The slow build up

I need a small number of people to take a look at my pilot exhibition, and leave me some feedback. It would be best if they are people who have an interest in online communities, in researching the internet, in online exhibition or something else related but if time continues to pass without me finding any then I?ll have to relax the criteria. So I?ll start out by being tentative and discerning, and then day by day I will increase the exposure and the volume until I end up deperately making a nuisance of myself like the guys in Brick Lane or Rue de La Huchette trying to steer passers by into their restaurants.

Torimbia

Torimbia, originally uploaded by Saul GM.

This is to cheer me up on a cold November weekend stuck al day at the computer.
Somewhere near Llanes, Aturias, N Spain.

Looks a bit like Rhossili or Dorset or somewhere else I can't quite remember, never having been there.

Apple Mac OS X on x86: a first test - ZDNet UK Reviews

Stands to reason doesn't it. If Apple want to start making Macs powered by Intel chips then the Mac OS X system will also find it's way onto cheap PCs.

Apple Mac OS X on x86: a first test - ZDNet UK Reviews: "
Apple Mac OS X on x86: a first test"

Ultralab blogs still broken

Blogs hosted on the ultralab blog server have been unavailable since last Thursday, for reasons not explained. So I would be pretty frustrated about that by now if it weren't for the fact that I decided to allow my own ultralab blog to gracefully decline after the other problem with the comments system only a week or so before.

So I'd better link from here now as well.
My new research blog is at distributedresearch.net/blog

RSS feed here , comments RSS here

Stephen Downes, Jay Cross, George Siemens

George Siemens explaining his theory of connectivity in a multimedia conversation.

Stephen Downes, Jay Cross, George Siemens:

"I had the pleasure of engaging in a presentation/conversation (done in Breeze - audio quality varies a bit) with Stephen Downes and Jay Cross today. The topics were varied...but the general thread is our on going attempt to describe how learning does and should happen today. In the process, we discussed networks, subjectivity, corporate responsibility to develop better people, metrics for measuring training effectiveness...and so on. It's easy to enter a flow stage of conversation with Jay and Stephen."

CiteULike: Frequently Asked Questions

Not as good as Furl or delicious for social bookmarking, but CiteUlike is deigned for academic papers and it's probably a good place to search for them, and if you can run BibTex it will generate your bibliography for you.


CiteULike: Frequently Asked Questions: "What is CiteULike?

CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special software.

Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer. You can share you library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about.

When it comes to writing up your results in a paper, you can export your library to either BibTeX or Endnote to build it in to your bibliography."

November is officially impossible

There’s a 6,000 word report to write from scratch

A 4,000 word report to complete

A pilot exhibition to put on

An action research project to progress

Lots of literature to read

More planning to undertake

Compulsory online conversations to contrive

4 other people’s work to peer review.

two birthdays.

Registration and finance problems

All of this on top of EveryDayLife which is hard enough anyway..

And a lot of unneeded harrassment from all quarters.

See more progress on: Survive November

EducationGuardian.co.uk | E-learning | Breaking with convention

Education Guardian surveys the online HE sector without even bothering to mention Ultraversity.


EducationGuardian.co.uk | E-learning | Breaking with convention: "Online delivery and distance learning were touted as the means of widening participation in higher education for employed adults, part-timers, people with special needs, and armies of students in emerging economies such as Russia, south-east Asia and China.

But virtual learning environments (VLEs) failed to deliver as cutting edge technology outstripped pedagogy and the essential human dimension. Quality suffered and a catastrophically high rate of students dropped out of online degrees. "

blummy - The bookmarklet management bookmarklet

blummy - The bookmarklet management bookmarklet: "blummy is a tool for quick access to your favorite web services via your bookmark toolbar.
It consists of small widgets, called blummlets, which make use of Javascript to provide
rich functionality (such as bookmarklets). "

rough draft of Research Proposal

I’ve got a rough draft now, with a few holes in it. Around 2,000 qualifying words, somewhat disjointed. It needs an absract along the lines of ‘explain to us in 3 minutes what your proposal is, and why you are doing it”

work in progress is here:

http://tinyurl.com/9uvjo

See more progress on: write my research proposal

Upgrade sooner rather than later

I was hoping to leave the ukcider wiki on mediawiki 1.3.9 while installing 1.5 for the new project, but now I think some of the advantages are pressing:

• bug and security fixes


• potential for anti-spam plugins


• easier skin customisation


• editable navigation side bar.

Since it’s a live database, I have to make a backup copy of it first and use that to create a testbed environment where I can try out the upgrade safely, since it’s not just a matter of uploading new software, but restructuring the existing tables in the database as well, and there is no guarantee this will work with all combinations of upgrade.

See more progress on: live upgrade from mediawiki 1.3 to 1.5

it doesn't exist

Well I?m dead chuffed that 14 people have cheered my original photograph of the dark side of the moon, but there?s just one tiny little problemette isn?t there. The moon rotates on its own axis such as to always present the same face towards the earth, but it also rotates around the earth once every 28 days, and the earth is rotating once a day as well. So the dark side is a variable piece of turf, which is also the light side depending on your point of view. Sorry to dispel any illusion.

See more progress on: The Dark Side Of The Moon

Tag cloud

Here it is:

http://www.tagcloud.com/cloud/html/I_read/default/50

See more progress on: Make a taglist type diagram of my learning

Maybe change to Flock?

There’s something about adding Technorati tags which is just a little bit too contrived for me at present, so it doesn’t always happen by any means. A smoother solution might be to adopt the new Flock browser, with its integration of del.icio.us tagging in the blogging tool.

See more progress on: Use Technorati tags in my blogs

Sustainable improvement in diet

I?ve managed to keep up a regime of including far more raw food in meals for 2-3 months, ate home packed lunches every day instead of eating out and kept several batches of sprouts on the go continuously. No danger of going back to wheat and dairy either. So I?ll mark this goal as ?done and wants to do continuously?, I just need to watch out for the coldest months of the year when it might be more tempting to shop for the oven rather than the salad bowl.

See more progress on: eat more raw foods

plazes.com

It was linked to by Ross Mayfield, and I installed it out of interest one day. It didn’t work and now it won’t go away.

See more progress on: find a way to delete ‘plazes’ from my mac

Self-publishing challenges hierarchies - and facilitators

Self-publishing challenges hierarchies - and facilitators: "Former intelligence agent Matthew Burton provides a couple of insights from his world that have much resonance for me elsewhere. First, that networks reflect the culture of the organisations that run them, and second the importance of self-publishing to release creativity and challenge hierarchies. Matthew offers these in a comment to the item I wrote about his article on intelligence agency knowledge systems.
I've been to a couple of meetings in recent weeks where a day's discussion among participants drawn from a wide range of backgrounds, and mainly freelances, released a wealth of ideas for the convenors. In each case the purpose of the day was to develop ways forward for the organisers, working with the freelances - but of course people also saw many ways in which they could work together in pairs and groups without detriment to the central purpose. The network energy could add to the centre.
As each meeting closed, I made the suggestion, prompted by comments among participants, that it would be a good idea to have a better-than-email system to enable people to share ideas and work together since there were no plans for a further get-together for some time. I offered to set up a 'neutral ground' system since nothing was in place.
In each case the response was the same .... don't do that, we'll get around to doing it......
....
I think I am right in detecting some instinctive anxiety about giving people a space with freedom to publish and a network structure different from the tightly moderated approach in the workshops.
A little self-reflection makes me think that behind my practical suggestions was also a desire to offer up that challenge. The great thing about social software is that the individual has that capability. In future I'll try and raise it earlier in the day."

