5 244 749
Country Area: 388 145 sq km
Internet Users (Mar/2008): 3 600 000
Penetration per ITU: 68,6%
Broadband subscribers (June/2007): 1 518 900, per OECD, 29%
Source

Chapter VI: Internet Scams

2008-09-30T13:31:00.006+03:00

A typical Internet scam
The most typical Internet scam is an auction-type; something is ordered from the web, it´s paid but not delivered. But maybe more common are the so called Nigerian Letters, which promise you lots of money if you just pay a liiiiittle payment.. Yeah, right.

There are also other kinds of letters, and more sophisticated (well, not always..). Most likely there is at least one in your email box right now. Or at least I seem to get one every day. What then? An email where you are either a "The Lucky Winner!!!" or are offered something, like "Loan offer to you!!!". With these emails the sender (using of course fake name and email) tries to get your private information (for example bank account information and codes) or get you to donate money.

About a year ago there was a big scam in Finland. Some direction sent emails in the name of Nordea bank. I got the email also, it was about some transaction and therefore my bank account codes were needed. Even though the email was quite inarticulate some fell for it. Afterward the Nordea bank clearly stated in media that it never ever asks for clients´ bank codes. Especially not via email. This scam went on also in other Northern countries as I know of.

Fighting the scammers
When reading the "whatsthebloodypoint.com" first thing I felt was why not. If there is a way to fight against the scammers then it should be used. Why not to fool them around and this way maybe save other peoples´money? And after all, this is quite nice way to fool the scammers, only their time is wasted.

Well, maybe my ethics are a bit rough, but I tend to get angry when innocent people are harassed.

whatsthebloodypoint.com

Chapter V: Echelon

2008-09-30T13:30:00.004+03:00

Wondering what Echelon is? It´s a system which intercepts and process international communications passing via communications satellites, it extracts information and intelligence illicitly from millions of messages every day. It´s used by NSA. Echelon is a part of a global surveillance system which is quite old, over 50 years. Still, it is seen useful and some countries have recently built Echelon-like stations.

The UKUSA Agreement is about breaking codes of signals, it was established in 1947 and it brought together the British and American systems, and later on Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Also Norway, Denmark, Germany and Turkey joined the UKUSA network. This network is engineered under the same principles as Internet and it can be accessed from NSA´s system, Platform. The funny names continue, as some parts of the system are called Embroidery, Tideway, Oceanfront, Newsdealer, Gigster and Preppy and Droopy. You can draw your own conclusions from those.

What is interesting is that the first global WAN (wide area network) wasn´t the Internet, it was the international network connecting sigint (signals intelligence system) stations and processing centers. Funnily, it looks and feels like using Internet, standard browsers can be used to look at the output of NSA´s Operations Department, of course only with appropriate permissions. This so called Interlink connects 13 US intelligence agencies and some allied agencies and it is run from Fort Meade HQ. The aim is to provide instant access to all types of intelligence information.

The information Echelon and other parts of the global surveillance system provides is used by the US and its allies. Commonly the information is used for diplomatic, military and commercial purposes. Even it is denied, commercial and economic intelligence is a major target. The goal is to recognize topics of phone calls, since word spotting is not so effective. This feature is about to come. Also ever more extensive use of encryption by direct interference is hoped to overcome.

It is important to realize that your emails really are open to the eyes of intruders. Systems like Echelon are needed until encryption and secret codes become much more effective and ubiquitous - and most likely also after that..

Influence to global community? Well, at least it is a surveillance system, so beware of what you write ;)

Duncan Campbell: Inside Echelon

Chapter IV: Testing Net Nanny

2008-09-23T10:51:00.008+03:00

I chose Net Nanny for quite obvious reason: I have a little girl. I thought it would be nice to know something about this very popular blocking software. Net Nanny is a so called child lock, it´s simple and rough - it blocks everything coming from certain address automatically. Works great on private PC´s but maybe too much to public machines. It is said that the major problem is that Internet changes much quicker than vendors cope to follow. And of course there is the threat of vendor´s hidden agenda.

Installing Net Nanny was simple. There were some dialog boxes which might confuse a user who isn´t that used to installing but nothing severe.

When I started web browsing for the first time after the installation it took a year for Firefox to start.. Well, it might have been also something to do with one of Firefox´s updates.

Feminism wasn´t bad on Net Nanny´s opinion. I got to browse without getting blocked. Also disabilities weren´t blocked. I also tried for example "Jehova´s Witnesses", "Republican" - no blocking

But porn was of course totally blocked. When I wrote "porn" to Google, I got a message saying "You are being blocked for viewing: www.google.fi/search For content of the following type(s): Pornography. For overriding it you need a password. But the override actually made just a blank page. Clicking the back-button gave me a page which said that there are no results for the word "porn". The reason was told below Google´s search bar: Word "porn" is filtered because you are using Google SafeSearch. Quite impressive I think. (NB: I use Finnish setup, so I transferred that last sentence - that´s why you might get a totally different one).

Also when I searched for "violence" I got the same kind of dialog as with "porn".

I would use this Net Nanny for sure, it seems to be effective. I might even need to use it after a couple of years when Karoliina grows ;) Or not. I´m not sure if there really is a need for blocking things, it´s one thing what has to be thought - maybe it´s enough to create a trusting environment to our home? It remains to be seen.

Heh, I had to uninstall Net Nanny soon after testing it - it blocked Facebook! :D And the reason it was blocked? "For the content of the following type(s): Gambling"

So, bye bye Net Nanny!

Chapter III: There is Always Room for a Good Product

2008-09-23T10:48:00.008+03:00

At first I have to say that economics is not my strongest areas.. Quite often I have to struggle to stay awake while reading about it.. A non-market production? And in my field of activities..

Well, just to give you some mind-flow: Internet actually is a place where nonmarket productions can live. If you think you create something by yourself, meaning not that much people is needed to do the work, the costs of the product are not that huge. The first but is of course how to make your product visible. If you just put it so some server (there are some even free or almost free places) and don´t do anything to make it found, then you can say that you have just wasted your time.

Nowadays communities and networking with people and communities is "the thing", meaning blogs, wikis, galleries, Facebook, SecondLife and so on. So, your marketing plan contains a nice list of different places where to make your own profile and put your product in (or a link to it). Then you just have to be active, active and active. Make your friends, relatives and aquaintances test your product and write reviews about it until they beg you to stop. Spread the word. If your product is good and you have managed to find the right target group then the rest is history. Your product will spread through Internet like a wildfire.

Just are you good enough to create a new IRC-Gallery, MySpace or Wikipedia?

I think there is always a order for an innovative, smart and simple-to-use tool. For example to work collectively (enhance wikis) or study online (enhance for example Moodle). Or why not to just bring yourself up and known (enhance blogs).

Chapter II: Examples and Analysis

2008-09-18T16:12:00.007+03:00

Robert Theobald: "Mind-Quake"

A Mind-Quake is a concept which means a certain point in the process of change where the old model and old understanding lose their meaning and a new one must be obtained or constructed. It means the skill to cut and divide the major quakes into smaller ones which are easier to handle.

At first when you think of Theobald´s theory you might think of the different theories of education. Well, behaviorism isn´t all gone, but when combining it to constructivism the idea is totally different. Learning just isn´t a stimulus-reaction, there is always some relation to old information. And in constructivism you actually puzzle up your knowledge.

But where this theory of Theobald works more precise.. If you think of the large scale, some basics has changed in the society as a whole. Today´s world is fully colored with one word: hurry. And everything has to be efficient. It hasn´t always been like this. Just ask your parents. Also in olden times you always got service, today the trend is more to self-service. This means a total change in thinking. For example when you check-in to a flight: you have to use a machine alone, no more smiling receptionist taking your papers (OK this is optional still, which must be a relief to older people).

And this change of society works even in childcare: some things which were seen as good things a few decades ago are nowadays seen almost dangerous. This is easily seen when you ask your mom or grandmother to watch your child a few hours.. The collision is guaranteed..

And even when thinking of the ways of correspondence, there has been a long road from homing pigeons to emails, SMS and instant messages like Messenger. The model has changed quite hugely in every step. The latest change has recently become common and usual -but there are still some people who don´t want (or can or like) to use emails or SMS (for example my mother). But what a thrill it is to receive a letter or a postcard nowadays! When I was basic school it was quite common to have many pen pals, I wonder does the children of today have any? And when have you received a letter last time? I think I got one about a year ago.. And before that I can´t even remember. It´s a shame in a way that this is so rare, maybe letters and postcards come back in fashion some day.

Charles Handy: The Paradox of Time

The application of modem technology means less time is needed to make and do things. People should have more spare time. But time has become a competitive weapon and getting things done quickly is imperative. As a result, many of those who work have less time that ever before.

Well, I think quite many people can see this happening. It is so easy to get a certain picture or phrase or what ever from the other side of the world. You can quickly collect for example logos of the company´s in IT-business, create a birthday-card or send greetings to your aunt. Without going to a store and buying a magazine and cutting the logos from it, without buying and writing your card and handing it to the receiver or without the effort of writing with a pencil and then taking it to a post. Where goes all this spare time since you don´t have to leave your home? You do another task since it is done so quickly. You send greetings to ten people instead of one. It is so quick and easy.

This applies perfectly in technical support in companies. Well at least to the one in our company. Without modems their work was more related to client´s phone calls and doing some logs of what was done. With modem technology they can take remote control the client´s computer and solve almost any kind of problem without leaving their desk. Sounds like the job is done about ten times faster than before? Probably yes. There must be a lot of spare time? Noup. And this goes closely to the paradox of productivity. Since one client is helped so quickly there is no need to have so many support personnel. And even if there were the same amount of workers than before, seems like the client´s contact more easily and also with just minor problems and instantly, without even trying themselves before.

So, all the time is always spent. Spare time? People tend to think that the certain amount of time is needed to use in precise tasks, it feels weird to have more time to do nothing than before.

Manuel Castells: Changes in Work and Employment

Emergence of flexi-workers (working without fixed time, place, or regulations); new methods allow more flexible approaches, but also produce more stress and discontent; the share of temporary and telework increases.

In my latest workplace there has never been precise times when to go to work and in certain frame you can choose how long you work in each day, just the hours per month have to be enough. We have a slide in the morning, from 7-10am when it´s recommended to show up. Usually most of people manage to apply this but it´s not rare that some people show up around eleven. I think this is quite common in Finland, especially in IT-sector.

The direction really has been away from office working towards flexibility; this kind of flexibility belongs to this time of ours, everything is more or less in electronic form, so no time is needed to "move the papers around".

My employer has offered me the possibility to work from home some days a week when I return from my maternity leave. I can manage and tutor some web courses. How great is that! Really flexible, all thanks to Internet connection. The stress this creates is how to really find and maintain a reasonable schedule. To really do the reasonable amount of hours a day, not to do all the week´s work at once.. To know when to stop, how much to do to get the work done needed in that precise week or month. And of course it feels more important to prove my employer what I do. That they can rely on me, I do what is wanted. (And a bit more.. Since I´m a perfectionist..)

