Exclusivity, interoperability and platform choice

This was going to be a comment on Andy’s blog but it got a bit long so I thought I would post it here. Apologies – a little off topic but has some shared themes with access management work!

Andy talks about the fact that iTunesU has not come up for as much criticism as Second Life.

That really got me thinking. Why am I perfectly happy to use something that is fairly locked down like iTunes, fairly happy with the concept of using the same platform for education content delivery, but can’t get my head around Second Life? I do after all spend quite a bit of time talking about the importance of open standards!

I did resist using iTunes for a long time because of file compatibility and lockdown issues but it won in the end because i like the platform, it took me no time at all to learn to use, and because the iTunes store is simple and competitively priced (and addictive unfortunately). I’ve also never run in to a situation where the non-openness has become a problem – I have an i-pod, use i-tunes on my pc at work and home. If I were to change any of this, it would probably be to buy a mac for home and an i-phone It is ubiquitously usable in my life!

iTunesU is an effective example of universities using a platform that students like to offer an educational service. Podcasts on iTunesU makes far more sense to me than the various university attempts to use Facebook. It’s also easy to use for both users and administrators – but I don’t have the experience to know if it would be any better than say just putting the podcasts on uTube. I guess this harks back to how open universities want to be about their content – can it be just out there or does it need access management / rights management? I know iTunes have thought long and hard about the rights issues and non-institutional access with iTunesU as it was very important in their development of iTunesU with Shibboleth.

Finally Second Life – that’s simple. I’ve never been able to get beyond the idea of having to choose a name Suggestions welcome… It is also a platform that takes a reasonable amount of learning to use. The name thing may sound silly but I think it harks to the point that SL is not just another platform – it is an entirely different way of working and engaging.

If I were a student, I think I would be OK with grabbing a podcast of my lecturer from iTunes, but going to a lecture in SL would be a step further for me. Why? Because it requires me to very actively engage in something, other people witness that engagement (and I’m quite shy to be honest) and I would have to learn a lot about how to do all this in SL as well as learning the information my lecturer is trying to impart to me. I’d have to really interested to do all that and I’m not sure that I would gain any more from it than other ways of learning, both online and offline.

In some ways, this actually makes SL more exclusive than iTunes. Not only do I have to use that specific platform, I have to overcome many learning barriers as well.