10,000 visitors

This blog will welcome the 10,000th visitor today. Thank you for your support. If you are the lucky 10,000th visitor, please drop me a note. How to know if you are the 10,000th visitor, scroll down a little to look at the site counter, please.

I started this blog in August 2004. The past 6 months have been an incredible learning journey for me. I have learnt a lot, sharpened my ideas and made a lot of online friends. It is amazing to look back and see how much I have improved in my own thinking. This is a vivid illustration of the hand-on approach of self-learning and self-reflection.

I learnt my computing skill the same way. I entered the world of online role play also in a similar way. Learning and exploring as I go, making small discovery, progress and just continuous to amaze oneself, and be amazed, by new things that we discover. The writing of the blog helps to reflect on the ideas and helps to internalize the idea. What a great way for self-development, especially you know that you are sharing this with a lot of people.

Welcome to my 10,000th visitor. You are truly amazing!

10,000 visitors

This Blog will welcome its 10,000th visitors today. Thanks for all the support! If you are the lucky 10,000th visitor, please drop me a note.

Since I started blogging in August 2004, I have learnt a lot of things, sharpened my thinking in many areas and made many friends on line. This has been an incredible journey in such a short span of time. This illustrates how effective hand-on approach is to learning and self-reflection.

Business Case for LMS and scalability design considerations

This post have two points to make:

This afternoon, I have lunch with two best friends from two different Australian universities. Both are middle managers and both are responsible for making a recommendation to the Senior Management for a campus-wide course delivery system. Eventually, they both will be responsible for the implementation and maintainence of the system. Both are non-technical and come from an academic background. After some wine and food, we started talking about LMS.

I was in favour of open source and have been pushing hard to both to adapt/adopt the MIT/Stanford open courseware and saki approach. However, both rejected the idea basing on their perceived value of their respective higher management. While one of the university has already made public their choice, the other's choice is still officially private information. But I know that they ended up choosing differently from WebCT and Blackboard. These two universities, due to their different background have chosen different commercial LMS. One of the strongest reasons for the choice is the perceived support offered by the vendors and the "additional" cooperation offered to them. They were both offered position in the development committee of the product so that their implementation experience and needs can be addressed in the product. Another interesting result of the negotiation was that they both got a 5-year license with a cap on the license fee.

It is true that LMS has become the tier-1 IT infrastructure that Australian Universities will rely upon. They equal the LMS to email system. They are happy to find a solution for the 80% of the academics and let that innovative 20% to find their own ways.

Content management system was considered together with the LMS. One of the University chose one because the other vendor configured their system wrongly during pilot. It seems that if configured correctly, the missing vendor can provide exactly the same feature. Because the CMS and LMS was offered for testing from two different servers, some of the functions they wanted failed. If the vendor has run the two systems on the same machine, it would have met all the requirement and remain a sound contender!

I saw a fundamental fault in the architecture if this is the case. I know where the problem is and I have a solution. But I am not disclosing this here. If any LMS/CMS vendor is reading my post, expect to pay good money for me to reveal this. :-) OK, some nice words and good food may do the trick too.

I like to add to the complex mix of factors scalability and fault-tolerant. Scalability can be obtained vertically and/or horizontally.

By a vertical scalability - I mean obtaining more throughput using more powerful hardware. Typically, if a system is not providing sufficent throughput, the institute replaces the hardware with a faster and bigger one. This is not a bad approach given the continuous Moore's law of increasing computing power per unit cost. But this is a wasteful approach. In many cases, the decommissioned hardware is used to serve second tier services, or not as demanding service.

Another scalability is horizontal scalability, or Google scalability. Instead of a single (or a few) powerful hardware, Google uses thousands off-the-shelf PC running in parallel. If more capacity is needed, Google adds more PC. (One of the problem facing Google is the tremendous amount of power required to run this army of PCs for the same computational throughput. I am not sure about this remark, but I inclined to believe that it is true!)

Inherent to this scalability issue is fault tolerant solutions. Redundancy is the best approach to provide fault tolerant to critical systems. Running multiple expensive big server in parallel just to provide fault tolerant is expensive. On the other hand, off-the-shelf PC are inherently error prone, but they are relatively easy and cheap to replace.

I am more in favour of Google's approach.

This implies a different approach to software architecture in building the application. Stating the obvious again, developing an application to run on many nodes and expecting any node to fail any time, but continuous to provide a non-stop service is quite different to developing the same application which based on a single never-to-fail computing node.

Ok, I cannot avoid coming back to Fablusi. For Fablusi, I have put into the software architecture the capability to run in parallel an army of PC as servers. First, the computational intensive part is shifted to the client side. The server is basically a huge storage and serve whatever required by the client. Second, each connection to the server is "stateless" meaning that any responding server would have sufficient information from the client request to execute the needed operation. My hope for Fablusi's future is a single unified platform to serve ONE single pedagogy to anyone connected to the Internet - the "Google" of role play. I understand that role play simulation is just ONE of many powerful pedagogies. I just hope that it serves the purpose we built it and serves it well.

The problem I mentioned earlier about the integration between LMS and CMS is very real and faces Fablusi too. If Fablusi is to integrate with other pedagogical approaches in a course, it must be able to function across server boundaries and domain boundaries. The solution has already been developed and in the public domain. It is just a matter of identifying the problem and applying the solution.

Simple Answering Machine for Skype Users

via incorporated subversion (thanks James)

My skype has now installed an answering machine. So if I am not with my computer, you can still leave me a message on my skype. That's great!

I am not advertising my skype name here. But if you have something to discuss with me, feel free to send me an email and I'll get back to you.

Soundseeing to Sightseeing: Good or Not?

AMY GAHRAN of Contentious is doing an experiment:

She asked:

... about soundseeing expeditions – which are audio recordings made in the field which capture the ambient sounds and the creator’s descriptions. Soundseeing sets a context intended to create a vivid picture in the listener’s mind.

How crucial is that mental picture to the soundseeing experience?

This echoes well with my earlier post Learning Context: Do we need to render it?, our mind fills in the missing details from our past experience.

So I went ahead and listened to the soundseeing. This is my imagined scene (briefly):
I heard the wood cracking sound from the wood fire. I imaged a room in reddish colour, Amy lying cosily in some soft fabric in front of the wood fire and typing away. I did not pay much attention to her description of the car junk yard - there is no ambient sound to support that!

My reaction to Amy's invitation is that I would rather have not seen the photographs. With the exception of the one where Amy was typing away on her bed, most of the photos do not depict the image I have formed from the soundsighting. When rendered, it totally destroyed my mental image.

Again, rendering the learning context is not a matter of right or wrong. It is a matter to do with the purpose. If this is a designed experience for learners and if we like to promote imagination and get the learners to focus on the important issues (except when the issue is visual!), rendered environment may not help.