Discontent? Maybe those who don´t have this opportunity of flexibility feel left out, when thinking of a work community. But when thinking of a worker, the discontent comes from the temporary and short periods of employment. The amount of temporary workers has been increasing a long time, I don´t think it´s straight related to flexi-work.

Chapter I: Challenges to the Global Information Society

2008-09-16T20:57:00.014+03:00

Some basic of the situation of information society, according to Himanen´s article, is that the new technology isn´t the issue, it is a new way of doing things. Also the development of the technology won´t help if it isn´t combined to the changes in structure. These deep structures are the ones which need the change.

The article of Himanen comes to a conclusion that development of the deep-set structures of society is the most critical aspect to the development of information society - these structures need our attention. In the article it is pointed out that information society is not same as an information network or Internet program.

Himanen presents ten major trends which are already in progress. First one has to do with increasing international tax competition, which means that countries reduce tax rates in order to compete for investments and skilled labor. The second trend is about the new global division of labour, meaning that cheaper countries like China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia and Brazil get the routine production. The more developed countries need to specialize to more creative work. Third trend is the aging of the population which is happening especially in Europe. Fourth trend is about increasing pressures on the welfare society, the first three trends cause this to happen. Fifth is second phase of the information society which means that the technical development (which started the first phase) continues focusing to social matters.

The sixth trend is the rise of cultural industries, meaning how information economy expands to the field of culture. Seventh trend is the rise of bio-industries. The eighth is about regional concentration which means how expertise concentrates to certain regions. Ninth trend is the deepening global divide which means the rise of inequality and marginalization. The tenth and last trend is the spread of a “culture of emergency”. It is about the acceleration of development which increases the volatility of economies.

Himanen also presents some development scenarios. From a geographical perspective USA, Europe and Asia are leading, USA has kind of a upper hand for example since one third of the world’s economy is in there. Still thinking geographically, there are also three different models: The Silicon Valley model, The Singapore model and The Finnish model. The first model refers to the neoliberalist scenario of “leaving the weak behind”, the second is based on tax competition, i.e. “a race to the bottom” and the third one is the current European combination of the information society and the welfare state. Due to the article, it really is possible to combine the welfare state and the information society, it just needs courage to revise this last mentioned model. There is a need to change from a reactive to a proactive policy, react beforehand and lead the way.

In the article there are also listed some values which are underlying the original European welfare state and innovative entrepreneurship. The values are caring, confidence, communality, encouragement, freedom, creativity, courage, visionariness, balance and meaningfulness. These are the values which make life worth living so they are important to any society.

But to meet the global competition with the scenario and values, it is important to notice also these concepts: A creative economy, a creative welfare society, humanly meaningful development and a global culture.

So, what is about creative economy? It is important to rely on creativity (and expertise) under these pressures of international tax competition and the new global division of labor. Creativity is the key when aims are in increasing the added value and to improve the efficiency of production. A creative welfare society on the other hand is about the goal of people having equal opportunities to realize their potential and are protected against the random misfortunes of life.

Humanly meaningful development has the core in the human sustainability, all the time rapidly crowing global development really is an important question in the information society. The global culture is about the fact that in global development the progress should be towards joint development that is sustainable on a world scale. Open mindedness is a key to that.

Pekka Himanen: CHALLENGES OF THE GLOBAL INFORMATION SOCIETY

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 10

2008-06-02T12:32:00.003+03:00

What was your personal impression of participating such a course?
I enjoyed the course very much :)
I think the materials were very good and carefully chosen. Also this way of working, doing an actual course with a group is excellent choice. BUT to activate students and keep them working and most importantly together is VERY hard. To create the feeling that things are happening all the time is one key, but to show it.. Somehow it should be more clear to the students where is the actual "home" and from there you should have clear links to EVERY source needed and "see" others too (for example the feeds from blogs). Just ONE place where to go every day and check the current situation and do what is to be done.

I indeed learned also something new about collaboration. I´ve always been the hyperactive member of all the groups I´ve participated. I´ve done the tasks even alone if others didn´t do anything. It was quite a surprise to have another kind of role, more normal one I think ;) But I did feel I wasn´t doing enough and felt quite frustrated for not being able to do more - it was too difficult to jump in. Some of my tryings were even deleted which of course didn´t give much a courage.. But this was an important lesson. As was also this thing with being visible; how important it would be to have a certain place where all the group members / students can see that something IS actually happening all the time, the course is still going on.

I am used to taking responsibility for my own learning. It suits me, but I do need the contact with fellow students also. The discussions in the forums (or commenting and receiving comments like in this course) are very important. I need to reflect with others, get some support and see that I´m not alone doing stuff.

This really was a good experience. Maybe I´ll do my Master´s thesis about how to activate web students..

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 9

2008-06-02T12:14:00.005+03:00

How well could I fulfill my goals?
Well, I was sure I would do more; create, write and "fuzzaround" making the group members to work.. But I ended up only commenting. Heh, I did try to do an actual evaluation plan but it was deleted (twice). So there was no plan done, just some questions. There were two hyperactive guys in our group who did almost everything - and deleted things they didn´t like. Good point was that they really did things and we others commented but I believe all of us would have enjoyed also the actual doing. They started out with force when I was still wondering the life of a mother, so I didn´t manage to jump in to their pace.

Besides commenting I also did comment other group member´s blogs, used a whole lot of not-so-familiar tools (Google Groups, Doodle Polls, Zoho...), put some links to the del.isio.us -account, wrote something about wikis as learning environments, did a lot of evaluation on other groups´courses and wrote a lot to this blog.

So I can say that I achieved quite much but would have done more also. Luckily I´ve studied quite a lot of eLearning (e.g. Mediapedagogy in university level for 25 ECTS points) so I don´t feel so left out. I do know that mostly it was up to me; I could have been more active but I know also that I would have done more if there wasn´t these guys who did almost everything. But it was good for the group that there were these active guys since I had my baby back then when it would have been time to be more active. It just happened that my baby got first :) She is little only once and she really needed me. And I enjoyed being with her so much. I still am with her all the time, now I just am more used to this situation and have more energy to study also. So I just have to settle for this what happened with this course, even tough I´m used to always do 110%.

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 14 Reflection

2008-06-02T09:58:00.008+03:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
It´s been very quiet week.. With our group. Last week I evaluated the group 5, this week the groups 2, 3, 4, 6 & 9. Others (7, 8, 10) were not ready or didn´t have any place to evaluate.

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
It was very interesting to see what other groups had made :) The courses and the evaluation polls.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Reflecting about other´s experiences.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle and our wiki. For evaluating others: their wikis, Google Groups and polls.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
I commented some of the team member´s blogs and the "global" blogs of this course. And did a lot of different polls, using wikis, blogs, getFAST.ca and GoogleDocs polls.

(This is here just to keep these in mind :)
Group works
Group1 course design
Group1 evaluation page
Group2 course design
Group2 evaluation page
Group3 course design
Group3 evaluation page
Group4 course design
Group4 evaluation page
Group5 course design
Group5 evaluation page
Group6 course design
Group6 evaluation page
Group7 course design
Group7 evaluation page
Group8 course design
Group8 evaluation page
Group9 course design
Group9 evaluation page
Group10 course design
Group10 evaluation page

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 13 Reflection

2008-06-02T09:52:00.004+03:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
There were some interesting ways to collect evaluation, nice to learn about polls.

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Evaluation of other groups.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Lot´s of reflecting about other´s experiences.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle and our wiki. For evaluating others: their wikis, Google Groups and polls.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In our wiki with the participants (it was very quiet week), I also commented some of the team member´s blogs and the "global" blogs of this course.

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 12 Reflection

2008-05-19T17:14:00.002+03:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
Evaluation planning..

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Evaluation planning.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Lot´s of reflecting about other´s experiences.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle and our wiki.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In our wiki with the participants, I also commented some of the team member´s blogs.

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 8

2008-05-13T10:18:00.003+03:00

How to formatively evaluate e-learning course designs?
I was starting to make a plan; who to ask, how many different people, what.. I know that the people who are going to answer / evaluate are our "classmates" but still it would have been nice to make such a plan. It´s close to (usability) testing which is one of my favorite subjects.

But seems like in our team we just make some questions, maybe to Doodle as a poll. Now I´m trying to be a part even to that. Seems like I´ve missed all the other action, just made some comments.

BUT to this subject. Evaluation should be planned well; who is going to evaluate, what kind questions to make (open / selective / both), what are the actual questions and so on.

A Doodle poll is of course OK, at least it´s easy to realize.

I´ve made some evaluations of other team´s courses and it was interesting to use different polls; with wikis and Google Groups.

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 11 Reflection

2008-05-13T10:11:00.005+03:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
What a process this really have been!

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Our wiki really is an excellent place :)

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Lot´s of reflecting about other´s experiences.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle and our wiki. And now we got even a Zoho-account!

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In our wiki with the participants, I also commented some of the team member´s blogs.

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 10 Reflection

2008-05-06T13:12:00.003+03:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
I enjoyed the conversations about people´s experiences - again II ;)

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Our group is really active in our wiki I´m proud :)

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Lot´s of reflecting about other´s experiences.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle, our wiki and del.icio.us account.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In our wiki with the participants, some emailing also.

EMIM / E-Learning / Personal Contract II

2008-05-06T12:45:00.009+03:00

My objectives: Why I wish to learn/do something, what is meaningful for me/for my group as part of the assignment I am responsible of?

I want to deepen my knowledge, eLearning is familiar to me, but there is always something to learn more. Meaningful is my experience, maybe the courses I have done give something to this team too. Especially the wiki courses I´ve made.

What I would like to add is the pedagogical aspect: that is what I need to learn the most! Different technologies to set up a course are quite familiar and I think the management side is easy to me :)

What resources will I need: What software tools and resources I am going to use? Resources can be people, different artifacts, materials.

I most definitely need my team! I have already done one group work almost alone in the autumn ;) I will need my laptop, Internet connection, Firefox, Word, Excel, Photoshop..

Peer evaluation and discussions are to be important.

What is also needed: blogs, wikis, Skype, email, Doodle (a new thing for me, making polls).

How will I do it: What is my strategy to achieve my objectives? What is the order of my actions? How will I use different resources in my actions?

I believe some planning is to be done with Word and Excel, but maybe we also will use wiki or something (LATER EDIT: Google Groups). Laptop is the artifact to work with and I need Internet connection and Firefox to keep contact, deliver material and so on. With Photoshop I most likely do some pictures or something.

I will read the course materials, join the discussions with my team, do all the weekly assignments and with the help of these join the design of our team´s own course.

Evaluation criteria: How do I know that I was successful? Develop measurable criteria to evaluate your activities in respect of your objectives.

