edna.edu.au

A Letter to Kate

I like anyone who inquisitive, and Kate is, especially about ICT things. 

Thank God she didn't go to uni, so she hasn't had her imagination damaged too much.

But we do have a chasm, as one of my network operator correspondents has described it, between "the creatives" and the engineers who make the ICT (networks) interoperate, regardless of which sector or industry they consider themselves in. This conference theme from MIT posits the prob. If you were a network manager, you just consider the web to be "the top layer" of four (usually) layers. The surface dwellers of course, have no interest in trolls.

Kate. Can i make one point, especially if we are to include lots of people in a dialog (or an enquiry). I can point you at my blog, or wiki, or pod, or video just as you can. But this media doesn't abide by the old broadcast rules, where, if I've got more bandwidth and make more noise, you get educated.

One thing the main network operators for education in this country learned at Questnet a few weeks ago is that, if you set up a conference site and capture rather than produce the (separate) conversations, presentations, etc, then you can create a community hub around  a Community of Practice very easily, and give it an archive.

Tags: governance
Posted at 10:31AM Jul 26, 2009 by simon fenton - jones  |  Comments[0]

Govdex vs edna

Had a nice discussion with Cathy at govdex who gave me the inside buzz on what they're up to, shortly. The main features (tools) are pretty similar to edna, down to the creation of echo chambers. =  Secure - Only members of your community may view your forums. Check out how many groups and lists around here are open, and noticed how many are actually used.

But at least it's a starting point (again).

So a quick note about Governance and Media. You may remember this thread from the Australia2020 get together. Governance is about making rules (or policy) so that you only have to deal with the odd exception. One size (one grouping of tools) is never going to fit all. The question is, "are all these publicly funded aggregations of tools in a domain are to be used to share a group, or community's, learning or not".

I understand the need to have a quiet conversation between experts, which is uninterrupted. But I fail to understand how we might ever come up with an inclusive institution of learning if novices can't get an insight into a silo's mechanizations. The successful social environments always have the approach that you might be able to read, but sometimes won't be allowed to post. And yes, there are always exceptions to this rule.

The primary point being that open these days is the new principle of governance. So if any publicly funded initiative, regardless of whether its in the .gov.au or edu.au domain, isn't open to being read by the general public, could we ensure that it doesn't appear on a public index. We have enough distractions.

Tags: governance
Posted at 08:24AM Aug 27, 2008 by simon fenton - jones  |  Comments[0]