Fangs: The Screen Reader Emulator Plugin for Mozilla

via EdTechPost

so many people simply assume that if it conforms to W3C WCAG or Section 508 guidelines, that's enough. It's not, and it's a case where 'seeing' (actually 'hearing') is believing. 'Fangs' allows you to read web pages more like how the users of an assistive reader will hear them.

Totally agree. Accessbility is much much more than just conforming to a standard. A tool like Fangs will help developers who are not visually impair to understand the problems of their screen layout. I look forward to installing this plug-in and I think it is a good idea to promote it.

Learning Context: Do we need to render it?

aka: Online Role Play Simulation Design - 4
Previous posts in this series: 1, 2 and 3.

Working almost against the main trend, Fablusi, the role play simulation platform I develop is NOT "pedagogically neutral". In fact, it embraces one pedagogical approach, namely problem-based, experiential, online role play. Roni and I called it "dynamic goal base" - meaning the game goal within the role play is changing all the time. We spend a lot of time thinking how our platform can deliver the kind of learning we designed into the platform and how effective that may be. One issue which came up since the LOW-1 meeting in Finland last year is how "virtual reality" rendered world can be integrated into Fablusi. Before answering that question, I am asking: "Does rendered world enhance the kind of learning that we build into Fablusi?" Here is my answer at this point in time.

Here are several assumptions/beliefs/facts I have about human nature:
1. Human sensory system is highly selective. Depending on the focus at the time when the information arrives, only those information which have our attention are captured. Most, if not all, other information are simply got filtered out. (This has been verified by a famous HCI experiment - but I cannot remember the source.)

2. Our internal world model is built, bit by bit and accumulated throughout our life via a lossy memory system. Such accumulated experience has been filtered by our sensory system. (This is very much the basis of constructism.)

3. When a model is lacking in details, our brain will fill in the details when necessary. This is what I called "imaginated reality". I can recall how disappointed I was when one of the character of a novel was played by one of the most beautiful actress in a television show. Although the actress is beautiful, she cannot compared with the imagined beauty I have created via reading the novel. One interesting thing about the "details" we filled in. Many may be based by experiences which have escaped our initial "attention" but somehow retained and show up. Others are simply made up at the "blink".

The way learning context is created by Fablusi online role play:

Our online role play mainly deal with human situations which involve different roles playing different stakeholders under different social relationship. The context of the "game" is abstracted to a number of roles representing different interest of different stakeholders. The players get a brief role information describing the situation of the game from the role's point of view. The game is started by the release of the initial kick-start episode. These roles interact in iSpace (interaction space). By differentially giving the roles different level of information, different rights in various iSpaces and wealth, we created a framework to model most social situation.

The role information is deliberately brief. One of the reason is to enable the players to embellish the role, filling in some details about the roles. Obviously, no one will be able to describe a full persona in the limited number of words allowed (by time and by design). However, this created a springboard for further imagination and players can fill in details from their past experience - and hence link the present simulated experience to their existing world model.

For political science simulations, where stakeholders are real political figures, we do not need to create the images of the persona in the game. The players can map their roles to real world figures.

For non-political simulations, e.g. commercial or human resource simulations, the players usually create a persona typical to their past experience. The imagined reality among the players are obviously different, but just like any other human interaction, we never have a perfect model of our communication partner any way. In this way, we have created a very realistic simulation, linking players past experience right into the game - AND that's exactly what we want to achieve.

iSpaces, e.g. corporate meeting rooms, the News room, the UN council are abstracted to asynchronous interaction spaces. We do not provide extensive graphics to represent the iSpaces as well. The players "tele-port" from one iSpace to another simply by clicking the appropriate buttons. There is no "walking" between iSpaces.

One obvious suggestion was to use 3D-rendered world to represent the iSpaces. I am rejecting this based on three reasons:
1. Typical interaction in 3D-world is synchronous. This will break some of the pedagogical values we have implemented using asynchronous mode, not to mention the additional loss in flexibility to the players in playing the simulation at any convenient time.
2. The extra rendering details may shift the attention of the players from thinking strategically and tactically how to deal with the simulated situation to the graphical details, which does not add any additional value to the learning objectives.
3. 3-D world rendering is an additional cost with no obviously benefit.

Another suggestion is to use 3D world to represent the "desktop" of the players. The reasons 2 and 3 from above applies.

Avatar may be used to represent the other roles in the game. Since we are leveraging on the asynchronous nature of our model to provide players "breathing space" to do background research, discuss with team members and formulate moves. Taking that away is not constructive to the pedagogical power of the design. Again, when you have an imaged model, any rendering may destroy your imaged model - which may not be in-line with our design as well.

Please note that my exposition here only relate to the value of virtual world in online role play. Again, my view of life is "fit for the purpose". Virtually rendered world must be good for something. Here I am just focussing on online role play simulation.

Asynchronous Meetings Standing Order

In the course of our work on online role play simulation, we continue to discover a lot of differences between physical world and online world, especially when the online world is asynchronous. The following is NOT a comprehensive list of the differences, but significant enough to linger in my mind all the times related to online meeting especially related to online role playing.

Many meetings, especially those formal ones, will have rules of the meeting, or standing order, e.g. just a quick search on Google, I found this and this. Typically, such standing order will specify the time and method of calling a meeting. The timing for calling of election seems to be a powerful political tool to give your own party is highly winning chances (as in British and Australian Parliaments). One of the purpose of this fixed schedule of calling a meeting is to give participants sufficient notice in order to present in the meeting. Obviously, in an asynchronous meeting, the meeting time is an extended period and such a requirement becomes unnecessary. Actually, I have seen some Fablusi players spent significant amount of time and effort to "arrange a meeting" where in fact our analogy is a continuous meeting in the designated iSpace (interaction space). Of course, if they want to use the chat feature, a common acceptable time has to be arranged before hand.

Another common feature in Standing order is the requirement of a "Quorum" before the meeting may commence. Obviously it is to ensure that decision and discussion is reached and carried out within a "significant" representation of the body in which the ruling of the meeting may apply. Again, this requirement is needed in a physical meeting and can be relaxed in an online asynchronous meeting.

Business in the meetings are discussed and resolution reached in a pre-defined order - the agenda. Any change of the agenda also requires additional formal motion and voting. This is an aspect we try to simulate in Fablusi so that some roles may make use of the agenda to arrive at some desired outcome, if such roles have such right.

Limited by time, most meeting will also have limitations of time allowed for each participants to "have the floor". Again, this is a requirement that we can relax in an online asynchronous meeting.

