Penny's joy in writing

What’s the maximum PDF file size for public websites?

pennyjw — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 03:31:43 +0000

How big is too big? (Note: it isn't a hat). **

Strangely difficult to find good guidelines on a maximum file size for PDF documents.

Craig Thomler from influential Australian blog eGov AU recommended a PDF file size of no more than 2 megabytes: ‘and you need to have the document in another format to meet accessibility requirements’ (his tweet on 22 March 2011. This ‘other format’ requirement was the subject of hot debate on the AGIMO blog post on Good document design).

At least Craig’s recommendation gives us a bit more leeway than the CUE standard on a Queensland Government web guide -

PDF documents larger than the recommended size limit of 200kB should be divided into smaller files and linked to from a HTML cover page. [...] For some document types this limit may not be suitable and agencies may develop internal policies to ensure that a size limit of between 200kB to a maximum of 500kB is imposed where appropriate.

Those guidelines were published in early 2008, so Queensland government publishers may well exceed this limit now, but there is still good guidance in their instructions on ‘what makes some PDF files so large?‘.

One of the few notes on file size I found in my research was from the Government of Western Australia, Public Sector Commission, who recommend 4 MB

Why is there a maximum file size of 4mb?

The preferred method for distribution of the annual report is via the web. For people with slow connections, accessing large file sizes can be time consuming and frustrating.
(From: Annual reporting framework, 2011)

I could not find any reference to maximum downloads from other States’ sites.

In the very olden days of the web, we used to think about how long it would take a user to download the file, and Dreamweaver would display this metric for different connection types, and we would argue on what was a reasonable access time. Some NSW council sites still indicate expected download time for PDFs via slower connections.

This was how we currently plan to derive our limits for our site:

PDF documents up to 4 MB are publishable within the ordinary workflow. (Because: on a worst possible download speed of 9.6 kB/sec, it would take 59 minutes to download a 4.1 MB file)
PDF documents between 4 MB and 12 MB are publishable after approval from our website management unit. (Because: on a worst possible download speed of 9.6 kB/sec, it would take 2 hours 59 minutes to download a 12.3 MB file)
Exceptions for files larger than 12 MB will only be made where a specialised audience (not the general public) is the intended primary user of the publication, and this audience is likely to have adequate bandwidth. We should still probably indicate alternative access methods (‘visit your regional office’) for members of the public who wish to view these publications.

(Let’s not argue this too strongly, or the powers that be might turn their attention to the size of our audio and video offerings.)

This standard ought to be relatively easy to enforce – now we move on to educating our publishers on creating more accessible PDF files!

PostPost: AGIMO does not have a file size limit, but comment: ‘agencies tend to set guidelines for any files above or between 2-5MB. These files are usually split or optimised for the web. We do occasionally see larger files, and sometimes where the content is highly graphical, when it is multimedia or there are special considerations, it may be necessary to provide the larger files” – but they feel that text-based information (e.g. publications) should not exceed 2-5MB.

—-

Le Petit Prince Nursery School, Saint-Nom la Breteche, France. AR+TE Architects inspired by drawings and writings by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

** I am enchanted with this recently constructed building (right) created in the form of a boa constrictor devouring an elephant.

Thank you Patrick (PATrichotomy) and Saint-Exupery.

Twitter collectors

pennyjw — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:06:26 +0000

To check out the audience response to an exhibition, it could be good to analyse the associated twitterstream.
Two practical questions for this task are:

What are the tools that allow an analysis of a twitter user or a hashtag?
How long do tweets last?

Tools

Aggregating old tweets:
http://topsy.com/
(‘a search engine powered by tweets’)
Reviewing your own tweets only:
TwimeMachine
Finding twitter accounts to follow
Listorius

Examples of exhibition twitterstreams

Comments on copyright

pennyjw — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 07:29:33 +0000

I learned something from each of the presentations on overcoming e-learning barriers that we saw on our block day, but I have decided to comment on the Copyright for Educators project because this has been a very thorny issue for me at work lately.

Who owns our stuff?

Our work problem was around the ownership of an e-learning package. The content of the course was developed by one of our work units, outlining our particular work policies and practices, and then prepared by an external contractor as an e-learning package.
When it came time to bring the package into our learning management system, the external contractor was not able to supply the files in a SCORM-compliant format – instead, they wanted us to keep using their site to access the files.
After some delay and questioning, it turned out that the contractor had no intention of giving us the source files at all. A work colleague stated his understanding that:

because the IP was owned by the [external contractor], we would not be in a position to require the source files to be provided.

(This was the same colleague who was responsible for selecting, briefing and paying the contractor.) There was no contract signed between the parties, no record of meetings, and no itemised invoices or statements, so it was difficult to argue that the contractor should have been hired under the same conditions as, for example, our contract photographers or writers, where we require all copyright to be made over to our organisation and all original material to be provided to us – in these ways, the contractor has the same rights as a staff member, that is, moral rights only (the right to be acknowledged as the creator of the work, and for the work to be protected from use in a way that would damage your reputation.) As a government agency, we are in a particularly ‘maximalist’ position:

Photographs taken under the direction or control of the Crown: The copyright in any photographs created or first published, under the direction or control of a Federal, State or Territory Government, will always be owned by the Crown.

