Leigh Blackall

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Posts referring to articles by Leigh Blackall

How to produce, publish and distribute a journal these days
I think off and on about publishing a journal. I would do it this way: submissions would be accepted only if they had already appeared online and received widespread recognition. The articles could be submitted, nominated, or simply found by the editors. On acceptance, the article would be cleaned up, if necessary, and added to what amounts to a library of canonical publications. Regular 'bound' versions would be distributed to people outside the field. The idea of the journal is not to act as a content filter, but rather to confer, post-publication, recognition to works of particular merit that pass scientific scrutiny by a community of readers. My system is a bit simpler than Leigh Blackalls, and one day I will put it into practice - I simply need a setup like Aaarg.org (but without the login). It would double as a textbook as well. Leigh Blackall, Weblog, January 13, 2010.

On connectivism
Leigh Blackall: "There has been a long and [barren] relationship between education and popular culture for over a century now. Education has been absent from reality for as long as I've been a part of it and today is no different - even when Social Media has direct associations to the rhetoric of educational practice... The challenge I think, is to educationally consider the culture being recorded in these mediascapes, in such a way so as to ask let alone answer more than the obvious questions." Leigh Blackall, Weblog, November 27, 2009.

Myths, lies and ...
Leigh Blackall launches a screed against myths and lies in relation to education, "especially in relation to social media, openness and online learning." Language warning; don't click if you don't care for profanity (the language doesn't add to its expressiveness, it just makes it harder to link to or to quote). Blackall has a general point that's worth making, I think - that worthwhile initiatives (such as open education) in online learning have been misappropriated, and ordinary technology (such as YouTube) has been misrepresented. "Could it really be true, that education has never been about the empowerment of people really, rather the survival of an institution?" Then all of us in e-learning have been chasing the wrong goal, which is why it is so difficult to make such simple progress. Leigh Blackall, Weblog, July 27, 2009.

Video File Formats, What and When to Use
What I like about this item is that it doesn't try to be an encyclopedia or to analyze all possible options. Instead, it addresses directly the question: what video format should I use. That's a great question, and from my own experience I can say that leigh Blackall's solutions and explanations are sound. Related: the TED blog is promoting the free and open source Miro player which will play a wide variety of video formats. Leigh Blackall, Weblog, May 1, 2009.

Google Voice Set to Knock Web Conferencing Off
Google is spotting a weakness in the marketing and attacking it. "Skype still doesn't record! and conference calling is not reliable because Skype wants to use so much bandwidth.... Elluminate works on low bandwidth, but has never been very easy to use.... Flash Meeting, Dim Dim, Adobe Connect all use the Flash player to web conference, and while that makes it potentially user friendly, it also makes it bandwidth hungry." Well, let's see if they can solve this problem - it would make the web a lot more interesting. See the demo movies. Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, March 13, 2009.

Illich Makes a Come Back at Last!
This post refers to videos of 'scary school nigtmares'. "Every night Pinky tries to get some sleep, only to be kept awake by a bizarre school building slideshow. Words by Ivan Illich, author of Deschooling Society." More information on the Pinky Show website. Leigh Blackall celebrates the videos: "Aafter 5 years of edublogging, I have seen no more than 5 people reference Illich's Deschooling Society and discuss its DIRECT references to networked learning, and only 2 references to his wider work on institutionalisation and humanity generally." Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, March 6, 2009.

Should Wikimedia Cost That Much?
Though the contributors to Wikipedia are distributed, the site and management are centralized, which leads to increased costs. Agreed, six million dollars isn't 'large' in the greater scheme of things - but it's a lot of money to raise annually when you have no revenue stream. Donors of this amount of money usually expect some sort of say over how the money is spent. Expect this to become an increasing tension going forward. Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, December 29, 2008.

My Experience with OLPC in Tuvalu
Leigh Blackall ventures into the south Pacific to conduct a workshop using the OLPC XO laptop computers and encounters difficulties. As one commentator summarizes, "The author points out serious flaws with the Sugar interface and the OLPC software that have not been fixed, even in the latest builds, though they have been known for years: The interface is too slow; The Journal metaphor is confusing and only partially implemented; Networking and collaboration are flaky; The touchpad is flaky; Standard Linux applications (like Firefox) do not run, despite the Linux core of the operating system." Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, December 3, 2008.

