I’ve been working with people on campus for a long time to try to figure out what we need to do about our campus LMS. My oldest file for the endeavour was created on July 19, 2011. Seriously. Almost 2 years ago. We did a couple rounds of campus engagement¹, ran an RFP, and wrote several reports. Provincial politics, budget crises and legal processes intervened, and here we are. The decision was formalized in the RFP system this afternoon, and it’s official: the University of Calgary has selected Desire2Learn as its next learning management system.

An idea I first saw Tim Bray do - when he finds a bunch of interesting tabs open in his browser, he writes a "tab sweep" post to share the links, and why they're interesting. I think it's a good idea. So, here are a few tabs that got opened up during my lunch-hour RSS feed reading…

via Stephen: Google Entices Mobile Developers To Its Cloud With Kinvey

The full stack required to deploy stuff is surprisingly/insanely complex:

I've really been loving running my own dropbox clone, by using owncloud running on my Hippie Hosting Co-op account. It's (mostly) seamless and automatic, and (usually) Just Worksâ„¢. It's not as polished as Dropbox's UI, but that's not critical (although the status badges on files and folder badges would be nice…)

But, over the last week or 2, I've been noticing that owncloud on my work computer gets wedged. Digging into the status, the URL changes from my owncloud instance to something intercepted by browser-based wifi authentication. Just changing the URL in configuration doesn't seem to solve it. I have to nuke my owncloud settings, add a new config, delete it because it insists on syncing to /clientsync rather than /, and then re-adding it manually. Then, deleting the /clientsync folder on the server. Annoying. I just need this to work.

Tim Bray on blogging (yes, blogging) - it’s not dead yet. The long-form nature is obviously more appropriate than 140-char bursts for important things:

We increase and improve our body of knowledge through conversation. When this involves serious issues, those that matter, the appropriate unit is, more or less, the essay; neither very-long nor very-short form.

and that blogging has an important role in countering the BS that filters through more traditional everything-to-everyone press outlets. He refers to the “Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect”, where we see faults in press coverage of topics we’re familiar, but trust it in areas we’re not expert in. When, more likely, the quality of analysis is probably equally crappy and misleading across the board.

I was talking with a prof yesterday, about how our CIO has an IMDB page¹ . We both thought that was pretty cool. Afterward, I was thinking about IMDB and how non-film people don’t have a similar common CV/project/collaboration/history listing. I mentioned this on twitter, and Boris nudged me that, yes, we actually do have that. It’s LinkedIn.

@dlnorman you’re going to hate me for saying this, but @linkedin does fit the bill. Also check out @gklist & @zerply

David Wiley nicely wraps up MOOCs, and why they're important even if much of the hype is just marketing drivel spouted by elite institutions:

For a complex tangle of political reasons, "the people in power" are currently paying a tremendous amount of attention to issues relating to access to education, and the role of the cost of education in regulating that access. MOOCs have popularized and significantly advanced the conversation regarding both universal and free. The general public is beginning to believe that technology may have the near-term potential to provide a genuine solution to the problem of making education both universal and free. We can take advantage of the space MOOCs have created in the public conversation to introduce and advance the idea of truly open educational resources to people who are unfamiliar with it.

The job posting for the position of Director, Educational Development at the new Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning was just published.

From the posting:

Within the vision for the Institute for Teaching and Learning, the EDU Director will play a key leadership role in guiding the transition of the former Teaching and Learning Centre to an integral component of a more comprehensive institute. The Director will manage and promote a collaborative spirit among all staff within the EDU and between the EDU and the University community. The Director will liaise with deans, chairs, faculty, librarians, teaching assistants, student services professionals, and students to encourage the development of research-informed learning and teaching methods, including the integration of appropriate technologies to improve learning. He/she will also lead inquiry into selected University of Calgary educational development practices for the purpose of understanding and improving the impact of initiatives. The Director will also pursue relationships with institutions in Alberta and other external organizations to advance the work of the EDU.

Yahoo! is buying Tumblr for $1.1B US. Cash, not stock paper-shuffling. Why? Marissa Mayer says:

In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!'s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they'll love. In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!'s media network and search experiences. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to support innovation, and to avoid feedback loops that trigger fads and unjustified hype. I figure the story usually starts with an innovation. Somebody has an idea for a process/product/tool/whatever. A few people try it out. Early adopters. People start getting excited about it. From there, I’m thinking the adoption curve takes roughly 4 different lines:

From the initial adoption curve, the line will either:

Clint responds to Audrey’s decision to nuke comments from Hack Education. I agree - it’s unfortunate that douchebags on the internet¹ feel that they can abuse people while hiding behind the anonymity of the internet.

It’s Audrey’s decision to nuke comments - and I fully support her in whatever she decides to do - but I hate that she was pushed to it by misogynistic assholes spewing vitriol and hate. That’s not OK. Nobody should feel threatened or devalued or hated for what they write. Nobody should feel like they need to withdraw because some vocal assholes throw bile at them.

I gave a presentation at the University of Calgary's Collaboration for Learning conference today, on some of the visualizations I built as part of my thesis research. I made a point of avoiding talking about the thesis itself, but presented some of the key visualizations of metadata and coding data. I also made a point of only having enough slides to last for no more than half of the allotted time, in order to ensure enough awkward silence to hopefully prompt an active discussion. Kind of worked, almost.

So. This happened. Your move, Bowie.