One of the greatest difference is the way voting is conducted. In physical meeting, because of the attention span, when there is a motion on the table, the discussion will be focussed on the motion. Any other discussion is not allowed. There is only one motion on table. If there is any amendment, the motion is typically suspended and the discussion is focussed on the amendment itself. Again, this is carried out one at time.

I don't see that we should apply the same restriction on the online meeting environment. Hence, in Fablusi iSpaces when voting is allowed, simulation author can allow multiple motions can be put on table with multiple amendments at the same time. By using threading, discussion on each of the motion and amendment can be carried out in parallel. We are yet to see how this may influence the quality of online meeting. I am certainly interested and will keep a keen eye on such meeting.

Just like role playing, when we implemented it online, we see different limitations and potentials. I believe there is still a long way before we can fully understand how to conduct online meeting effectively. Comments welcome.

My wish for the future of e-learning - with a businessman hat on

Is content king in e-learning industry? May be a doubtful YES today, it is a definite NO in a slightly longer term.

The marginal cost of reproduction of digital content is near zero. The upfront cost of course production may be huge and there may be copyright protection put in place by the copyright owners. This will not stop other people doing the same. Note that copyright only protect the manifestation of an idea. It does not prevent anyone else to create another manifestation of similar or same idea (this is the difference between patent and copyright, right?) As authoring tools advance, the cost of production will continue to decrease. The value of digital content will quickly reduce to near zero by the nature of market competition. I was told that the cost of "English as a second language" course in China have dropped 70% per year for 5 years at an AusWeb conference years ago. That's the result when people realise that ESL in China has a market and suddenly everyone jumped in. There are other initiations which drive the cost of content down quickly, .e.g MIT OpenCourseWare, BBC open-source streaming of its video content, the highly successful wikipedia, Google's digital library, project Gutenberg, etc.

For the "birthday cake" maker, see my birthday cake analogy, my advise is:

If you are a good content provider, you can still capture a good part of the value-chain.

Unlike physical goods whereas when a product has established a market, people will repeatedly buy the same product again without any need of "discovery", digital content is typically a use-once product (exceptions in this include songs, music and other "artistic performances", but informational content is very much a use-once product.) Another viable business in elearning is content discovery services. However, I am not sure a direct user pay model is a viable business model. May be Google's advertising-based model. This is the filling station part of the e-learning business.

On the other hand, organisations are waking up to realise that "Return of Investment" is enhanced when there is "real" change in attitude, behaviour and performance. Delivering training is NOT the same as delivering of information. Just-in-time bite size information is useful in the job-support situation. Again, the "filling station model" may be best approach to meeting this need.

My ultimate interest is still looking at training and education as a service industry where we provide valuable, memorable and life-changing experience to the learners. First person and second person experience are accidental (in the sense that it is unlikely to be planned) and most likely from informal learning channels. By encouraging active participations in blog type of sharing, community of practice and experience exchanges, the industry can provide a significant informal life-long education services. I will leave it to my readers to figure out a sustainable business model for informal learning. For planned (or formal) learning, a pure third person experience approach, while the cheapest (???) and easiest (???) to develop, may not be the best approach given the changes of this and coming digital generation. This is why I am betting everything I have on promoting simulated first person experience.

I don't gamble, but when I do, I bet my life on it.

Folksonomy and Taxonomy

I have been so busy lately that this debate has remained out of my radar. There is a debate currently on the merits of folksonomy and professionally developed taxonomy (or controlled vocabularies) for assigning values to metadata (tagging in the folksonomy parlance). The discussion focuses mainly on the information classification, which indeed is an important part of metadata based search. Many to Many has a post on the positive side which referred to a negative side. I believe there must be more posts on this debate.

My take on the issue is that we should not forget that metadata is only one of the many methods that we can use to find information, including e.g. digital images. See my earlier draft: Meta Meta Meta Data Draft 0.1b - in plain English For example, I do not believe Google has employed an army to tag images found on the web. It is likely to tag the images by the words near the image, or the file name of the image.

My pragmatic approach is still based on "fitness for the purpose". In a digital library where you have an army to classify information against a well established taxonomy. Why forces to use the evolving folksonomy? On the other hand, in evolving domains where developments are rapid and classification is fluid, taxonomy will not have been developed. Other methods should be used. Among the methods, folksonomy is one of them.

Discovery alone is not the best approach either. Without ranking, over thousands of returned results are quite useless. Even with progressive search refinement, still any use of the search result will demand quite an effort to work through a non-ranked list. Ranking of search results is NOT related to classification. Many methods are available too.

I would rather like to broaden the folksonomy verse controlled vocabulary debate to identify typical use pattern and debate on the best approach to meet the needs of "most" uses - leaving the long tail for niche application to fill the demands. Of course, one may choose to be a niche solution provider.

Rapid E-Learning: A Growing Trend

via Learning Circuits

I agree with the author that there are at least two expectation changes:
1. rapid development of e-learning (whatever what that means), and
2. lower cost of development for effective learning/training.

Here I would like to draw the attention to the different needs under different situations:

In a work support environment, we like to have just-in-time, easy to find information on how to accomplish the task at hand. Typically, the right bite of information at the right time is the most appropriate. The information consumer needs no more and no less information - just enough to solve the problem at hand efficiently and wants to move on to the next task. I suppose such kind of bite size training and support needs is better served by an efficient database with good search technology for locating the solution.

When there is a product launch which involves some training of a distributed sale force, I believe it would involve in-house rapid content development. The technique mentioned in the Learning Circuit article would meet most of the requirement.

When we are involved in changing the organisation culture to meet new business environment, this is a totally different kind of training and attitude modification requirement. A information shovelling model would not work. One cannot ensure that
1. the people in the organisation would even read the information,
2. if they really read it, whether it can actually change any attitude is problematic.

Yes, attitude and belief modification cannot be accomplished in a day or two. However, in this hyper-competitive business environment, the faster you can effect the change, the better is the opportunity of survival. Role play simulation, as I have argued earlier, is an effective tool for such program. The issues of using role play are time in the development of an effective RPS, and the cost of running the RPS.

Fablusi is text-based. The development cost of Fablusi-based training is small. The average cost of e-learning solution, according to the article, is US10,000 to 50,000 per hour. In comparison, Fablusi's cost would be next to nothing. For around US2,000 to US10,000, we can develop a RPS catering client's needs which runs for around 3 weeks and delivers life-changing experiences to the trainees. (Ok, there is an on-going fee based on per participant if you run the RPS on our server, but again it is very small compared to the traditional e-learning program. Getting a Fablusi server to serve your own need would cost a few hours of traditional e-learning development cost - but provide you with a continuous capability to run your attitude changing programs throughout your organisation perpetually.)

