I am having another look at Squidoo and Eurekster. I tried out editing often a while back, then lost track. But a check on Alexa shows they have grown over the last couple of years.

There will be a version of this post with a bit more technology included on the drupa2008 blog but the Adobe MAX event is an occasion to just list some options for online collaboration or forms of publishing. I have been working on a page about a possible eTEN research project. This was around the Adobe project for server software and PDF. At the time I saw PDF as central to the move of documents online. PDF has all the function of paper. But recently Google docs are showing that the format of the page is not that crucial if it is the text that is central to collaboration. Adobe have now bought Buzzword and it looks as if this will work ok with the same sort of collaboration as with Google docs plus the display and design of pages as they would print. By the way I don't see these as competing too much ; both ways of processing words would suit some purpose. Adobe seem converted to the Google model of free online apps supported by adverts. It is unclear whether the PDF approach will also change. In my opinion the acceptance of PDF for online collaboration has been delayed by the very high prices charged. LiveCycle is only really promoted to a few banks and some governments. Perhaps PDF is only required in a corporate setting for security and signatures etc. It may just stay rare and expensive while Flash is promoted on another model.

Most of what was announced at MAX is still beta. Actual releases next year. So my view at the moment is that it is not really possible to design any learning situation given the rate of change in available formats and software. The next few months are a time for observation and experiment. There is a relevant theory of learning no doubt but this may be clarified later.

On the drupa2008 blog I have suggested that the London College of Communications do their Futures conference in reverse order, putting print in a web context. The publishing bit in the middle could link to discussion at Online Information. I don't understand how the courses are organised at LCC but for some reason the issues for the panel at Online Information seem slightly distinct from the Digital Print World conference.

So in a mild attempt at time travel, here is my question for the panel. In real life this will be asked around lunchtime on December 6th towards the back of the hall in Olympia.

What to make of the London printed reviews of "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger. So far as I know there have not been any. There is no UK publisher but the book is available from Amazon UK. Is there something about books such as Andrew Keen's "The Cult of the Amateur" that appeals more to the sort of people who edit review pages? Since David Weinberger gave a keynote two years ago for the Online Information conference with similar content, is the lack of book reviews evidence that the conference is of very little interest for the world of London literature?

My impression is that the Swicki is working ok. So the idea that there is a link between learning and quality could be valid. I will try out putting that more definitely. Quality systems work as people learn from them or in them, maybe it is more about learning design or the learning is accidental. So I will arrange other blogs and claims as if this is a reasonable assumption for a while.



I have just done a search on "learning quality" in the Learn9 Swicki. The results are ok. I am not surprised that a European project turns up. The continental universities are serious about online learning and using quality ideas as part of this. The concern is quality in support of learning but this is probably as good a context as any to find out about learning within quality, the concern I started out with. Of course "non-learning" and system failure are just as easy to study. There may be more data.

I have tried out a post about forms of knowledge on the Guardian Talk. I have posted a series on the QR funding part of research assessment. Some academics have helped to explain things. It is a way to find out what they think about quality.

Also on the learning with ISO 9000 log there will soon be something on forms of knowledge that might overlap. The current debate about amateurs that mostly comes from professional journalists strikes me as related to discussion by academics about mode1 and mode 2 knowledge. My own interest is in quality and I am gradually turning to forms of journalism rather than attempt academic writing. Most quality theory has come from practitioners. The web is changing the location of styles of knowledge. If it turns up in a Google search it may be from a journal, a magazine or just a blog or something. Continues on blog.

Since writing that I have had a printed promotion for the Online Information Conference and I think it will leave it as open as possible till then. The keynote speaker is Jimmy Wales and the topics are all "web 2.0". It seems a good chance to talk about validity claims in a wider context. I'm sure some form of quality will fit in there.

There is every chance that the Hunky Mouse or someone from Newswireless will turn up and report. Could Guy Kewney revise his views on amateurs given new discussion on user generated content?