Well, the team will give feedback. And I´m quite harsh to myself as usual ;) I will rely on straight feedback, I will give myself points or something.

The peer evaluation will hopefully be lively :) And I believe the facilitator will guide me.

Self-reflection: Did I achieve my objectives? Use the criteria what you developed to assess how well did you work. Reflect, what worked and what did not?

For now we have been doing some planning. Of course I suspected a bit more activity, but as it has been seen so many times it´s so damn difficult. Maybe I should really study how to activate people to do group works via Internet / webcourses. Finding some successful ways would really help many!

The current situation is better, I´ve managed to get a babysitter on daytime :) These first months with a baby have shown me that there is no planning anymore.. Just have to do things when it´s possible. Evenings seem to be the hardest (the baby is in her most demanding), at daytime I have time to study since the baby usually sleeps a long nap. I would have enjoyed doing more, but I just have to settle with this I´ve got. The guys have been so hyperactive that I have troubles following them and that is really new to me!

Google groups didn´t work that well, somehow it was very plastic or something. Wiki has worked out much better even though they are not that much different. Little things count :) Doodle´s polls are easy, del.icio.us got me confused at first, Skype has worked well as usually. We´ve really used a lot of different softwares and services!

-----

Based on the comments

At the beginning of the course I felt I´d do a lot as usual, be the one who does things when others don´t have time or loose interest or something.. The surprise was quite big when I noticed that I don´t have the time to be the one anymore. Luckily in this group there are two very active fellows :) And I ended up kind of being late and fell back, I lost the sense of "what is the current situation". After that I´ve been more or less confused, trying to catch up. Still am.

My objective to the group was to participate a lot, be in the middle of the actual thing. I ended up commenting to GoogleGroup/wiki/blogs, adding some links to del.icio.us, collecting something about wikis.. Those (wikis) are kind of what I was planning to give to this group and I actually did write something about my experiences, but so much more could have done.. But I will rise again! There are still weeks left so now my objective is to give as much as possible to this next task, evaluating.

EDIT:
Well, you can see that I tried, check the history of Formative evaluation page in the wiki.. All deleted what I tried to put in there. Well, at least I created one page to there.

So I´ll stay as a commentator, try to suggest things to every part of the course. Discuss. And try to find some useful materials and so on.
I just have to settle for the grade I get.

EDIT II:
Well, now I´m trying to make our course visible and be part of the gang to produce the evaluation poll / questions.

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 9 Reflection

2008-04-30T12:43:00.004+03:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
I enjoyed the conversations about people´s experiences - again ;)

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Our group is really active in our wiki :)

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Lot´s of reflecting about other´s experiences.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle, our team´s Google group (mainly just reading since we´ve moved to a wiki), wiki and now we have also a del.icio.us account.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In wiki with the participants, email.

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 7

2008-04-30T12:42:00.004+03:00

From the perspective of my tasks in our workgroup, what did I learn from theoretical materials, how to make/use the course materials/activities/assessment/tools?
Well, have to say that we are still in process so much that I have to get back to this subject later..

Later:
My tasks ended up to be more of a commentator, link collector, wiki-specialist.. I thought I would have been maybe the pedagogical "expert" or something but.. Maybe I should have been more offensive.. But that is not my style. Well, luckily I have studied eLearning quite a lot, 25ECTS points in university level + around 10 in lower level, so I don´t feel that I missed now something important.

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 8 Reflection

2008-04-30T12:36:00.005+03:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
I enjoyed the conversations about people´s experiences.

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
It was very nice to chat with the group! And also to see that in our Google group we have some discussion all the time.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
This week we discussed a lot of the group work itself, about the use of blogs and wikis and so on.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle, our team´s Google group and Skype. Now we also have a wiki

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In Google group with the participants. We also had a Skype-chat on Sunday 20.4. :)

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 6

2008-04-14T15:22:00.004+03:00

Explain, which type of learning environment is best suitable for your e-learning course?
Our group/team decided to use wikis and blogs. Wiki would be the "home", where are all the materials and so on and the students will have personal reflection in blogs. The topic of our course is blogs and how to use them, that is why the students also need to actually use a blog. So the course is about basic concrete skills in setting up and using blogs and also skills to use these technologies in a pedagogically correct manner.

We will use behavioristic way of learning in the beginning since we want everybody to be at the same level with knowledge and skills. Then we will also use the constructivistic approach since part of the course is about letting people to learn through experience.

From our team´s Skype-chat:
"I think what we could say about the latter iterations would be that we'd give the learners some basis which they could found their learning process to obtaining these skills and also try them out to find out the ways that suite them"

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 7 Reflection

2008-04-14T15:21:00.002+03:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
Selecting a suitable learning environment. We already have chosen to use blogs, but in general.

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Different learning environments though Moodle, WebCT and some others are already familiar to me.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Blogs and wikis can also be used as learning environments. In a way. You just need to have some other ways to for example measure the activity and give rates and so on.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle and our team´s Google group.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In Google group with the participants.

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 6 Reflection

2008-04-09T18:13:00.004+03:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
How to use Google´s groups ;)

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Finally our team really starts to work!

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
I told about my experience with wikis to my team. Now we are going to test blogs as a way of learning.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle and Skype and Google group.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
Via Skype with Ani i Lyubo and one thought with Kai Pata ;-) And in Google group with the participants (discussion, editing materials).

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 5

2008-04-09T18:12:00.004+03:00

What are the best ways of finding a social network of your interests?
At least it´s a big job to do ;) You could start with Google, search for for example articles and blogs about the subject. Through this you get at least some idea of the situation. From one blog you most likely find links to some others and soon you have a kind of social network; at least you know who writes about the subject. Then just get familiar with them. Maybe even Facebook could be helpful?

From this week´s materials:

"Online learning is at the cusp of a transformation that ought as well to inform social networking: the transition from a centralized, institution-based system depending on a top-down structure and rigid standards to a decentralized, grassroots system of creation and sharing based on informal and ad hoc standards."
Source

Sounds good, let´s do that! :) ;)

Social networking websites
Web2.0 tools
(Thank you Kai!)

EMIM / E-Learning / Personal Contract

2008-03-31T15:28:00.002+03:00

My objectives: Why I wish to learn/do something, what is meaningful for me/for my group as part of the assignment I am responsible of?

I want to deepen my knowledge, eLearning is familiar to me, but there is always something to learn more. Meaningful is my experience, maybe the courses I have done give something to this team too. Especially the wiki courses I´ve made.

What resources will I need: What software tools and resources I am going to use? Resources can be people, different artifacts, materials.

I most definitely need my team! I have already done one group work almost alone in the autumn ;) I will need my laptop, Internet connection, Firefox, Word, Excel, Photoshop..

How will I do it: What is my strategy to achieve my objectives? What is the order of my actions? How will I use different resources in my actions?

I believe some planning is to be done with Word and Excel, but maybe we also will use wiki or something (LATER EDIT: Google Groups). Laptop is the artifact to work with and I need Internet connection and Firefox to keep contact, deliver material and so on. With Photoshop I most likely do some pictures or something.

Evaluation criteria: How do I know that I was successful? Develop measurable criteria to evaluate your activities in respect of your objectives.

Well, the team will give feedback. And I´m quite harsh to myself as usual ;) I will rely on straight feedback, I will give myself points or something.

Self-reflection: Did I achieve my objectives? Use the criteria what you developed to assess how well did you work. Reflect, what worked and what did not?

For now we have been doing some planning. Of course I suspected a bit more activity, but as it has been seen so many times it´s so damn difficult. Maybe I should really study how to inactivate people to do group works via Internet / webcourses. Finding some successful ways would really help many!

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 5 Reflection

2008-03-31T15:26:00.003+03:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
About personal contracts, I´ve never done one before :)

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
To read about other´s personal contracts.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
I have to use these contacts more often! They should especially be used with group works..

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
Well, this week was quite quiet ;) This blog and Moodle were the tools to work alone and keep up to date.

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 4

2008-03-31T15:24:00.003+03:00

How can a conversational personal contract improve self-directed learning?
Very shallow, but it makes you more committed :) Somehow you have promised these things for real, you have it "on paper", you need to have good reasons to slip. Well, at least this is how I feel it.

Web 2.0 has provided us some social spaces which include self-manageable tools, learning at personal spaces, continuous invasion to new spaces, distributing one’s personality between spaces, community as an identity and publishing artifacts to define communities and ourselves. Because of these we need self-direction and self-management.

A personal contract is a tool to this, with it you can make decisions and manage yourself. A conversational contract means that you update the contract, especially according to facilitators comments. It helps to sustain self-conversation with oneself about learning, it also externalizes learning conversation for the learner, passes the control back to the learner.

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 4 Reflection

2008-03-29T08:31:00.004+02:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
Well it´s always good to read about course design :)

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Nothing in the course.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
I liked the course design form in the "How to make a training course (roster example)", page 2 and also the other schemes too. Schemes are always nice, they give something new every time.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In this week I got very very angry with the still ongoing problems with my internet connection / browser. Well, today I installed new Firefox and booted my wireless box. Now everything works..

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 3 Reflection

2008-03-17T16:26:00.003+02:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
I learned some new ways of designing a course.

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
The importance of design is always interesting.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Actually my week was filled with frustration to my internet connection or browser problems. I´m not sure what was it in the end, now everything seems to work.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In this week I checked the blogs of my team mates, didn´t leave comments though, it was so tough even to browse..

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 3

2008-03-17T16:24:00.003+02:00

Explain, what are the components of course design!
When reading this weeks materials the document "First Principles of Instruction" was somehow most familiar to me. It contained some basic rules or how to say.

In the text there are presented four phases of learning:
(1) activation of prior experience,
(2) demonstration of skills,
(3) application of skills,
(4) integration or these skills into realworld activities
These are seen important in many current instructional models and on my opinion are some kind of ground stones. At least I´ve seen these important to my own learning. Especially the fourth one. With these the text also suggest that the most effective learning environments are those that are problem-based.

There were also these instructional design prescriptions:
Learning is facilitated when:
- learners are engaged in solving real-world problems
- existing knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge
- new knowledge is demonstrated to the learner
- new knowledge is applied by the learner
- new knowledge is integrated into the learner's world

And from my own experience in course design and course participation the most important things are that the course has clear goals and rules (what to do and when and how), all the needed information and materials are easy to find from the learning zone and the materials, assignments and guided discussions are relevant to the subject and support the learning of the students. How to get to this? On my opinion the list above is good. It takes the emphasis to the learner, what is needed to support his/hers learning.

A very good web course was Melissa Lee Price´s Digital Culture which I participated last autumn. There was a lot of discussions in the forums, good weekly assignments and reasonable final assignment. I really learned a lot!

Bad ones.. Hmm.. Bad ones are those which don´t have assignments which relate to the subject, there are no discussions, peer-reviews or reflections, the teacher don´t know how to activate students or the course just don´t work, there is no clear schedule, no "to do" lists or a very precise introduction.

