By Stephen Downes
August 20, 2003
Bayes on RSS feeds -
Unsuitable?
Seb tossed this link to me and I
feel like I ought to respond. It begins with the
tantalizing idea of using Bayes Theorem using some Perl modules to autocategorize blog
content. Nifty idea. Could it work? Well, not according to
the critics. It does not take into account the origin of
the feed, it does not take into account the placement of
the word, and it does not take into account the relative
importance of the word (such as placement in a title). One
critic writes, "If the author of the feed has already
denoted the news item was 'technology', it would be wise to
give this match a probability of 1 for the category
'Technology'." Well, hardly. To assume that people will
categorize entities correctly is the height of wishful
thinking, in my opinion. To make the Baysean approach work,
what designers should do is evaluate not mere strings, but
couples. I would express it like this: title~RSS (which
means, roughly, title contains the string 'RSS'). If these
are the elements used in the Bayesean calculations then the
objections vanish. Mind you, I have just quintupled the
number of elements to be considered, so there are other
issues to contend with. But all of that said, I'm not ready
to go Baysean just yet. My preference is a type of
pattern-detection using Perl regular expressions.
By Krishnan Nair Srijith, srijith.net, August 12, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Edumed News On-Line Newsletter
If
you are interested in the convergence between e-learning
and health (and yes, there is one, a very large one), then
you may be interested in the Edumed News On-Line Newsletter
at Yahoo! Groups. "Edumed News is a free on-line newsletter
for news and events on distance education in medicine and
health and other topics related to information technology
applications in the educational area, such as Internet,
telehealth and telemedicine, health informatics, etc. It is
an official publication of the Edumed Institute for
Education in Medicine and Health... a not-for-profit
educational and research
institution which operates the Brazilian Distance Education
in Medicine and
Health, a consortium of several institutions of higher
education." By Renato M.E. Sabbatini and Silvia Helena
Cardoso, Edumed Institute for Education in Medicine and
Health, August 20, 2003 3:49 p.m.
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Directorate E - Interfaces, Knowledge Content
Technologies, Applications, Information
Market
There's not a lot here other than a
promise and a dream, but if you are looking for a sign
pointing to the future of online learning, this is it:
"Enabling ubiquitous access to personalised learning
throughout life." Part of the European Sixth Framework,
this site should fill out substantially over the next few
years. By various Authors, August, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Blogs
Canada
This is definitely not the Government of
Canada. But it is pretty funny in design, and if they can
extend their reach beyond the LiveJournal universe,
potentially useful as well. Blogs Canada is a large (though
obviously partial) list of Canadian blogs, presented in a
format remarkably similar to the Government of Canada home
pages. I hope the good people at the GoC website can show
the good humour and restraint needed to let this site be.
By Unknown, August, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
W3C Issues Web Ontology Language Candidate
Recommendations
The World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) has officially filed OWL, its Web Ontology Language,
as a "Candidate for Recommendation". Ontologies are used to
define the meanings of terms used in metadata schemas.
"Essentially, an ontology is the definition of a set of
terms and how they relate to each other for a particular
domain." By Press Release, W3C, August 19, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Microsoft to Lock Down MSN Messenger
Network
Expect many disgruntled users as
Microsoft moves to "lock down" its instant messenging
software, citing "security issues" with third party
software. The people most afftected will be those who use
products such as Trillian, Imici and Odigo in order to
communicate with other instant messaging clients such as
ICQ, AOL and Yahoo. The spammers and hackers, on the other
hand, having only Microsoft's vaunted security to overcome,
are not likely to be even slowed by the change. By Joris
Evers, InfoWorld, August 19, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Smarter Toys, Smarter Tots?
Forget
online learning: this is where the big money is. "Parents
spend $2.8 billion per year on educational toys for infants
and preschoolers," according to this article (probably
citing U.S.-only figures). But the gist of this story is
that these toys will not deliver the educational
improvement their marketers promise. "The boom," writes the
author, "is based more on wishful thinking than hard
evidence." Well maybe, but this article doesn't provide the
hard evidence to prove it. Relying mostly on arguments from
Ranny Levy, president and founder of KIDS FIRST!, the
article stresses that online media, such as classical media
CDs, cannot replace personal attention, because "Babies
learn through multiple senses being rewarded
simultaneously." Well, quite so, and it's true that an
attentive person can provide such stimulation, but it
doesn't follow that only a person can provide such
stimulation. The author overlooks this little logical
faux pas and descends into caricature. "Flashcards
for an infant?" Yeah, right. Bad journalist, bad. By G.
Jeffrey MacDonald, Christian Science Monitor, August 20,
2003 1:33 p.m.
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Fair Use Under Fire
The opening
paragraph gets right to the heart of the problem. "A
library customer checks out a new DVD from the library only
to discover that it won't play on her Linux operating
system at home. Another, who is blind, borrows an e-book
from the library and finds that his text-to-voice software
cannot "read" the product. Yet another user checks out a
new music CD but can't get it to play on his laptop. These
activities are absolutely legal, but technologies installed
within equipment, tied to content, or built into a software
program, make them no longer possible. This is digital
rights management (DRM) in action." The remainder of the
article contains discussion of this and other issues, but
can give us nothing more hopeful than the vague promise
that "the process is underway." By Carrie Russell, Library
Journal, August 15, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
RSSlets - Functional RSS Feeds
Via
Scott Leslie comes this nifty link to RSSlets, a set of
useful RSS feeds designed to grab dynamic data. This is
where the real power of RSS shines (and imagine having
dynamic data feeds embedded in your course). The RSSlets
gather information on FedEx parcel shipments, logfiles,
Google searches, comics and more. By abursey, Eightlinks,
July 22, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Learning Molecules White Paper
The
concept of the learning molecule is interesting, though not
really revolutionary. The metaphor of the molecule, of
course, has been used in many previous papers. An
object-oriented approach, reusable templates - these also
are in wide use around the world. One wonders, then, after
reading this White Paper, just what it is that Ulises Ali
Mejias at eCornell thinks he is patenting. By Ulises Ali
Mejias, ideant, August 8, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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