Another good news is that we are going to develop "Fablusi Lite", a light version of the Fablusi server which aims to enable a 5-minute development of RPS. Fablusi version 2 has taken us over 2 years to develop and has slipped the release date by about 6 months. I have under-estimated the amount of development work and over-estimated my ability! However, based on Fablusi version 2 core, Fablusi Lite is planned for release at the middle of this year. If you want to prepare yourself to enter this exciting training environment, please download the design worksheet and have a go with it. I am sure your time will not be wasted.

Role and stakeholder in Role play simulation

In the version 3 role play simulation (RPS) design worksheet, Roni pointed out the distinction between roles and stakeholders. At other occasions, people asked,

In designing RPS, should I use a generic title (such as managing director) or give the role a name, e.g. Mr. Wealth Goldstein?

Any answer to this question has to meet the design objective? What are the purposes of the RPS and who are the target players (or learners) of the RPS?

The world is never a single dimension. Even a really elementary class of business school, students should be aware that a CEO is a human. Beyond the work place, s/he, like everyone else, is faced with other ups and downs in life - marriage problems, family commitments, health and so on. CEO also relaxes and goes to pub with colleagues. CEO also builds friendship, beyond the professional encounters at the workplace. By giving a role a proper name, interactions among persona in the RPS are more realistic and potentially have more learning opportunities to be discovered and leveraged upon.

This is this distinction to lead us to develop the independent concepts of "stakeholders" and "persona". In our terminology, stakeholders are viewpoints from a single professional related point of view. CEO, secretary, president, activists in Green movement and factory works are stakeholder view points. These present a set of public and private agenda, with influences from the circumstances in the scenario. Roles, as in a story, are characters in the RPS.

In order to create an effective role play, these stakeholder viewpoints are represented by personals in the role play (or simply roles). Roles have additional characteristics beyond representing the stakeholder viewpoints. Roles live in the RPS. Roles have personality. Roles has "fresh and blood".

Another important consequence of introducing this separation is that when we create a RPS, we concentrated on articulating the stakeholders viewpoint at an earlier stage, select those most relevant to learning objectives and create the scenario around typical issues. If we stop here, the RPS will be fairly "blend". By combining several stakeholders into a role, or by using several roles to represent a stakeholder viewpoint, the RPS sudden becomes much more playable. Players may have to fight the conflicting issues represented by the multiple stakeholders represented by the role, or need to align or fight for "stage time" between other roles who have similar stakeholder viewpoints. As the players bring in their previous personal experiences, the role play will develop differently at each run. Moderating/assessing a role play is not, and have never been, the same as the tedious process of reading the almost the same poorly written exposition of the same viewpoints as many times as the number of students in your class. AND the players learn better in authentic situation too.

One additional benefit of this design is the potential of creating roles with different levels of "importance": must have, critical, good to have and fillers. When combined with a flexible team size structure, this multiple levels of importance of roles created a large solution space for allocation of players into roles. The software, hence, can support the tedious task of allocating players into roles. This reduces a significant work load at the beginning phase on the RPS and will let teachers/instructors concentrate on their real job of leading the learners through the experience.

Role Play Simulation design worksheet v3

The version 2.1 Role Play Simulation design worksheet, which has been online since May 8, 2003, has been updated by Roni Linser and is now available free. You need to supply a valid email address for the system to send the worksheet to you.

Although the worksheet aims to help authors to begin the creation of a role play simulation for eventual delivery using Fablusi v2 platform, previous versions have proved to be a useful tool for designing more general role play simulation.

The worksheet promotes a two step iterative design process. The first step, called the foundation phrase, guides you to think about the problem or set of problems/issues, places where stakeholders communicate with one another in confronting the issues, and a prioritised list of stakeholders involved in these issues.

You are then guided to fresh out more details including the key ingredients in creating "kick start episodes", the combination or splitting of stakeholders into roles, using interaction spaces to create a power relationships among the roles, and suggestions about creating tasks for roles.

Further customisation includes the issues with simulation time, look and feel, role playing with concept of wealth, role play for "knowing who" and so on.

Please feel free to distribute the design work sheet to whoever may benefit from this work or send them the URL (http://www.fablusi.com/requestDesignDoc.asp) for download.

How Did Animals Escape Tsunami?

Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a sixth sense for disasters, experts said Thursday.

Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.

"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit," said H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Department.

If true, this is really amazing. Most news reports are, understandably, focussed on the human lost. Are there any further reports to support this?

Hard choices: researcher vs. blogger?

This post strikes a resounding resonance that I also struggled many years ago:

One of the comments I received from Inna Kouper on weblog conversation paper was about my involvement in it, the fact that as a researcher I could influence the conversation if you knew you were going to study it. I realised that Inna was right and included a statement that when the conversation was unfolding I wasn't going to study it.

So Lilia wanted to separate out the role of researcher and the role of a participant in a dialogue (blogger). Then...

...two weeks back I was struggling with another choice. I saw an interesting conversation unfolding, I wanted to participate, but I also thought that it would be a great "another case" to add to our paper since we discussed some future work with Aldo. Those two seemed to contradict: as a blogger I wanted to participate, as a researcher I knew that a better choice would be to stay away, so I could claim more objectivity in a future analysis.

Whoops! what is objectivity in the analysis of experimental studies? Later on, Sebastian Fiedler commented:

It is dead easy to cry for objectivity, reliability, etc. bla bla without ever exploring what this could and should mean in social research.

Of course, there are always proponents of one unified method for all sciences or one universal set of criteria of quality.

I have never understood why studying rock formations should and could follow the same set of rules like studying historically contingent affairs of human beings that are capable of self-reflection, change, etc.

I agree. As a Physics students over a quarter of a century ago, I learnt of the principle of uncertainty. The observation itself will distribute the state of the particle you are trying to observe. So "hard science" also recognised the dilemma...

...her being a long time participant in this particular social practice is putting Lilia in the privileged position to select especially illustrative materials to exemplify what she is trying to express.

The selection of episodes to include (or not to include) is a "subjective" decision (as oppose to objectivity)!

The question is of course, should social studies be criticised based on the notion of the researcher's objectivity or subjectivity? Unlike physical science, "social experiments" are difficult if not impossible (ethically as least). Social experiments are not repeatable. Social studies are NOT physical science and I don't believe the same set of rules (if any) should apply to judge the validity of reports on social phenomena .

Satellite Images of Tsunami Affected Areas

Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia

Before (08 Dec 2004)


After (29 Dec 2004)


Large area of land just been wiped off...

This is heart-breaking...

The only way is up

via Curiouser and curiouser. I did the clean sweep assessment p:6 + W:8 + M:9 + R:4 = 27.

I performed poorly in terms of relationship. The current heavy work load is hurting my relationship with my dearest. I hope I can repair this before it is too late...

On the positive note, the only way is up...