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 2 Reflection

2008-03-16T12:04:00.002+02:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
Team skills..

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
It was interesting to read different experiences for example using blogs.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Actually no.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
I really do think that wikis have lots of potential. Even as part of webcourses.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog is all the time under construction :) I also visited my group member´s blogs, made links to them from here. I used Moodle of course, to read the materials and check out what to do etc. and also to choose my group.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
Well, I read the Moodle forum, did not feel necessary to comment, though.

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 2

2008-03-16T12:01:00.002+02:00

Which principles of groupwork, communities of practice and collaborative learning should a distributed group consider, when planning the design of an e-learning course?

On my opinion wikis are great tools when planning almost whatever. I´ve used wikis in a couple of different courses, with people from the same country and also "world wide". It works well. BUT to make the group work nice to all participants certain rules should be made. If not else, at least the group should decide who is in charge of what. And that everybody really makes their part, delivers something and comments when asked..

My experiences of these www-group works are quite different. On one course I ended up doing a huge workload almost on my own. It was very stressful time but I wanted to get a good grade from that course. On one course the team work was excellent, everybody did their part and was happy about the outcome. The rest of the courses have been/are something in the middle. I easily end up to be the facilitator and being a kind of perfectionist I also end up doing too much and get myself stressed. Now that I have my baby I´m forced to try out a bit different role in some of the courses. Feels weird to let the responsibility be in somebody else´s hands, or at least a bit of it.

SO wikis are great tools even when planning an e-learning course. And if some online conferencing tools is needed I´ve used for example Marratech, which is a videoconference tool with a whiteboard. With it you can hear and see each other and also create and edit documents, share pictures etc. But of course Skype and Messenger are also excellent tools.
(well, this went a bit off topic)

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 1 Reflection

2008-03-06T19:39:00.003+02:00

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
That Web 2.0 really effects everything.

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
It was interesting to read about future things in this field.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Actually no.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Designing a webcourse will just get more and more complex. It´s not enough just to throw some material to the web.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (eg. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
I refreshed this blog, now it´s in English and so id my profile and so on. I got familiar with Scuttle (wow there are quite many of us in this course..)

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
Heh, the teacher commented my blog post. Nothing else yet.

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 1

2008-03-06T19:38:00.002+02:00

What are the trends in e-learning and how do they influence online course design?

First of all, this was in the course materials:
".. but we do need theory to help us envision how education can best take advantage of the enhanced communication, information retrieval, and management capability provided by the Net. It is all too easy to consider new innovations in a “horseless carriage” manner, and to attempt to develop new actions based on old adaptations to obsolete contexts."
This is SO true. Nowadays it´s always a hurry towards something. Then you get blinded by the new technology and just dive in. You forget to think thoroughly through the essence and idea of the technology, what are it´s strengths and weaknesses, how to harness it to your purposes and most of all: how to make a whole which actually works and gives something valuable to learners.

Web 2.0 seems to be "the thing" nowadays. It´s been in everybody´s lips for a couple of years but lately it has got more and more attention. So also with e-learning. Web 2.0 underlines collaborative and social issues, blogs, wikis and so on. Openness is the idea and it´s going to change also e-learning, no more closed and institutionalized systems. Personalization is the other thing, it will restructure the educational processes.

We will have more flexibility and freedom of choosing: tools and services when creating learning spaces. And the movement is from tutor-defined and well controlled spaces towards user-selected variability.

EMIM / E-Learning / My introduction

2008-03-06T19:21:00.001+02:00

Hello!

I´m Sonja, studying at Tallinn University (Interactive Media and Knowledge Environments). My favorite subjects in this field are usability issues and user interface design but also mediapedagogy/E-Learning. Actually I studied approbatur (25 ECTS points) of mediapedagogy in year 2007, in Helsinki University.

I´ve used this blog for almost a year and I also have a wiki-account. In Project Management -course we made a promotional article of EMIM to my wiki: http://emim.wikispaces.com/ I also have SecondLife-account, my name there is Constanzia Bergamasco.

What I expect from this course is another view of the subject, English vocabulary and lots of conversations :)

~Sonja

OSM: Test report of Taanilinn

2008-01-05T11:39:00.001+02:00

I played Taanilinn in the easiest level, elfish fighter.

There was not this "presentation" at the beginning (meaning a big picture and a story), but the story was presented just before the actual playing. So the idea got clear. And the dialog after it was very informative! Good :)

The opponents were hard to defeat even in this level.. Well, I haven´t played Wesnoth awfully lot, but still this felt hard. In the first time I played I got only to the bridge before the enemy´s castle, I lost a fight there. On the second attempt I left Konrad to the base camp and recruited a lot of fighters. This time also the main enemy acted differently, it came to the bridge (and didn´t recruit that many enemies) so I managed to kill him and get the scenario done.

The second scenario made me laugh at the beginning, "an ugly duck forever" lightened the atmosphere and was good sense of humor on my opinion - everything doesn´t need to be that serious :)

But the but of the scenario was again the opponents/enemies. Hard to defeat! On daytime easier, but at night almost impossible. I again recruited a lot of fighters but was surprised to see that it wasn´t enough. There were too strong enemies, especially this one dude with the special sword. And the distance from our castle to the enemy´s castle was quite long, it almost got boring.

The maps were very good though, diverse. The characters also. And I bet that to a more experienced player playing this through isn´t that hard as it was for me :D
There was only two scenarios, but since they weren´t that short and simple, I believe it´s enough.

Job well done! Especially when considering that none of us were familiar with the Wesnoth beforehand.

:)

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth VIII

2007-12-30T22:23:00.001+02:00

IT WORKS!!! :)

Our campaign really works! Well, it´s not an extremely huge piece of coding-art, but at least it´s playable. Feels funny to play it :) I was quite sure it would never reach this point.. If there was more time it would be nice to develop it further.

I´m not sure if it´s ever coming to the real Wesnoth (now I have the files only on my own laptop, in Wesnoth-folder), but if it is, it´s found under name The Quest of the Dwarves! *proud*

THANK YOU Lauri & Olja!! :)

And of course Kaido :) :)

Battle for Wesnoth
Download Wesnoth

OSM: Free Culture

2007-12-13T11:29:00.001+02:00

What is Free Culture?
“A free culture is one where all members are free to participate in its transmission and evolution, without artificial limits on who can participate or in what way. The free culture movement seeks to develop this culture by promoting four things:

creativity and innovation;
communication and free expression;
public access to knowledge;
and citizens’ civil liberties.”

Source

'“Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig is a clear look at copyright law, how technology is affecting it both technically and in people’s perceptions, the current trend in legal responses to the technology, and how it affects the artists and authors in the world. Lessig is uniquely qualified to write such a book, because he is a professor of law, a computer geek, an author, and an activist in the field of copyright and creativity.”Source

Free Culture Tour
Multimedia performance about copyright, creativity and the internet
"Free Culture is a multimedia show by artist, entrepreneur and INSEAD MBA student Colin Mutchler that mixes music, images, and spoken word, drawing from his personal experience and the creative commons to demonstrate the tensions and opportunities of sharing and remixing media."
Source

OSM: a FLOSS Success Story vs. Failure

2007-12-13T09:54:00.001+02:00

Success of Moodle

"In academia land, one of the more popular forms of open-source is the system known as Moodle. London, UK-based The Open University is currently in the midst of implementing Moodle to the end result of “the largest use of Moodle in the world,” namely a complete student online environment. Moodle is currently employed in some aspects of Open’s distance-learning program and the “comprehensive online student learning environment” promises to be fully operational by February."

"Meanwhile, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Education has now in place a full-on “Moodle Service”, which acts as supplement to course material available to College of Education faculty and students and a resource to other university workgroups, workshop participants and communities."
Source

The Open Source Fiasko

"Hugger-Mugger Yoga Products is a $5 million supplier of yoga-related products such as clothes, yoga mats, and so on. After struggling with a variety of individual software products that did not integrate well, the company decided to implement open source ERP package Compiere. This package was chosen on basis of low-cost and because it includes modules that Hugger-Mugger specifically required."

Enterprise software implementations are complex — jobs can change, processes across an organization can be affected, and great care and feeding is required to be successful. This situation offers a classic study in how an IT initiative can move forward under its own steam, without sufficient reference back to what users actually need. In addition, it can be tempting to think that open source means cheap and easy, which is not necessarily the case. As someone wise once said, “Don’t let this happen to you!”"
Source

How to Make it Work?

1. Open source development is not business

Open source development succeeds or fails irrespective of the businesses that are directly associated with them. The constructive exploration of sustainability with respect to open source software development depends upon it.

2. Projects and open source development

An open source software development project can only ever be a singular instance of many possible developments of the code. It cannot be equated with the development of the code itself.

3. Projects or open source development?

The sustainability of an open source software development path is effectively beyond the capacity of analysis by case study or example.

4. Criterion of project success

Either the project retains the trust and good will of the open source community and thus remains the lead on the development path of the software or it does not. If no one is willing to invoke the option of the code-fork, then the project must be considered a success. An open source software development project which has no user or developer base will be successful by default. The worst that can be said about such a technically successful project is that it is uninteresting. By contrast a project with an extremely active development community will be at greater risk of failure using the above criterion. It will, correspondingly, also be of greater interest. Another potential limitation on this criterion of success is the very diversity of project types that may be found in open source software development.

5. All successful projects fail

A successful reference implementation project may advance the software development path even if some other project arises which carries the software beyond the reference implementation stage.

6. The success of failure

very successful open source software development project will eventually fail. Remember, it fails when some other project takes on the lead in the development path. Any project that holds the lead in an open source software development path is by definition successful.

7. Preparing for the success of failure

The test for any successful project is whether or not it stands at one point along an ongoing development path. If the project comes to an end and there is no continuance, no new project that will carry the code development further, then that software development path has truly ended. If it is the software development path itself that concerns us, then anything that assists that onward movement will be a benefit. For example, supplying sufficient comment within the code itself in order to make it easy to read by others increases the likelihood that someone else will take the code further. Structuring the code into comprehensible units is another way of honoring the code.

Source of the list

"The marker of success in an open source business is the same as that in any business: profit or loss. An open source software development project is not a business. Indeed, even when a single business lies behind the majority of the development work, I would argue that the software development project is still not itself a business. What counts as the marker of success for open source software development projects must therefore be something else."
Source

"The criterion of project success is whether or not it retains the trust and good will of the open source community and thus remains the lead on the development path of the software. Since no project is likely to sustain the lead on development forever, any successful open source software development project must encounter its own failure. The successful preparation for failure and transition of the software development lead marks an even greater success for an open source software development project."
Source

OSS Watch

Unlocking The Secrets of Open Source Success

The Secret of Successful Open Source Companies

The Myth of Open Source

The Success of Open Source

OSM: Legal Issues of FLOSS

2007-12-13T09:33:00.001+02:00

I found a source which tells that SCO Group brought a lawsuit against IBM, the Group claimed that IBM employees had illegally transferred proprietary AT&T Unix code (which SCO Group owns) into IBM’s Linux projects.
Source

Another legal issue which I found was that some researchers in Cambridge had been forbidden to publish some material:
"Some laws, such as UCITA (a law in Maryland and Virginia), specifically enforce these clauses forbidding free speech, and in many other locations the law is unclear -- making researchers bear substantial legal risk that these clauses might be enforced. These legal risks have a chilling effect on researchers, and thus makes it much harder for customers to receive complete unbiased information.