There are speakers from universities so I will contact others and see what they think. In 2002 there was a "Manifesto: Towards E-Quality in Networked E-Learning in Higher Education" but I don't know how this has developed since. Is the word "quality" part of this? Chris Grey wrote "Against Learning" (PDF file)in 2001. I got the impression the web was part of the learning he was against.

Academics may not recognise the conference as carrying weight in their discussion. There is still no UK review of "Everything is Miscellaneous" that I can find though I think a keynote at Online Information is worth some consideration.

I have had an email invite to a survey on e-learning, or rather whether the term "e-learning" should vanish and just be known as "learning". Strangely there is also another term "technology-enhanced learning". This seems to have been recently invented by academics looking for another discipline. Hey, this is just a blog don't take offence. I have sent a reply and suggested "the web" as a term that is in use. It seems obvious to me that some form of learning is involved in using the web. One problem is that "education" is associated with institutions. In the UK there has recently been less emphasis on adult education other than basic skills or through employment sectors. So I think the web should be part of the mix.

It is making more sense that the Online Information show can be imagined. I might as well assume it is happening now or last week. Also I have managed to read all the way through "Everything Is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger. I do read some books by the way. I do not spend all my time watching TV or online. Just most of it. But I still read newspapers and magazines and sometimes a book. Usually they have some kind of typological guide or outline. "In this chapter you will discover x y and z" or an introduction that sums up the main points. In this case there is just a long continuous text with occasional breaks for a chapter heading. Maybe it is thought this is how a book should be. Based at the Berkman Center, Harvard Law School and a frequent keynote presenter at events such as Online Information maybe he thinks that speaking without interruption for an hour or so at a time is no bad skill and printed text should have the same effect. Not that I'm complaining about the content now I have managed to read it. I just think there should be a route map.

One thing disappointed me, the representation of people who work on quality assurance. An imagined character, Carla (page 160), has just one line. "I'll be making sure what we build meets company standards." This is in a chapter on "what nothing says", how fiction communicates more than our information about people we know through work. My own view is that quality assurance can be more than this. Maybe I should turn to fiction for a Carla who would guide the team through the next morphosis.

Jimmy Wales, scheduled to present this year's keynote for Online Information, is quoted on page 136. "I'm not all that interested in French philosophy. An article is neutral when people have stopped changing it."

Wales is currently working on the Wikia search engine. One of the principles is quality ( as well as transparency, privacy and collaboration).

"* Quality - Significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results and the searching experience."

Discussion so far points out that search engines sometimes turn up mostly commercial sites : social networking sites suffer because people use the wrong tags : there is plenty of room for improvement.

It is a mystery to me why Weinberger's book has not been more widely reviewed in the UK. That is, reviewed at all as far as I can tell. It is now available through Amazon UK. On Huffington Post Weinberger recently explained why there has been media attention for "The Cult of the Amateur" by Andrew Keen

How could they not feature an author -- a former dot-com guy no less -- who says that the Internet is killing our culture, as his subtitle puts it? Even better, the culture the Internet is supposedly killing is the mass media's presented in its best light -- the home of poetry, opera and fine journalism.

Some points from his own book are repeated but there is support for some of the points made by Keen.

Keen's best case largely fails. It's strongest at pointing to the strengths of the modern ecology. Some institutions that have nurtured talent are likely to go bankrupt. We do not yet have replacements for some of them, and it's possible that for some of them, no economic model will emerge that will enable them to continue.

So this is interesting for business students as well. The Wikipedia may not have a normal business model but it seems to survive. Online Information will include some discussion about publishing.

This post is going away from theory and into news but maybe the time is right for this. The Online Information conference in the first week of December is a significant event. With stands for university presses including Oxford and Stanford there is potential interest for academics.

