Creating a Connected Community? Teachers? Use of an Electronic Discussion Group Looks at the use of online discussion forums in professional environments and in particular at the development and use of the a Special Needs Coordinators (SENCo) Forum in the U.K. Discusses the use of the forum as an information exchange, the forum as a "virtual respite" and using the forum to create a sense of community. That said, the study accurately captures the a weakness of many discussion groups designed for education: "on closer inspection this use was limited. Much of the generated discussion noticeably emanated from a hard core of participants." Draws an unduly pessimistic conclusion: "the Internet should really only be seen as extending preexisting identities and institutions," one that is inevitable given the structure and design of the SENCo Forum. Forums should reach beyond traditional institutions and include participation from people with varied and diverse backgrounds. By Neil Selwyn, TC Record, February, 2002.[Refer]

Video Development Initiative A list of resources related to video conferencing in education, including some case studies, presentations and a white paper. Looks mostly at h.323 desktop video conferencing. By Unknown, ViDe, Undated.[Refer]

Stories, Curricula, Master's Degrees and Dragon Slaying It is only appropriate that Roger C. Schank would use a story to extol the benefits of storytelling in education. The story Schank selects is in the education of young warriors being trained to be sent out to slay the dragon terrorizing the community. The university curriculum, authored and taught by the finest educators in the land, fails miserably. The moral of the story, of course, is that the dragon-slaying program had nothing to do with slaying dragons. Hence the faiure rate (albeit the creation of two new industries: training dragon-slayers, and public relations for the dragon). The idea here is that educational curriculum should be tailored to the student's goals. "The story would be about a particular attempt to slay a particular dragon. The student would be part of a dragon slaying team, which would prepare for the big event by learning to do small parts of the overall task." By Roger C. Schank, TrainingMag.Com, February 12, 2002.[Refer]

Stanford Professor and Author Lawrence Lessig Plans a Legal Insurrection Copyright lawyer Lawrence Lessig is planning to create what he calls a Creative commons to provide authors with a mechanism for distributing their work without submitting it to the dictates (and full copyright strictures) of publishers. Authors will be able to select from a menu of copyright protections, allowing them to grant reporduction rights or not as they wish. Sounds perfect... count me in. By Hal Plotkin, SF Gate, February 11, 2002.[Refer]

What are Web Services The writing isn't all it could be but this is another good description of web services. I like this article because approaches the topic by way of an example and because it has a sample of a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) document. And a great three sentence description of SOAP: "SOAP is a wire protocol. What that means is SOAP is used across the wire or SOAP comes into play between the two end points. When information needs to be sent across the wire, SOAP is used." By Matlus, The Delphi Apostle, Unknown.[Refer]

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