OLDaily By Stephen Downes November 12, 2003 Phoenix Photos from my time in Phoenix, Arizona. Tomorrow is flight day, so there will be no newsletter. In the meantime, enjoy these pics. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, November 12, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] More Elsevier Cancellations Cornell's website is not responding as I write, but this summary captures the gist: "The Cornell University Library is cancelling "several hundred" Elsevier journals and has explained the reasons why in a public letter. Excerpt: 'We can no longer subscribe to so many Elsevier journals (including duplicates) that we no longer need.'" What's interesting is this: "We have tried in these discussions to broker an arrangement that would allow us to cancel some Elsevier titles without such a large price increase to the titles remaining --but Elsevier has been unwilling to accept any of our proposals." Personally, I don't see why they bother subscribing to any Elsevier titles - they could take the money saved and set up an institutional archive to publish their own professor's works. In the end, as other institutions do the same, they will have access to the same material, but at a much lower cost. By Peter Suber, Open Access News, November 12, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Living in Parallel Worlds: Blogs and Course Management Systems This interesting article asks the question of whether blogging software should be incorporated into course management systems. Most of the discussion involves giving students access to blogging systems. "As the desire to capture student work for class assessment builds, we may reach a time where we need to build the bridges between two important technologies." But it seems to me the far more valuable approach, and the one more likely to be used by students, is access to content feeds. Placing, for example, an Edu_RSS topic feed using Javascript (such as is provided on this page) is an easy way to provide students immediate access to timely resources. By Frank Tansey, Syllabus, November 12, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Can Personal Appetite for Learning be Fed by Today’s Organisations? This set of slides is a bit disjointed, so it's hard to grasp the author's overall point. But there are some good bits, especially the data presented in the first half about changing attitudes between generations in Britain. The author suggests that there is an increasing trend toward personalized learning, and that a major driver toward this is personal self-fulfillment. Some of the later slides suggest that the major barrier to this is organizational and institutional resistance. Now I may be extrapolation here, but I read the point as this: what is required for personalized learning is the evolution of a network, but institutions are still set up in silo mode, which works against the network. Whether or not the author said this, I think it's true. ( Note: because of a space in the link, this may not open for all browsers ). By Tom Bentley, Net*Working 2003, October, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Education and Innovation Interesting set of PowerPoint slides from this session at Net*Working 2003. The author describes the need for innovation and sketches some key requirements. Via a series of examples, he outlines the role of education in innovation. The final few slides provide a good overview of approaches to flexible learning being taken in Australia, with a focus on bandwidth, content and intellectual property. ( Note: the link has a space it it and may not be rendered by some browsers ). By Evan Arthur, Net*Working 2003, October, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Penn State Trustee and RIAA Lawyer Denies Conflict of Interests As the headline suggests, conflict of interest allegations have surfaced in the recent Penn State deal to provide its students with access to music through Napster, even though Penn State trustee and RIAA legal counsel Barry Robinson denies any involvement in the decision. "Robinson told 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]