Spotted last weekend at the British Museum… Space Hijacking Santa’s Flash-mobbing the British Museum.
What Do We Want? CHRISTMAS! When Do We Want It? NOW!
Beyond All Reason
Well… today was last day of term for two @smiths courses: Beyond All Reason and Culture, Globalisation and Power.
I’ve just finished uploading all my Beyond All Reason mindmaps… use with caution…. Click on for some links…
goldsmiths wiki
@smiths now has wiki space at a cost of around £2000 for the software licenses (1).
Wiki’s, along with blogs, are a prominent feature of the contemporary easy to read, easy to edit web. The term wiki is derived from the Hawaiian word for quick. Wiki’s are websites that are quick and easy to contribute to and to edit. The software purchased, Confluence, is merely an implementation of the wiki idea, corporatised, privatised and packaged up as an ‘enterprise level collaboration tool’.
Apparently the free software Media Wiki (it’s open source, don’t you know), the software that built wikipedia the software that spawned a thousand clones, isn’t good enough for Goldsmiths. I don’t understand the rational behind the purchasing a proprietary implementation of generic software, when one of the original and best pieces of software out there, the code behind the biggest wiki on the planet, is available for free.
Has the success of Moodle, the free software code that powers the VLE, not sufficiently demonstrated the strengths of open source to Goldsmiths IT purchasers? A couple thousand pounds have been spent on software that could have been obtained for free. The savings made by adopting a free software alternative could have been spent on developing the skills of the IT services team so that they could support and maintain the software.
- Assuming a New Academic Unlimited User License. Costs estimated from Atlassian website.
@smiths… the student staff forum.
I should be I should be writing about Appadurai’s theory of globalisation, but I wanted to write about the student staff forum meeting I attended today more…
Reflections on staff student forum aka The Alternative Minutes
The program monitoring program at goldsmiths has recently changed to a new model. This arrangement uses online tools to compliment the traditional Course Rep role to set an agenda for a number of meetings over the course of the college year between the academic staff and the students. As a Program Monitoring Rep I was at the first of the meetings today.
There was an agenda. These are my reflections on that meeting. Disclaimer. I would probably say all of the following again. But that doesn’t make it anything more than my opinion. The official minutes may more accurately reflect actual events. Mileage may vary. Terms and Conditions Apply. Offers not available to those outside the EU.