A sad end of 2004

It is sad to note that 2004 ended with such a huge tragedy - over 120 thousand people died in the Tsunami which occurred on 25th December 2004. Here is a blog which aggregates news feeds and blogs from a variety of sources around the world.

http://www.tsunami-info.org

Season Greetings

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

More tips from the coaches

It was the Victoria State Age Championship in the last few days. I have been ferrying my dear swimmer between the swimming pool and home about 3 to 4 times daily until we have arranged car-pool to reduce to two trips per day. That's a big slice of time from my busy schedule!

During a causal discussion with the coaches, I learnt that swimmers need to overcome "pain barrier", learn to push their body, handle the pain from the physical work and recover afterwards. I know that my daughter knows her heart beat very well. She knows how much warm-up will get her heart beat to certain level in order to swim at certain percent of her maximum speed. However, her coach said that she actually hasn't really pushed her body hard enough. So she is performing under her potential.....

Our great Australian swimming hero Grant Hackett admitted that during Athens Olympic games, he defended his title in 1500m freestyle with a collapsed lung, with only 75% of his full lung capacity. The pain arising from that long swim was unimaginable!

I guess any success story will have sometime like that.

Roni and I are struggling through the Fablusi pain barrier - working long hours several times around the clock, mentally, socially and physically pushing ourselves and our family to the limits.

Interestingly, my sister forwarded a motivational powerpoint from her company's HR - advising the executives to do 20 minutes quick walk daily to reduce heart problems....

Life is a balancing act. The tips from the coaches are not only the "pain barrier" part. It is equally important to know how to recover after exerting oneself. This is the part I need to learn.

Context matters

My sister sent me this:

WORDS WOMEN USE
******************************
FINE
This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

FIVE MINUTES
If she is getting dressed, this is half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given 5 more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

NOTHING
This is the calm before the storm. This means "something," and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with 'Nothing' usually end in "Fine"

GO AHEAD
This is a dare, not permission. Don't do it.

LOUD SIGH
This is not actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A "Loud Sigh" means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you over "Nothing"

THAT'S OKAY
This is one of the most dangerous statements that a woman can make to a man "That's Okay" means that she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

THANKS
A woman is thanking you. Do not question it or faint. Just say you're welcome.

While this is more like a joke about the differences between the sexes, there is a lesson here for e-learning designer. Typically, e-learning will be delivered without the rich feedback from face to face interaction. If such misunderstanding (or re-interpretation) of common words used require explanation likes the above, computer-mediated messages are more likely to be mis-interpreted. If our e-learning content is solely dealing with information, that would not be much of a problem. For rich interaction like role play simulation, there is a lesson or two to be pondered carefully.

Copyright and Google Digital Library

re: Press commentary on Google's Digital Library Initiative via Auricle.

One of the press quoted was:

... we have the Sunday Times article All the world's best books at a click (Sunday Times, 19 Dec 2004) by John Sutherland, Professor of Modern English at University College London, which raises the commercial spectre:

"By the act of converting printed books to digital form Google will be creating a new copyright ... Works in the public domain will effectively be privatised. Whether or not Google chooses to exercise its rights, it and its library partners will be owners of the newly processed property. So the vast reservoir of material in the out-of-copyright public domain will become 'proprietary', or pay-per-view. If we get access, it will be because we are 'allowed', not because we have the right. Great Books will go the way of Test cricket. You don’t pay, you don ’t see. Google hasn't said it will do this; but, as far as I can make out, nor has it definitely said it won't. "

My understanding of copyright is that copyright protect the manifestation of a piece of work. While and if Google is digitising public domain material and locked them away in a pay-per-view system, it can only be charging for the manifestation it has created. Google, or in fact anyone else, has no right to forbid anyone else to digitise the work and put the work up in public domain or lock-up in yet another system. If we still believe in the "invisible hand" of the free market, the competition pressure will make the cost of digital goods to near zero because of the near-zero marginal cost of reproduction although there is the upfront cost in creating the material in the first place. The market competition will be shifted to another level (e.g. competing in the ease of locating the material) and we would be likely to pay for the convenience of finding of the content - not the content itself.

I hope the decision makers in Google (or any large data repository) will understand this economical force and adjust their business models accordingly. Otherwise, it will be just a waste of their initial investment in digitizing the material. People won't be paying the content, but will be happy to pay for the convenience of finding the material directly (which I am doubtful) or indirectly (e.g. via advertisement).

It’s all about rich e-learning experiences

The opening paragraph (by Maish R Nichani) is (with my emphasis):

Here are my thoughts on the current discussion between focusing on tasks and focusing on information in an e-learning course. Amy Gahran points out that a task-oriented approach is more effective in most e-learning than an information oriented approach. My point is that a decision-making or an execution-based approach is even better. Decisions are what business organizations are about. The need to perform a task or to acquire information really depends on the decision you are trying to make. Thus, know-how is equally important as know-why or know-what, it really depends on the decision.

The rest of the post tells a convincing approach to more effective e-learning.

My reflection on this is why we only think in terms of tasks and information. A memorable, life-changing experience is not necessarily tasks nor information oriented. We, human, are blessed by our ability to learn from first person, simulated, second person and third person experience. The effectiveness of delivering an experience by narration depends on how well the story-teller can relate to the previous experience of the listener, in order to really triggers the links between the narrative and the existing base of experience of the listener. In many ways, narrative is still a uni-directional delivery. Tasks require operationally measurable output which may, or may not, reflect the rationale of doing the task in a certain way.

The author has used a very good title in the post "rich e-learning experiences". Rich experience implies a blended, clever and effective use of information and tasks. E-learning is about two or many directional exchange of ideas. When all the learners (or trainees) are exchanging meaningful stories related to the theme of the training, I would say we have a rich e-learning experiences.

Why am I so quiet lately?

Working from my home office for my own start-up business is no fun! Lately, we were installing Fablusi v2 for a US customer. My business partner Roni was over there and I was providing technical support from base.

During the last two weeks or more, I had been working 9-5 USA work hours, 9-5 Aussie work hours + overtime. We discussed the issues over Skype from midnight Melbourne time to about 7 am. Then I took a power snap. Got up again around 9am Melbourne time solving the issued raised aiming at delivering a solution by midnight before the USA guys got back. If I was lucky, I might take another power snap before midnight.

The technology was fantastic! Skype provided a cost-free and clear audio channel continuously during the USA 9-5 interval. We also used a number of tools: remote desktop, net-meeting, IM and video to supplement the audio channel. I must say doing things between continents have never been easier and affordable.

The cost was in my relationship with my family and my health. Working like this is NOT healthy, both biologically and psychologically. I am fortunate to have a very understanding wife who supported me all along. I really own her a lot!