multiple wordpress

I’ve nearly completed this one, with some difficulty. Uploading the unzipped wordpress files doesn’t work using Dreamweaver as an ftp client for some reason, similar problem to mediawiki 1.5 I think, something to do with files such as ”.htaccess” or edited .php files which DW hangs up on. My solution was to go and look for a proper FTP client, but I found Fetch instead, which kind of works. There must be a simple, free, two-pane Mac ftp client out there?
Once I had one instance of Wordpress installed, I tried running the config.php again using a different table prefix. That worked fine for the second instance, but overwrote some parts of the first instance. In order to start all over again I had to go into mySQL and delete all of the tables, then ftp the whole thing up again to a second directory, but still pointing at the same database as the first. Thus I now have two wordpress blogs running off the same mySQL db, and all that’s left is to repeat the excercise but using /blog/ instead of /wordpress/ so I get a better URL for the new blog.

See more progress on: install multiple blogs on one database

minute by minute

Minute by Minute was a local film making project in which 12 artists each made 3 individual 1 minute films for a joint website using the same creative limitations based on lumiere brothers aesthetics brought into the digital age. The outcome was a lavish launch at Stratford Circus of minutebyminute.co.uk , which is no longer available, in fact even the instigators deseperateoptimists.com seems to have been taken down after 10 years work. Strange. Fortunately I put my own contribution onto my own site so it’s still there at http://www.frankieroberto.com/dad/minute/

See more progress on: Take part in a collaborative creative endeavor

Introducing the LMOS Open Source Project

The LMOS project seems to have admirable aims and aspirations, such as "The next generation of LMS's should put students, not classes and groups, at the center of the design."

Introducing the LMOS Open Source Project: "Update: The LMOS Project Vision and Mission Statements are now in HTML format on the project wiki.

I?m pleased to announce that the LMOS now has a home on Eduforge. This is an idea that really belongs to some of my colleagues at SUNY as much as it does to me, and I?ve been dying to give them the recognition and credit that they deserve. (Some of them are a little shy.) In particular, Patrick Masson and Bernie Durfee have been equal partners in working out the LMOS concept.

You can find the project?s vision and mission statements here [RTF]. We?re eager to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Expect more announcements on this project in the coming days. We?re working on some partnerships that could be truly exciting. "

distributedresearch.net

I checked out my preferred name with a select group of shrewd researchers and got a positive response without any problems and then decided to go for it. Then I discovered that just because a doamin name returns “site not found” doesn’t always mean it’s available, so I switched from .com to .net which is fine by me.

See more progress on: Register a new domain name

Research Proposal cannot be written just like that.

I’ve come to realise that writing the research proposal is not something that I can just sit down and do one day, consider it ‘done’ then get on with the rest of it. It’s going to need to be left open and developed alongside the completion of other tasks, such as researching literature, doing the first few AEs and preparing the pilot exhibition.

See more progress on: write my research proposal

How to backup mySQL

Well that was easy, I can do it through the php control panel thingy. From “operations” choose copy structure+data to wiki2 and that then becomes a complete copy of the entire wiki. Then empty the data from ‘old’ and it reduces right down to 4Mb. Shame I can’t have more that 2 DBs at the moment. Next task perhaps, upgrade mediawiki to 1.5

See more progress on: be satisfied that mySQL database is safely backed up

walking 10,000 steps a day

Over exactly seven days I managed to get the overall total down to 79000, so that’s an average of only 11287 steps per day. If I did any less than this I would fail to earn a living or buy food.
conclusion: If I wanted to get fitter by walking more I would have to adopt a target like “walk 15000 steps a day” but I’m not at all convinced that walking more is the answer for me. Walking the same number of steps only faster would seem a better one, but the pedometer doesn’t measure speed or effort, only the number of movements. I think I’ll pass it on to somebody else for a bit.

See more progress on: walk 10,000 steps a day

Schools put science on big screen

Schools put science on big screen: "Young filmmakers are to premier their 10-minute movies at London's Science Museum."

This was a test blog post from the new browser based newsreader Google Reader , re-edited with ecto

pilot exhibition

For the pilot exhibition I want to try and make sure I’ve got all the technology in place, including domain hosting, blog, wiki, ggroup, podcast and feedback mechanism. Then I will be able to concentrate on doing as many research cycles as possible, building up the contacts and content for the main exhibition in March 2006.

See more progress on: decide what my 3rd year exhibition will be like

Still sprouting

I’m still sprouting and learning. Alfalfa and fenugreek are infallible staples, which can be taken to the green leaf stage easily. The chick peas, cow peas and lentils can start to go off and there can be problems with sunflower husks despoiling the sprouts. In fact, I think the seeds I’m using have far too many broken or damages individuals so I shall seek better quality ones.

I tried some dried broad beans from the Turkish shop, and these are really interesting. After soaking for two days and sprouting for at least 7, the green stalks which emerge can be eaten at about 2-3 inches before the young leaves unfurl at which stage they are fresh green and juicy. The rest of the bean and the root looks a bit offputting, so I mashed them up in a food processor to make a sprouted bean paste which was fine. The advantage of these is that fresh broad beans are only available for a short season but sprouting dried ones could be done all through the year.

Yet to try: brocolli, radish, unhulled sesame

See more progress on: eat more raw foods

Carefully

This requires a lot of initial research and thinking to make the right choice. I need to choose a name which will be sensibly descriptive way into the future, easy to remember, not too long, unambiguous, distinctive, interesting.

See more progress on: Register a new domain name

Not much choice really

I was given a pedometer today, along with lots of other people. It says “the first step towards fitness” on the box, and apparantly people should be walking 10,000 steps per day. I don’t own a car, and I have a regular journey to make most days which I think will cover most of the 10,000 anyway. I don’t really want to walk any more than that, it just wears out my joints and makes me feel tired, but what itrigues me slightly, is whether having the pedometer will influence decisions I make about journeys.

See more progress on: walk 10,000 steps a day

Musical Ability: a blessing or a curse

I discovered I liked singing at a very early age, then I was made to take piano lessons which became a chore, so I stopped. A couple of years after, I picked up a guitar, taught myself, and it soon became an obsession. I specialised in 12 string guitar for quite a long time, and then developed a 6 string fingerpicking style which transferred back to the flatpicking. But it’s more about the songs really, than just the guitar technique. It’s opened doors for me but also caused pain. The curse of having a musical capability is that if you try to make a living out of it, much of the joy can get squeezed out of it, but if you don’t then you have to put up with a day job that isn’t really what you’d rather be doing.

See more progress on: Learn to play a musical instrument

Transitional Raw Cuisine

One way of helping to make the transition from eating mostly cooked food to mostly raw, is to introduce more raw ingredients into conventional dishes. You have to be careful this doesn’t become an excuse to eat shepherd’s pie with a few beansprouts thrown in though! The raw food has to be added in right at the end, or better the other way round, perhaps adding a cooked sauce to raw vegetables.
So I made a raw vegetable curry, which was good and satisfying.
I make the masala with chopped onions, celery, garlic, ginger and spices, scarcely browned in olive oil, add curry paste and tomatoes, then turn it into a roux with gram flour. Stir in warm water to make it into a big, shiny curry sauce and simmer until the gram flour has cooked out.
Meanwhile I place pieces of raw cauliflour, mushroom, peas and sprouted lentils into a cold roasting tray or lasagne dish.
Pour the curry sauce over the vegetables, give it a shake and leave for a couple of minutes before serving either alone or with (cooked) rice and salad.
Yum.

