By Stephen Downes
June 16, 2003
Idea City
Tomorrow morning I'm off
to Toronto for the Idea City conference. Because of the
ecclectic nature of Idea City, I'm not sure what my
newsletters will look like. But I'm looking forward to the
diversity of speakers and topics - it's so important to
look beyond your own field for news ideas and inspiration.
By Various Authors, June 15, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Best Practices - eduSource
Canada
Interesting to see this blogger's-eye
perspective of a session more or less about eduSource in
this live blog of a talk by eduSource member Mike Mattson.
What surprise me a bit (not so much because we've had many
conversations) is the role played by RSS in this account of
the project. But as Mike says (as reported by Sarah),
"eduSource infrastructure supports 3 types of users:
federated search; individuals via peer-to-peer (selective
publishing); harvested - intense debate between the three,
only made sense once it got scratched out and people saw it
could work together." Yup, some tough meetings. This is
only one of the six sessions nicely
blogged by Sarah Lohnes at the New Media Consortium
Conference over the weeked. By Sarah Lohnes, Xplana, June
14, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Web Services Basics
If you are
still not sure what web services are, exactly, this book
chapter may help fill some of the void. Some good overall
explanation, and even better, a host of examples. PDF
format, which gave me no end of grief. By Anne Thomas
Manes, May 16, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Backlash Brews Over Rising Cost of
College
This is a crisis that has been long in
the making, as colleges and universities invariably respond
to any business problem (rising expenses, declining
enrollments, losing football teams) with tuition increases.
The crisis, of course, will appear to arise 'out of the
blue' to university administrations when a measure much
like the one described in this article inevitably comes to
pass. "Talk is cheap and legislation has been toothless. A
25 percent increase in tuition and fees is not reasonable,
it is scandalous. And we can no longer sit idly by and
accept such increases as the natural course of things."
Eventually, lawmakers will discover the magic formula:
remove the institutions' monopoly over the granting of
credentials. By Mark Clayton, Christian Science Monitor,
June 17, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
InfoWorld Trials RSS-Based
Advertising
As users of Edu_RSS know, RSS spam
is already a problem. So this announcement that InfoWorld
is the "first" to plant advertisements in its RSS feeds is
a bit of a problem (I doubt that they're first - NewsTrolls
ran RSS feeds for its Cafe Press gear ages ago), but we'll
leave that aside). Fortunately, aggregators can simply
decline to harvest from troublesome feeds (I have already
kicked out several sites from Edu_RSS and they can filter
the links they aggregate (coming soon), but I can see it
now, the ongoing battle between aggregators and those who
wish to slip their message through the filters. *sigh* By
Jonathan Angel, Ad Week, June 11, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Today's Lesson, Sponsored
By...
What I have to ask is, what are people
thinking when they have Dunkin Donuts sponsor a school
party, Oscar Mayer sponsor a student singing contest (of
the corporate jingle), or Angel Soft toilet paper give
prizes to students for community service? We want children
to be receptive to the information they receive in school -
that's the whole point, isn't it? - and these companies pay
what amounts to a pittance for exclusive access to this
receptivity. The vast bulk of this article is devoted to
describing and defending the school activity sponsorships,
but what the story should contain is some sort of analysis
of how these companies are being given a direct pipeline
into the students' subconscious. The only sensible
paragraph in this entire article: "It's a very dangerous
thing for a corporation to have this kind of presence in
school," said advertising critic Jean Kilbourne. Children
are more susceptible in school, she said, because they tend
to believe that what they learn there is valid. So a
commercial message in schools, no matter how subtle, "gives
an aura of responsibility and truth," Kilbourne said. By
Caroline E. Mayer, Washington Post, June 15, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Maine School Gives Students Own
Laptops
Wrap-up and overview od the Maine laptop
program, with some statistics and examples. The program
appears to have drawn glowing reviews from all concerned
and there appears to be a stong committment to continue the
program in the future. By AP, CNN, June 15, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Enterprise Learning
A lot of
fascinating discussion in this report from the E-Learning
Forum's session on Enterprise Learning. Representatives
from the largest Silicon Valley e-learning companies got
together to discuss the state of the industry. The word of
the day is "best of breed." The comments are... mixed. The
best insight was from Click2Learn's Ashwani Sirohi: "User
collaboration and personalization will be key." By Jay
Cross, Internet Time, June 14, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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