A couple of years ago the keynote speaker was David Weinberger, author of the book "Everything is Miscellaneous". My main interest in this is to at least break down the divisions between learning and quality as academic subjects. Just enough to make some connections.

The news is that this year the keynote will be from Jimmy Wales and cover "Web 2.0" , whatever that turns out to be.



It surprises me that "Everything is Miscellaneous" has not been reviewed by the Guardian. They have covered a book on the "Cult of the Amateur". Maybe this is better suited to the views of proper journalists such as Victor Keegan and Tim Dowling. So far as I know there has not been a review of "Miscellaneous" in Information World Review, although "Amateur" has been together with an interview.

Screenshot of search on Guardian shows that "Miscellaneous" has only been mentioned by Jeff Jarvis, in 2006, before the book existed. So what is the point of a book format? Available from Amazon UK ( special offer includes the Amateur one as well if you are really interested). Is UK review space limited to London publishing? What is going on?



Discussion continues online. Olympia in December is actual space.

There is more happening around the discussion of expert authority in a web context. On this blog I still think it is worth repeating this, just to create a space where quality and learning can be seen as related. It is the view of distinct academic subjects that has been a block on this.

Today's post, actual through the letterbox hard copy stuff in cellophane, included Information World Review. Splash next to the front page title- "The Wicked Web 2.0 - Culture Killer" . This is a bit loaded. I have not given up on dialogue through Guardian Talk but have decided to concentrate on this blog. So in future most words will turn up here to avoid repeating things. But today, here is a copy from Guardian Talk

Information World Review has joined in the publicity for Andrew Keen's book. "A book is a fitting medium to argue for a reassessment" writes Mark Chillingworth. This is a very fair point. This stream of thought is coming from the print world. I am not sure Victor Keegan was right to say it represents any trend on the web.

In an interview, Keen says "We need to re-install a principle of authority. The mainstream media and experts can civilise the web."

Presumably Guardian journalists support this view of experts and mainstream media. Who knows? They rarely join in this sort of Talk.

I may continue to add to this topic but probably will kepp my own blog more updated

http://www.learn9.net

By the way, as far as I know there is no IWR review yet of "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger. As mentioned before, this is a proper book. Continuous text with an index. Maybe this will have to wait for UK publication. The US version is now on Amazon UK.

Also similar points on the chatspace for NewsWireless. Guy Kewney recently wrote about the threat to journalism from user generated content on the web. However NewsWireless seems fairly open to contributions.

A printed version of Information World Review has arrived, dated for July and August. The opinions are a bit exetreme in my own view. Web 2.0 is linked with the words "wicked" and "culture killer". That is just the splash on the cover. The review of the book "The Cult of the Amateur" by Andrew Keen is headlined "The monkey cult destroying the temple of knowledge". It opens by comparing the web to "infinite monkeys ....perpetuating the cycle of misinformation and ignorance". The recent views in IT Week from Guy Kewney seem fair and balanced by comparison.

In an interview with Mark Chillingworth, Andrew Keen said "We need to re-install a principle of authority. The mainstream media and experts can civilise the web."

Strangely the same Mark Chillingworth writes an editorial about a recent discussion panel on Web 2.0. "My hat goes off to the information professionals....who put their hands in the air and admitted they didn't fully understand the technology and the issues it presented to their working lives."

So what sort of authority do they have? There could be some sort of dialogue with the people who have been using the web in ways now described as Web 2 or whatever.

I am not sure who finds this topic. There seem to several routes from the Newswireless pages. So here is a link to my own blog, which may be more likely to be updated-

http://www.learn9.net

Also there is a comment on the IWR blog. I don't think they have reviewed "Everything is Miscellaneous" as yet. If I'm wrong another comment should turn up.

I have previously come across the Information World Review mostly through the Online Information show. It now seems to put more emphasis on print than I had realised. The case made about "The Cult of the Amateur" seems to get attention just because it is in a book.

The Online Information show would be a good time to talk about online information.