See more progress on: eat more raw foods

Distributed Action Research

I’ve pretty much decided to plump for the meta-research angle, looking at Action Research methodologies in the context of online communities. That’s the one on the A4 sheet, which has been fleshed out a little in the learning Set, in the degree title claim, in my voodoopad wiki journal and more so in my head.
I haven’t had any response from LFs yet, but then that also means that no immediate problems have been identified. I’ve even started some initial very small cycles, which wil help to inform the process of refining the proposal.
Next I need to take another look at the Learning Activities for Module 1.

See more progress on: Decide what to research for my third year action enquiry

Draft degree title suffix claim rationale

I’ve only been given a few days to work on this, but I’m sure there’s room for improvement.

Requested degree title:

BA Hons, Learning, Technology, and Research: Information Technology

Justify your choice of preferred award title
1. Describe your work context (max 100 words)

I have worked in the IT industry for nearly 30 years, in various fields including Local Government, Commerce, Transport, Print & Publishing, the Voluntary Sector and Education, most recently as an IT Technician and ICT Subject cordinator in a well-equipped Primary school. With an eye on relocation and possibly remote working, I am currently exploring opportunities to develop and deploy my skills and knowlege of emerging internet based technologies.

2. Describe your intended research focus in support of the award title you are claiming. Say what it is that you will do in your studies that is directly applicable to the award title you want. In this you must justify your choice. (max 250 words)

The activities I have already undertaken towards the degree involved:

Year 1

• investigating the role of an ICT coodinator in a primary school.


• researching internet communities.


• experimenting with open souce software


• An action enquiry project looking at the use of net-connected computers in the classrooms.


• Developing my own use of IT to include Flash animation, Java applets, and web streaming video.


• Evaluating the potential for using weblogs (blogs) for school websites in order to encourage wider participation and multi-authorship.


• The use of Social Bookmarking web services ( Furl) to collaborate with others and automatically generate reference lists.

In the PDP module, I identified my most significant learning of year 1 as being that related to the use and implications of weblogs, RSS and blogging software..

Year 2

• A study of Constructivist learning theory and my own practice centered around the book “LOGO – a guide to learning through programming” by Goodyear (1984)


• The use of ‘webnotes’, a globally editable workspace.


• The authoring of a personal multimedia blog with sound video, digital photography, analysis, hypertext links and distributed conversation.


• The development of a Business Plan based around IT tutoring.


• Installation and use of Personal Wiki software ( Wikidpad) to write up course notes and subsequently convert them into an interlinking website.


• Installation to a remote web host of MediaWiki software and the sucessful facilitation of an online Community of Practice to create an extensive collaborative resource using my installation.


• Exploration of the use of collaborative goalsetting web service ( 43things) to drive SMART tasks, peer review progress and publish entries directly to blog.


• use of online photo-sharing web service ( Flickr) to build Communities of Interest, investigate Folksonomy tagging and publish pictures onto blog and Wiki.


• Invention of a markup language in which to author a playscript in a personal Wiki ( VoodooPad) exported and published as a printable pdf file.


• A case study of the introduction of the Wiki to a Community of Practice.


• use of MySQL and PHP to rationalise the MediaWiki database after Spambot attack.

Year 3

My research focus for the final year will be selected according to criteria to which I have added “must have a strong IT focus”

I will continue to publish all of my coursework and other related activities as I go along in the form of a multi-media website, as well as maintaining an online learning Journal, various other blogs and web services.

See more progress on: update my degree title suffix claim rationale

Research proposal on a sheet of A4 paper - done

I managed to find a sheet of A4 in a cupboard but I don’t have a functioning printer, so please excuse the handwriting. As this is a technology degree, I thought – no need to walk to the postbox, buy a stamp and send the piece of A4 paper to the LF physically, you can use a scanner or a digital camera to capture the writing, attach to an email and then claim credit for innovation.

See more progress on: Write my research proposal on a sheet of A4 paper

tagging goals in 43things

goal tagging has been made easier in 43things, and more worthwhile I think. Now you can see at a glance how other people have tagged the same goal and ‘surf’ the tags. You can also generate a personal tag cloud, and ‘see all goals with the tag….’ So I’ll try to keep it. Oh yes, there’s the link with the same tags on Flickr and technorati too. I must re-adopt that goal about technorati tagging blog posts…

See more progress on: tag all of my things

leaning towards....

As of this morning, although I have not yet completed a systematic process of choosing a research topic I am leaning towards the idea of using the running of an after-school club as a domain to focus within. This could incorporate several of the possible research quetions/ problems/ ideas which came out of the brainstorming and it also seems to fit the selection criteria well. One possible stumbling block might be finding others adults to cooperate with, but all I can do really is to try my best to draw anyone in, then I’d have a clear winner I think.

See more progress on: Decide what to research for my third year action enquiry

Criteria for choosing a research project

• builds on learning identified from Y1+2
• attempts to solve a niggling problem from daily work
• something within my power to make changes
• can be made to fit into an AE cyclical methodology
• bear in mind the need to work towards an exhibition of it
• Must be something I would actually like to do
• important not only to me but to others
• a body of relevant literature to build on

See more progress on: Decide what to research for my third year action enquiry

Sprouting

The most convenient way to increase the availability of raw food ingredients is to grow sprouts. I’ve got this well underway now, with containers, netting, rubber bands and a box to keep the different kinds of seeds together.
The mung beans were problematic, with too many not germinating.
Chick peas need to soak for longer than 24hours.
Alfalfa is a staple
Amaranth is a bit weird.
cow peas are good
lentils also seem reliable.
quinoa still to try
hemp – not enough germination
sesame – doesn’t look hopeful.

See more progress on: eat more raw foods

A good start

I?ve mostly done these:

• remove trackbacks
• change comment system
• review title
• change colour

see http://blog.ultralab.net/%7Eblogger/andy/

so that leaves me with:

• review or remove categories
• move search higher up
• review links

See more progress on: redesign my blog

Remembered

I used PHPMyAdmn to explore the MySQL Database and this reminded me of the syntax for creating queries.
So now I have saved query scripts which will delete all rows from the ‘old’ table where ip-text = whatever, and clean up the recentchanges as well as emptying the archive for deleted pages.
Luckily I remembered eventually that nothing actually gets done until after you issue a “commit” command, and that the tables need to be optimised again in order to release the saved file space.

Low priority task remaining:

I still haven’t worked out which tables the individual page histories are stored in, or why the recent changes won’t go back very far.

See more progress on: Learn MySQL

Working

The glitch with getting the 8Meg ADSL working was caused by the master phone socket unbeknown to me having a microfilter built in to it. This meant that I was trying to plug the modem + filter into a filtered phone socket rather than plug the modem without its associated filter directly into the unfiltered ADSL output.
I worked this out after research led me to this useful site:

http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_bits.htm

See more progress on: Choose a new broadband ISP

Last Minute Changes to Module

Passed on to me from Cohort 1 today, a message from Stephen Powell, which, just 1 week before the deadline, appears to make important changes to a module which has been running all year long.

