A day in the [online] life...

Looks like UMW is getting ITunesU. And while I’ve had nothing to do with the decision process, and I really don’t think it is going to make any significant difference in our environment, I would like to lay out a few quick reasons why I think this is a bad (or would irrelevant be more apropos?) move.

1) Don’t trust anything without a URL! ITunesU has no URLs, isn’t that suspect? Matt Gold pointed me to this post recently that does a nice job of suggesting how the disappearance of URLs is killing the web. Here’s a pull quote from the article: “The rise of the ‘app store mentality’ is a direct attack on the web, and on the very nature of free discovery and choice built upon URL-based hyperlinks.” Amen.

2) What’s more, ITunesU is built on the transactional logic of web design. You go somewhere because you want something very specific, usually to buy—like a song or TV episode. What does it say that most of our content delivery systems are framed according to a logic that is being used for selling goods?

3) Building on that, ITunesU is not a place for community, context, or collaboration. What is interesting about the web is not that you can get something, but that you can participate and dialogue around something. We have built a community at UMW with web-based technologies that is not about simply getting something, but about discovering something and following a series of connections and exposing a community of ideas that would otherwise be locked behind a wall. ITunesU is just that kind of wall we are trying to avoid.

4) The nefarious logic that everyone is doing it. What is this compulsion to be “there”? Who cares? People are often wrong, especially at institutions when in comes to content delivery systems. ITunesU on campus is really no different from bringing Taco Bell or Starbucks on campus, another sign of the corporatization of the university space that is running rampant in our moment. Why aren’t we uploading this stuff to the Internet Archive, as Leigh Blackall suggested at OpenEd this Summer? We have no soul or spine when it comes to “just saying no to the gentrification of our campuses.”

5) Finally, and specifically to UMW, we will have so few resources in iTunesU, so now you can add meager to decontextualized. We are a teaching and learning college that has taken on the title of University for appearances sake. Our strength is in the relationships between faculty and students in and out of the classroom. We do not produce video lectures by top researchers, that is not who we are–why pretend? We don’t have a huge ongoing demand for podcasts and/or other media. We have an engaged community centered around an academic space for open praxis around teaching and learning. ITunesU is not a teaching and learning tool, it is a delivery mechanism that is not only overkill for our purposes, but anathema to the open web.

So there you have it. I know I am right, but comments are welcome anyway

Related posts

• Twourse Design (7)
• Course Mangement Systems as the Gentrification of EdTech (26)
• Young Gun for Hire: A DTLT Graduate (7)
• Writing New York: Posts from the Boroughs and Beyond (1)
• WPMu: Sitewide Tags, Search, and Archive (7)

Interesting contribution to a debate that my own institution is engaged in.

Different strokes…

We’re getting iTunes U. as well, but I see it more of a showcase for student work currently. Yes it might still be running on the transactional mentality of pre-2.0, but I don’t think that everything *needs* to be interconnected so tightly all the time. The iTunes application may grow more social networking/media hooks eventually, and that would be great to promote more community-oriented activity in the iTunes U space. You can already allow authenticated students to upload audio/video to your institution’s iTunes U space, that opens up a lot of opportunities for teaching and learning…at least that’s where I want to focus with our iTunes U space rather than building out a promotional storefront for the school.

You can get URLs in iTunes, just right click on the tracks to copy a link. It would make more sense to be able to “share” it too, but they’ll get there, I am hopeful. But you make valid points, iTunes U will be an additional tool, not a replacement for anything.

Interesting contribution to a debate that my own institution is engaged in.

What you’re holding in your hands – assuming you’re reading this in print form, which a substantial number of you are – is a collector’s item. Guardian Technology, in its print incarnation, is to cease publication. The last edition will be on 17 December.

This does not mean the Guardian is abandoning its technology coverage; far from it. For example, our award-winning games coverage (the 2009 winner, for the third year running, of the Games Media Awards for coverage in a national newspaper) will continue with reviews, blogposts and features. So will our coverage of gadgets, and the Ask Jack column (which has been running online as a blog since 2005), and our in-depth features and coverage of all the important issues in technology.