I will do a course later this month on autobiography, part of the summer school at Lancaster. The first slant is as a situation. More chronology will follow later. I have included some time travel, taking in up to drupa next year.

Jeff Jarvis on Buzzmachine recently described the possible consequence of web availabilty for education.

"I keep coming back to the idea that the next institution to explode — after media, advertising, consumer companies, politics, and government — is the academe. This will have profoundly disruptive implications for both education and research. But why shouldn’t educational institutions — especially publicly funded ones — follow the lead of MIT and other universities and put their curricula online? And wouldn’t it be ducky if there were a good, standard infrastructure for doing so and even for joining in with other online students? And, of course, why shouldn’t we all be able to create courses to share?"

This interest me as it would change the way people think about learning and quality, and the way that print fits with the web.

My guess is that Nature will be at the Information Management Show or Online Information. They both have a blogger stream in the free seminars that are on the show floor. I get confused as to which is which.

Guardian Education this week has ann article about Nature Network and a quote from Dr Timo Hannay, director of web publishing at Nature Publishing Group.

"We are increasingly seeing the online world with its informal rapid communications complement the slower, more formal communications of academic journals. There should be a way of measuring the impact of a scientist who posts comments on a site like Nature Network. These could be added to their publishing record for the research assessment exercise [in which every active researcher in every university in the UK is assessed by panels of other academics]. I think the funding bodies will see that these contributions add to the scientific knowledge base."

Previously I had thought of "Research Assessment Friendly" knowledge and "search engine constructed" knowledge as two different things. They could be complementary but I have not previously come across anyone suggesting the web be given the sort of credibility suggested here.

I would welcome it because as the management learning establishment still have little time for quality as a topic, still less recognition as a subject. By contrast any discussion coming out of real situations can often cover both learning and quality.

I am starting to include more in this blog about the nature of the knowledge that is on the web. The actual book, "Everything is Miscellaneous" has arrived. It is now on Amazon UK. Last weekend was the third forum on citizen journalism organised by OhmyNews. Very little coverage so far, but the issues keep cropping up. Proper print journalists seem to be getting upset.

Latest example, Guy Kewney in IT Week.

Headline - Warning: user-generated sites may contain nuts
Real news and informed opinion are being drowned out by conspiracy-fuelled drivel

selected quote -

User Generated Content makes these people think they have a point worth making and allows them to make it. This is a recipe for mob rule, not intelligent consensus.

"Real News" on NewsWireless has included a story about Hutchison which was denied and then appeared not to be valid. The explanation came out that the prediction was essentially correct except that Chinese beliefs in the benefits of a new year had led to a delay. Very entertaining and easy to read, but surely there could be a bit of tolerance for bloggers from real journalists such as these?

Serge Ravet has posted a Google Doc including the original formatting. This is fantastic as it would have taken ages to guess.

I have highlighted the bits that jump out. There will be more on the website later.

This is a Green Paper about eQuality. There was an awards event in Paris in January and this paper was written later. So the meaning of the word is still for discussion. Any scope that includes learning, quality and technology is helpful for me.

Checking out the links on the website I find that the various European quality research projects seem to have combined to support a Quality Foundation. Here there is a wiki with several texts.

My impression is that the discussion has gone a long way in combining ideas about learning and quality. I am trying to reformat this text to get a better idea of it. It is very encouraging so far and may be a base on which to reorganise other material.

The book "Everything is Miscellaneous" has been published.

There are extracts and versions and reviews have started. See the blog for links.

there is also a video on Google



I will come back to this later.

What interests me is the possibility of breaking down the gap between learning and quality as academic subjects. On the web my impression is that many people search on either word and maybe both. But academics in the UK at least who are researching learning tend not to be interested in quality except to critique it.

I have found a couple of links following an article in yesterday's Guardian. Michael Rosenblum has a copy of most of an article by Ian Reeves, who has some video on his own site.

