electro-textual

Finally back from NetworkingNow03, in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney - what an exhausting experience! 600 people all drinking tea in one small space, rushing from room to room, overheating and then moving out to the fresh air and incredibly beautiful views of the mountains. Delightful, but not much chance to meet people you didn’t already know.

One highlight was Marty Cielens‘ session on Open Source – (and if you head to Michael Coghlan’s audio blog and subscribe, you’ll hear that Mardi Dwyer agrees).

As well as showing us all the great tools that he’s experimented with, Marty
compared the philosophy of the Open Source movement to that of our educational sectors. He asserted that it would be great if we could embrace the concept of Open Design – allowing teachers to create and share a range of learning materials - within a framework of a kind of General Public Licence for teachers.

Also Barbara Pitman presented us with a great new resource for Indigenous Health called “Livin in a House” – an inspiring speaker, Barbara’s not one
for using text-based technology without good reason. She also told a terrible
story about how technological progress can mean democratic regression – back in the seventies local people in the Northern Territory relied on free community radio to get their messages rapidly between groups of people. Opponents of the Land Rights movement were amazed at how quickly word was getting around. But now there is only the pay phone.

Barbara showed us how to use animation and music, as well as a well-known person with street credibility, to get a message across. You’ll find her keynote address at Human Services – worth a read!!

PS: some time after this i interviewed Marty for the knowledge tree.. i’ll hunt down a link. Remind me if you’re interested  ;-]