“Not sure if this has been covered elsewhere so I will say it again.

1. The CBSP template has had a slight change. Previously at the top of the self assessment template it said ‘The Intended Learning Outcomes for this module are…’ It should have read The Assessment Criteria for this module are….

2. Note that ‘Select and negotiate appropriate tasks and meet learning objectives’ self assessmnet is about finding evidence from any of the level 2 modules. It does not refer to just this module.”

See more progress on: finish my final report of the year

Bulldog

Bulldog appear to have offered me:

unlimited 8Meg broadband for £17.50 pm .
£1 for the first month, no connection fee, no contract.
a free wireless router.

See more progress on: Choose a new broadband ISP

Annet - Bird Sanctuary

Annet is one of the largest uninhabited members of the Isles of Scilly, 28 miles off teh coast from Land’s End. It’s designated a bird sanctuary because of the Puffins, Manx Shearwater and other seabirds which make nests or burrows on the cliifs. Landing is normally prohibited, but I was with a small group led by a leading local ornithologist who had obtained special prmission. The best part was looking down from the top of the cliffs at an enormous colony of kittiwakes.

See more progress on: Annet

There's a song about it.

After I went to Primrose Hill for the first time, as soon as I got back I wanted to learn and record Loudon Wainwright III’s song about it. My version is not particularly original, but it has the edge that I did used to be a busker myself.
download mp3

See more progress on: Primrose Hill

blog

remove trackbacks
change comment system
review title
review or remove categories
change colour
move search higher up
* review links

See more progress on: redesign my blog

Tested

I tested it, broke it, got kicked out a couple of times….
Some things have been half fixed but it’s still a bit broken and they’re releasing it live soon. And I’m just an amateur, wait til the professionals arrive!

See more progress on: Help test Tootietails: the next new thing from The Robot Co-op

Languages and versions

Ok so this is only a test version and there will be future developments but some things have to be got right very early on.
I notice there are at least French, German and Spanish versions of 43things ( fr.43things.com, de.43things.com, es.43things.com ) and I’m concerned that what we are testing here will develop into en.43places.com if not us.43places.com .

I already made a suggestion about translations, which would be the ideal way to go, but until that becomes a possibility it’s vital to have multilingualism built in all the way through.

So what is needed?

• One 43places, not multiple versions


• Alternative names for places leading to exactly the same pages.


• Automatic Flagging of which language an entry or goal is written in based on the writer’s default language, but changeable


• Options to filter entries by language when reading, but with ‘all’ as the default.

See more progress on: Multilingual version

Make a taglist type diagram

First I need to find out what these types of diagrams are called, the ones with words of different sizes as used by all of the social tagging systems like Flickr, deli.cio.us and 43. I’m sure I’ve seen a web service which creates them mentioned on a blog somewhere, but I don’t know what to search for so I need to ask the right people or get lucky.

Then I need to jot down all the keywords which mean something to me, find some way to weight them and generate the diagram. I could always do it manually I suppose, but then that would be more difficult to update and I’d prefer to learn something useful along the way.

See more progress on: Make a taglist type diagram of my learning

One week left

My internet connection gets cut off soon, and frankly I’m not that bothered. If I haven’t finished the last ultraversity module by then I can upload it from work. Who needs broadband in the summer holidays?

See more progress on: Choose a new broadband ISP

Registration

In order to complete Year 3, first I have to register and pay for it. This entails undertaking a whole series of smart tasks and comprises a substantial project all of its own which rightfully should be worth about 15 credits towards the degree. Anybody who is struggling right now is quite likely to fall at this hurdle.

See more progress on: Complete Year 3 of the degree

How to survive?

It’s a race against time. If I survive until May 2006 then I can redesign my lifestyle to spend less time on these unhealthy computers. But if I’ve already gone completely bonkers by then, I could make all the wrong decisions – if there are any. When I die, I would like to leave my mind to science for use as a case study.

See more progress on: Survive

for places I've been and want to

I’ve added Tasmania as a place I want to go to, and that’s turned the whole of Australia Orange even though I’ve been to Queensland which would normally make Australia blue.
I don’t want Australia to be divided up into states and no longer count as one country like US and Canada because I don’t think that’s right, so I propose a third colour for where both apply – maybe a different shade of blue.

See more progress on: add a third colour

Border

Whilst touring Alberta in a Campervan truck RV thingy, I accidentally strayed across border in the middle of the the Rocky Mountains somewhere. So I spent a few minutes in British Columbia, then turned around and went back to the main road through the National Park from Banff to Jasper.

See more progress on: British Columbia

Not in Summer perhaps

I went to a tourist resort called Bodrum and the best things were the boat trips, in fact that was the only bearable way to stay cool in the hot summer months.

See more progress on: Turkey

Midnight Sun in Tromso

I stayed for a few nights in June and saw the midnight sun. It never gets dark at all, the sun just dips behind the mountains for a short while then comes up again.

See more progress on: Tromsoe

conveyor belt sushi

I’d like to sit at the conveyor belt and watch all the nice food going past, then pick out the most tempting morsels.
There’s one in Liverpool Street station which I’ve walked past and looked in at several times now, but not yet been and gone and done it.

See more progress on: Moshi Moshi

Climate Change

I’d like to go to the Maldives before they become the first country to disappear beneath the rising ocean.

See more progress on: Maldives

Overnight

I can’t say I’ve really visited Japan as I only stayed overnight to connect a flight from the UK to Australia, but there was enough time to take a walk around the roads near the Hotel, which was a bus ride away from the Airport.
I looked at the roof tiles and the trees, and saw a group of council workers taking a break from sweeping the streets to practise their golf swings.

See more progress on: Japan

King Arthur

For some reason although I grew up in Cornwall and go back there quite a lot, I’ve never actually been to Tintagel – home of King Arthur’s castle. It’s probably for the same reason I never went up the Eiffel Tower all the time I lived in Paris. When you live somewhere, you just don’t always get around to doing the popular tourist things – with the exception of London of course, where you have to make some kind of use out of the fact that you live there.
Anyway, This is an entry on the trial 43places site which I’ve added in under UK > Cornwall rather than UK > England > Cornwall in order to test how the system deals with the inevitable conflict which arises over hierarchical taxonomies, especially with anything to do with the National Question.

See more progress on: Tintagel

ILM2-07 LA6 Hot Stitching

The main problem I’m facing getting this module finished now is the heat. My workstaion at home is upstairs where all the heat collects and I’ve got the windows open and the fan on but it’s still too hot to think straight. I’m sure the conclusions would benefit from coming back after a few days but that’s not an option at this stage. I’ve got my data, findings, conclusions and reflections all mixed up in the LAs so the hot stitching is far from straightforward. I’m reduced to consoling myself with the thought that when the time runs out, it’s all over.