This is not merely a theoretical problem; these license clauses have already prevented some public critique, e.g., Cambridge researchers reported that they were forbidden to publish some of their benchmarked results of VMWare ESX Server and Connectix/Microsoft Virtual PC. Oracle has had such clauses for years. Hopefully these unwarranted restraints of free speech will be removed in the future. But in spite of these legal tactics to prevent disclosure of unbiased data, there is still some publicly available data, as this paper shows."
Source
The .pdf

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth VII

2007-12-13T09:23:00.001+02:00

In the last weeks we have made some progress :)

I made our main configuration file and scenario files. Olga made the maps to ASCII format. Lauri has made the transfers to Subversion and figures out the actual "how this will work" ;)

Our team has been talking about these things in here:
http://trac.htk.tlu.ee/osm/wiki/BlueTeam

And the materials of our campaign is in here:
https://www.htk.tlu.ee/repos2/osm/team2/The_Quest_of_the_Dwarves/

Feels so relieved.. Even though the task isn´t over, to make the campaign actually work seems to be a bit of a problem..

~Sonja

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth VI

2007-11-29T14:33:00.001+02:00

Still having quite huge problems of understanding what we really are supposed to do.

In the last week or so I´ve created the main configuration file and three scenario-files. Scenarios are all in different maps and there is only one task in each. I think that´s the best we can come out with.. Hopefully even that.

The Quest of the Dwarfs
Orchs steal The Thing from the Dwarfs. The Dwarfs go after them. On the first map (Land of Dwarfs) the Dwarfs catch up some Orchs and there is a fight. On the next map (Forest Land) the Orchs attack. And on the last map (Land of Orchs) the Dwarfs and Orchs have a big battle. Dwarfs get their Thing back, if they win of course. The Thing is a special gem.

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth V

2007-11-12T10:40:00.001+02:00

Me and my team have been doing things considering Wesnoth for three weeks now and still we are a bit confused.. The information is not in the "normal people´s language" and is hard to find.

I´ve been doing the storyline and putting tasks to the map

Somehow these just don´t open up!
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/EditingWesnoth
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/BuildingCampaigns

Well, we still have a bit time...

Hevostalli.net´s Seniors and the Use of Power

2007-10-20T12:54:00.002+03:00

In Hevostalli.net´s (EN: Horse stable) Senior-column you can see interesting writings, even in the mediapedagogy´s point of view. But who gets his/hers voice heard, what kind of writings get responses and to what writers appeal when they want to underline the truthfulness of their writings? I´ve got interested in uses of power in mass medium and decided to study how this power is adopted in Senior-column. This analysis is based on my own observations of the topics written to the column and the people who write to it.

Internet is a mass medium on my opinion. Or to be precise, Internet forms a mass and masses tend to communicate. It really does involve different forms of communication. In the Internet the traditional source-message-receiver model is seen. The source can be one person or a group-list. The message can be almost anything, an email, writing on a homepage, chat conversation etc. The receiver can again be just one person or millions of people, depending on where the message is, in an email, homepage or other. Mass communication research should regard Internet´s potential, or I´ll have to agree with Christine Ogan when she writes in her article that the "theories about communication will become less useful".

When speaking of the power of mass medium the most straight outlook is that simply some people have power in society and some don´t (Kunelius 2004, 212). Meaning how the public chooses from what is popular on the opinion of the financial power at that moment. In the Senior-column there is no direction which would serve subjects which are under writers observation, the subjects are born from the interest of the writers. From this you can though lead to that some subjects are more popular than others. So some subjects have power and some don´t.

Some subjects get very popular and there are multiple topics about them and some other subjects don´t create any conversation. That´s called the Spiral of Silence which belongs to the traditions of impact study (an example of one). (Kunelius 2004, 143). The Spiral of Silence is about how public strengthens some subjects and those subjects which don´t get public that much just disappear. The point of this theory is according to it´s creator Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann that people change their opinions and ways they act to respond to the socially accepted opinion and way of act. In the Senior-column you can see this through the fact that anyone can start a topic but if it doesn’t interest others it will drop and be forgotten. The faster the less there are people to comment the subject.

Also Agenda Setting Theory raised from the ruins of the MCR-tradition (Mass Communication Research) defines the column well since it is a very good place where to find the subjects which interest the people who are interested in horses. (Nieminen & Pantti 2004, 157). The subjects aren´t all about horses, there are lots of topics for example about the days politics and of course about the personal life´s mysteries of the writers. The community plays the role of the chairman of the column, it decides what people talk about. To get answers to the topic started, the writer has to have power.

So who has the power? Some of the power comes from the community, since the community has for example created some own words to the users. For example “lapikasta” (“lapikas” is a kind of a shoe, “lapikasta” would be like a verb to it) is said if somebody tells about violent or cheating mate. They urge him/her to get rid of such. Also “porvoo” is a very popular word. It is actually a city in Finland, but it´s also a modification of “provo”. Provo means a non-true or over exaggerated thing, which with you just want to tease and make others angry or to write to you lot´s of replies. From this “porvoo” word is made jokes by asking “again is this stuff happening in porvoo?”. The one who knows how to use for example these words is obviously an insider. And what an insider writes is not so easily questioned. If you need to explain these words to someone he/she is marked as an outsider and he/she might get a bit more negative and mistrusting comments at the beginning. There are so many people writing just to annoy others. But you really have to be active in the column to know who are the insiders and who are not.

In the column is also seen the term “julkiso” (in Finnish we have only one word for English words public and audience, “julkiso” is our audience). This term is created by citizen journalism and it means an active mass of people participating some event for example. (Nieminen & Pantti 2004, 147). Seniors write approximately 4500 messages every day. That´s why I think they are active, they say their opinions to multiple topics while they visit the column.

Power in practice is another view of the power in mass medium. It´s based on that power just isn´t something with somebody somewhere but it is also used (Kunelius 2004, 221). This theory includes ideological subject who against some of the writers rebel, meaning that the roles that are on offer are not the ones writers would like to take, they rather try different roles and ways to respond to topics (an example article: "Postmodernism and the Death of the Subject" ). There are certain basic roles which are taken easily, for example womens take the feminine role and men the male one. The topics invite to take a certain role and even submit to it. The easiest way to see this are these well made teasers, "provos". For example if someone calls names or something about a certain horse breed there are immediately comments against such ugly words. The writers take the role that the starter of the topic wanted to. That is until somebody gets the idea and writes “porvoo” and the topic is forgotten or written full of different modifications of “porvoo” and the starter is recommended to get a life.

This means that also discourse is strongly fulfilled in the column. Discourse says that there is always an assumption in a text of the way the reader will read it. Meaning the texts always offer us certain roles and they direct the action. (Kunelius 2004, 223.) Discourses are shown in the column also through the fact that who has the right to speak. According to the rank order the one has the right to speak who has the most amount of knowledge about the topic and who is in the highest rank at that moment. With discourses you can play with the power since it is a way to define what is true and normal. (Kunelius 2004, 225). This is easily seen in the column though it´s also rebelled against. There are always some people who want to say that there are also different options of doing things “the right way”. Still every time some of the points of view takes the highest place and the others a put down. The writer appeal to experience and sometimes to age when they want to enhance the truthfulness of their words.

In the topics it is also important how many there are speaking and the one who speaks with his/hers own name and shows his/hers email is the most reliable. Others are said to be “yelling just anonymously” and are not to be considered powerful. There are a lot of so called regular writers who write daily and use the same nick all the time. They are widely known in the community. Topics they start get more replies than others.

There are more of the writers who write anonymously than with a recognizable nick. Some days it even happens that if there are enough anonymous they can unite and get a regular writer questioned. But this means that the anonymous writers must write adult-like, with correct spelling and good argumentation and of course that the anonymous are to be recognized as different persons. Usually people have their own way of expressing themselves so it can be seen when somebody tries to write as a different person, the text gets fumble and not so fluent.

Through this way articulation is also important, meaning that something is said out loud but it is also connected to some other thing too. (Kunelius 2004, 232.) The phenomenon raised from the discourse is connected to another phenomenon which makes sure that the thing gets understood from the wanted point of view. This is used widely, for example when somebody recommends some saddle he/she says also who of the celebrity riders also use the same trademark.

The writers try to figure out the truthfulness of the topic starts by using some criterion. For example is the start text possible in time, place or even with common sense. Other writers make statements and questions. The topic starters can show their power through that their writing can´t be questioned. The less there is doubt the more there is credibility and power. Topic starts which are unreliable are asked to be argued and proven by pictures etc. In some way at least some of the writers demand for certain kind of rules and routines, which can be compared to for example to news criterion of journalists or to the quality criterion of journalism. (Nieminen & Pantti 2004, 106-107, 140-143.)

There is also a third point of view about the power in mass medium. It highlights that power is a relation where the ones who dominate and the ones who are dominated influence the form of the relation. Through this the roles should offer something important to the people. The power and ideology should reach the experience of the subjects which tough includes that a big part of the people who are dominated have the experiences of being dominated. (Kunelius 2004, 234-235). I do believe that writers in the Senior-column get something to themselves, attention, acceptance..

Through this point of view of power are also the meanings of the messages interesting. Do people really read the meanings from the texts that the writer has in coded? One challenge of writing to the Internet must be that everyone reads the texts based on their own experience and local cultural codes. On the other hand if the writer´s and the reader´s social experience is common, there might even be a transfer of influence. If the writer´s discourses differ from the reader´s experiences can the reader read the text from his/hers own point of view considering his/hers experience. (Kunelius 2004, 236-237). Through this builds also the connection to others who read the text in the same way. In a column this strengthens the community and considering the individual the feeling of belonging to a group.

On my opinion this point view of power binds well to Stuart Hall´s views of building the identity. The fact that how people interpret different texts and how many things affect to that interpretation. In the Internet's forums these problems in interpreting are easily seen. Of course there are situations when people misunderstand the texts on purpose but very often you can see how people lack the skill of reading what is said, they lack also patience, understanding, emphatic etc. Sometimes the topics are filled with awful fights and crashing of the points of view by others.