Source: Copyright Agency Ltd via http://www.overclockers.com.au/wiki/Copyright_for_photographers

(We are good citizens, though, in that any application to make non-profit use of our content is always granted, and we are an important resource particularly for secondary and tertiary course material compilers.)

It makes me wonder: if the truly creative process of making images is automatically made over to the Crown through the government agency, where does the ‘IP’ of the e-learning package contractors reside?

Insights from ‘Copyright for educators’

The team’s wiki defined the terms ‘copyright’, ‘IP’ and ‘moral rights’ for us, and I was glad the definitions matched my understanding. There is, however, the question of ‘form’ (defining what can be copyrighted) which seems a little problematic in my work case – while these contractors did not devise an original interface, or write thought-provoking questions to encourage deep learning, or even write compelling content, they did format the notes from our face-to-face training into a set of Flash sequences – and thus they changed the form of the learning. If we had had a contract with them, could we have calculated the value of these somewhat staid and ineffective sequences? Their contribution did not seem much more significant than when I format an author’s rather tricky Word document for the web – I use my judgment and the available tools to re-purpose an item: does that make me its owner? Does it give me the right to put my name on the web page? (something else the e-learning contractors thought was their right).
In general, the Copyright team was looking at their question from the consumer or user side. They gave a good survey of some of the key questions around digital reproduction, reuse and copyright, but were not concerned with the issues of ownership and access that were part of my work problem.
I am keen, when sourcing more workplace training, to see what we can find that is ‘free for education’, and am hoping we might use content developed under the AEShareNet-FfE licence.

Twice shy

The e-learning contractor’s semi-successful attempt to hold my organisation to ransom – we are unable to host our own packages from this project, we cannot correct the mistakes they have made without paying them more, we cannot update the packages as we change processes and organisational identity without paying them a lot more – is not an isolated example in the industry. The magazine Elearning urged ‘Buyer beware‘: ‘Having a finished LMS module doesn’t mean that you can update It’.
But ultimately they have shot themselves in the foot – this incident has led us to develop a policy to only purchase from vendors who are prepared to deliver the source files and sign over the copyright in the materials to our agency.
And we won’t be buying from that vendor again.

SWOT analysis for e-learning in professional development

pennyjw — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:56:33 +0000

Is it worth developing a coordinated approach to e-learning in the organisation?

Strengths	Weaknesses
Historically, each individual agency shares an operating environment and shared software across sites.	In merged agencies – no standard operating environment across the new partners; different email and groupware clients, intranets that don’t interconnect
Variation in job roles – multiple possibilities that could be suitable for training via e-learning	Many variations in job roles – some roles or tasks cannot be addressed
For Agriculture department, tradition of professionalism; science-based; speaking the truth to power; primary producers are both our clients and our stakeholders	Other agencies in merger: non-professional; focus on regulatory activities; small; unfocussed; concerned to serve the minister, not the public – ‘the Minister is our most signficant stakeholder’
We do have staff designated for communications, design, web, intranet, IT, training staff	but no designated e-learning positions outside colleges
Designated staff training and development unit, but	staff training focusses on computer training and training for compliance
We are a registered training organisation	Registered training organisation’s role is to look outward to our client public; it does not feed back into corporate training needs
Opportunities	Threats
Diverse industries available for partnerships	Accepting faulty contracts from outside providers – the perception that our IP can be hijacked by the contractor we pay to make the e-learning
Whole of government state and federal elearning programs which are reusable in our context	Ignorance of what e-learning is (actual executive’s quote: “as yes, it’s where there are buttons for me to click on”)
Opportunity to develop skills that can be used for both internal (staff) audience and external clients (extension)	Providing e-learning to a fragmented organisation risks missing opportunities to make connections through physical meetings
Limited resources require alternative solutions: no budget assigned for training of any kind no budget available for travel no budget available for conference attendance	Competing models – in-house and contract authoring and packaging; competing LMS (Moodle vs ElementK);

Guidance for further SWOT analysis:

List macro and micro factors, as well as internal and external factors that influence the mission of the organization (or focus on a specific program.)
List all items, whether they are in your control or not (e.g your marketing vs. your competitors marketing.)
For external analysis think PEST (as a starting point), which stands for political (and legal), economic, social, and technological analysis.

Evaluation for e-learning

pennyjw — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:17:37 +0000

We need to review a resource we have found helpful in evaluating e-learning. The difficulty in this task is clearly in making a choice, so I would like to sidestep this problem and take this chance to recommend to my class mates a Cloudworks approach.

How could you choose? - a bowl of clouds, kevindooley, Flickr

Cloudworks

Cloudworks is a social networking site developed to:

provide a dynamic environment for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas and designs. [Conole and Culver (forthcoming), The design of Cloudworks: Applying social networking practice to foster the exchange of learning and teaching ideas and designs, Computers & Education, vol. 54, no. 3]

Built with an object-centred approach to social learning, Cloudworks started with the aim of helping teachers by sharing examples of new technologies in education and providing the means to network with contributors and teachers who have used them. Anything about learning and teaching – a tweet, a blogpost, a personal story, a research paper, a SlideShare presentation, whatever – is published on Cloudworks as a ‘Cloud’; and unlike a Ning or an Elgg, where the multiple tools and aggregation methods put chief weight on the network itself, it is this object that is the focus of the site and the centre of activity and community.