See more progress on: ILM207 LA6 Stitching

ILM2-05 LA3 data

After the problem with extracting some Wiki data I’ve now found problems with analysing mailing list data as well. This is because I don’t have a pop3 email client set up on the Mac, and gmail search results are not as convenient as having individual messages in your own database because of the way in which gmail presents its results only in a threaded view, without any option to sort by date or by author. How I miss Forte Agent!
I’m not too fed up about this though, because finding problems with the data collection method is a valid finding in itself, especially now that the emphasis for next year seems to be shifting towards researching the process of research itself rather than doing anything useful. If I decide to pursue my own methodology of ‘Distributed Action Research’ ( see report9 ) then it will stand me in good stead to have uncovered these problems in year 2.
The findings from the data which I have obtained so far are looking good though – the traffic on the COP mailing list has actually increased substantially since the Wiki was introduced, while only a minority portion of the increase can be attributed to discussions about the wiki. This throws up the question of whether it may be possible to conclude that there is a causal link between the vigor of the COP and the success of the Wiki project.

See more progress on: ILM205 LA3 analyse mail and wiki data

Subscriptions

I’ve noticed that 43things have now added the functionality so that you can subscribe to each others’ activities on the website quite easily. It’s quite prominent in the right hand side of members’ pages, a bit like adding contacts in Flickr. It may not be worth doing if you already use RSS, but it’s probably worth trying out.

See more progress on: use 43things to develop collaborative Ultraversity work

Why learn mySQL?

This has arisen out of a setback when when trying to analyse MediaWiki Recent Changes data.
It would be much better in the long run to set up my own saved queries which directly interrogate the MySQL database and provide me with the analysis I require.
My web hosting service provides a web interface to MySQL and I have had some previous experience with Oracle SQL so it’s a realistic goal.
Interesting that when I added ‘learn MySQL’ as a goal on 43 things I was told “3 people are willing to help you with this goal. Read their advice or ask them a question.”

See more progress on: Learn MySQL

ILM2-05 analyse wiki data - unexpected setback

I tried setting Recent Changes to display all the edits ever made but it won’t list further back than 12th April – this is an unexpected setback!

I know the data is still on the MySQL database, because the history for Main Page will list edits going back to 30th January.

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to learn enough about the syntax of MySQL query language to be able to construct my own direct searches of the database, so I’m stuck without being able to retrieve some of the data which I had assumed I had access to when I framed the question. So how can I get around this?

Well I do have the quantitative data which was compiled for report 9, which covers the period 31st Jan – March 12th

And I could still gather total number of edits data for the last two months.

13April-12thMay

13thMay-12thJune

and compare it to the month 13thFeb-12thMarch. This would give me a very good comparison between how much the Wiki is being edited now compared to the period in the first flush of activity.

and from the Special Pages statistics I can work out an average number of edits per month since the Wiki began as well. Then I could draw a histogram diagram which shows the bulk for those periods being depicted ( as well as the gaps) along an accurate timescale.

See more progress on: ILM205 LA3 analyse mail and wiki data

Asking the right questions

I spend some time thinking about how I was going to analyse the data before gathering it. Then I sent the draft questions for peer review. This is what I have now:

3. Gather data from the mailing list and Wiki. Design questions about the data and answer them through analysis.

A list of questions about the data

The essential research question is to investigate the effect of the Wiki on the COP, so with this in mind:

Quantitative

• How many edits have been made month by month since the Wiki was set up.

• Which pages have been edited the most and viewed the most. Which the least.

• How many posts were made to the email list during the same period.

• How many posts were made per month during the period immediately before the Wiki was set up, and during the same period as the WIKI but for the previous year.

• How many active posters in the mailing list duing the same period

• How many people editing the Wiki

• How many posts on the mailing list are about the Wiki , what percentage does this represent.

Qualitative

• What do people say about the Wiki?

• What issues have arisen?

• Which type of pages are working well, and which not so well.

• What have I learned by talking to COP members at F2F meetings?

So now I need to press on with some answers

See more progress on: ILM2 LA3 - analyse mail and wiki data

open ended

I seem to be finding appropriate literature all the time now, sometimes it just arrives in my RSS..

Time to stop reading any wider, concentrate on the most relevant extracts and get on with writing up.

See more progress on: ILM2-03 – LA2 Research Literature

Miss Genie's Trip

As an act of blogvangelism, I've helped to set up a travel blog, Miss Genie's Trip so that the year 4 children can follow online Miss Genie's trip to the Australian Outback which they have been researching, writing and painting about with her.

Self Portraits

It was great to observe a resource which I created on the fly during a lesson a while back, now being put to expert use by our new Reception class teacher in the ICT suite. These four and five year old children were shown how to navigate to the page, and then to scroll down exploring the various self portraits. They each chose their favourite one, left it visible on the screen and then discussed which type of drawing tools had probably been used for each picture, relating it back to previous classroom activity with paints and charcoal.
selfportraits.html

Rough and ready, but workable.

I’ve learned how to do this using the JavaScript RSS Box Viewer 1.0RC. Found via Shirley’s blog

Example:
http://frankieroberto.com/dad/ultrastudents/andyroberts/

See more progress on: learn how to include an RSS feed on part of a web page

Findings

Yesterday I did a bloglines search for “wiki +COP” and this came up with a posting by Sebastien Paquet ( Seb’s mailbox )
http://sebsmailbox.blogspot.com/2004/06/communities-of-practice-for-educators.html
which led to http://www.emacswiki.org/cw/MailingListThenWiki
on the Community Wiki which is a kind of meta-wiki which focuses on the community aspect – just the kind of thing I’m investigating.

Mission Statement:
“This is a wiki about communities both online and offline: Management, creativity, teaching, learning, conflicts, mediation, security, freedom. We also have lots of tech talk about wikis and other tools used by online communities, but that’s just the current bias.”

The Community Wiki seems to have spun off from Meatball, which is a good sign I think. There’s also a CommunityWiki blog which hasn’t been updated since February, but had a useful article about WikiSpam – a subject which has been on my mind too, from time to time.

See more progress on: ILM2-03 – LA2 Research Literature

Literature Research

LA2. Research websites, blogs and conference papers to identify emerging opinion about the usefulness of Wikis to COPS.

First thing is to set up a FURL category, which I’ve called Wiki2

RSS: http://www.furl.net/members/andyrobts/rss.xml?topic=Wiki2&count=25

See more progress on: ILM2-03 – LA2 Research Literature

ILM2 - version 3

version 3

Name: Andy Roberts SID:9999999

Award: BA Learning Technology Research ( Information Communication Technology )

Title: Further research into ? Introducing a WIKI to a Community of Practice?
Brief description:

My Action Enquiry2 module looked at the process of creating a Wiki for a COP and the first few weeks of activity. This ILM unit will focus on an analysis of the data which has accumulated over a longer period to date, as well as attempting to research other examples through conversation with online faciliators and by reviewing the latest literature.

Assessment criteria focus: All

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the module I will be able to:

1 Design, write and modify an ILM plan in plain text format.

2 Analyse several months? data from a mailing list and Wiki.

3 Review the latest significant literature emerging about the topic.

4 Engage Online facilitators in discussion about the use of Wikis for COPS.

5 Analyse data from 2,3 and 4.

6 Reflect on conclusions with regard to future practice.

7 Evaluate and reflect upon the ILM planning process and outcomes.

Learning Activities

1. Write an ILM plan in plain text format and share it in the Learning Community and elsewhere. Change it as necessary.

2. Research websites, blogs and conference papers to identify emerging opinion about the usefulness of Wikis to COPS.

3. Gather data from the mailing list and Wiki. Design questions about the data and answer them through analysis.

4. Share findings with Meta-COPS and Meta-WIKI communities, with a view to soliciting reports of others experience.

5. Reflect on findings from 2,3,4 and draw conclusions.

6. Reflect on the ILM design, negotiation and implementation process.

Product for Assessment:

A report consisting of contents along the lines of

1) Literature review
2) Summary and findings from activities 3, 4 and 5
3) Main Conclusions supported by data in appendix.
4) Brief conclusions about the overall ILM process

See more progress on: ILM2-01 ? negotiate ILM

A Fresh Look

I’ve been really struggling with this ‘negotiate ILM’ task, so now I’ve taken a fresh look at the whole proposal and decided to go about it in a different way.

