Wednesday October 08, 2008 LOFI on the web -- CRD 704 - Reading 8
The main theme in the readings is the use of free/open-source technologies for learning.Nothing surprised me in the Reilly and Williams article. It was a study about the extent to which educational institutions use open source software and why. Similar things happen at IBM: the team I work on needs to consider what sort of webserver we'll use to serve content -- Apache (free) or WebSphere (our own, too much functionality and too hard to use -meant for the 'enterprise'). Unfortunately, even open source software can wind up being commercialized. Or because of the search of the next big thing open source can wind up morphing into something entirely different or "go away" completely. Perhaps this connects with Stolley's focus on content producers using basic text and graphics so students would be able to access classroom materials and participate more in discourse (assuming they are technologically saavy enough) without the need for CMT.
Stolley's basic argument seems to be that "the need to use specific software and hardware creates an online environment that favors the producer while preventing real, dynamic discourse by the user". He writes, we need to "create free and open source artifacts that are software- and device-independent" and mentions specifically, in the section of defining technologies, that we should use or retrograde to "Plain text files (.txt, .xml, .htm, .css, .js, etc.)". He calls for an emphasis on the source in "free and open source" and Lanham-esquely wants to ensure users that "source code and media elements are available for inspection, revision, and extension outside the scope of any one piece of production software and any one producer".
What does he suggest happens to or replaces blogs and forums for a second - technologies which at least attempt to create discourse using technologies? It's unclear what Stolley thinks about these which are not "expensive" but do not adhere to his L.O.F.I principles as they are not just text and notepad. Is he suggesting that blogs or forums downgrade to text files editable in notepad which users somehow upload online? Also unclear to me is how using a cludgey, wonky FTP interface to upload notepad files is "forgiving" to the user.
Lunsford concern is delivery. It will be very interesting to see how changes in technoliteracy, and maybe the ease-to-create multimedia discourse, will change an organization like IBM. There is still a very "old school" mentality about communication and I wonder if it is because its a science (logic based) and business (results based, efficiency based, relationship based) in one. I think upcoming generations will (of course) change this but I'm curious about how technology will change to be able to accomodate these new forms of communication to provide communication, logic, relationships within the business context.
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PDF in Blackboard Vista:
* Reilly & Williams, 2006
* Lunsford, 2006
Article online:
* Stolley, 2008
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Posted by hkvonlud ( Oct 08 2008, 09:09:38 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [2]
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I agree with your confusion about some of the points Stolley makes. Some of his suggestions don't really sound like they would be that much easier for the user... unless the alternative is nothing. It seems people would choose certain programs that they feel is the best for them where the pros outweigh other dilemmas.
Posted by knmartin on October 08, 2008 at 12:13 PM EDT #
At the end of the day, I want to keep the costs of a class as low as possible to students. If they want to use open source software to perform their tasks, I'm all for it. What I hadn't previously considered was the course management software and the fact that there may be a number of reasons to use something else. Frankly, I just didn't know there were other options before these readings.
I don't know that I would want to get behind everything (or most things) in the LOFI manifesto, but, like most things in this class, it made me question my underlying assumptions.
Posted by Shayne Pepper on October 09, 2008 at 01:52 PM EDT #