Vicki Davis, over on her blog, bemoans the closure of Lively. The Google blog contains this very helpful advice: "We'd encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms." Now that's data portability for you.
As I've said before, using someone else's "free" service is a risk, analogous to crashing on someone's couch rent-free. While it can be useful, and even fun, as a short term getaway, it's not particularly viable as a long term strategy. And if you have student work hosted on such a service, and you haven't asked how to move that work in the case of a loss of service, you should examine your process of technology integration.
Earlier this week, Chris Sessums had some insights on this issue as well, as he described some of the problems users have faced with the Edublogs service. When you are using someone else's service, you are using it on their terms.
Of course, an easy fix is to host your own tools using open source components that run on open standards. My question: how many closures/abuses of trust will it take for schools to get serious about controlling their own data, and their own infrastructure?
Comments
"Of course, an easy fix is
"Of course, an easy fix is to host your own tools using open source components that run on open standards."
Yes. Or if possible (and assuming privacy isn't an issue), use remote services that run on AGPL licensed software (or something effectually similar). That way, if the service shuts down you can look to put it back up elsewhere as the source code for such tools are available to the clients who communicate with them.
Or I may be way off here. I have no idea what "Lively" is. Never used it.
DIY
I understand the seductiveness of using wikispaces or GoogleDocs or Lively, and certainly, I use them for a variety of uses, but if you want to know that you can never lose what you've built, hosting it yourself (and building a great backup system) is still the best way.
Sure, it's a pain when you have to add every feature yourself, and sometimes even wait for those features to arrive, but scienceleadership.org is never going away.
EVERY choice has risks
By the logic of this post, one could argue the ONLY approach is to go it on one's own using Open Source apps. Even companies charging for software go out of business or discontinue products. As someone burned by that process, trust me, it's true. But OS approaches are not without their own set of (albeit different) risks.
I think that argument is both disingenuous and not based in reality. It's not just the "free" piece that should be of concern, I think that is a red herring, or at the very least not the only indicator of sustainability.
Focusing on exit strategies (and doing sensible risk/reward thinking) strikes me as a more useful exercise than nose-thumbing at free services. If long term persistence is a need, then certain choices may prevail. If ease and up front cost, then others. We need to accept, though, that there is a certain amount of innovation that can and will happen in the private/"free as in beer" sphere that is worth taking advantage of in certain circumstances, and learn to weave that into our approaches instead of falling back on default either/or positions which will leave higher ed an innovation ghetto.
Not an either/or
Hello, Scott,
A couple misunderstandings in your response -- first off, I'm not advocating an either/or, nor am I advocating nose-thumbing at free services.
I'm talking precisely about what you describe as "Focusing on exit strategies (and doing sensible risk/reward thinking)" -- in my original post, I cover this (or attempt to cover this) when I say, "if you have student work hosted on such a service, and you haven't asked how to move that work in the case of a loss of service, you should examine your process of technology integration."
There certainly is some great innovation occurring in the private sector, and some of this innovation trickles down to education in the form of "free" services. But at the risk of stating the incredibly obvious, everything costs something, and free is not a business model. And with that said, all services, even paid ones, can go out of business
I'm all for actively weaving effective approaches into our practice and into our infrastructure -- and these approaches can/should involve tools that meet the needs of learners, regardless of whether the tools are open source are proprietary. And I'm certainly not advocating for a black/white approach to tech integration. Like you, I'm advocating for a clear analysis of risks and rewards, and I am wondering (as I have been for several years) how long it will take for schools to get serious about managing their own data.
As to the "higher ed innovation ghetto" to which you refer: a dogmatic approach to choosing how we support learners will certainly have a negative impact on access to innovation. However, so will leaving our destiny in the hands of others to solve. There is a lot of innovation going on, period -- one main benefit of using open source tools is that schools at all levels get closer to the decision-making process. This is certainly not a black and white issue, but my main question still stands: how many times must schools get burned by proprietary solutions/lack of open standards before they get serious about controlling their own infrastructure?
no worries, and thanks
Hey Bill, I appreciate the clarifying comments, and I do think you and I don't have much to disagree on this. Apologies if I mis-characterized some of what you wrote, I think you were getting the brunt of my having read 3 or 4 "nah nah, we told you so" posts about Lively and the risk of 3rd party services. That just strikes me as another form of FUD (I'm not levying this at you, just explaining where some of my vitriol was coming from). Anyways, thanks, always appreciate the intelligent and civilized exchanges here on the funnymonkey. cheers, Scott
power of open source rather than it just being free
Bill,
"one main benefit of using open source tools is that schools at all levels get closer to the decision-making process."
Your comment got me thinking. Unfortunately, I think that too often we in the open source community (and by we I mean me!) are guilty of the “you can download it for free” verbiage in sharing about the project with someone. I think you hit the nail on the head in pointing out that the power of open source is not that it’s free, but that it empowers those that choose to use and expand those tools. Whether it be Drupal, Moodle, or Wordpress, there are so many of us making the tools suit the job that we need them to do rather than having to wait for someone else to do it.
Great post and even better conversation. Thanks.
Dan
going on own
I think Scott pretty much nailed it on the head. Instead of relying on a 3rd party; the only sensible answer is to purchase your own software in order to control the situation.
If you keep using another one's software you will always have that vulnerability.
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