Rather than seeing ‘updating the previous findings in the light of new data’ as a means to the end (dissemination and validation), I think I should make this the main focus of the module.

The Wiki was born in February and the AE written up in March, after only a short period of existance. I now have data from the COP and WIKI which covers a longer period (to date) and can be subjected to a more thorough analysis which should reveal deeper and more accurate conclusions.

So the activity will be reduced in scale, and the report focussed on data and analysis, with far less on preparation and process. I shall dispense with the ‘rewrite for a different audience’ objective and instead attempt to engage the meta-cops in conversation about the previous findings. Any data forthcoming from that can then be analysed alongside my own data. I shall also research and review any emerging literature on the topic of using Wikis for COPS.

Now to rewrite the ILM proposal, and begin work.

See more progress on: ILM2-01 – negotiate ILM

one last push

After a pleasantly productive weekend now I just need to avoid accumulating too many distractions for the next 15 hours and make sure there is enough time left to finish off the last few short tasks in order to polish off my submission for the deadline tonight.

• careful proofreading and spellchecking of the main piece. 1 hr


• Harvardising short bibliography therein. 1/2 hr


• Re-furling items for the wider bibliography and exporting 1hr

If there’s any time left I can then flesh out some of the PDP comments a little further and work on the discography. Then it’s all over, 2/3rds of year 2 completed – through the pain barrier and out the other side.

See more progress on: LITWS01 get through the module

Manor Park website

Oh bums, I?ve just realised that with the loss of my broadband supplier I?ll have to move the manor park website as well, since it?s hosted at http://www.manorpark.homechoice.co.uk/

and that will break the links from sites such as this one. Perhaps I?ll just shift it onto a

combination of Flickr and the Manor Park blog

See more progress on: Choose a new broadband ISP

By June 30th

My current ISP will cut me off on June 30th, blaming BT for not supporting their legacy VOD network, so I have to find a new one and the transition won’t be easy since the release code system thingy, (a bit like the one for transferring a mobile number to a new network) doesn’t apply to moves from videonetworks to normal broadband.

I’ve been with the old one for several yeaars, and when they started up it was by far the best available service in the London area, sending streaming video to the TV simultaneously with a genuine 1Mb intenet commection all over the twisted pair of copper wires which were always used on older telephone exchanges. But for the last year or so it became expensive compared to the competition, so I had intended to stick with them only until after the online degree course finishes in May 2006.

Now I have to arrange for an alternative, including allowing for an indefinite break in service sometime before June 30th, which could become extremely inconvenient.

The first I’ll look at is Bulldog.

http://www.bulldogbroadband.com/

and it probaby makes sense to consider escaping from the BT landline quarterly standing charge as well, not to mention switching electricity, gas, water, banking, insurance, savings, travelcard, subscriptions, etc etc

Modern life is rubbish.

See more progress on: Choose a new broadband ISP

Let me explain

LITWS01 - little progress, deadline approaching

The plan to get through the module by doing a little bit every day is yeilding alarmingly slow progress. It’s not a good time for it, and frankly it’s a dreadfully designed module in the first place. It’s like having to undergo a personal OFSTED inspection by the man in a suit from Tesco. My peers are already finished or well near it and I don’t feel there’s anywhere I can get relevent help with it. So I’m going to have to spend the entire Bank Holiday working on it by myself.

The best thing would be if it rains solidly for all three days.

See more progress on: LITWS01 get through the module

ILM2-01- ILM SMART

1) Find the pro-forma – same as ILM so that shouldn’t be difficult.
2) Convert it to Plain Text – as per unresolved discussions in FC
3) Fill it in as far as is possible for an emergent plan…..
4) Post to Learning Group.

By the end of April, which is um – Saturday.

See more progress on: ILM2-01 – negotiate ILM

Sheepgraze1

Sheepgraze1, originally uploaded by LindaH.

It's not fair. I really need to be able to spend some time in a place like that this year or else I shall perish.

Move the old PC

First I need to disentangle and transfer old email, ftp and news accounts whilst I can easily go online with it.

Then move it to the new location.

Advantages:

easier access to some PC only programs, such as Picasa, ACDSee and Paintshop.

Somewhere to work with a change of scenery and without Internet distractions.

File transfer can be by pendrive and USB HD.

See more progress on: Set up my old PC as standalone

Next stage

It’s become clear that just inviting people to join a team doesn’t really do much. Some will sign up out of curiosity but then for whatever reason don’t pursue it any further.
What has developed for this next module though is that there appear to be three of us committed to using this tool directly for our own specific goal setting, that’s three people doimg the same module at the same time with one LF still subscribed, and I found it interesting that the query about result dates, which for some reason could happen here in a way that perhaps wouldn’t have done in FC, did have the effect of feeding back an answer to everyone else.

See more progress on: use 43things to develop collaborative Ultraversity work

LITWS02 - review PDP

I’ve had a quick look at, realised that I have hardly looked at it since it was created last year and feel as if I have acheived hardly anything as intended.

Perhaps a longer & deeper look will reveal more actual progress.

Meanwhile, I am considering:

• Was the PDP too ambitious in the number and amount of goals set?

• The direction of any learning has largely been led by external circumstances and the prescription of events including the degree course, rather than by my own PDP. Is this inevitable or could I do more to take control myself?

• My PDP for next year should probably comprise of nothing more than

1) Survive


2) Complete Year 3 of the degree

See more progress on: LITWS02 - review last year’s PDP

LITWS01 - daily plan

I’ve thought of a way I may be able to get through this dreadful “Learning In The Workplace 2” module without wanting to hide under the duvet for a month or dive under the Ipswich Express as it hurtles through Manor Park station at 07.55a.m.

It’s a very simple plan, I’m going to a little bit towards it every day – even if it’s just to write a short paragraph or set up a template, and then whatever I’ve acheived by the time the deadline comes around, that’s what I’ll hand in. If it’s nothing like what the module inventor imagined when dreaming it up then tough. If I fail to sound convincingly enthusiastic about the latest management fad then that’s because I’m not.

See more progress on: LITWS01 get through the module

update

It’s been a while.

My report for assessment has been submitted and I expected to put this to one side for a while. Because of the questionaire data, I posted the link to ultrastudents and this had two effects. One student wanted to be anonymised, so I converted from opt-out to opt-in, and Nancy White wrote to me wanting to blog my report saying “Andy, this report is a GREAT read! Is it ok to share this URL publically? I’d like to blog it.”

So my plan to write a seperate findings report and post it to onfac and comprac as part of my ILM2 got kind of pre-empted except that it didn’t happen yet. I decided that didn’t matter but now it’s a bit of a mess.

Anyway, I posted the link to the Ultraversity Firstclass community as well, for what its worth, and nobody is interested there, so it’s back to plan A, I suppose.