Now that the pressure has ease off slightly, I am returning to my regular programming - about 12 hours daily. However, I would be taking a holiday in mid January. I am allowed to bring my laptop only for watching DVD on it. My GP advised me that if I don't do so, my life expectancy can be counted by the fingers in one hand. I don't want to see this happen!

What will happen to this blog? I will continue blogging for about 3 to 4 weeks before I take the break and will be back after that. I have opened a number of threads which I want to continue, but am afraid that I won't be able to finish before the break. I still like to write another two or three pieces on role play simulation design, another reflection on Stephen's Buntine Oration and some more on the "experience theme". I have started an open paper with only early drafts...

So, keep on reading and share your ideas with me ....

How to make miniature modelling clay oranges

via Boing Boing

This is an amazing photo sequence showing how to make miniature mandarins (or oranges). The Boing Boing remark:

Oranges are symbolic of gold and wealth for the Chinese, hence they're all over at the Lunar New Year

is incorrect!

Chinese has mandarins during New Year (Mandarin has the same sound as "lucky"), not oranges. But these fruits are close enough. This is why the photos show the peeled version (which is a common way to peel mandarins - we usually cut oranges!)

Warning: The advertisement links on the website are pornographic!

Dear IE, I'm leaving you for good

See the original, then:

ps I actually have fallen in love with Firefox. Firefox is lean, fast, responsive and understanding, just stunningly beautiful. Unlike you, Firefox surprises have been nice so far. When I needed some extra helps, there is extension around. Did I also mention that Firefox is compliant to standards? It changes its look readily, suiting my mode all the time.

pss BTW, when everyone else love Firefox, I just follow the crowd.

(MY) THREE PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE ONLINE PEDAGOGY

by Bill Pelz via Teaching and Developing Online. Original article published in Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks Volume 8, Issue 3 - June 2004.

Thanks Darren Cannell for pointing out an article which I will keep handy on my desktop.

The three principles are:

A. Principle #1: Let the students do (most of) the work.
1. Student Led Discussions
2. Students Find and Discuss Web Resources
3. Students Help Each Other Learn (Peer Assistance)
4. Students Grade Their Own Homework Assignments
5. Case Study Analysis
B. Principle #2: Interactivity is the heart and soul of effective asynchronous learning
1. Collaborative Research Paper
2. Research Proposal Team Project
C. Principle #3: Strive for presence
Social Presence
Cognitive Presence
Teaching Presence

In an earlier post: Levels of online courses; Where is yours?, I suggested that we should start looking for a level five course which achieve BOTH effective learning AND reduce workload on the part of the instructor/moderator/teacher. Bill Pelz has shown us how to create such a structure (an environment) - learners take on the responsibility of learning and do most of the work. Bill has provided the "structure", in image format, which can be used in many different types of courses verbatim. Unfortunately, I cannot find the use condition of Bill's work.

I would like to add that the "presence" of a responsible figure in the learning environment also serves two other purposes: 1. as a representation of the authority (i.e. the institute) who provided the learning environment and hence the right to provide evidence of achievement and 2. as an obligation to exercise "the duty of care". So if I may add one more sub-element to principle C, I would add "pastoral presence".

Interview of Stephen Downes by Robin Good

WOW, you can get anything better than this!

The mp3 file is waiting for curator approval. The window media is available. I have yet to listen to the interview. One of my favourite writer interviewed by one of the best reporter in the field....

What a treat!

Piracy vs. Stealing: Teacher Fails "A" Student for Topic Choice

I am going to address two issues in this post.

The first part is about the issues of evaluation and assessment. The next part deals with lesson I learnt from an instructional design point of view.

First background (Quoting from Boing Boing):

"Sixteen year-old Steve Geluso was failed by his English teacher for choosing to distinguish piracy from stealing in an essay.

[sic]

"His teacher failed him, saying there was no difference between the two and that he was "splitting hairs". Other teachers who read his essay said that he did well from an organizational and technical standpoint, but because his teacher felt that there was no difference between piracy and stealing, she gave him an 'F' because she disapproved of the content of his essay.

Steve's papers (scanned) can be found in his web blog.

On assessment

One of the first comment on assessment can be found here (THE NEW ACCOUNTABILITY). While this post initiated to discuss the new way of using the net to hold teachers accountable, the post reflects the mainstream view of assessment (evaluation of a PRODUCT as a way of evaluating the ability of the learner who produced the product, without looking into the PROCESS of how the "product" was created.):

The first scorer failed to assess the product (in this case the essay) based on the agreed* rubric.

*"agreed" may be a wrong word here. The publishing of the assessment criteria and the fact that the assessee produced a work according to the published criteria should legally form a contractual agreement which, in this case, there is no exit clause. Assessing the product in any way other than this published criteria is violating the contractual agreement under which the student took the examination.

[This point is irrelevant here: Isn't splitting hair one of the way our understanding of our world can be advanced? Most academic papers are hair splitting definition arguments! Take the definition of "Learning object" as a vivid example relevant to e-learning, or irrelevant to e-learning!]

For important assessment like this and if there is disagreement, a second assessor could be called. It is important that the second assessor is independent and have no prejudice to either parties. It seems that there is a clear case of "information cascading" happening here.

The fundamental problem with assessment based on a single end product is that it is based on an industrial age paradigm.

There is nothing wrong with such a paradigm if you are still living in developing or under-developed countries. The education system in any developed countries should start thinking seriously what kind of citizens will be required to sustain the current standard of living. "America cannot remain rich by producing pillar cases" is true for all developed countries!

One of the important corollary of the industrial age quality control (assessment) is that any product must be evaluated against an agreed set of measures. Any deviation from the measures outside the agreed tolerance is considered faulty - even if the deviation actually *improved* the product in some way.

I will leave my dear readers to ponder a better solution, because I don't have one! We know that learning is a process. What can we do to evaluation the effectiveness of the learning process? What kind, under what condition and how many evidences should we collect in order to provide us with confidence to draw the necessary conclusion? Do we evaluate the learning process (as in how it is delivered etc.) or do we evaluate the effect on the learner (as in how well a learner has mastered a certain skill or concept)? I raise this second part of the last question because I don't believe education (learning) should be a way of "sorting" people!

On lessons learnt

So far, you have been reading a story - a story told by me with a "coloured" glass put on. You may find it interesting (I assume so, since you are still reading this line.). The great question is "SO WHAT?" Have you learnt anything? Have you found anything useful? Is there any ROI for the time you have spent reading up to now?

If you have found my argument full of crap, laughing all the way thinking how silly I am. You have your reward! Entertainment!

OK, let's put on our instructional designer hard hat and assume that we want to use this story for some instructional purposes. By selecting such a story, have we done our job? My answer will be a simple NO. We are not started yet.