Bowers Could Be a Turning Point in My Thinking
Leigh Blackall channels Chet Bowers. "Chet Bowers wrote his first book on the connections between education, cultural ways of knowing, and the ecological crisis in 1974. The title of the book was Cultural Literacy for Freedom. Since then he has written over 95 articles and 19 books that examine how language reproduces ways of thinking that were formed before there was an awareness of ecological limits, the connections between emancipatory/transformative ways of thinking and the globalization of the West's industrial culture." Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, October 7, 2008.

Speaking to Ascilite, ACODE and Desire2Learn
"If you can accept my argument that social constructivism can not be used in behaviorist methodologies, then with it I would argue that social media cannot be used inside behaviorist media - such as the prescribed media presently used (LMS, system email, content repositories etc)." That's from Leigh Blackall's notes on a presentation he gave to NZ educators at the Desire2Learn roundtable. The theme of this post is whether social media should be integrated into enterprise learning systems or vice versa. Since formal education is such a small part of our learning, it would make more sense to make the LMS/LCMS subservient to the social media surround. Janet Clarey adds her thoughts to Leigh's post. -HJ Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, June 25, 2008.

Speaking to Ascilite, ACODE and Desire2Learn
Pretty good rant from Leigh Blackall on the question, "What is an appropriate response from our educational institutions, to a forecasted social media scape?" And the argument is subtle - but easy to grasp, once stated as clearly as this: "Now that a connection should be evident between social constructivism and the media scape we have on hand today, it should be interesting to consider how objectionable it may actually be for education to be adopting social media inside its seemingly inescapable behaviorist contexts. If you can accept my argument that social constructivism can not be used in behaviorist methodologies, then with it I would argue that social media cannot be used inside behaviorist media - such as the prescribed media presently used (LMS, system email, content repositories etc)." Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn, June 19, 2008.

Revisiting Content Is Not King. Connectivity Is Priority.
I get what Leigh Blackall is saying in this post, but even with full connectivity content would not be 'king' - at least, not the sort of content that is ordinarily supposed hen we talk of things like learning objects (or newspaper articles). The point is, more learning happens through conversation and content creation than by mere passive receptivity. And what Illich (and Friere, and others, know) is that when you take control of the production of your own learning, you give yourself the power to learn, which is something no content provider can even give to you. Broadband connectivity helps, to be sure - but the important part of the broadband connection is the ploading part. After all, we've had broadband downloading for a very long time. It was called television. Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, December 27, 2007.

Here's a Video I Helped Create
This is nice. The video discusses the history of the Maori people who lived around the Otago harbour in New Zealand. If you look closely you'll see Second-Life style animations mixed in with the film footage. It blends really well. Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, November 23, 2007.

When You're the Village Idiot in Zeitgeist
I've been rereading Bruce Sterling's novel Zeitgeist this past week. It actually ages quite well for a pre-millennium novel that addresses the millennium. I haven't seen Zeitgeist the movie yet, but it's on my list, Maybe tomorrow. I haven't been reading the Talo list for months, not since someone on the list took to carping about 'gurus and experts' for no good reason. I haven't read Bill Kerr at all, but judging from his post, he hasn't read me either - otherwise he wouldn't be complaining that Web 2.0 people are not willing to deepen their analysis (by contrast, people tell me to return to the surface for air from time to time). Kay writes, "The 1000 monkeys hammering on the typewriter is a real part of web 2.0." All I can say is, "ook ook ook." Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, July 24, 2007.

It'S Not Plagiarism, It'S an Easy Essay
Leigh Blackall was offered money to link to this essay service, Custom Writing, from his blog. The service offers essays for sale to students - "the papers we provide are plagiarism free – neither TurnItIn, nor any other plagiarism detecting software cannot find any plagiarism. Papers are 100% custom written." He linked all right - for free - and as a bonus tossed in an interview with the service's representative, Andrew Schwatz. The result is a fascinating discourse on the mechanics of testing. The position taken by the company is that essay writing is not an accurate assessement of student performance, that they are essentially a waste of students' time, and so the service helps them get past an unreasonable and unfair hurdle. "When it comes to applying for a job – experience and testing conducted by a hiring company – is what does count, not educational credentials. From this perspective, companies like ours only help – we spare the time for students to develop in the field they chose to, which will then be their career path." Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, July 11, 2007.

