By Stephen Downes
November 27, 2003
Pitch
Pitch has launched. I'm not
sure if the launch is formal yet, but you can access the
online magazine and view three articles, including an introductory editorial by David Wiley and
Brent Lambert, an article from George Siemens on open source content in education, and one
of my articles, The Regina Declaration. Now what's really
interesting about Pitch is the peer review system. "Pitch
uses a democratic method of peer review where all readers
participate in the review process. Instead of sending
submitted articles away for 12 months of secret review by
three individuals, Pitch allows your peers to review your
work. In Pitch everyone 'pitches in' to rate papers
submitted to the journal." Kudos to David and Brent for
getting this off the ground, and my thanks to them for
letting me be a part of it. I look forward to the
discussion that will no doubt follow. By David Wiley &
Brent Lambert, Pitch, November 27, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Natural Deselection: Not Even Microsoft Will
Last Forever, but They Plan to Try
Good article
advancing one theory about Microsoft's proposed DRM system
(I say 'one theory' because I think this is only an aspect
of the overall strategy, not the whole thing as the article
implies). "Imagine a remote procedure call that goes out
every time you are online. The RPC doesn't do anything but
act as a key. The call goes out to some Microsoft server,
but it is only returned if your OS and applications are
legit and up-to-date. This is how piracy goes away, and how
Microsoft plans to make more money by turning us all into
Windows subscribers whether we want to or not. We'll see it
first when you try to play a bootleg MP3 or that VCD image
downloaded from Finland, but eventually your system won't
work at all if you aren't on some kind of support contract
and Microsoft gets paid twice." By Robert X. Cringley, I,
Cringley, November 20, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
W4
k-collector
From the web page: "k-collector is
an enterprise news aggregator that leverages the power of
shared topics to present new ways of finding and combining
the real knowledge in your organisation." A lot like Edu_RSS, this website aggregates RSS
feeds and displays the results as a series of topic feeds.
I like the 'what', 'where', 'who', 'when' organization of
topics (hence 'W4') - especially since I'm one of the
people listed in the 'who'. I ran into access problems
trying to explore the site, so you may have to be
persistent with this link. By Various Authors, Evectors,
November, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
For
edu.au Domain Name Holders
If you hold an edu.au
domain name, you may have receceived a request from a
company called Domain Names Australia Pty Ltd requesting
payment for Internet domain names. Education.au writes,
"Please be advised that this company has no relationship
with education.au limited and is not associated in any way
with the edu.au domain. The correspondence from Domain
Names Australia Pty Ltd in no way affects any existing
domain names that you have registered in the .edu.au domain
space. If you have received such a correspondence, you are
not required to pay." By Unknown, Domain Names Australia,
November 27, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Roland Tanglao's Weblog
Following
the fate of one of my articles this morning (aka 'vanity
searching') I happened on Roland Tanglao's contribution to
the blogsphere, a set of links each one better than the
next. Great stuff for people interested in RSS, blogs and
social networking. One link points to some useful
conceptual work on smart content aggregators. Also be sure
to read the Manifesto for community contributors
on-line (scroll down a bit to find this item). By Roland
Tanglao, Roland Tanglao's Weblog, November 27, 203
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
'Blogs in Education' Roundtable Discussion
Topics
Lots of activity at the University of
British Columbia these days. This item from Scott Leslie
points to a useful summary of two roundtable discussion topics along with
some links to examples of uses of blogs in education. By
Scott Leslie, EdTechPost, November 27, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
New E-Learning Tools Make It Easy For faculty
and Students to Create Media-Rich Learning
Resources
"We’ve built learning object tools
that in turn build learning objects themselves," said
Warren Scott. "By doing that, dozens if not hundreds of
other people can create timelines and save threaded
discussions, which are actually learning objects. This
creates exponential growth in the number of re-usable
learning objects that can be re-used and re-purposed in
other courses by other faculty and students." Cool. Via
Scott Leslie, who also links to Michelle Lamberson, who links to the Timeline Tool and WebCT Discussion Extractor Tool described
in the article. "This tool allows faculty and students to
extract parts or all of that conversation and re-use it for
other contexts." By Unknown, University of British
Columbia, November 27, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
IMRC - Information Management
Glossary
I've been trying to find this item for
a while, so now that I've found it (thannks to the release
of a new revision) I'm going to make sure it's listed here.
This bibliography of technical terms is useful not only for
the definitions but also for the French language
translations. Thus I now know that an 'application profile'
is a 'profil d’application'. By Various Authors, Treasury
Board of Canada, November 17, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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