Our job is to induce learning, cause changes in the learners' mind. Throwing information (in this case, a story) to the learner is NOT inducing change. We should design ways to activate the change process, prompt the learner to reflect on the information, build links to his/her prior knowledge and arrive at a socially agreed view on the issue.

How can we do that? Let say this is the e-learning design challenge for this festive season.

ps BECAUSE WISDOM CAN’T BE TOLD (OR READ ONLINE) provides some fuel for thinking about this. I may write a post re: case-based learning later.

Role play and real life

In a post called "Is humanity so easily forgotten?", Matt Mower (Curiouser and curiouser!) described a reading about

Zimbardo Prison Experiment in which Stanford students became prisoners and guards in a simulated prison environment. The article [sic] describes the aims of the experiment, how it was set up, how it operated, and how they evaluated the results.

From my reading of the article both prisoners and guards more or less internalized their roles (maybe they were already there to begin with?) by day 2. The guards also showed similar effects in how they responded to wielding power, even though they knew they were being watched, they knew it wasn't real.

While the Zimbardo Prison Experiment took place in a physical world with all the preparation procedures to "prepare the prisoners", the fact that the internalisation occurred only two days into the experiment (while no doubt there was "suspension of belief" operating), and that the randomly chosen groups behaved in the way in line with their assumed roles BOTH being watched AND in private is a powerful reminder of the intensity of role play. It is almost impossible to emphasis the moderator's duty to monitor the well being of the role players when we are dealing with emotional intense situation. Proper de role and debriefing are essential parts of using role play as a learning tool.

This also reminded me about a computerized doll, programmed to mirror the needs of a real baby, shows teens what parenting is really like. See RealCare® Baby II website. [Note: this is not a paid advertisement. I am just using it as an example of the use of real physical objects and environment.]

Using role play in training and learning, online or otherwise, has great potential and hence responsibility. More to think about. I total agree!

The voting is ON now

The EduBlog Awards is now open for voting. Please vote.

http://incsub.org/association/poll

In Autralia, voting is compulsory AND my blog is written in Melbourne, Australia. You know what you should do, right?

:-)

Support this blog, vote for me in "New Comer" award category.

Levels of online courses; Where is yours?

Darren Cannell posted four levels of online courses. The characteristics that indicate the level of courses created are:
Level One:

An attempt to recreate the textbook style of teaching.

Level Two:

The recreation of a successful face to face course online.

Level Three:

It is a level two course in which the teacher recognizes the fact that they are teaching with the largest library in the world at their fingertips and have access to technology.

Level Four:

A level three course which recognizes the student might be able to choose the questions and the teacher assist them in using the technology and the Internet to find the answers.

I am not interested in Level one and level two. So, I suggest to analysis the last two levels like this:

Level 3 recognises the vast amount of information on the web. Here, the teacher will have great difficulty in managing "duty of care" as information arriving at the learners' screen is mostly out of the control of the teacher.

Level 4 recognises that the web is a communication medium as well. Allowing the students to choose questions and communicate the choice to the teacher who will assist in finding the answer.

The investment of effort (from the teacher's point of view) obviously increases as the level advances. Level three and level four involve a continuous effort on the teacher's part as the course is run. The "instructor-less" paradigm is completely throw out of the window - which is GOOD!

One question I would like to ask is why online course. What is the benefit, if any, to both the teacher and students? If no additional benefit over face to face, why change!

No doubt my knowledgeable readers will be able to name a long list of benefits, but suspect in close examination, these are more towards the students than the teachers. Hence, I would suggest there should be a Level Five. Level Five course is not necessarily a level four course, may not even be a level three course. Level five course should have all the achievement of level three and level four course. In addition, it would reduce the workload of teachers running such courses.

What are these level five courses? Let search or create one!

What will her future be? - A Second Look

In a previous post What will her future be?, I thought all repetitive work and production of physical goods (and some digital goods) will be out-sourced to developing or under-developed countries. Because of the huge difference of living standards, there will be a continuous supply of low level skilled labour (and some sophistic skills as well) from these countries. On the other hand, we also know that our own life expectancy is increasing. Our kids need very high value jobs in order to maintain the living standards they are brought up with. My question was "what kind of jobs will be available in 2020" and how should I prepare my daughter to face this unknown future.

At that time, my suggestion was that only service industry will be left - but this will not provide the value production to sustain the living standards of the current developed countries. My search continues until...

I heard a presentation from IT conversation by Richard Florida on The Rise of the Creative Class.

We're in the midst of a fundamental economic revolution, bigger than the change from an agricultural to an industrial society. It's based on creativity including technological, economic and aesthetic creativity.

The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life by Richard Florida:

... the rise of a new social class that he labels the creative class. Members include scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists, and entertainers. He defines this class as those whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative content. In general this group shares common characteristics, such as creativity, individuality, diversity, and merit. The author estimates that this group has 38 million members, constitutes more than 30 percent of the U.S. workforce, and profoundly influences work and lifestyle issues.

From a book review by P. Lozar "plozar" on Amazon.com:

Richard Florida's study began with a rather straightforward premise: what characterizes the cities and regions that are economically successful today? His conclusions are rather controversial, but, based on the statistical evidence he presents (as well as my own experience), I found them highly convincing.

The liveliest economies, he finds, are in regions characterized by the 3 T's -- talent, technology, and tolerance. The implications are profound, to wit:

1. Conventional wisdom holds that, to boost an area's economy, it's necessary to attract large companies and thus create jobs. In fact, companies locate where the talent is; all the tax breaks in the world won't bring a large company to your area if they can't find the quality of employees they want there. Often, too, the talent itself will generate new companies and create jobs that way.

2. Urban planners assume that, to attract talent/jobs, what's important is to provide infrastructure: sports stadiums, freeways, shopping centers, etc. In fact, creative people prefer authenticity -- so making your city just like everyplace else is a sure way to kill its attractiveness.

3. The often-misunderstood "gay index" doesn't mean that gay people are more creative, or that attracting gays to a community will ipso facto boost its economy. Creative people tend to prefer gay-friendly communities because they're perceived as tolerant of anyone who isn't "mainstream"; a city that's run by a conservative good-ole-boys network isn't a good place to try to start a business unless you're one of the good ole boys.

Richard Florida looked at the problem from an American angle and provided advice to government. My interest in more about how we should prepare our kids. If he is right, I now have a direction to look for the kind of attitudes and qualities which I can help my daughter to develop.

Here are some books on the subject by Richard Florida on Amazon for your convenience:

Online security and Online teacher's duty of care

I have commented before (here, here, here and here) that as we move to e-learning, the notion of "duty of care" and cyber security for learners are difficult issues. I shifted constantly between in favour of "education" to in favour of "filtering" and back. The spam emails (mostly inappropriate for minors) take up about 95% of my incoming email. Without filters, I just cannot work. However, the recent entry of MSN into the blogosphere is another demonstration of how bad filter may be (at least as an implementation by Microsoft). See this from Boing Boing.