When I get back from holiday I’ll write an “Independent Learning Module” plan for writing up the findings and taking it further. The expected Learning Outcomes will have to be unspecified in oreder to allow for the unexpected.

See more progress on: SMART10 - publish

gherkin entrance 

pelican

pelican, originally uploaded by Andyrob.

SMART10 - problems of success?

Problems of success?

The introduction of the wiki has gone much better than I’d dared to hope. There’s been no resistance whatsoever, no complaints, misunderstandings or anything negative at all really. The revised introduction method ran smoothly, there’s a steady flow of useful edits being made and now the COP members are talking amongst themselves about how to make best use of it, what to do with innaccurate information, how to identify themselves there. In other words they have comfortably adopted the space as their own, which is exactly the intention. So I can now take on the role less as facilitator and more as an ordinary contributer whilst also making observations about the relationship between wiki and COP.

So that’s a very nice situation to be in, for once. What do I do with it?

Help! I don’t have any problems to reflect on!

Going back to Bob Dick’s hotseat, he said of my early proposal – “I hope you find some way of publishing the eventual outcomes. I think many people will be interested in your experience.” So now I am starting to think about how I can publish my little success story so that I can pass on the positive lessons learned and perhaps help others to adapt some of the findings to their own situation if it has any parallels.

I’m not sure that the assessment product is going to be the best vehicle to do this with, although the intention of the AE tool is probably that it should enable publication of findings. It occurs to me that meeting the assessment criteria and publishing clear findings are two very different writing tasks, although there should be some overlap. Is there any previous experience of undergraduate research publication?

See more progress on: SMART10 - publish

almost silent

When I switch over from the PC to the Mac mini I really notice the quiet. One of my goals is to make decent quality home recordings of my music and I think I’ll be able to use the MAC and garageband software to do it without going to all the trouble of having a laptop connected to a file server in another rooom or anything so expensive as that.

See more progress on: get a Mac mini

delay

I think I’ll delay the ukcider questionnaire for a few days.

I noticed that there’d been a pause in new edits to the wiki, with nothing for 4 days so I posted a message to the community to give it a little gentle nudge and explain a bit more. This gentle edging in of the new wiki seems to be working fine. Contrary to expectations, there hasn’t been a single objection, criticism or even “but what if..” type question. That’s not to say there won’t be some yet to come…

The nudge produced a flurry of new edits, some just fiddling about but that’s fine. There are now 70 pubs listed in the cider pub guide, which means it’s getting towards the point of becoming a demonstrablly useful resource already and not just a research project.

So I’ll leave things to run along for a few days and get the questionnaire ready for next weekend instead now.

See more progress on: SMART08 - questionnaire

SMART Tasks

I've been using 43things to track SMART tasks in relation to one Ultraversity Module, and it seems to have worked very well for me. It helped me to organise my own plans much better than if I'd simply maintained them offline in a document somewhere, and it allowed comments from collaborators in a way that doesn't happen so easily with other peer review processes.

So that's just one way in which 43things seems to be working well so far.

I wonder what else might be achieved by spelling out goals in here?

See more progress on: use 43things to develop collaborative Ultraversity work

SMART08 - questionnaire

Thinking about getting more data, the idea of a quuestionnaire seems apt. I tried this in year1 report2 with some success, and it doesn't take too much time to effect. Rather than ask for volunteers and then send them individual questionnaires this time I think I would just post it to the mailling list and gather up any public or private responses.

Plan

1) design some questions, draft the email.

eg Had you ever heard of a wiki before?
what do you think of the idea
Have you looked at it - if so how many pages?
have you made an edit yet?
if not yet - do you think you would ever edit it to make a correction or add some useful information perhaps?
Any suggestions
etc

2) Peer review, or prototype to make sure it makes sense.
3) choose a date - around March 1st.

The timing needs to allow for a fair number of people to have already looked at the wiki, but allow enough time to wait for responses and consider them in time for module due date.

4) Collect data and consider what it means


The Questionnaire will not be merely collecting data, but actively publicising and explaining the wiki, thus adding to the "Action" not just the enquiry.

See more progress on: SMART08 - questionnaire

SMART07 plan

Update the old site so that it shows a nice looking prominent link to the wiki from the main page, ( duplicated on other pages - so library item ) using the 4 pens graphic I think.

Listing pages can be left as they are with an explanation that content is now being developed on the wiki. The old pages remain as a historical document to show what the wiki grew from, and as search engine fodder. By doing this there's no need to revise the old Flash navigation bar for now, so saving time to concentrate on Action Enquiry.

SMART? Yes by Tuesday, I can do it when avoiding SMART06 :-)

The website gets a lot of hits from people with relevant search strings so there will be some peoeple who arrive by this route o the wiki. Eventually some might stay, set up usernames and interact without ever bothering to join the mailing list. So then we will have two slightly different centres of gravity, or possibly even two communities - which might be investigated in a future project.

See more progress on: SMART07 - update old site

SMART05.2 - revised plan

5.2.1) Review the wiki after considering Evan's views, consolidating pages, working on content and form. Make sure there are 3 good quality pages to show.

5.2.2) Offer to make one "user" page.

5.2.3) Start referring to the wiki and asking for opinions in the cop.

By Wednesday.

See more progress on: SMART05 - plan the next phase

SMART06 - write the Literature Review

I have three types of literature:

* ACTION ENQUIRY theory - types of AE - I'm using 1st person and collaborative action research.
* COPs Theory - blog entry pending
* Wiki theory - from Ward Cunningham to Wikipedia and onwards

try to find more linking 2 and 3.

using Furl to catalogue references

Specific:
write 300 words on each subtype, 1000 total.
Timed:
must be done by half way through half term.
Relevant
see discussion on Gina's blog
achievable
yes but....
Realistic
Depends if other things take priority. It may be more important to push on with writing encouragment and explanations for the wiki community at that time.
Measurable
Yes, when it's done there'll be a link to the lit review from my coursework site.

Hey! that's not SMART it's STRARM !?!

See more progress on: SMART06 Write a literature review for the action enquiry

SMART06

I have three types of literature:

* ACTION ENQUIRY theory - types of AE - I'm using 1st person and collaborative action research.
* COPs Theory - blog entry pending
* Wiki theory - from Ward Cunningham to Wikipedia and onwards

try to find more linking 2 and 3.

using Furl to catalogue references

See more progress on: Write my literature review for my action enquiry

ultraversity teams collaboration

This goal was created so that we can learn better how the concept of "teams" and shared goals works withing 43things and to produce an RSS feed of 43things activity by Ultraversity people. So let's see how far we can push it :-)

Feel free to invite more individuals to the same goal, I think there may well be some people who will appreciate being introduced to this useful.

See more progress on: use 43things to develop collaborative Ultraversity work

Change of plan

One of the features of Action Research is flexibility, because we are dealing with real living situations and people which cannot be frozen, re-run or predicted. So plans are not set in stone, they can be amended as events unfold, and that's what happened just now.

The plan was to draft an initial explanatory message, deliberate upon it for a while, and then post it to the community. Instead what has happened is that the topic has arisen naturally in others' conversations which suggested to me that the time to begin explaining what i am doing is straight away. It just means doing some of the plan in a different order, that's all.

So here's a copy of my messages which effectively initiate the enquiry into the effect of bringing a wiki to an existing COP.