The Illogical Rhetoric of Share Alike
I don't agree with this post. I use 'share-alike' on my licenses (both Creative Commons and Open Source Software (where it's GPL) precisely because I don't want somebody coming along, doing a minor repurpose, and then claiming to 'own' the content. Leigh Blackall argues against 'share alike', though, because he can't use SA content in conjunction with proprietary materials, cultually restructed materials, or old commercial materials. Right. because such a combining would be a process of taking something that is freely sharable, and turning it into something that is not. It's just a clever way of raiding the commons for personal gain. But that said - there is nothing that presents the presentation of SA materials alongside commercial materials. You an still use the materials - you just can't pretend they are something you have created (and can restrict access to). I see nothing illogical about this. Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, May 4, 2007.

My Vision for Wikieducator
Leigh Blackall figures it out. Everybody focuses on wikis. Collaborative creation and all that. But "the problem with wikis is that they require people to remember to contribute, stop what they're doing, go to the wiki, click edit and retype what they wrote somewhere else already, such as in a blog, email, or other media upload somewhere else." OK, good. Then how would you fix this? He goes through a little thinking, and then: "one-way aggregation is only half useful. Being able to quickly and easily compile an information piece on a wiki page from a variety of already existing information and media is great, being able to then quickly edit and add your own information around that media is even better, but to be able to dynamically export that page in true Web2 fashion would be the bomb!" Yes. Exactly. Bring in content from multiple sources. Mash it up, whatever. But instead of requiring that everybody go to your place (which is where these initiatives always go) ship it out in whatever form will be useful to a person and where that person needs it. And then you have (ta da!) a learning network. Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, March 15, 2007.

Wikiversity, Wikieducator Please Join and Make Wikilearner
Leigh Blackall is forced by site outage to shift his attention from Wikiversity - a Wikipedia style online learning platform - to Wikieducator, a similar project set up in December, 2006, by the Commonwealth of Learning. "Wikieducator has made fantastic progress since last I looked," he writes. "Apart for a range of great tutorials, the key players in wikieducator have been more innovative and experimental in my view. They now have a web based IRC chat facility on the main nav - which is getting closer to Teemu's vision of a VOIP supported community learning network; they support media embedding, they use funky templates to play around with navigation and content layout, and they already have some significant contributions." Well good, but I wonder about his call for the two to join forces. Sure, they my be doing the same thing, but the management styles, I suspect, are miles apart. Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, February 16, 2007.

No More New Speak, Back to Old Speak
Leigh Blackall offers some old terms that may be viewed less suspiciously than the new terms. Like saying "social constructivism" instead of "Web2.0 and Socially networked software." Nice. Except that, to me at least, the two things are very different. And except that, if somebody is only willing to listen for four seconds, then I'm not going to have much to say to them. But then again, since I don't view reality as socially defined, I don't feel as much pressure to 'sell' or 'convince' people of something. And as in the next item, I don't view "pragmatism" as a good reason for doing something that's incorrect. Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, January 24, 2007.

Youtube in Melbourne School
Just an example of the sort of things you can do with a site like YouTube if your administrators or computing services haven't blocked it. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, November 9, 2006.

What Would It Be Like To Be the Rain
Leigh Blackall captures the intuition behind learning networks. It doesn't mean everything is exactly as depicted here. But it's a plausible scenario. And I like this: "The challenge for teachers I think, is how to develop a web presence in such a way that this person will want to come back, subscribe, or otherwise tune in to what you are doing." Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, October 7, 2006.

Phone call with Stephanie Rieger - Yiibu
The audio quality is spotty - not sure whether that's the Gizmo recording or noise reduction - but the content is interesting as Leigh Blackall chats with Stephanie Rieger on the creation of content for mobile devices. Blackall argues that instead of creating PowerPoint slides, a more usable (and sustainable) alternative is the creation of image stacks - just create a set of photos and number them sequentially. Of course, unless you're pretty handy with Photoshop, PowerPoint is an easier design interface - but there must be a program for converting slide shows to image stacks... isn't there? Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, August 14, 2006.