... from a BoingBoing reader about the fact that MSN Spaces, Microsoft's new blogging tool, censors certain words you might try to include in a blog title or url. If you can't speak freely on a blog, what's the point of having one? This demanded a full investigation.

[sic]

(1) BoingBoing's readers said the title "Corporate Whore" was censored. My attempt at "Corporate Whore Chronicles" met the same result, but "Corporate Prostitute Chronicles" worked fine. Hooray for synonyms with more syllables!

[sic]

(4) Uh-oh. My attempt to create an MSN Spaces blog called "Pornography and The Law" is met with rude red text advising me to can the profanity. So, if I were a law student who wanted to start a blog about the history of obscenity law in the United States, I'd be shit out of luck.

[sic]

The conclusion? A mixed bag of results that manages to do what most attempts to automate censorship do -- make fools of the censors. - Xeni Jardin

Season Greeting

Please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, the best wishes, referred to as this greeting hereafter, for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, politically correct, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, non-specific sexuality, celebration of the winter solstice holiday in the northern hemisphere and summer solstice holiday in the southern hemisphere, practised within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your preference, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all and a financially successful, personally fulfilling, emotionally enchanting and stimulating, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2005, but with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects, in a world filled with love, peace, joy, harmony, diversity, tolerant, good will and respect, and having regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith and your preference to the choice of blogging software, RSS reader, email system, Internet web browsers, including but not limited to the free Firefox and/or Internet Explorer with due considerations of their respective differences to the interpretation and implementation of W3C web standards, computer platform, brand of microprocessor, type of visual display unit, keyboard, mouse or any other pointing device, operating system, including but not limited to singular or a plurality of variations, whether for a fee or free open source, and Internet service provider connected by modem, permanent modem, broadband, or otherwise, or dietary preference of the wishee.

This greeting must not be read if you do not accept the terms and conditions of this greeting. By reading this greeting, you have indicated your explicit acknowledgement of accepting this greeting in the aforesaid manners . This greeting inclusively, exclusively and non-exclusively cover you, your spouse, whether same or different gender and/or whether such relationship is legally recognized or illegal in certain jurisdictions, including singularly and plurally, previous, present or future, your children including natural, adopted, by-law or sponsored, dead, alive, or unborn, and/or your parents, related by blood, by-laws, adopted, or sponsored dead or alive. Upon being covered by the greeting of the aforesaid greeting in the same aforesaid manner, those covered wishees will extend the aforesaid greeting to the same relates they have recursively and infinitum.

By accepting this greeting you are bound by these terms:

• This greeting is subject to further clarification or withdrawal.


• This manifestation of the greeting is copyleft under GNU license or other open source license similar to GNU license and or Creative Commons when and if such license(s) is/are enforceable in certain jurisdictions and/or when GNU or similar open source license is not enforceable or not applicable in certain jurisdictions this greeting, and all its associated tangible and intangible good will and best wishes, is freely transferable, duplicated, distributed, copied and reproduced provided that any further addition or alternation shall not impose any limitation beyond those implicitly or explicitly expressed this clause.


• Any alteration and addition, including but not limited to the syntactic, semantic, linguistic, artistic, aesthetic, spiritual and material improvements, shall only be made to the original greeting in the same good faith and honour of any reasonable person and that the proprietary rights, including but not limited to the intellectual and moral rights, publishing rights including but not limited to publishing via the blogosphere, by email, by web sites, on CD and/or any electronic means, and or the right to perform in private and in public to a small, medium or large group of present or remote audience and or the rights to transmit, preserve and retransmit by any physically means or electronic means of the wishor are preserved, acknowledged and/or enhanced.


• This greeting implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any of the wishes.


• This greeting may not be enforceable in certain jurisdictions and/or the restrictions herein may not be binding upon certain wishees in certain jurisdictions and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.


• This greeting is warranted to perform as reasonably may be expected within the usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first.


• The wishor warrants this greeting only for the limited replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor.


• Any references in this greeting to "the Lord", "Father Christmas", "Our Saviour", "Santa" or any other festive figures, whether actual or fictitious, dead or alive, shall not imply any endorsement by or from them in respect of this greeting, and all proprietary rights in any referenced third party names and images are hereby acknowledged.


• Any names or terms used in this greeting, whether trademarked, copyrighted, copylefted, patented or have been placed in the open source under GNU, Creative Commons or other open source licenses belong to their respective owners and promoters.


• The wishee expressly agrees, by the acceptance of the greeting, that the greeting is accepted and enjoyed at wishee's own risk. Neither the wishor, its affiliates, nor any of their respective employees, previous or current employers, friends, relatives, spouse past, present or future, agents, third party providers or licensor's warrant that the greeting will be uninterrupted or error free; nor do they make any warranty as to the results and effectiveness of the greeting.

Executed today and valid irrespective of any signature which may be required or not.



________________________________
Signed Albert Ip
The Wishor










___________________________________
Signed You
The Wishee

To better enjoy this greeting, print this out, frame in a nice gold frame, hang 20 inches in front of your desk or in front of the monitor, read daily and smile.

"Practice Makes Perfect" - a follow up

Harold commented on my post with a story about a gymnastics instructor.

Her main method of teaching was to provide only positive encouragement after each attempt, without criticism. Just before the next attempt, she would give some corrective advice, like "keep your elbows tucked in this time".

[sic]

I still believe that the only way to develop a skill is through practice and feedback, however when and how the feedback is given is extremely important.

(original emphasis)

It seems that we have a lot to learn from the coaches as well!

Sexual Harrassment Role Play Resource

Will the use of these mouse pads constitute a case for inappropriate behaviour in a workplace? The link is not pornographic, but may not be "workplace" safe. Be warned.

World Record

Hong Kong will achieve a new world record in 2005: the largest ever demolition of new, unused buildings.
Seven residential blocks built two years ago were never inhabited. Developers will tear them down to make way for luxury flats which will net about HK$6 billion in profits.
-Daily BWG

How does Hong Kong get to such situation? This is a separation issue. Developers' avarice aside, the courage and risk-bearing attitude is unmatched.

Most educational institutes are publicly funded. If an educational institute needs to take similar drastic action, whose interest should be served?

Some of my reflective questions (white on white, highlight to cheat)
Who are the "shareholders" of higher education?
Will "CEO" of any education institute be willing to bite the bullet even if s/he is convinced that such a decision will serve the best interest of the "shareholders"? (i.e., can it be his/her own career-promoting decision?)
Are there any such "new, unused buildings" (metaphorically speaking) which need tearing down in today's education institutions to generate even better profit for the "shareholders"? What are they, if any?