A Cloudscape on evaluation

The Cloudworks site has multiple resources/discussions/tools on evaluation, and many of them are gathered into the Evaluation Toolbox. The Evaluation Toolbox is a ‘Cloudscape’ – a collection of Clouds. One resource it re-presents is the Learning Technology Dissemination Initiative Evaluation Cookbook: this lists methods of evaluation, how they can be used, processes (the ‘recipe’) to implement them, plus hints, variations and exemplars (‘serving suggestions’). The LTDI Evaluation Cookbook was published in 1998, and the creator of the Cloudscape on evaluation recognised in collecting (‘seeding’) her initial Clouds that technology has made other evaluation methods available, and that the Cloudscape will grow as other creations are produced.

New Clouds are added to each Cloudscape from across the Cloudworks community. While I have been drafting this post, an excellent wiki on formative evaluation for online course design from San Diego State University was made available as a Cloud in the Evaluation Toolbox Cloudscape, and then tweeted about by one of Cloudworks’ founders Grainne Conole:

This recently added Cloud emphasises how formative evaluation can make improvements in the learning design over many iterations. This is a highly relevant concept for my current e-learning project, which is to develop interface help and mini-video training for our installation of the content management system Matrix. This project itself may never! get to a summative evaluation, but each staff member’s feedback and assessment performance is quickly used to develop the interface and the documentation for all users.

Summary

In selecting a resource on e-learning evaluation, I will choose one that matches my practical, organisational or philosophical concerns. Using Cloudworks to find resources gives me the critical benefits of collective intelligence.

And this post may be timely, since this is the current membership on Cloudworks from our university

Not so social - UTS on Cloudworks

Volte face

pennyjw — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:11:56 +0000

No longer duelling (Flickr, time stood still)

A friend has just asked for a recommendation for some collaborative writing tools and I find that I have done a complete 360 from this time last year when I felt that wikis were the tools of Satan and authorship was a precious treasure to be guarded as zealously as Tony Abbott’s daughters.
I am quite happy now to open up a document to all comers and take any comments up into its skeleton as well as its hide.
Where you really want an output, as opposed to just collaborating for the hell of it, I can see that a collaborative writing plan, like this one from a university instructional design team, is very important. The team completed their plan, reviewing the strengths and applications of 3 tools. It is fascinating to see how much has changed since the team’s review of exactly a year ago:

One tool was Buzzword, which I had never heard of: an Adobe product, it has now been taken up into acrobat.com
Another tool which has in the past sounded more like a superdooper whiteboard (Etherpad), has been bought up by Google (so we must presume it was a quality product)
and Google docs, which was what I started to recommend to my friend.

Notions, not nations

pennyjw — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:49:34 +0000

It’s great that Google customises our searches so that we get results from .au so prominently, but I think that the order of domains in IP addressing is a bit 1950s.

The order of systems should go from smallest unit to widest. Just as a commercial brand like Macintosh operates seamlessly across country boundaries, so all the people reading .edu sites have more in common with each other than all the people within a nation.

Edu is the widest unit – it should come last in the domain name.

blogger -> PhD

pennyjw — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:55:40 +0000

Several classmates are thinking about starting their PhD. They may be interested to see the working site of my Facebook friend Hannah, who is researching the ownership of knowledge for her PhD. She writes articles, outlines, chapter sections and runs polls on her blog, and often refers to her posts on Facebook, where we all put our two cents in.

Please see

http://hannah-hannah-land.blogspot.com/

This image below has nothing to do with Hannah but I thought it was a great history of a hat:

Source: Yale Alumni Magazine

What I want to achieve in E-learning Experiences II

pennyjw — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:31:08 +0000

The new stuff in this subject seems to be about strategic focus, and is designed to skill us up so that we can contribute authoritatively to decision-making and implementation discussions around e-learning.

This poses the general issue that I have had throughout this course – the learning is meant to be for your current workplace. What if you want to change?

In my main current workplace, there will be no occasion when I will be able to contribute authoritatively, regardless of my knowledge – this is partly why I would like to change my workplace.

In my minor workplace, there is probably an opportunity to ‘manage up’ – to demonstrate improvements that could be made to how we are using the tools to support the development of academic writing.

So I guess I can hope to either change myself or change some practices by the end of the semester

Muddying the waters

pennyjw — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:31:41 +0000

Marking some academic text by second language English writers, and I am trying to sort out in my own mind how ‘wrong’ this is, and why:

During the S-phase, it divides [where 'it' = S-phase]

In this text, it explains [where 'it' = text]

We don’t do this in English, but where is the issue? The redundancy? The discourse failure, watering down the subject by pre-empting it in a circumstance? The grammar failure, where the referent of ‘it’ is disqualified by being in a circumstance?