Rosenblum is quoted as distinguishing web 1 as based on text and web 2 as based on video. Personally I find the use of webs 1- n confusing but the idea of a text web and a video web is interesting. The video on Ian Reeves site shows several examplesof newspappers moving to the web. Jeff Jarvis believes that video is suitable for conversation but I don't really expect US candidates to respond in detail to every post on YouTube. Text still has some scope, even if email exchange started in web zero.

Today Adobe announced a new Creative Suite ans I am struck by the low priority for print. My guess is that most people still relate to hard copy. But 'design' seems to be one of three words, the others being web and video. Within 'design' print is hanging on with mobile devices. The most recent figures show sales of Flash to device OEM as about 2% of Adobe revenue. Postscript sales are included with 'other', totalling about 10%. So somebody expects the mobile video aspect to grow fairly rapidly.

"text web" relates back to hard copy. "video web" may not. Except that if flying type is included in the animation I hope knowledge about typography survives somewhere.

I am posting this in learn9, about learning and quality, and in drupa2008, about whatever pre-press is supposed to be doing, and in a Guardian Education Talk comment about QR. I still don't understand the UK academic approach to quality but when a new set of students arrive one day expecting to borrow cameras from the library there must be some way to manage the transition.

I have had another look at word clouds and search engines. One reason is that the websites I have worked on have limitations. Based it the UK they are always going to have less scope than the US sites on similar topics. Planet PDF and PDF Zone get more news and have more resource. Stats so far show that the UK audience is usually less than 20% of the site intended for the UK, even with an opening screen suggesting going to the dotcom site. So maybe now there is some broadband in the UK there could be less diffence between them. The dotcom could be more about Flash for example. I have written on drupa2008 about my difficulty keeping up with Adobe. I realise there is some point in Flash but I think the UK is still slightly into hard copy.

Anyway, the benefit of search engines is that they can include your own site and others. So the people coming to it get a range of sources even if one website is not updated. I started last year on Swickis and Squidoo lenses. It is easy to lose focus through this but I managed a 'Hello spiders' diagram that had some sort of coherence.

At Google University last year I got a freebie introduction to adwords so tried to promote this hello spiders diagram page. It is clearly too complicated as my 'quality score' has gradually dropped so that all the words are inactive within the budget. So I have tried a simplified version for Google Customised Search. Gradually Google offers enough to absorb most of what is happening. Their webpage creation tool is pretty good so I have used that. It started as a personal homepage which is ok as I can relate to most of the issues around the search engines on it.



Customised Search Engines start here.

So far it seems to work ok.

I am also working on a Google doc following up some ideas from last year. There is academic study on how the weak links of the web change views on communities of practice. I have not been able to follow how this relates to practice, but these search engines with social aspects may demonstrate some issues after a while.

I have started to think about updating the Acrobat Services sites. Relevant here because the technology around PDF is now a useful part of learning and documentation. Over the last few months I have got more into blogging than websites. It is easier and more provisional. Also I have not been settled in a view on Acrobat 8. It is too much about Flash. Now I know a bit more about Mars I have come to accept the Flash aspects. Apollo runtime is now available and some of it looks ok. So I realise what I am interested in fairly retro for the current Adobe direction. The dotcom site could expand into the Flash aspects of what is now Acrobat. The UK one will stay close to print, at least until drupa.

Last week I was in Lancaster and I had a look at the campus again. The new IT building is still a major feature and there is a lot going on to promote IT companies and projects. I think quality ideas could fit with this. I didn't check out the Management School but it should be possible to work on some kind of 'performativity' that is accepted to some extent. As in wifi should work some of the time, for example. In the cafe at the top of the building it is working fine.

Encouraged by feedback so far on Google docs I have merged two bits of text that may start a new connection with management learning as a subject. One is from an earlier proposal relating quality to FE and the other is the last part of a paper on the knowledge economy. Current version at Google docs.