By Stephen Downes
April 30, 2003
Reusing Online Resources: A Sustainable
Approach to eLearning
This special issue of JIME
features chapter summaries and commentary directed toward
the recently published book "Reusing Online Resources: A
Sustainable Approach to eLearning" edited by Allison
Littlejohn. The big frustration, of course, is that the
book itself isn't online (and living in a small city, it's
not like I can just pop out to the local bookstore and pick
up a copy). But the summaries are quite good, and
interestingly, are used to prime subsequent discussion of
each of the chapters. Devotees of learning objects won't
find a lot that's new here: the book is mostly an overview
of current applications and issues. But that also makes it
a good introduction to the field and a nice launch-point
for further discussion. By Allison Littlejohn and Simon
Buckingham Shum, JIME, April, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Web Site Where Gossip Posted About SoCal
Students is Shut Down
Parents and some students
are pleased that schoolscandals.com has been shut down. The
site, which was used to spread rumours and gossip about
classmates, had been the subject of numerous complaints.
Now this content will shift to individual blogs hosted by
Blogger, where it belongs. By AP, San Jose Mercury News,
April 25, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
OAI Metadata Harvesting
Workshop
This page is a set of position
statements submitted by participants in the upcoming OAI
Metadata Harvesting Workshop at the Joint Conference on
Digital Libraries in Houston at the end of May. The issues
here are remarkable consistent with those I see on the
RSS-Dev or Syndication discussion lists. Right off the bat
we have NSDL's Naomi Dushay commenting on the problem of
inconsistent metadata from providers. OAIster's Katrina
Hagedorn raises the possibility of automated repository
discovery. The RSS solution was to do nothing, and to let
each aggregator solve the issues in its own way. This,
realistically, is also the only option for OAI. By Various
Authors, JCDL2003, April, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Is E-learning Really the Future or a
Risk?
This essay has a catchy title, but the PDF
document (the HTML link supplied by ACM wasn't working)
that follows is not a good read. This raises a dilemma:
should I include such resources in OLDaily, or simply let
them slide into oblivion. Usually I opt for the latter, but
this one is glaring, especially coming as it does from a
publication of some repute. The problem with this paper is
two-fold: first, it doesn't really tell us anything new
(organizations will opt for blended learning - now that's a
surprise!); and second, it uses outdated and discredited
resources (such as the thoroughly debunked 'modes of
learning' graph, or two-year old (and thoroughly revised)
IDC projections. I don't blame the authors, who, because
they apparently do not use online resources (check the
references), may simply have been unaware of the list
server discussions or the reports carried in OLDaily. But
the editors have a responsibility to catch stuff like this.
By Charles A. Shoniregun and Sarah-Jane Gray, Ubiquity,
April 29, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
MARTEC
The acronym stands for
"Mentoring for Effective Technology Integration in K-12
Schools." Participants were selected by the New jersey
Department of Education and interviewed about their
experiences as mentors. This site is a compilation of the
interviews, organized into eleven major categories. Very
nice, though a bit of a pain to navigate - this is the sort
of site that would really benefit from syndication
technologies. By Various Authors, Regional Technology in
Education Consortia, April, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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