Free Ranging and Bill Postering
Leigh Blackall writes, "I think its quite liberating to let go of the obvious - that digital means recorded, and think of it as a more fluid and transitory medium." I asked myself as I read this, am I ready to cast aside all of my ties to a permanent web presence and permanent data? And my answer, in a nutshell, is no. So am I not living consistently? I'll have to think about that. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, June 26, 2006.

Teaching is Dead, Long Live Learning
Wiki notes for a paper being presented to the Global Summit. I enjoyed the presention, which will evoke some commentary. I have posted my own response on my other blog. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, June 3, 2006.

The Only Thing Worth Teaching is How to Learn
I have this feeling that the best things are written between four and five on a sleepless night (that's how my presentations are written - like Dave Warlick I never sleep well before a talk). Leigh Blackall writes, "When a student comes to us, it is probably for one of 2 reasons. They are a novice learner and need support in starting out their learning in a particular area (a bus ride as Jay puts it); or they are an already expert learner (a bicycle rider as Jay puts it) and have to be here because some other piece of paper says they need this piece of paper." Leigh Blackall, Educational Development, May 30, 2006.

North Korea and South Australia Agree on Censorship: Web 2 Banned
The only consolation - if there is any - is that North Korea and South Australia are by no means alone in their dislike for new web technologies. Still. Leigh Blackall comments, "Some might say, 'take it to the media Bill, blow the lid off it' - but from what I've seen and heard on the mainstream media toilet papers, teleblindness and radio monotony, they're buying into the fear frenzy and are not interested in representing a range of views on Internet censorship in schools." Perhaps if we set a better example, we wouldn't be so worried. Related: Judy Breck comments, "What scares me is there is not the least hesitation in the article to assume educators must approve what students study. That notion does not teach information literacy âx" it empowers censorship. We need to be careful here." Hear, hear. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, January 30, 2006.

RSSCalendar
This link is mostly for me, as I want to look at this more closely, but you may find it interesting too. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, January 6, 2006.

Digital Literacy: How it Affects Teaching Practices and Networked Learning Futures
How does the changing nature of digital literacy impact teaching practices? According to the author, "flexibility and sustainability can be achieved through community wide participation in ongoing action research, enhanced by the educational organisation's support for a wider range of software and hardware - afforded by free and open source software, and through encouragement to engage with open and internationally networked communications." More from the December issue of the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning. Leigh Blackall, International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, January 3, 2006.

Die LMS die! You too PLE!
Some interesting reaction to the advocacy of the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) that has been floating around recently. "The VLE, LMS and PLE are the same. A suggestion that the Internet, and informal networked learning are not enough. That people still need to come to school to learn. That people need to distinguish learning from life, that people need to download and install an application that will solve their learning needs." I am sympathetic to this view, and wonder whether we would need a PLE at all if we had a more generic application (we don't, yet) that performed the same function. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, November 24, 2005.

Digital Literacy: How it Affects Teaching Practices and Networked Learning Futures - A Proposal for Action Research
Looking a little like the revolutionaries have taken over the castle, the 2005 edition of The Knowledge Tree launches Thursday with some great content, including this article in which Leigh Blackall discusses "digital literacy, the impact of open source software and the place of content within the worldwide rapid publishing and networked learning revolution (Web 2.0)." If you are in Australia or insomniac, check out the launch event online. here's a direct link to the issue's Contents. Leigh Blackall, The Knowledge Tree, November 1, 2005.

North South East and West
Leigh Blackall ventured where I didn't dare and explored Chinese blogger Yaozhou's website after finding the link in a post on my website. Via Google's Chinese to English translation (which I haven't tried) we read, "Podcast Education Movement Podcast, blog and rss will save human being from another clash of civilazation..." I would certainly like to hope so. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, September 28, 2005.

Lawsuit forces Web2 learning strategies
Peeple have been discontented with academic software before. But when someone launches a lawsuit because your software of choice is hurting their grades, you need to pay attention (and if you manufacture tghe software, you really need to pay attention). Anyhow, the student said of the software, WebCT, "It was just a navigational nightmare. It made it impossible for me to study." Ouch. More from the FLOSSE Posse. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, September 26, 2005.