1)

I've been thinking about the possibilities for collating this kind of information (and more) together as a group quite a lot recently, and I think I've worked out how best to do it. I'll explain more about it when I'm ready in a few days time but if anybody feels they'd like to get involved in helping to steer a project for getting the ukcider world-editable reference website underway, then do please contact me.

Andy


2)

Hi John,

You asked what help am I looking for?
As I said I shall explain better in a couple of days time but the kind of help I am probably looking for is a small team of UK based cider enthusiasts who are interested in discussing the formatting of ukcider related lists and other information, the detailed development of an open group copyright policy, spending a little time watching over areas for which they have personal knowledge/expertise, and most importantly helping to build a growing participation from other members and website vistors. The lucky volunteers will also be co-researchers in a small part of my degree project, for which I have managed to negotiate credit for doing ukcider related work :-)

I don't think I need the specific skills of programmers or traditional website designers, but those of librarians, community facilitators or reference book publishers might be handy. Anybody who has ever joined in on a wiki based community would be most welcome. In fact anybody who has even heard of a wiki and has time for the idea might step forward.

It's all about trying to build the maximum amount of cooperation to build a growing pool of useful and up-to-date information for the good of the cause. I believe that, for real cider and perry, this group is best placed to pull together the biggest range of sources and make this a reality.

All of this could be discussed right here on the list, and maybe it should. On the other hand it might swamp the lowish volume friendly and directly relevant discussions which we tend to have here, if the ukcider list is suddenly inundated with posts about the structure, classification and formatting of lists. So what does the group think about that?

Andy


So now of course I am anxious to see what sort of response (if any) I get.


So in this critical stage I am acting upon my plan, but also interacting intuitively, reaching out for collaborators and collecting data all at the same time.

See more progress on: SMART05 - plan the next phase

Queensland

Wonderful country, I stayed on an uninhabited island, snorkled with reef fish, shot yabbis, saw platypusses, climbed a tropical rainforest mountain and drove thousands of miles on deserted one track roads. Good job it was winter.

See more progress on: Visit Australia

UKC

I worked at University of Kent, Canterbury for a few years, doing administrative systems analysis/programming. It was a nice job, and I quite liked being situated on the University campus with access to the library, college facilities and plenty of nature in the surounding woods and walks.

See more progress on: work at a college or university

Phases

Phase 1 was a "1st person action enquiry" which involved preparing the required technology and investigating SMART tasks with 43things.

Since it was successful, I now know that I should be able to proceed with Phase 2, which attempts to answer questions about ommunity members attitude to the idea of building up common resources and knowledge on the Wiki.

Phase ONE needed to be very flexible and barely planned, since it was an exploration into the unknown for me. Phase TWO I think, needs to be more carefully planned if it is to produce valid results as part of the Action Research process.

So the next task is to tidy up after Phase 1 -

* fully transfer out from the old host
* check permissions on the config diirectory, tidy up /wiki
* minimal wiki skinning

And then

* Plan Phase two

planning phase two will involve

* seeding the Wiki with an illustrative initial structure
* drafting an initial message which broaches the project to the community (show this to peers)
* thinking about data collection
* identify non-members who could also be contacted - DM, OhV
* deciding on a few definite goals, research questions
* identifying more possible SMART tasks for phase two

so , quite a big task altogether. I shall give myself until Saturday 5th Jan to complete this planning cycle, and then launch the main part.

See more progress on: SMART05 - plan the next phase

Albert Hall

I have dozens of the cassettes, bought from asian music shops in East London, but now I listen to the music through last.fm which is the best radio station ever since it plays roughly what I tell it to!

I went to two Nusrat concerts in London, one was at Wembley town hall and the other at the Albert Hall. Both excellent.

He's dead now, of course.

See more progress on: listen to more Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

getting closer

I spent 2 or 3 hours working intensively on Sunday morning, completing SMART03 and then tackling the next steps towards getting the wiki up and running on the new host.

* I saved the account details in gmail and private furl.
* I set up a new ftp connection in Dreamweaver.
* uploaded all the mediaWiki subdirectories and files to the new host.
* logged in to the dc-hosting control panel
* experimented with the file manager therein. This is a tricky tool, when choosing a file from the directory tree-structure on the left it doesn't always seem to tally with the one pointed to by the control panel ( add read/write/exe permissions etc ) on the right. It took many attempts to make the /config directory writable.

*But once I succeeded, the php script which configures the wiki did actually start to run.

That was a breakthrough.

The script then demanded answers to questions about the mySQL database

it took several attempts to even find the place for managing this part of the hosting, but once discovered it is easier to recognise another time. I created a database called "wiki" and a user for it, then put these details into the config script. After a few goes, I got it right and the script ran right through, telling me that my wiki is now installed - and I can click ::here:: to start using it.

Another breakthrough, even if clicking there does only result in an error message from the browser - "ukcider.co.uk not found".

Since then I have wondered whether it's todo with the delay in DNS transference, although that doesn't make total sense it's the next thing to rule out. So tomnorrow will tell. If that's not it, then I have to look at the database creation, config parameters and file permissions again, uninstall and re-install everything and try again looking out for references to the domain which may be absolute instead of relative or something like that.

So I was disappointed that I didn't get it working today, but I suppose I have made quite a lot of progress really.

See more progress on: SMART04 - install MediaWiki at dc-hosting

technical support

I managed to run ahead of myself a little, so the first entry is about what I have already done rather than defining the task.

I had a useful discussion with frankie over some fine belgian beers on saturday night, and learned some important concepts. For instance, I now understand that the wiki pages are not held as generated html files at all, but as data or tables within the MySQL database. The wiki installation script needs to be pointed at that database.

The MySQL database server is a seperate entity from the Apache web server. I can create more than one MySQL database, and also create users of them. This somehow ties in with the wiki users

If you order a big bottle of champagne style brut beer, make them get the glasses ready before they open the bottle.

See more progress on: SMART04 - install MediaWiki at dc-hosting

Done

I checked out dc-hosting and discovered that the professional bronze account should be more than adequate for my future needs, so I bought one for £47 a year. I know it's possible to get media wiki working there because frankie has done it, and I watched a little as he installed evan's movable type blog there ( not so sucessfully, it turned out )

I've also done a "partial transfer out" from 10quid and pointed the old domain at the new hosts DNS servers. This will actually happen at 0400 or 0800 tomorrow morning, but I still have to go back and do the "full transfer out" sometime, otherwise they'll try and charge me for domain name renewall later in the year.

See more progress on: SMART 03 - find a new hosting service for the website

Yangtze Gorges trip

I did this in 2000 and it was a wonderful trip. I had the photos developed onto CD, then made some of my first web pages about it.

http://www.yangtsegorges.ukgateway.net/

I'd love to go back when the dam is completely finished to see how the landscape has changed.

See more progress on: Visit China

a pile of recently shot haggis. 

Define Task

Specific

1) research Moin Moin
2) download files for installation
3) Find out what's needed to install it and if possible go ahead
4) Record findings and progress as a learning activity web page.

Measurable
YES, when the web page is completed, I know I?ve done it

Achievable
YES, even if I find out it's not possible, this completes the task I set myself.

Relevant
YES, If this works then it's the simplest solution and enables me to get up and running sooner so I can concentrate on the community research.

Timed
I'll do this and more this weekend.

See more progress on: SMART 02 - try uploading a moinmoin Wiki