2002/03/13: Some real programming

Draft 2

I've just posted my econd draft of my article for BC&C: Educational Technology Standards: A Guide for the Perplexed. There is still work to be done. A stylistic make-over is in order. Maybe I can write less about my own project (which I use as an example). I'd like to add a small annotated reference list. Maybe I can make more concrete what the XML standards actually look like.

I'm sending it out for comments....

I'm not sure that writing my drafts in such a public manner is the best way to go. I must admit that it's a bit scary. My drafts also demand a certain way of reading them: that they represent my best efforts up to that point, that I'm willing to change what I've written, that I'm open to others' views. Granted, it might be seem so egotistical on my part to think that my drafts would be of interest to others (given that I'm not even sure that my final products will be read by that many people!). But I think of this process as valuing collaboration over immediate perfection even at the risk of looking like an idiot. (I've also worked hard on not writing things that I will totally regret writing, trying to keep my errors to ones others can forgive me for. For example, I am not writing "Joe Smoe is a total idiot" under the guise that "hey, it's only a draft")

What is OKI really about?

David Carter-Todd points to a comment about OKI by Greg Ritter (who works for Blackboard) Greg writes that "instead of being a fully-developed course management system, OKI is only the architecture."

I admit that I'm confused on this point too. I have thought that OKI is on its way to becoming a working learning management system -- but that the architectural specifications represent the first steps. As David points out, OKI is releasing some source code too. Is the source code only illustrative of the architecture or will all the source add up to a fully integrated functioning learning management system?

BTW, Greg has written about the idea of blending the Blogger APIs with Blackboard's API to mix blogging and LMS functionality. I like the idea but don't know enough about Blackboard to say any more at this point.

Blogging to fight patents

Dave Winer wrote: "BTW, another reason I blog is patents. It's my 'lab notebook.' I keep track of my art here, lest someone someday take a patent out on an idea I came up with. Keeping a public weblog helps protect our power to innovate."

This is an important point. For those of us who are very interested in sharing our ideas (and litle interest in laying proprietary claims on our ideas), maintaining a public "lab notebook" might be a key weapon in the crazy patent wars. Especially for us at the Interactive University, where our goals are more the promotion of certain ideas and where it does no good to hold them too tightly to our chests. We could only hope that others take up what we are talking about and run with them. It would galling, however, if others took good ideas and methods that should remain in the intellectual commons and keep others from using them. Patenting gone crazy. Hence, documenting our ideas (without patenting them) is a way forward.

Of course as university staff, I don't "own" the work I do for the university....so I'm not in the same situation as Dave Winer. It'd be interesting if I ever develop something the university considers patentable and do exactly what I fear....Hmmm. I just hope that our ideas don't have that much profit potential that UC would want to patent them and that the value of keeping them public is greater than any possible profits.

Feb Apr

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