The final issue will mark just over 26 continuous years since Futures Micro Guardian had its first edition, on 20 October 1983. (It was a Thursday; the publication date of this section has remained unchanged.) From then, you will continue to find our writing online, or through our Twitter feed, and also throughout the paper incarnations of the Guardian in the news, business, features and other sections, where we will have a renewed focus on bringing you our take on the technology issues that truly matter and which you should know about.

That said, I am sure that many of you will feel the absence of the physical manifestation of the Technology section — which among its former incarnations has been called Futures Micro Guardian, Computer Guardian and Online, before taking up its current naming in 2005 in order to reflect our wider coverage of all sorts of technology, not just that which comes through a browser. The latter is, of course, still enormously important, given the key part that the internet plays in all our lives.

In part it has been the internet that has hastened the end of the physical version of this section, as more classified job adverts have migrated to online job sites such as Guardian Jobs (jobs.guardian.co.uk, in case you’re looking); there have also been the arctic winds of the recession, which seems to be hitting the UK harder than many other countries around the world.

But it would be foolish to resist the tide; we prefer to swim with it, and the purpose of this section has always been to teach our readers how to manage technology, what to expect, what to watch out for, and where to look for further advice. We’ve also tried to be guided by the feedback you have given us – through the letters and more recently emails, and then blogs and most recently Twitter remarks that you’ve written.

The huge advantage of going online, of course, is that it frees us from the space constraints of print – games and gadget reviews can be longer and more plentiful, features are untroubled by the tyranny of the word count, and interactivity comes to the fore, both in how we present data and how you can respond and inform us about the topics you find interesting and important.

There is still plenty more to tell you: there are issues left unsolved (such as the Free Our Data campaign, which as you will see is still gaining momentum right at the top of government), and topics that we know you’ll want to have answered. We know that there’s a huge swathe of readers for whom Ask Jack has been a weekly lifeboat; that fact is evidenced by the continuing stream of queries and cries for help that we receive.

But having said that, we’d like to ask for your help. We’re sure that you have stories that you’d like to tell us about how this section has affected your life over the past two decades. Has it helped you find a job? Start a company? Shaped your life in some important way? We’d like to know: email us at tech@guardian.co.uk with the subject line “Guardian Technology memories”. We’ll try to use the best in one of the last issues that we produce. And with your help, we’ll make it one to keep for a long, long time.

• Charles Arthur is editor of the Guardian’s technology coverage

I’m a part-time Guardian reader and full-time technophile so I look forward to Thursdays when I buy a copy of The Guardian for the Technology section — sometimes that’s the only bit I actually read. I was saddened, therefore, to read in last Thursday’s section an article from the Guardian’s technology editor that the Technology section will no longer be printed and that the last article will be on 17th December. The Guardian’s excellent technology coverage will continue to appear in the regular paper, and of course, on-line. As I listen to the Podcast, follow the blog, and subscribe to the twitter feed, I’ll probably continue to get my regular fix of Guardian Tecky goodness. Just not over a Massimo Latte in the library coffee shop!

Hello, open source developers. Would you like to help build an operating system for web users?

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Today we announced the Chromium OS project on the Official Google Blog. This release of Chromium OS includes:

• Source code
• Design docs
• User interface experiments
• How to build and contribute
• Short overview video

We are doing this early, almost a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users, because we are eager to engage with open source developers. There are many of you who share our passion for creating a new model of computing. Chromium OS makes it possible for any interested developer to contribute code, ideas and designs to help shape the future of personal computing.

Speed, simplicity and security are fundamental to Chrome OS. We wanted to talk about these areas in a bit more detail.

Speed

Simplicity

Security

Open Source

We expect to publish additional design docs and documentation in the upcoming few months. You can track what we’re doing on this blog and we hope you will join us in this effort.

Posted by Glen Murphy, Martin Bligh, Will Drewry, Software Engineers

Interesting new blog from the Chrome OS team. This post contains videos explaining some of the concepts that are being thought about in the context of the design of the Chrome OS.