AU$695 for a Blogging, Wiki, and RSS Workshop!!
Leigh Blackall describes, and rightly roasts, this workshop. Looking at this, I've gotta figure I'm as qualified as this guy. And if I ran one with ten people once a month, I could pretty well forget about working the rest of the time. But I suspect the real skill here lies in finding people who will spend $695 a pop to pay for learning that is widely available for free on the internet. Leigh Blackall, , September 19, 2005.

The Real TAFE Homepage
Leigh Blackall has a happy discovery while giving a presentation at TAFE NSW Illawarra. "I came across the usual things that make TAFE a bit of a joke... access denials, not being set up to play MPEG4 movies, and other stuff I can't really recall just now, but then the joke turned on me! It was when I was up to the bit about wikis - using wikipedia, wikiversity, and the South African Curriculum wiki as examples. I thought I'd be smart and type in 'TAFE NSW' as a search in wikipedia. Cocky as always I pre-empted the results expecting a no show for my search when BAM! There it was! A wikipedia entry on Technical And Further Education in Australia!" Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, September 2, 2005.

More on EdNA Groups Vs the Open Network
Leigh Blackall responds to the recent statement from EdNA's Mark Tranthim-Fryer on whether EdNA groups should be open. The core of his response: "I think this issue goes to the heart of a more serious educational matter. That being a school and teacher's constant struggle to be relevant, engaging, and accessible to learners. EdNA groups uses a tool that replicates the real (Internet) world, declaring that it insulates its users from 'the noise'. That 'noise' as Mark calls it is actually quite audible information once an adequate network literacy is obtained by the listener. I don't think EdNA groups is helping its users to obtain that adequate and essentially independent network literacy." Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, August 26, 2005.

Break Down the (Fire) Wall!!
I was at a government office not too long ago (the nature of which shall remain hidden) and during some of the discussions the subject of Flickr came up. Imagine my surprise to find access to the site blocked by network administrators. Leigh Blackall comments on this increasingly pervasive trend, a trend that is characterized as much by its ridiculous application as by its fundamentally undemocratic nature. I know people have strong feelings about what it is appropriate to read or view in the workplace. But to try to enforce those views through a regime of site blockage is dangerous and dictatorial, and ought to be avoided. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, August 8, 2005.

EdNA Groups or the Open Network
Leigh Blackall takes on EdNA Groups, writing, "Its better if we use more global and reliable services I think... EdNA Moodle groups is diluting the impact that individuals could be having on the global conversation. Its keeping many in Australian education disengaged from the world beyond EdNA." I can get into EdNA Groups, but every time I go to read something, I'm prompted for an 'invitation key' that I don't have. I agree with Blackall: "The valuable time of teachers and educationalists would be better spent engaged with the open Network, learning the popular tools and understanding the nature of the Internet so that they may teach people how to learn in an open Network." Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, August 4, 2005.

Early Film, Early Internet, Early Days, Network Learning
Leigh Blackall begins by talking about finding old movies on the Internet Archive (which alone makes his post worth reading) but makes his main point here: "This post is not so much an outcome of any particular study (such as a paper or essay might be) but is more a piece in the process of learning. Its an ongoing conversation of learning, with the recorded voices in the conversation contributing to the content used in someone else's learning." And me? Now I want to get some proper video editing software (and a computer that can run it) so I can make some documentaries. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, July 25, 2005.

Prensky Takes a Beating!
As a 46 year old who is not a baby boomer it's hard not to agree with Tom Hoffman. I was too young (ie., 8) for the Summer of Love and Woodstock; I grew up with wiring diagrams, techno-pop, Pong (and Galaga- heh) and punch cards. I saw Tangerine Dream in concert. And I am a digital native. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, July 25, 2005.

The Blogs We Need in Australia
I have noticed a slowdown of news from Australia, caused partly by a greater centralization and partly by recent changes in projects like the Flexible Learning Framework (does it even publish RSS feeds any more?). Leigh Blackall agitates for more Australian e-learning blogs, and offers some suggestions for topics. Leigh Blackall, Teach and Learn Online, June 25, 2005.

Teach and Learn Online
Seb Fiedler points us to this e-learning weblog by Leigh Blackall in the Blue Mountains of Australia. Backall's coverage of the recent Blogtalk Downunder points us to Mark Bernstein, who has been blogging since 2001. Leigh Blackall, , June 7, 2005.