Tag: 23things

November 27, 2016

things to create, curate, collate

OpenAdvent homepage (2011) CC-BY University of Oxford

Creating a curated collection is one of my favourite passtimes. Selecting items from a larger collection and curating a subset for an exhibition or theme can amuse me for hours. Digital curation is Thing15 of our 23 Things.

I do think this is one way in which discerning people can add value to the internet. Making curated pathways through the never ending maze of linked content.

Some examples of curated sets I have created include:

Three online advent calendars which showcased the Oxford OER collections and OUCS services on a Christmas theme. It was not an arduous task ; the collections are rich and wonderful, and the premise of generous giving suits the spirit of the task. The calendars were wordpress sites scheduled to publish a new post each day in Dec.

I also encouraged my podcasting teams in Oxford to develop a tool for the podcasts.ox website to enable us to showcase a handpicked collection drawn from accross the collection e.g. some of our best female academics on interational women’s day. At the moment the tool is being used as ‘featured people‘.

More recently, at the Edinburgh Gothic editathon I learned how to curate a timeline using Histropedia. If the internet keeps producing tools like this for curating content I may be done for.

I haven’t managed to persuade anyone at Edinburgh to join me in an ‘Advent of technology’ or ‘Internet of free things’. But I did get Charlie to curate this set of 23 things and the world is a better place for it.

Update: As of 1 December there now is an Open Advent calendar at Edinburgh. Check it out!

November 24, 2016

hearing things

old technology

Many years ago in a galaxy far, far away Oxford University launched on ItunesU. Here’s the screenshot from BBC ceefax that night.

Podcasts are Thing 14 of our 23Things and I am getting nostalgic again.

Here’s a case study by Terese Bird of how we approached podcasting at Oxford.

And here’s the Oxford podcasts site (outside of ItunesU).

I’m on there, here’s my podcasts and ebooks. They include a recorded talk about my research on the student digital experience and 5 years of blog posts available as an ebook.

In April this year I was delighted to welcome one of Oxford’s top podcasters, Dr Emma Smith to keynote at OER16. I first met Emma around the time we were launching Oxford on ItunesU. She is a Fellow of Hertford College and Professor of Shakespeare Studies. She was one of the first academic colleagues to champion the use and creation of OER at University of Oxford through her involvement in the Jisc funded Open Spires and Great Writers Inspire projects. Her OER licensed lectures reach an international audience and she continues to produce, publish and share cultural resources online.

After some early Jisc funding in 2009 Oxford’s podcasts collection quickly became one of the largest growing collections of openly licenced university lectures online. Oxford podcasts have published nearly 10,000 thousand audio and video items. 50% of this content is CC licenced. It includes 6,000 individual speakers and presenters. More than 23 million episodes have been downloaded. 10 million episodes have been streamed.

Emma was one of the first of the Oxford podcasters and the first major contributor to record podcasts herself. She has published 48 episodes which are part of 7 different series. Her biggest successes are ‘Approaching Shakespeare’ and ‘Not Shakespeare’.

Approaching Shakespeare has had more that 500,000 thousand downloads and regularly features in the itunesU global top ten.

Emma’s podcasts are only a small part of her work, but whenever I hear discussions about open academic practice I think of colleagues like Emma at Oxford who share so generously, but always with a wise, and enquiring eye to what might happen as a result.

Writing this post is reminding me of the connection between podcasting, recording and lecture capture…..ing,

https://blogs.it.ox.ac.uk/melissa/2014/03/23/lecture-capture-will-set-you-free/

https://blogs.it.ox.ac.uk/melissa/2013/05/28/capture-and-keep/

https://blogs.it.ox.ac.uk/melissa/2012/09/04/free-time/

https://blogs.it.ox.ac.uk/melissa/2013/04/02/defend-lectures-to-the-death/

November 16, 2016

people make things open

Open practice in action. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:University_of_Edinburgh_Spy_Week_Wikipedia_edit-a-thon_02.jpg

Thing 12 of our 23 things is OER.

I talk a lot about OER. Last week I was talking about it in Barcelona, this week I’m talking about it in Paris, in two weeks I’ll be in Berlin. I also write a bit about OER. On this blog and occasionally for case studies and articles. My work in creating a culture of openness is featured as a case study by OEPS. At the moment my homework is to write a case study for Gill and Fred to include in their new book.

I am also pleased to be able to make the case for new posts based on our institutional commitment to open. We have had support to extend contracts for our OER Adviser and our Wikimedian in Residence. We have also just signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Library at a time when they are working to open up huge swathes of their collections.

The task is to find OER to use in my work. I enjoy finding OER to use in my blog and presentations. Other OER I use in my work tend to be the OER about OER such as:

(1)Open Educational Resources infoKit JISC[online] Available at: https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/24838043/Approaches%20and%20models [Accessed 11 Nov. 2016].