All of this shows that power is used widely in the Hevostalli.net´s Senior-column. There are always some who have more power, the power depends on the writing skills and argumentation. Regular writers are usually respected but of course there are some who are almost hated. And still they keep on writing because they have good skills in writing and argumentation and they do get others to respond. Every day the Seniors build the agenda of the day, choose the things which are interesting. The topics bind a complex net which include certain regular subjects and some parts are magnified and others silenced. Seniors take eagerly different roles but act in those sometimes differently. From these roles they definitely get something to themselves, who gets what and what kind of pleasure.

Sources:

Kunelius, R. (2004), Viestinnän vallassa, Helsinki: WSOY.

Nieminen, H. & Pantti, M. (2004), Media markkinoilla, Helsinki: Loki-Kirjat.

Wiki - a Representative of an Online Community

2007-10-20T11:42:00.002+03:00

Wikis are worth of their name. In Hawaian, verb “wikiwiki” means “hurry” or “quick”. The developer of WikiWikiWeb Ward Cunningham actually took the name of his invention from the language of Hawaian. He wanted to find a quick way to collective publish software models and in the year 1994 he started to plan the simplest possible, still working online database. Since then the use of WikiWikiWeb has increased vastly. In the year 2005 there where 13000 pages in use and they increased with 500 every month. Nowadays there are also other comparable services which all are called with the name wiki. (Leuf and Cunningham 2005, 14-15, 24.)

The operating principle in wiki is to offer a service which is as easy to use as possible considering maintaining and modifying information in the Internet. Establishing a wiki-community (an example) is often free and quickly, it´s easy to maintain, it´s informal and open by it´s operating (an example of wiki-service). The principle of the creators of wiki-services is to incite users to modify their pages freely and tailor functionality with HTML-code almost unlimited. (Leuf - Cunningham 2005, 14-17.) These features explain well the huge popularity of wikis. Today´s thing is absolutely quickness and easiness, there is always too little time and people don´t want to read manuals. When you can code a bit you can make your wiki-community original.

Everything what happens in wiki is characterized by growth and development (Leuf - Cunningham 2005, 322-323). From one page grows easily many and the more the community writes the easier it is to produce text. Wiki is a good tool to learning since with it you can try different ways of distributing information and you get feedback and support from the community. On the other hand the very fundamental openness of wiki and the lack of existing structure can be uncomfortable and even scary according to some people. The totality of the freedom can be pressing. In this also the support of the community is important so that everybody dares to say what they want and don´t get writer´s block.

The functionality of the wiki is based on the means which have taken form commonly in the use of Internet: adaptation of the individual, the politeness of communication and conforming of the common opinion (Leuf - Cunningham 2005, 323). It is relevant in communities that these things are under attention, otherwise there is easily created some differences in opinions, conflicts and misuses. People join to the communities to fulfill their needs: they create relationships, talk, get and distribute information, collect sympathy and support and advises to handling problems (Preece 2001, 34). These features fit well also to wikies since in them the community has some unite goal which is worked in wiki.

In the Internet there is also Wikipedia, which is a global dictionary and one of the most known applications of wiki. The collective and equal standard of activity of the Wikipedia is a foundation to a new model of the society which is based on true democracy, says Niklas Vainio who is a researcher of Hypermedia Laboratory in Tampere. He sees that the standard of activity can spread vastly to different areas of the society so that the new wikipedias of the future would at them best function as the meeting points of the cultural sense. The possibility to democracy in Wikipedia needs new, critical media literacy to be fulfilled. (Vainio 2006.)

Wikipedia is possible mainly because of the community which maintains it has it´s own ways of function and it´s own culture and tradition. Secondly it is easy to join the community, you don´t need to apply for the permission to use the Wikipedia and no registration or revealing your identity is demanded. Thirdly since Wikipedia is based on facts it is easy to collect the information fact by fact and the quality can be checked. This makes it a good tool to team works. (Vainio 2006.) The more comprehensive Wikipedia gets, the more competent possession it achieves.

In every wiki there is the potential of spreading to Wikipedia-like, to be modified by all the users of the Internet. The need of this is another question. Wikis in all the sizes are found and there is a lot of them, from all the topics between sky and earth. Wikis are rised like mushrooms in a rain. Still they are always important to their users, there is something personal in every of them to their creator.

Wiki-webcourse created by the writer of this blog.

Sources:

Leuf, B. & Cunningham, W. (2005), The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web, Boston: Addison-Wesley.

Preece, J. (2000), Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability, Chichester: Wiley.

Vainio, N. (2006.), "Muuttaako Wikipedia käsitystämme tiedon luonteesta?"
http://www.virtuaaliyliopisto.fi/?node=vy_nakokulma_0606_fin [accessed 15 Oct 2007]

Extremely busy..

2007-10-20T11:36:00.001+03:00

Whohow, I guessed this to happen, but still..

I´m doing three web courses to the University. One of them is vastly laborious and the other two "normal".

I´m also doing this Open Source Management -course, trying to learn Wesnoth.

Then there are these two Mauri´s courses, also done in the web.

And then there is the last two sections of my mediapedagogy (approbatur) studies..

Yep, I´m also working.

Just have to say, I wonder how I manage this all but I just do :)

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth IV

2007-10-09T13:26:00.001+03:00

We´ve been working with the campaign in TRAC of this course.

I´ve been thinking of the story etc. and now I´m getting to know the coding and so on needed to make the campaign..

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Create

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth III

2007-10-02T19:06:00.001+03:00

I´ve just played three hours..

I played the same campaign (Etelän Vartiosto) and the same level (siviili). This time I didn´t have to figure out the terms ;) Campaign is OK, when you know it.

It´s funny how you just click the text field even though it´s not said to be done. Maybe somehow you think there must be more information if I click this or something.

This time I tried different tactics. I collected different amounts of warriors and different sets. I Managed to get over the river, but got defeated. Then I didn´t have any money. Well, then I started thinking of the villages (oh, a house is a village ;) and got some money from there. So then I started to go back and forth between the village and the fortress..

And then I noticed that the enemies aren´t safe when they are in the villages..

Well, then I found a new problem. I selected same warriors which I just had moved or something and couldn´t get the selection off so I made double moves...

I managed to be a bit more careful with the moves, refreshed my warriors in the village and send new ones all the time. I also found a warrior called Aleran. Game started to flow and I won Urza Math :) But I did it by night, there was no way to fight just by day time.

From the winning I got 255 pieces of gold :) I won in 15 sifts, there was 17 still left.

Next assignment was to win back the city of West. I played this around four times or even more. First I lost because I used the same strategy and left Deoran to the starting fortress to get more warriors. Deoran was supposed to get to the West.. Somehow I thought that you should first empty the city or something. OK, it was said that the city must be won back in 10 sifts.

Then I lost a couple of times, maybe because of not so wise moves. And some of the enemies were weird, it wasn´t so easy to hurt them.

I managed to fool around also with the loading ;) I loaded a replay or something when I wanted to try again :D

Then I discovered that by clicking the right tap of the mouse you can take back the selection of a warrior.. It helped a lot! I managed to get Deoran to the city but he was so week that the next assignment got short.. There was these new characters, also with the enemy. Have to continue some other day!

This gave something to think about but mostly I felt that it takes looong time to learn some strategies..

We´ve been planning our own campaign here: http://trac.htk.tlu.ee/osm/wiki/BlueTeam

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth II

2007-09-21T08:57:00.001+03:00

Hmmm.. I seem to be not that good strategic..

Well at the beginning the word "kampanja" was confusing. I search for a word like "aloita" or something. When "kampanja" was the only word worth trying I tried it. Since the others were obviously something else. But I expected there to be instructions of something.

And when I realized that "kampanja" was a kind of style to play the game, to choose the situation, then the word "kampanja" was quite ok. Maybe on the first page should be a kind of text box telling that if you want to start an individual game choose your "kampanja" first.

From the campaigns I chose the "Etelän vartiosto" since it was a kind of introduction to Wesnoth. And I took the "siviili" -level since it was recommended to beginners. BTW the first longer text on the foreword was in English, the others in Finnish.

Are there any female characters? Not that I mind, but it would give some variety :)

The music is nice, it supports the story and creates the atmosphere, but isn´t too controlling.

At the beginning of the game I was confused. What should I do? Ok, there were this talk boxes which told where to go, but it isn´t so clear what you can do and how much on your turn. The idea of these kind of adventure/role games is excellent, that the enemy has it´s turn.

It´s good that there are these talk boxes and some automatic moves, cause otherwise playing would be more difficult. Quite many times I was in the situation of thinking "what now?". And just did something and ended my turn.

I didn´t get quite far from the river and "Jokilinnoitus". My gold was spend quite fast, I didn´t realize that I could keep my main character all the time in the fortress and make him have more people. It was not clear where to get more gold, but somehow it was collected in turns.

My first game was mostly WTF and defending. Next time I´ll try to be more aggressive. I thought I was it this time, but obviously not. I ended the game before loosing, it started to repeat the same pattern (get one man with the gold I managed to have - oh, another is dead - oh, the enemy is healing it´s men - yeppiii...)

Another strategy next time! Maybe today..

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth

2007-09-14T19:41:00.001+03:00

Haa, finally I had time :)
I downloaded Battle for Wesnoth and got a glimpse of it. Seems interesting!
As a e.g. Giana Sisters -addict, adventure games are always something worth getting familiar with.
http://c64s.com/game/1397/giana_sisters/

(I had a Commodore 64 as a kid, and was VERY happy when the emulators came!)

OSM: FSF & OSI

2007-09-07T15:04:00.001+03:00

Free Software Foundation
* Free software is a matter of liberty not price.
* Established in 1985
* The FSF promotes the development and use of free software, particularly the GNU operating system, used widely in its GNU/Linux variant.
http://www.fsf.org/
Free Software Foundation in Wikipedia

"Free software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things."
Source

Open Source Initiative
* California public benefit corporation, with 501(c)3 tax-exempt status, founded in 1998.
* Stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD) and the community-recognized body for reviewing and approving licenses as OSD-conformant.
* Actively involved in Open Source community-building and education. OSI Board members frequently travel the world to attend Open Source conferences and events, meet with open source developers and users, and to discuss with executives from the public and private sectors about how Open Source technologies, licenses, and models of development can provide economic and strategic advantages.
http://www.opensource.org/
Open Source Initiative in Wikipedia

"Open source software is computer software whose source code is available under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It is often developed in a public, collaborative manner."
Source

Differences?
FS is more free of these two. It´s totally free to use, study, modify and distribute. Only restriction is that the possible modifications has to be also free to the next recipients. OS is free to use, study, modify and distribute only under license or for example public domain. The other difference is that OS is developed in more collaborative manner.

Open Source Management

2007-09-06T10:48:00.001+03:00

This blog came back in use now cause I started to study in Tallinn University. This is going to be a kind of diary for Open Source Management -course.

