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Marc Eberhard | 1 Apr 2003 09:11
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Re: Education Campaign?

On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 06:11:37PM +0100, Simon Waters wrote:
> I agree, but how is the AFFS Education campaign going? Who is our
> contact again...

I think, Richard was involved in some school stuff. But I think, it all went
very quiet. Would surely be good to restart these efforts.

On another matter, does anyone have any contacts with LearnDirect? I was
very surprised to learn, that their online courses only work with Microsoft
Windows. The technical reason is, that they require a plugin, which is only
availabe for Win (Macromedia Authorware). I didn't investigate this very
much, but it wouldn't be good to have an organisation of that size promoting
only Windows for their e-learning efforts. Obviously their IT course are
only based on Win-Software, but they do also offer non-IT subjects. And I
would really like to see these being available to non-Win users. Anyone any
experience with them?

Bye,
Marc
_______________________________________________________________________________

email: marc <at> greenie.net, marc.eberhard <at> alumni.tum.de
email: m.a.eberhard <at> aston.ac.uk, web: http://www.aston.ac.uk/~eberhama/
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Alex Hudson | 1 Apr 2003 09:33

Re: Education Campaign?

On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 08:11, Marc Eberhard wrote:
> On another matter, does anyone have any contacts with LearnDirect?

Yup, me - the company I work for was talking about designing some
courses for them a while back (it never happened, for various reasons).

> I was
> very surprised to learn, that their online courses only work with Microsoft
> Windows.

That's not strictly true - their platform spec calls for Macs to work
also, and Netscape 4. But, they do re-negotiate the spec on a
per-project basis. The environment is pretty harsh, though - for
example, you cannot do any server-side processing at all. Hence people
tend to use heavy-client plugins, like Flash/Authorware, Java, etc.

Most of their projects don't require renegotiation, though. Their
half-decent stuff is done in Flash, but there's not much of it - pretty
much the ESL stuff only.

> only Windows for their e-learning efforts. Obviously their IT course are
> only based on Win-Software, but they do also offer non-IT subjects. And I
> would really like to see these being available to non-Win users. Anyone any
> experience with them?

Their courses aren't particularly amazing, and because of the way that
they are setup and funded, they don't have much incentive to renew their
courses and keep them up-to-date.

In fact, they only tend to generate courses when the Government dangles
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Marc Eberhard | 1 Apr 2003 11:05
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Re: Education Campaign?

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 08:33:38AM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> That's not strictly true - their platform spec calls for Macs to work
> also, and Netscape 4.

That's the original information I got and I thus assumed, that mozilla
should work fine. The problem is:

  http://www.macromedia.com/software/authorware/productinfo/sysreqs/

According to the specs there, it's only available for Win and Mac (you're
right, Macs appear to be supported too). I'm not even sure, if they are
fully aware of this nasty dependence this plugin introduces into their
courses through the backdoor. The person, who booked the course with them,
asked explicitly, if GNU/Linux was OK and the reply was: Yes, netscape 4
should do. In principle it probably does, but the plugin is not available
thus making it impossible to do the course as all content is served through
that plugin. The rest appears to work fine. Obviously, that makes it all a
bit useless. Do you know someone with enough technical knowledge there to
contact and ask about it? Maybe they are willing to think about this problem
and look out for alternatives.

> But, they do re-negotiate the spec on a per-project basis. The environment
> is pretty harsh, though - for example, you cannot do any server-side
> processing at all. Hence people tend to use heavy-client plugins, like
> Flash/Authorware, Java, etc.

Flash is acceptable as it at least exists for GNU/Linux, obviously not as
Free Software, but anyway. Java should be fine too. However, Authorware
appears to be the problem. The Macromedia website is pretty awful to visit
as it insists on setting cookies all over the place and constantly requests
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Alex Hudson | 1 Apr 2003 11:53

Re: Education Campaign?

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 10:05:49AM +0100, Marc Eberhard wrote:
> > That's not strictly true - their platform spec calls for Macs to work
> > also, and Netscape 4.
> 
> That's the original information I got and I thus assumed, that mozilla
> should work fine.

Well, as I said, it's kind of flexible :/

> Flash is acceptable as it at least exists for GNU/Linux, obviously not as
> Free Software, but anyway.

I think there is a GPL Flash plugin, but I'm not sure how advanced it is.
Certainly, the latest Flash6 is completely out of our reach, as far as 
I know. This might be something to do with the fact that the 'techie' 
community tends to look down on Flash, but unfortunately Flash is even
more pervasive that Internet Explorer (or, at least, was last time I looked)
making it almost the common denominator.

> a very different opinion, what that term means for me. In any case, is
> anyone aware, if they plan to release their Authorware plugin for GNU/Linux
> too as they've done for Flash?

I would suspect not. It's quite a complex ActiveX control; whereas at least
the Flash plugin was a Netscape plugin. I imagine it relies on the W32
infrastructure fairly heavily. 

> I only stumbled over them, because they appear to have made a really big
> deal with the local libraries here now.
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Richard Smedley | 1 Apr 2003 13:34
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Re: Education Campaign?

On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 08:11, Marc Eberhard wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 06:11:37PM +0100, Simon Waters wrote:
> > I agree, but how is the AFFS Education campaign going? Who is our
> > contact again...
> 
> I think, Richard was involved in some school stuff. But I think, it all went
> very quiet. Would surely be good to restart these efforts.

Indeed. Yes, it all went very quiet. At the moment
we need volunteers with time, knowledge and contacts 
to get involved (hint, hint :-)

> Early days, but I'd like to be prepared to give a presentation on more
> administrative aspects, where I can discuss example deployments, give
> references to appropriate sites etc, potential cost savings, without
> just waving empty figures around (not that the emptiness of figures ever
> stopped a salesman before IME).

