OLDaily By Stephen Downes August 26, 2002 Encourage Your Employees to Play Pretty good article that recommends the use of simulations in corporate learning. The article stresses the role of simulations in encouraging group cohesion, something I don't see mentioned a lot. Some practical recommendations, including the clear need for management support, the role of the simulation leader, and the need for debriefing. By Jack C. Green, Graziadio Business report, Summer, 2002 [Refer][Research][Reflect] How to Build a Time Machine Some August silliness... can we travel through time? According to this article... maybe. "Traveling into the past is rather trickier. Relativity theory allows it in certain spacetime configurations: a rotating universe, a rotating cylinder and, most famously, a wormhole--a tunnel through space and time." Why does this matter? See below... By Paul Davies , Scientific American, September, 2002 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Specifications and Standards For Learning Materials Nice summary for somebody who wants a quick read and a handy-dandy links page. Covers interoperability, standards development organizations, learning objects and repositories, sharing, reusability, instructional architectures, and the role of XML. By Graeme Daniel and Kevin Cox, Web Tools Newsletter, August 26, 2002 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Knowledge is a Noun, Learning is a Verb Interesting little lesson picked up in today's SynapShots discussing the relation between learning and knowledge management. I have no idea when it was published (people - please date your web pages). Nothing deep, but I like the style of the past-future and deep-detail diagram of management accounting. By Ian Herbert, University of Derby, Unknown [Refer][Research][Reflect] The Time Travel Fund Oh, this has nothing to do with online learning, and is really probably nothing more than a cheap scam, but the concept is so delicious... "one day, it may be possible for people living far in the future to retrieve you... we pay them to bring you into the future... You make a small contribution to the fund, and in a few hundred years that small amount grows to a very large amount. From that fund, moneys will be taken and used to retrieve you." Yeah! Don't you love the dog days of August? By Unknown, undated (naturally) [Refer][Research][Reflect] Personal Website and Weblog Guidelines OK, just for the record (as if there were any doubt): the views expressed in this weblog are almost certainly not those of my employer (not for lack of trying). That said: it should be obvious to people when opinions are personal and when opinions are not. it's sad to think that some people are so eager to misrepresent what they read that they think every utterance of an employee is somehow company policy. It's not. That said, these guidelines are good, common sense guidelines for weblogs. Of course I'm not going to spill confidential info on this weblog (conversely, I am very careful about what I allow to be classified as confidential). And of course I am respectful to my employers - not because of any guideline, though, but because they deserve it. But these are rules that ought to apply everywhere, including, for example, the corner pub - and you don't see guidelines for pub behaviour. Nor should they be needed for weblog behaviour. By Ray Ozzie, Ray Ozzie's Weblog , August 24, 2002 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Is Our Children Learning? I'm not sure what the point of this attack on educational technology is save that the author is very concerned about the money spent on it (and on teachers' salaries, for that matter). Mostly, the author throws large numbers around with no real comparison of contrast. Usually, though, such articles serve as an indicator of a political interest. Though just what interest is represented here, I can't be sure. By Julie Landry, Red Herring, August 21, 2002 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Know a friend who might enjoy this newsletter? Feel free to forward OLDaily to your colleagues. If you received this issue from a friend and would like a free subscription of your own, you can join our mailing list at http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/subscribe.cgi [ About This NewsLetter] [ OLDaily Archives] [ Send me your comments]