28.5.2007

2007-05-28T18:29:00.001+03:00

Kun sai ajatuksen juoksemaan, aukeni tehtävänantokin paremmin :)
Onneksi keksin aikaisessa vaiheessa käyttää IRC-Galleriaa alustana, sitä kautta loksahti paikoilleen mitä oikein pitikään tehdä. Ja tarkoitus oli tehdä palvelukokonaisuus, joka pyörii jollakin alustalla, mutta pyörää ei tarvitse keksiä uudestaan, vaan koostaa olemassa olevia asioita.

Alkupähkäilyn jälkeen innostuin todella tästä yhteisöstä ja ryhdyin jopa mainostamaan sitä ;) Hauskaa oivaltaa palveluiden rakentamiseen liittyviä asioita, mitä pitää ottaa huomioon (yhteisön nimi, kuvaus -> vaikuttaa suoraan keitä yhteisöön hakeutuu, puhumattakaan alustan valinnan vaikutuksesta esim. jäsenien ikäjakaumaan).

Tehtävä 3, Palvelukokonaisuus

2007-05-28T17:16:00.001+03:00

Suunnitelma:
Joka kevät on tammansa astuttaneilla suuri jännitys päällä kun tulokasta odotetaan, ja päässä pyörii ainakin ziljoona kysymystä. Tätä helpottamaan tarvitaan ainakin vertaistukea ja opastusta. Siksi listasin palvelukokonaisuudelle oleelliset piirteet seuraaviksi:
* Yhteisöllisyys -> kuka kukin on, vertaistuki
* Tietopankki / linkkilista -> jokainen voi tuoda kokemuksiaan ja näkemyksiään toisille sekä jakaa hyödyllisiä linkkejä kaikkien saataville
* Materiaalin jako -> mahdollisuus lisätä kuvia
* Videopalvelut -> vanha kunnon YouTube, siellä on liuta videoita esim. varsomisesta
Ja "vanhana kettuna", ei niinkään Web 2.0 -palveluna
* keskustelufoorumi -> yhteisön oman keskustelun lisäksi asetetaan selvästi tarjolle myös anonyymimpi vaihtoehto, josta voi käydä etsimässä lisää vertailukohteita

Mitä tein:
IRC-Galleriassa ei ollut suoraan yhteisöä kantaville tammoille (tai niiden omistajille siis), joten päätin perustaa sellaisen. Ajattelin, että siellä tammanomistajat voivat nähdä ketä kaikkia odottajia on ja keskustella sellaisten kanssa, jotka tietää (Galleriassa pakko olla tunnukset, jotta voi liittyä yhteisöön). Samalla päätin, että Galleria voisi toimia myös varsinaisena alustana, koska kun ihmiset pystyy tunnistamaan, ei kuka tahansa laita mitä tahansa kuvia, linkkejä jne. alustalle. Galleria toimii samalla myös kuvapankkina, sillä sinne on helppo laittaa mm. tammansa mahasta kuvia.

Gallerian yhteisön foorumi on kuitenkin vain Galleriassa liikkuville, joten siellä ei välttämättä saa niin monia mielipiteitä kuullakseen. Siksipä päätin, että pitäisi olla erikseen keskustelufoorumi. Ja sellainen on jo olemassa, hyvä vieläpä. Niinpä linkitin Gallerian yhteisön kuvaukseen Hevostalli.Netin Kasvatus-foorumin. Siellä on jatkuvasti topicceja kantavista tammoista ja siitä, kuinka mones vuorokausi on menossa ja mitä merkkejä milläkin tammalla on lähestyvästä varsomisesta. Uutta foorumia en halunnut alkaa rakentaa, liian työlästä, vaikeaa lanseerata ja olemassa on jo hyvä.

Loin IRC-Galleriaan "Lemmikit ja eläimet" -luokittelun alle yhteisön "Kantavat tammat". Kuvaukseen saa käyttää vain 300 merkkiä, joten luovuutta sai kaivella esiin.
http://irc-galleria.net/channel.php?channel_id=2255591

Olin ajatellut laittavani tuohon kuvaukseen mm. linkkilistoja, mutta koska tila on rajallinen, päätin, että koostan linkkejä/linkkilistoja aina selkeiksi kokonaisuuksiksi. Aloitan "linkkivinkin" aina sanoilla Hyödyllisiä linkkejä X", X = juokseva numero. Julkaisualustana siis toimii yhteisön keskustelualue. Hyödyllisiin linkkeihin laitoin myös YouTuben varsomisvideoista listan (hakusana "foaling), jotta sekin kätevä Web 2.0:n piirre saatiin mukaan.

Tavallaan Galleria toimii siis palvelukokonaisuuteni alustana, mutta myös yhteisöllisyyden edustajana (samoin kyllä myös Hevostalli.Netin foorumi) ja tietynlaisena tietopankkina, tiedon ollessa varsinaisen tiedon (vertailukokemukset) lisäksi linkkilistoja.

Ja jotta yhteisö olisi yhteisö, laitoin oheisen "rekry-viestin" Hevostalli.Netin Kasvatus-osioon, josko yhteisöön tulisi lisää jäseniä:
"Gallerian käyttäjät: tein opiskeluuni (mediakasvatus) liittyen Galleriaan oman yhteisön, Kantavat tammat:
http://irc-galleria.net/channel.php?channel_id=2255591
Ajatuksena on, että yhteisö toimisi paitsi yhteisöllisyyden luojana (mm. helppo tunnistaa kuka kukin on), myös alustana vertaistuelle (jota toki myös nämä meidän topiccimme upeasti ovat!). Ei ole tarkoitus edes yrittää siirtää keskusteluja täältä yhteisöön, vaan yhteisössä ennemminkin esittäydytään ja kertoillaan ikäänkuin spesifejä faktoja kunkin tamman kohdalta, mutta varsinainen keskustelu olisi kuitenkin täällä. Yhteisössä olisi keskitettynä havaintoja ja tietoa sekä mikä tärkeintä: hyviä linkkejä ja muistutuksia mitä-missä-milloin -tyyliin.
Tämä on tosiaan vain opiskeluuni liittyvä kokeilu, mutta jos yhteisö jää elämään niin mikäs sen mukavampaa :)"

31.5. mennessä yhteisöön on liittynyt viisi ihmistä minun lisäkseni :)

10.5.2007

2007-05-10T17:51:00.000+03:00

Opettavaista oli ensinnäkin se, mitä googlesta tuli kun hakusanaksi laittoi koulutusportaali. Paitsi että termi tuntuu olevan vahvasti sidottu Puolustusvoimiin, myös se, että termiä käytetään. Eihän se tosiaan synonyymi oppimisympäristölle ole, mutta liittyy silti verkossa opiskeluun, enkä minä muista törmänneeni termiin aiemmin.. Siinä onkin kyllä vahva armeijamainen kaiku ;)

Suomi24.fi / opiskelu -chattaus oli avartava kokemus! Ainakin varmasti sille yläastelaiselle, jonka seurana olikin yhtäkkiä parikymmentä medka-opiskelijaa :D Mahtanut tosiaan olla aikamoinen kokemus.

Habbossa seikkailu myös oli mielenkiintoista ja hauskaa. Helppoa ja äärimmäisen viihdyttävää :D Oltiin hauskasti MedKalaisten kanssa mm. Puistossa yhtäaikaa :) Mielenkiintoista kokeilla!

Taas kerran oikein avartava juttu :)
Myös Secondlife pitää kokeilla joskus (http://secondlife.com)

Tehtävä 2c, Habboseikkailu

2007-05-10T17:50:00.001+03:00

Huomioita:
1735 vierasta :D

Kauhea "meteli", koko ajan tekstilaatikoita.
Kuin muurahaispesä, kauhea meno päällä.

Heh, Hotellin aula tuli täyteen, lensin ilmeisesti pihalle kun en liikkunut. Takaisin pääsi, kun tuli tilaa.

Viestejä ja kaveripyyntöjä tulee heti.
Kaverijuttu on jokin Kultakalastin hommeli.. En taida uskaltaa hyväksyä ;)

Navigaattorin avulla voi näköjään valita tiloja.

Hassu kun kaikki vaan huutelee omiaan. Kiva yksityiskohta on se, että suu käy silloin kun jotain sanoo.

Ensin ajattelin, että onpa jännää/salamyhkäistä, kun ei toisten nimiä näe. Ja että mitenköhän täällä sitten tehdään tuttavuutta.. Nooo, hiiren kun vie hahmon alueelle, niin johan näkyy nimikin ;D

Jee, pääsin istumaankin! Ajattelin sen ensin olevan vain maksaville ;)

Sain juttelukaverin Suosikki Kultakahvilassa, typyLotta :) Heh, tuli heitettyä kunnon teini-kieltä, varmaan jutustelukaveri oli meitä medkalaisia! :D

Cafe Taivaanranta, Malja Bar, Cafe Taivas, Suosikki Kultakahvila, Puisto, Kino Kultakuvat.. Tuli aulan lisäksi tsekattua :)

Kun lopetin: 1865 vierasta..

Päätelmiä:
Loistopaikka! Näin aikuisen kannalta lähinnä nuorten tarkkailuun. Koska nuoriahan tuolla suurin osa on. Tai voihan sitä sanoa, että ylipäätään hyvä paikka tarkkailla ihmisiä, heidän toimintaansa, puheitaan, valintojaan (ulkoasu jne.). Rekisteröityminen myös ehdottomasti hyvä asia, mitkä lie viidakonlait olisivatkaan voimassa, jos sitä ei olisi.

Huonoa jos pitää etsiä, niin ei tuoltakaan välttämättä kavereita saa. Minulle tulleista kaverikutsuista voi päätellä, että kavereita kalastellaan ahkerasti, mutta täytyy varmasti olla jotakin yhteistä, jotta kaveruutta voi syntyä. Yhteiseksi asiaksi ei välttämättä riitä Habbossa pörrääminen. Ja kuinka paljon tuolla on oikeasti pervoja liikkeellä? Sitä ei tosin pysty millään estää..

Kehitettävää en oikein keksi, nyt jo tuntuu minuuden suojaus hyvältä, tavallaan tuo itseään julki, mutta kuitenkaan ei tarvitse "levittäytyä kaikkien tarkkailtavaksi", vaan voi hahmon suojissa elää omaa elämäänsä. Tässä toki huonojakin puolia, kuten yllä mainitsin..

Mahdollisuuksia tällaisissa virtuaaliyhteisöissä on varmasti roppakaupalla, kunhan vain luovuutta riittää. Tällä hetkellä päällimmäisenä mielessäni on vain tuo tarkkailu ja kannattaisihan tätä käyttää enemmänkin "oppimateriaalina" ihan jo vaikka opettajakorkeassa. (ties vaikka käytettäisiinkin).