This would be great. Feel free to 'phone me any time
about this, or carry this on on the list. 

 - Richard

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Richard Smedley
Production Editor, LinuxUser & Developer

T: 01625 855084, F: 01625 855071
richard.smedley <at> linuxuser.co.uk
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Marc Eberhard | 1 Apr 2003 20:20
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Re: Education Campaign?

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 10:53:31AM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > I only stumbled over them, because they appear to have made a really big
> > deal with the local libraries here now.
> 
> That's interesting. I shall poke someone I know about this; I know people
> in the Black Country adult/higher education scene.

Please keep us/me informed!

> Bear in mind that they talk in £££ though. The company that runs it (UfI, 
> University for Industry, or something?) is fairly revenue oriented.

OK.

> I suppose the 'cheap GNU/Linux LearnDirect terminal' concept might have
> some mileage though, although perhaps not if it's unable to access
> all their courseware (they certainly won't update the courseware for us
> or anyone else).

OK. We should still try to raise awareness. Maybe they are willing to amend
their specs at least for future courses (newly developed ones). If we can
convince them, that they're loosing or at least missing out on potential
customers, that might help too.

> The tools are definitely available already, sans perhaps a decent Flash
> editor/plugin system. University of Leeds are doing interesting work with
> the "Bodington" (sp) courseware system, IIRC.

Do you happen to have a collection of URLs at hand?
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Alex Hudson | 1 Apr 2003 23:32

Re: Education Campaign?

On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 19:20, Marc Eberhard wrote:
> > That's interesting. I shall poke someone I know about this; I know people
> > in the Black Country adult/higher education scene.

Person has been poked.

They didn't know anything about any particular deal between LearnDirect
and libraries in the Black Country (not that they would necessarily
know), but it does fit with the idea of providing learning points. It
might be that they have organised something at that level - apparently,
LearnDirect are organised as a set of hubs, and this could be an
initiative of the west midlands hub.

> > I suppose the 'cheap GNU/Linux LearnDirect terminal' concept might have
> > some mileage though, although perhaps not if it's unable to access
> > all their courseware (they certainly won't update the courseware for us
> > or anyone else).
> 
> OK. We should still try to raise awareness. Maybe they are willing to amend
> their specs at least for future courses (newly developed ones). If we can
> convince them, that they're loosing or at least missing out on potential
> customers, that might help too.

Hmm, I'm not sure they'll find that too much of a convincing argument
I'm afraid. Pressing to ensure accessibility is definitely something
that we should do, though. I'm not sure what spec. they run in the
learning centres, but I seem to remember it varied a little bit. I don't
think they necessarily have a homogeny - for example, getting software
onto PCs in EasyInternet Cafes is notoriously difficult (they have a
worldwide agreement with HP, I think, and have a very reliable W32-based
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Marc Eberhard | 2 Apr 2003 11:41
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Re: Education Campaign?

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 10:32:05PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> Hmm, I did look at FP6 a while ago, and I don't remember there being
> anything about learning (I thought it was more research oriented), but I
> will check - I'm on the FSFE FP6 mailing list.

It is research: Research on how to write and deploy e-learning environments.
The actual context of the course is purely an example. :-)

> Definitely. It might also mean we can broaden the project out a little
> bit. I think the first step will be to firm up the idea into an actual
> proposal, and start hocking it around to see if anything bites. EUCDL

Do you volunteer to do so?

Bye,
Marc
_______________________________________________________________________________

email: marc <at> greenie.net, marc.eberhard <at> alumni.tum.de
email: m.a.eberhard <at> aston.ac.uk, web: http://www.aston.ac.uk/~eberhama/
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Andrew Savory | 2 Apr 2003 14:31
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Re: AGM

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Marc Eberhard wrote:

> ... that reminds me, that I probably should mention, that we are currently
> trying to sort the details for our first AGM for the AFFS. State so far is,
> that we thought the 15th is a good day (especially for those staying
> overnight in Birmingham for both Expo days).

Hi ... just wondering if this is still going ahead? I see that there's an
Expo on 24-26 June 2003 now ... and the AGM isn't mentioned on the web
site ... and 15th is fast approaching!

> More details soon!

Yes please ;-)

Andrew.

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Andrew Savory                                Email: andrew <at> luminas.co.uk
Managing Director                              Tel:  +44 (0)870 741 6658
Luminas Internet Applications                  Fax:  +44 (0)700 598 1135
This is not an official statement or order.    Web:    www.luminas.co.uk
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Alex Hudson | 2 Apr 2003 15:05

Re: AGM

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 01:31:43PM +0100, Andrew Savory wrote:
> Hi ... just wondering if this is still going ahead? I see that there's an
> Expo on 24-26 June 2003 now ... and the AGM isn't mentioned on the web
> site ... and 15th is fast approaching!

Nope, the planned AGM at the Expo isn't going ahead, since the Expo has 
been postponed slightly for geopolitical reasons.

Unfortunately, we would have said something sooner, but it would have made
life very difficult for the Expo organisers had we pre-empted their offical
statement, which only came this week. 

Now everything is public, we can start discussing alternatives - Marc
briefly mentioned this in a mail yesterday (tagged onto the bottom of a
whole nother subject though, IIRC).

The current idea floating around is that we have the AGM beginning/mid May,
I think (Mark?). We're probably now talking about a solely AFFS event, 
in London or some other convenient location. What do people think? I think
we might have a specific theme, or something - just an AGM would be a bit
boring, it might be that we have a kind of informal meeting before or after
in some convenient watering hole to talk more practical matters.

Hope this enlightens some, if people have any ideas about this, please
do make them known!

Cheers,

Alex.
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