(2)Compelling Reasons to Adopt Open Educational Resources [online] Available at: https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/45742558/Compelling%20Reasons%20to%20Adopt%20Open%20Educational%20Resources# [Accessed 11 Nov. 2016].

October 11, 2016

things can only get beta

Picture taken of me at #ald16eduni . No rights reserved by me.

Back in the days of Web 2.0 we used to describe things as ‘perpetualy beta‘. For me this perfectly describes Wikipedia. It’ll never be finished: we must add to, and improve it, early and often. Users are co-developers and it’s developed under open source principles of collective intelligence.

Wikipedia/Wikimedia are Thing 10 in our ‘23 things for digital knowledge‘ programme and today is Ada Lovelace Day.

Yesterday I wrote a provocation piece for the Dangerous Women Project. Today a bunch of colleagues and students engaged in dangerous practice and we were featured on the telly. I’m the one wearing the Creative Commons badge.

October 3, 2016

things to read carefully

Picture taken by me in the street of a Calum Colvin artwork. No rights reserved by me.

Since we are thinking about Twitter on ‘23 things for digital knowledge‘ and we have learned about privacy, and we have read our social media guidelines and we are going to learn about copyright and OER; I thought it was worth having a good look at the Twitter Terms of Service.

https://twitter.com/tos

I note in the first point: ‘ If you are accepting these Terms and using the Services on behalf of a company, organization, government, or other legal entity, you represent and warrant that you are authorized to do so.‘ I wonder, if we tweet from a work account, has our university/dept authorised us to tweet on its behalf?

On privacy: ‘You understand that through your use of the Services you consent to the collection and use (as set forth in the Privacy Policy) of this information, including the transfer of this information to the United States, Ireland, and/or other countries for storage, processing and use by Twitter and its affiliates.’ Good thing we understand our privacy settings.

On copyright: ‘By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).’ The right to reproduce, adapt, modify, distribute. That’s a lotta license!

September 30, 2016

access to things

Picture taken by me of a window in Budapest. No rights reserved by me.

I am participating in the University of Edinburgh digital skills course ‘23 things for digital knowledge‘. Thing 6 is about accessibility. I was listening on Radio 4 to ‘tweet of the day’ this morning while scrolling through Twitter and I mused on the possibility of having tweets actually tweeted, as in spoken outloud. A quick google search revealed instructions on Instructables on how to make it so.

Twitter Enabled Text to Speech

I’m thinking perhaps a day of making accessible tools would be a good use of our new ‘UCreate Studio’ Maker Space in the Main Library.

September 26, 2016

things to include

I am participating in the University of Edinburgh digital skills course ‘23 things for digital knowledge‘. Thing 5 is about diversity.

As well as being one of the ISG change themes through which we are looking at our organisation and changing it to be fit for the future, equality and diversity is part of a larger consideration of digital transformation going on in the university, being championed by our CIO.

Our CIO challenges us to think about the ‘internet of me’, where each of us is at the centre of a web of services tailored to what the internet knows about us and what it anticipates our wants and desires to be as a result. Examples given of Uber, Airbnb etc certainly seem to make life easier for some.

I’d suggest that we cannot think about digital transformation without considering privilege and bias. For some people, their experience of the internet is not as positive as it may seem to be for white, wealthy, north american or british men. For some it is toxic, biased and perpetuates unhelpful stereotypes. It is up to us as tech professionals to consider all our users and ensure that we create an internet for all. It is up to us not only to consider our unconscious bias but also to check and recheck that the services we build are inclusive.

The best way we can do that it to have diverse teams working on every project and provide safe working environments for colleagues to share their experiences which can inform our thinking. The risk if we don’t is that the more our services become personalised, the less we are able to empathise with the experience of others.

Some articles worth reading:
Airbnb’s ‘belong anywhere’ undercut by bias complaints
Can computers be racist? Big data, inequality, and discrimination
Research reveals huge scale of social media misogyny

September 18, 2016

things to cover up

Picture taken by me. Typesetting by Penguin. No rights reserved by me.

I am participating in the University of Edinburgh digital skills course ‘23 things for digital knowledge‘. Thing 4 is about digital security. I have checked the security permissions on my phone and ipad, but I am particularly freaked out by the idea that your own camera can be used to watch you without your permission. My laptop is often open around my house and that’s not a kind of knowledge I am keen to share.

Even the FBI- an organisation well known for unwarranted surveillance- suggest covering your webcam. I suggest using a cheerful sticker, perhaps one you have collected from an Adalovelace Lego, Wikipedia editathon or even the 23Things course. Perhaps the University’s information security team will issue a sticker of the perfect size.

Put tape over your webcam, FBI director warns.

I heard James Comey interviewed on the radio discussing who the targets for such privacy invasions usually are. I think he said young women were particularly targetted by this kind of phish/malware /hack. In an attempt to find that reference I made the mistake of googling ‘young girls webcam’. Mistake. Now that’s in my internet history.