By Stephen Downes
December 17, 2003
OSS Watch Survey Findings: Interoperability a
Major Factor in Educational Open Source
Adoption
Fascinating: "In the study, the single
biggest factor that Higher Education respondents mentioned
as a motive to choose open source was interoperability
through better standards support. Intriguingly, the single
biggest factor holding back open source software adoption
is ... interoperability and migration concerns." The
problem, of course, is that commercial software - such as
Microsoft - does not interoperate well with
competing products, and so long as people use this
crap software, interoperability will always be a
problem (in this light, you may want to read report author
David Tannenbaum's alternative explanations of this
phenomenon). By Wilbert Kraan, CETIS, December 17, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Scirus - Science Specific Search
Engine
Scott Leslie picks up this good link to
Scirus,
a "search engine that focuses solely on sources of
scientific information and returns results either from
qualified web sites or from only scientific journals." This
is what I would like to do (or see done) with educational
technology journals, in combination with Edu_RSS. In the
same post he also links to Joe Hart's EduResources
Portal, "a site that aggregates annotated references to
both discipline-specific and institutional repositories as
well as resources on the use and creation of learning
objects." In the same vein, you may want to look at the
beta version of Eurekster, a search service that combines
the results of searches by you and a set of selected
friends - the beta password to get into the site is: cool
By Scott Leslie, EdTechPost, December 17, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
ERIC/ACVE
website
This is your last chance to use ERIC
before it is killed. Judy Wagner writes, "The ERIC/ACVE
website () will be taken down on Friday, December 19. The
publications and links will be archived on several sites -
probably available by the first of the year: Center on
Education and Training for Employment, Texas
Center for Adult Literacy and Learning, and California Adult Literacy Professional
Development Project. By Judy Wagner, December 17, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Students Who Know Their Own
Minds
Wouldn't it help teachers if they knew how
students think and learn? Of course it would. But wouldn't
it help even more if this information were shared with the
students themselves? That's part of the philosophy behind
one of several novel programs implemented at Gateway High
School, a 400-student charter school in San Francisco. One
student comments, "Psychology was probably the best class
for me because it not only taught me how I learned and what
I need, but it taught other people how I learn and what I
need." By Ashley Ball, edutopia, December, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The Maine Event
Overview article
describing the Maine laptop program and the evaluations -
uniformly positive - that followed. "Students, teachers,
principals, and parents across the Pine Tree State are
relaying success stories for which the portable computers
are credited. Stories of sullen truants transformed into
outgoing school leaders. Stories of leveling the playing
field. Stories of environmental projects or oral histories
benefiting and uniting not just the school community, but
the community at large. Stories of teachers reinvigorated
by a new way of teaching that encourages real-world
problem-solving and individual student initiative." There
is, however, a downside to the laptop experiment: it ends.
"We won't have them next year," laments Skowhegan eighth
grader Emily. "It's going to be like going back to
kindergarten." By Diane Curtis, edutopia, December, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
School in Lyon County picked for Mars
program
I continue to follow the Mars lander program closely, as my name is one of many etched on a CD
that will land on the red planet January 24. By AP, Las
Vegas Review-Journal, December 17, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Content Management and Collaboration Converge
on E-Learning
Though this article is loosely
written, enought of the meaning comes through to give a
glimpse of a project at the University of Michigan that
seeks to combine content management (especially of video
assets) and e-learning. "The ultimate goal is a system that
lets people input video using a hardware/software appliance
like those available from Telestream or another vendor. The
system would know from a log-in who the user is and in
which folder to put the content. The text of speech would
become part of content's meta data, making it searchable
and doing away with hunting through audio and video looking
for the relevant sound bite. End-users would need only a
Web browser to peruse their rich media collections." What
happens when we get simple, user-created video? For those
with broadband access, the internet becomes much more
interesting (and television comparatively dull). By Michael
Pastore, Intranet Journal, December 10, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Kolabora
A new resource from Robin
Good, this website provides information and help on
conferencing and collaboration on the net. I like the style
of the newsfeeds, and may steal the author-site design for
my own lists. Also interesting is the set of discussion
board (or 'phorum') topics, each with its own RSS feed. The
site creator has also assembled a top flight team of
experts; time will tell the role they play on the site, but
if they do participate this could be one of the premier web
desitinations on the subject. By Luigi Canali De Rossi,
Robin Good, December, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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