(käytin siis tähänkin noita b-tehtävän arviointityökaluja :)

www.habbo.fi
--------
Simulaatioita: http://www.shambles.net/pages/students/simulation/
Oppimisaihioita: http://openetti.aokk.fi/e/aihiotJaMetadata/aihioluettelo.htm

Tehtävä 2b, verkkoyhteisöt

2007-05-10T17:49:00.002+03:00

Suomi24.fi / opiskelu, Chatin helmiä

+
Voi käyttää kun itselle sopii
Vertaistuki
Saa seuraa
Myös esim. liikuntarajoitteiset pääsevät
Helppoa
Voi itse tuottaa materiaalia
Löytyy kaikenlaisia
Nuoret käyttävät huvituksiin
Voi kysyä asioita, mitä ei muuten ehkä kehtaisi

-
Jos ei ole muuten kontakteja ihmisiin, niin onhan se vähän surullista
Aina ei pääse juttuihin mukaan, muut sulkee pois
Liikuntaa pitää olla tasapainoisesti netissä roikkumiselle
Asiattomuus etenkin anonyymeiltä voi satuttaa

Kehitettävää:
Tarvitaan mediakasvatusta! Jotta ihmiset ylipäätään selviävät verkkoyhteisöissä ja etenkin chateissa, miten toimia, mitä uskoa ja mitä ei, nopeus on valttia, oma merkistömaailmansa (lyhenteet, hymiöt jne.), mitä uskaltaa itsestään kertoa, mitä uskaltaa julkaista, netissä kaikki leviää nopeasti jne.

Mahdollisuudet:
Näitä chatteja voi hyvin käyttää tiedonhaun lisäksi ihan vain höpöttelyseuran hakemiseen, pahan mielen purkamiseen tai ilon aiheidensa huutamiseen maailmalle.
Miten helppoa onkaan saada esim. jokin kuva hetkessä kaikkien netissä liikkuvien käsille, ja kuinka helposti sitä kopioidaankaan ja levitetään lisää. Verkkoyhteisöjen ja chattien kautta kaikki leviää silmänräpäyksessä. Tässä siis hyvät ja huonot puolensa..

Tehtävä 2a, koulutusportaali ja oppimisympäristö

2007-05-10T17:25:00.001+03:00

Koulutusportaali-termi tuntuu voimakkaasti hakeutuvan Puolustusvoimiin. Googleen kun pistää termin hakusanaksi, on lähes jokaisessa muutaman ensimmäisen sivun linkissä jokin viittaus Puolustusvoimiin. Koulutusportaalin sanotaan olevan sähköinen opetusmateriaalisivusto. Se on verkko-opiskelun tueksi tehty, Puolustusvoimien kohdalla koko kansan (yli 15v.) käytettäväksi. Siellä on sähköpostipalvelut, verkkokursseja sekä tietopankki.
http://tinyurl.com/2ddcnt

Oppimisympäristö puolestaan on enemmänkin kokonaisvaltainen toimintaympäristö, jossa itse ympäristön lisäksi on läsnä opiskelijoita, opettaja/opettajia, erilaisia oppimisnäkemyksiä ja toimintamuotoja, oppimislähteitä sekä välineitä ja käytön tapoja. Täällä lisänä on selkeästi nähtävä toiminta, tehdään yhdessä (keskustellaan, on kalenteria ja tehtäviä jne.)
http://tinyurl.com/247lrv

28.4.2007

2007-04-28T12:41:00.001+03:00

Mielenkiintoista. Blogi on tosiaan ollut mielessä piiiitkään, hassua että se tuli perustettua loppujen lopuksi näin. Ja toisaalta taas hyvä, että näin. Tuleepahan samantien kunnolla käyttöön. Blogeja on tullut luettua, mutta tänään ensimmäistä kertaa loin sellaisen itse ja tuotin sinne materiaalia.

Web 2.0 on erittäin huvittavasti tullut eteeni nyt n.1½ viikon sisällä kolmelta eri taholta. Ensin törmäsin siihen ylemmän ammattikorkeakoulututkinnon hakuprosessissa (pitää kirjoittaa essee aiheesta), sitten Tallinnan yliopiston maisteritutkinnon hakuprosessissa (taas kerran essee, nyt englanniksi) ja nyt tällä kurssilla :D Mahtaa siis olla tosiaankin pinnalla ja puheenaiheena tämä Web 2.0! No, nyt on tullut sitä opiskeltua ja tuotettua siitä omaa tekstiä suomeksi ja englanniksi. Ja haettua enemmänkin oikein konreettisia esimerkkejä. Ei sen puoleen, aiheeseen tutustuttuani ei siihen voi sanoa muuta kuin että näinhän se on. Tietty muutos on tapahtunut, sitä ei voi kiistää. Muutos on mielestäni parempaan, netissä alkavat palvelut olla jotenkin rikkaampia ja valikoidumpia. Lisäksi yhteisöllisyys luo yhteenkuuluvuuden tunnetta ja turvallisuutta, mikäpä sen parempaa.

Tehtävä 1c, IRC-Galleria ja YouTube

2007-04-28T12:15:00.002+03:00

IRC-Galleriaa tulee käytettyä lähes päivittäin. Etenkin nyt, kun tammani on kantavana, on kiva lisäillä siitä kuvia aina eri vuorokausiluvun kohdalla ja eri kuvakulmista. Myös "herutuskuvia" eli utareista otettuja kuvia ;) Samalla on kiva lukea toisten kommentteja ja käydä itse kommentoimassa. Verkosto on ihan uskomaton, yhden tutun kun löytää, löytyy hänen kauttaan lisää jne. Näin siis vapaa-ajalla. Töihin liittyen Galleriasta ei niinkään ole minulle iloa. Opiskeluun ja koulutukseen liittyen Galleria itsessään on loistava esimerkki nettiyhteisöllisyydestä ja vaikkapa teinien käyttäytymisestä.

MUTTA ehkä enemmän hyötyä minulle on YouTubesta. Sieltä nimittäin löytää videopätkiä ihan mihin tahansa tarpeeseen tahansa. En ole rekisteröitynyt sinne, joten omia videoita en ole sinne ladannut. YouTubesta löytyy huima määrä lemppari-TV-sarjoja, musiikkivideoita.. Ja uskomaton liuta niitä käyttäjien omasta elämästä kertovia videoita. Huumoria piisaa. Enimmäkseen tätäkin tulee käytettyä viihtymiseen, mutta ei niinkään vapaa-ajalla vaan töissä ;) Itse tulee ahkerasti etsittyä hauskoja videoita ja lähetettyä helmiä kavereillekin, mutta etenkin työkavereiden kesken videoita lähetellään piristämään tylsää työpäivää. Opiskelu- ja koulutusmielessä YouTubesta löytyy kyllä esimerkkejä melkein mihin tahansa aiheeseen. Siellä on laajasti materiaalia myös uutisista ja muusta vakavammin otettavasta.

Tehtävä 1b, Web 2.0

2007-04-28T10:18:00.002+03:00

GoogleMail. Sähköpostipalvelu, mahdollisuus pikaviestikeskusteluihin, pikanäppäintoimintoja, muokattuja osoitteita, mobiilikäyttö, ei suuria/vilkkuvia/asiaan liittymättömiä mainoksia (vain kohdennettuja/pieniä tekstimainoksia) on selkeä ero esim. Hotmailiin, rutkasti tilaa (2845Mt).. Vastaava: Hotmail.com

iTunes. Latauspalvelu, musiikkia, elokuvia, tv-ohjelmia, Applen tuote, mainostetaan myös iPod-tuotteita. Voi myös ostaa tuotteita. Vastaava: Vertaisverkko.com

Amazon. Valtava verkkokauppa. Tuotenostolistat (mitä tuotteen ostanut myös osti), reittaukset (arviot).. Paljon erilaisia hakupalveluja. Vastaava: Verkkokauppa.com, Hobbyhall.fi

RSS. Wikipedia kertoo RSS:n olevan web-syötteitä, "joita käytetään usein päivitetyn digitaalisen sisällön julkaisemiseen". Tätä sisältöä ovat esimerkiksi blogit ja uutissyötteet. Suomessa esim. Ampparit.com. Vastaava: ?

Wiki. Kollektiivinen tietopalvelu, kuka tahansa rekisteröitynyt käyttäjä voi lisätä ja kommentoida. Jokaisesta asian kuvauksesta voi nähdä historian, eli kuka on muokannut ja mitä. Erilaisia palveluita, kuten satunnainen artikkeli. Rekisteröityneille erilaisia työkaluja, tiedoston lisämistä jne. Vastaava: Facta.fi (vain tietopalvelu, ei kollektiivista tiedon lisäämistä ja muokkausta).

Blogger. Blogipalvelu, kuka tahansa voi helposti luoda itselleen blogin. Helppo julkaista tekstejä. Vastaava: Laif.fi

YouTube. Videonlatauspalvelu, valtava määrä videoita, satoja tuhansia latauksia päivittäin, kuka tahansa voi julkaista omia videoitaan, rekisteröityneet voivat myös kommentoida toisten videoita. Kategoriat, hakupalvelu. Vastaava: GoogleVideo, YahooVideo.

Joost.com. TV:n katsomispalvelu, voi katsoa mitä haluaa ja milloin haluaa. Vastaava: TrissaTV, MTV3:n netti-tv.

Flickr.com. Kuvapalvelu, jonne käyttäjät voivat ladata ottamiaan kuvia, myös kamerakännykältä suoraan. Lisäksi karttapalvelu, missä kukakin on kuvia ottanut ja palvelu, jossa voi tehdä kortteja jne. Vastaava: Exif.fi

LinkeDin.com. Ihmissuhdepalvelu, voi luoda oman profiilin ja etsiä vanhoja kavereita joilla on profiili palvelussa. Vastaava: Koulukaverit.com

Furl.net. Palvelu, jossa voi katsoa toisten suosituksia mitä löytää mistäkin ja toisaalta kertoa toisille, mistä löytää. Eli voi etsiä, tallentaa ja jakaa nettiosoitteita/linkkejä. Vastaava: blinklist.com, myös Kuvake.netillä on vastaava palvelu.

IRC-Galleria.net. Yhteisöpalvelu, jossa käyttäjät luovat profiilin ja esittelevät omia kuviaan. Rekisteröityneet käyttäjät voivat kommentoida toistensa kuvia. Sisäisiä yhteisöjä, joissa samanhenkistä väkeä. Yhteisöjä voi luoda kuka tahansa. Vastaava: MySpace.

Suomi24.fi. Palvelu, jossa kaikkea mahdollista. Linkkejä, treffipalvelu, keskustelufoorumi, mainoksia... Vastaava: ainakin jossain määrin Hevostalli.net

Newsgator.com. RSS-sovellusta myyvä yritys, eli sovelluksen avulla voi tilata itselleen kiinnostavia uutisia, nettisivulinkkejä, blogeja.. Vastaava: http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html ja rsscaptor.com

Tehtävä 1a, vihdoinkin

2007-04-28T10:12:00.002+03:00

Kauan tämä bloggailu onkin pitänyt aloittaa.. Kiitos Mediakasvatuksen perusteiden opiskelun, tämä tuli väkisinkin eteen ;)