OLDaily
By Stephen Downes
February 12, 2004

cc.edu voting
The heated discussion I mentioned a few days ago on the Creative Commons Education list (cc.edu) has turned into a vote of sorts, with one side trying to get Creative Commons to endorse licenses restricting use to educational institutions, and another side trying to keep edeucational content open for everyone. David Wiley's post states the question, but doesn't link to the discussion where people can cast their votes until noonish tomorrow (Friday). Just to be clear, Creative Commons does not actually have a decision making process, and I have just been told to take my discussion about process elsewhere, so this vote isn't really a vote. For the blog record, my votes for what should constitute an 'education' CC license (not that I'm happy with the idea to begin with) were as follows:

  1. require attribution - yes
  2. disallow commercial uses - yes
  3. allow only uses to facilitate learning - no
  4. require modified works be distributed under the same license - yes
  5. require modified works be distributed with a mechanism for determining what changes have been made - no
  6. allow use by anyone whose use meets the above guidelines regardless of affiliation - yes
  7. option to restrict use to individuals affiliated with an educational institution only - no
  8. expand 7. above to include individuals affiliated with non-profit organizations with primarily educational missions in addition to individuals affiliated with educational institutions - no
This vote isn't final, it will just be used (as input, depending on what Creative Commons decides to do) to create a 'beta' education license. The effect of my vote is to assert that any such educational license should be Creative Commons' Attriubution - Non-commercial - Share-alike license. By David Wiley, Autounfocus, February 12, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Eedo Announces Revolutionary e-Learning Content Ingestion and Conversion Tool
I think the title for this link expresses all the hopes and fears about e-learning in one word: ingestion. By Press Release, Eedo Knowledgeware, February 10, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Why Wireless Will End 'Piracy' and Doom DRM and TCPA - Jim Griffin
Interesting take on a very possible future: wireless access will become the 'tipping point' where vendors stop trying to charge individual prices for content and will instead collect revenues from a pool collected from wireless access sales. "Can you think of a single model where we haven't had a pool of money then split it up?" he asks. "Since the 1920s we've had public address systems, radio, TV, and cable - and all of those are monetized with a pool. You simply can't find an example to the contrary." By Andrew Orlowski, The Register, February 11, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Neko Case
I'm pleased to announce my debut as a recording artist. If you listen carefully, you will note my voice amoung the several hundred backup singers. Heh. The artist is Neko Case; you have to click here to listen to (and view) the recording, made during Neko's session at Idea City last June. You will need Real Media running (which is why I made it an internal link). Sadly, finances dictate that I will not be able to attend this year's. Who knows what I will miss? By Neko Case, February, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

BBCi Connector
This is a really neat idea - chat with other people who are on the same BBC page as yourself. Unfortunately, the testing process didn't include Firebird on Linux, so it thinks I have no Javascript, and bumps me to an error page. Tsk. By Various Authors, BBC, February, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Chalkface Blog
I picked up this link from a Flickr contact. No RSS (sadly). The blog has some good content, some of it not covered elsewhere, and seems to address itself most directly to the interests of the U.K. Curriculum Online Project and the National Grid for Learning, two education resource repositories that (IMHO) have just got to provide RSS or similar XML feeds linking to their aggregated content (write them and tell them so!). And this is a first for an education technology website, I think: win a balloon flight. By Ian Grove-Stephensen, et.al., Chalkface, February, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Interaction of IT Systems and Repositories Project (IIS&R)
From their home page: "This project extends the outcomes of the successful Collaborative Online and Information Services (COLIS) Consortium project by:

  1. Sustaining the Demonstrator Testbed so that dissemination of findings can be made accessible to all education sectors around Australia
  2. Proving the robustness of the IMS standards based Demonstrator environment by encouraging substitution of systems, particularly digital repositories,in the framework.
  3. Conducting research into the useability of the framework through involvement of learners and teachers
It is designed to improve interaction between IT systems and repositories within a standards framework by sustaining and extending the outcomes of the COLIS Demonstrator project, and by conducting research with teachers and learners." The project team has taken their work on the road; the events have already taken place in the south and west, but if you're in Brisbane, Canberra or Sydney you can still ctach their seminars. By Various Authors, Macquarie University, February, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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