Comments on: Downside of the small pieces model http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45 Reflections on virtual learning Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:33:58 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: When Two Tribes Go To War « UK Web Focus http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45&cpage=1#comment-29 When Two Tribes Go To War « UK Web Focus Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:59:07 +0000 http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45#comment-29 [...] Sclater, Director of the OU VLE Programme at the Open University recently pointed out that the Slideshare service was down, using this as an “attempt to inject some reality into [...] [...] Sclater, Director of the OU VLE Programme at the Open University recently pointed out that the Slideshare service was down, using this as an “attempt to inject some reality into [...]

]]> By: The Eternal SaaS Loss of Control Angst « SmoothSpan Blog http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45&cpage=1#comment-22 The Eternal SaaS Loss of Control Angst « SmoothSpan Blog Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:33:18 +0000 http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45#comment-22 [...] on November 11th, 2007 Just caught another wringing of the SaaS-loss-of-control hands.  Niall Sclater via Aloof Architectures is worried that if teachers use 3rd party sites (the “lots of small [...] [...] on November 11th, 2007 Just caught another wringing of the SaaS-loss-of-control hands.  Niall Sclater via Aloof Architectures is worried that if teachers use 3rd party sites (the “lots of small [...]

]]> By: rashmi http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45&cpage=1#comment-20 rashmi Sun, 11 Nov 2007 08:13:26 +0000 http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45#comment-20 Hi everyone, Just a note to let you know that SlideShare site is back up. Many apologies regarding the downtime. We work hard at trying to keep the service reliable for your usage, and everytime something like this happens, we look into what we can do better so that the site never goes down. Tony, with RSS around, you don't even need to email a SlideShare developer! We find out anyway. We try to post updates on the SlideShare blog, so look for the latest there or post a comment/email us. rashmi (SlideShare cofounder) Hi everyone,

Just a note to let you know that SlideShare site is back up. Many apologies regarding the downtime. We work hard at trying to keep the service reliable for your usage, and everytime something like this happens, we look into what we can do better so that the site never goes down.

Tony, with RSS around, you don’t even need to email a SlideShare developer! We find out anyway. We try to post updates on the SlideShare blog, so look for the latest there or post a comment/email us.

rashmi
(SlideShare cofounder)

]]> By: aczeljc http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45&cpage=1#comment-18 aczeljc Sun, 11 Nov 2007 00:03:08 +0000 http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45#comment-18 And of course a "small pieces model" doesn't absolve you from having contingency plans. In fact it's got the potential to deal with disasters rather better. Slideshare goes down? No problem: here are some alternative sites that can similarly communicate with the other online services you're using... X, Y, Z It's got to be Slideshare rather than anything else for some specific course reason? No problem: here's the temporary mirror... because when we decided to specify Slideshare and only Slideshare for that specific course reason, we negotiated with Slideshare that we could host such a temporary mirror for when disaster happens. Sure this costs us money, but then we're not bearing the huge ongoing costs that we would have done for developing and maintaining an in-house presentation-sharing system. Sure, such workarounds are far from perfect, but as we all know from bitter experience, even mission-critical systems such as institutional email can go down for several weeks, despite every kind of backup and failsafe imaginable and despite all hands to battle stations trying to fix things. With a VLE, there's a reassurance in disaster planning that everything will be ok in the event of a major failure because (a) a commercial supplier has a huge motivation to minimise the likelihood of such failures; (b) a commercial supplier has a huge motivation to get you back on the rails asap; (c) if there's not much competition in the VLE marketplace (e.g. there's a dominant free open source solution), there'll be lots of people in the same boat and therefore more people to help. The price you pay for this reassurance is a development cycle that has a tendency to be sluggish, play-safe, expensive, and monolithic. However, an advantage of the "small pieces model" is that if you've truly got the capability to swap one piece for another at all times, then a failure of a single piece is less likely to result in a failure of the whole student experience. And of course a “small pieces model” doesn’t absolve you from having contingency plans. In fact it’s got the potential to deal with disasters rather better. Slideshare goes down? No problem: here are some alternative sites that can similarly communicate with the other online services you’re using… X, Y, Z

It’s got to be Slideshare rather than anything else for some specific course reason? No problem: here’s the temporary mirror… because when we decided to specify Slideshare and only Slideshare for that specific course reason, we negotiated with Slideshare that we could host such a temporary mirror for when disaster happens. Sure this costs us money, but then we’re not bearing the huge ongoing costs that we would have done for developing and maintaining an in-house presentation-sharing system.

Sure, such workarounds are far from perfect, but as we all know from bitter experience, even mission-critical systems such as institutional email can go down for several weeks, despite every kind of backup and failsafe imaginable and despite all hands to battle stations trying to fix things.

With a VLE, there’s a reassurance in disaster planning that everything will be ok in the event of a major failure because (a) a commercial supplier has a huge motivation to minimise the likelihood of such failures; (b) a commercial supplier has a huge motivation to get you back on the rails asap; (c) if there’s not much competition in the VLE marketplace (e.g. there’s a dominant free open source solution), there’ll be lots of people in the same boat and therefore more people to help.

The price you pay for this reassurance is a development cycle that has a tendency to be sluggish, play-safe, expensive, and monolithic.

However, an advantage of the “small pieces model” is that if you’ve truly got the capability to swap one piece for another at all times, then a failure of a single piece is less likely to result in a failure of the whole student experience.

]]> By: Tony Hirst http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45&cpage=1#comment-17 Tony Hirst Sat, 10 Nov 2007 21:00:02 +0000 http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45#comment-17 Err - how come I can't get into the intranet or any of my courses? http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/011632.html Err – how come I can’t get into the intranet or any of my courses?

http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/011632.html

]]> By: Tony Hirst http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45&cpage=1#comment-16 Tony Hirst Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:39:41 +0000 http://sclater.com/blog/?p=45#comment-16 "Now afficionados of small pieces will argue that services are improving all the time and such things are a temporary hitch but what happens when you’ve recommended a service to a student who needs it for an assignment and the service is down for maintenance?" ;-) Hmmm - now, [rubs chin once or twice], shall I start posting to my public blog the messages I see from time to time from OUr students, who can't get in to one OU system or another because it's down? (Does the Library catalogue still go down in the early hours of the morning for its regular backup, I wonder? I guess it does...) Now I'm not saying I've got one or two stories from Friday outages that won't be fixed till the Monday after when the ONE person who knows how to fix whatever is back in work; and the story I was told on Friday about a production matter that couldn't be acted on till the ONE person who could make the required change was back in work was probably just hearsay... ...but one thing I'd hazard a guess at is that I could mail the Slideshare developers and maybe get something back from them... but if I was an OU student, would the same be true re: getting in touch with an OU developer? tony “Now afficionados of small pieces will argue that services are improving all the time and such things are a temporary hitch but what happens when you’ve recommended a service to a student who needs it for an assignment and the service is down for maintenance?”

;-)

Hmmm – now, [rubs chin once or twice], shall I start posting to my public blog the messages I see from time to time from OUr students, who can’t get in to one OU system or another because it’s down? (Does the Library catalogue still go down in the early hours of the morning for its regular backup, I wonder? I guess it does…)

Now I’m not saying I’ve got one or two stories from Friday outages that won’t be fixed till the Monday after when the ONE person who knows how to fix whatever is back in work; and the story I was told on Friday about a production matter that couldn’t be acted on till the ONE person who could make the required change was back in work was probably just hearsay…

…but one thing I’d hazard a guess at is that I could mail the Slideshare developers and maybe get something back from them… but if I was an OU student, would the same be true re: getting in touch with an OU developer?

tony

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