By Stephen Downes
March 24, 2004
Two Rivers Mix: RSS and
e-Portfolios
The bar just got raised again as
content syndication and personal portfolios are merged by
Audree Thurman on the Maricopa servers.
Alan Levine explains, "This syndication publishes updates
from two different areas of an e-portfolio, from the weblog
entries (that makes sense), but also updates any document
or link added to what is called a 'collection' page (a
group of linked media, web sites, and descriptions). But
what is really cool is that there are two views of any RSS
feed- one is regular old, easily read in any capable RSS
reader, RSS 2.0, but there is also a web page view of the
same content." Outstanding. More on this from Will Richardson. By Alan Levine,
CogDogBlog, March 23, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Music Group Sues Another Batch
I have long argued for alternative forms of
education, bringing students into closer contact with the
real world, using the internet. However, harassing lawsuits
against university students is not an appropriate way to
conduct online learning, no matter what RIAA spokesperson
Jonathan Lamy says. "This [students] is a group that does
not appreciate as much as the general population that it is
illegal to share copyright music on a peer-to-peer
network," said Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording
Industry Association of America. "More education is
necessary. One form of education is lawsuits." By Katie
Dean, Wired News, March 23, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Real's Glaser exhorts Apple to open
iPod
This quote says it all: "I bought an iPod
and can only shop at one store. What is this? The Soviet
Union?" Ah, but Rob, if there was a free market, how long
do you think the price of 99 cents per song (or even
WalMart's 88 cents) would hold? By Michael Kanellos , CNET
News.com, March 23, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
ParlVU
Pause, just for a moment,
and ponder the educational opportunities of such a service:
live streaming media broadcasts of Parliament and all
Parliamentary Committees, available free to anyone who
wants, online. A great idea? Absolutely. Unrealistic? Not
at all - this service is now offered by the Canadian
government. Now there are still some tweaks needed - it
requires Windows Media Viewer and therefore is inaccessible
on my Linux box. It should also use RSS or some other form
of content syndication (using an events module) to make such content
available as learning objects in the eduSource and other
repository networks. And more - but hey, I'm getting ahead
of myself. By Various Authors, Government of Canada, March,
2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Labor Releases Free E-learning
App
The U.S. Department of Labor "is offering
agencies a free version of an application it created to
build multimedia training sessions," according to this
item. The application conforms with U.S. accessibility
standards and employs the SCORM learning object profile. EZ
Reusable Objects (EZRO) was developed using open source
applications and is available for download under the GPL.
Kudos! By Joab Jackson, Government Computer News, March 24,
2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
New Learning Models Under
Scrutiny
Discussion of the emergence of
e-learning as an accepted form of learning in the corporate
community. The article looks at the increasing demands for
accountability, as purchasers of e-learning look for
evidence of the success of the new model. But it is also
clear about the advantages of e-learning: "The trouble with
higher education for most people is that it is
overwhelmingly expensive." By Linda Anderson, Financial
Times, March 22, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Les nouvelles tendances dans le
e-learning
Nice summary (in French) of my presentation at RIMA last week. The
report is part of an overall summary of the conference on the
WikiFing wiki, part of the Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération
website. By Jean-Michel Cornu, WikiFing, March 24, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The Latest Word
Overview of
personal publishing from the point of view of aspiring
authors. The take here is that print on demand (POD) can
allow publishers to prints small quantities of books,
reducing the large costs associated with self publishing.
This allows books with very small print runs to see the
light of day, and while publishers scoff, the story makes
it clear that self publishing may be most writers' only
access to the market. By Kathy Boccella, Philadelphia
Inquirer, March 23, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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