By Stephen Downes
May 10, 2004
RSS News Ticker
James Farmer asked
for an Edu_RSS news ticker, and I was happy to oblige
(thanks to the coding work already done by the good people
at BBCi) - you can find my new ticker (with instructions on
how to place it on your own site) here. This was a lot more fun than
cleaning my website after last weekend's hack. By James
Farmer, Incorporated Subversion, May 5, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Very Loosely Coupled
I think Jay
Cross has the right idea here - "Real-world applications
require flexibility. Those of us who are too impatient to
await the arrival of nano-objects that conform to the shape
of a contrainer can find a better model..." Now in the
elipses Jay goes on to talk about intelligent agents. I am
more sceptical about intelligent agents. If we needed
intelligent letters to get words, or intelligent words to
get sentences, we would never have developed language. If
we needed intelligent paint and paper to get paintings, we
would never have developed art. Real-world applications
should not require this or that sort of connection
mechanism. They should require things that don't need to be
connected at all, but that work together naturally when
placed in the same context. By Jay Cross, Internet Time,
May 10, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Quiz Builder
EdNA has launched a
new (and free) quiz builder on its global education
website. By Various Authors, EdNA, May, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Chalk, Talk and Customer
Service
The Economist offers a description of,
and more or less endorsement of, low-cost private education
as offered by Sunny Varkey, a wealthy Dubai-based
entrepreneur, through his firm, Global Education Management
Systems (GEMS). It's not a pretty picture: the bare-bones
education would focus only on core subjects and "good
discipline, established chiefly through selection." Of
course it's easy to pare costs when you don't have to
consider the low-margin subjects and the more difficult
students - but, of course, this is how private schools end
up being a drain on the public system, cherry-picking the
high-margin students and leaving the more difficult cases
for the public purse (where subsequent higher than average
per-student cost will then, of course, be branded as
'inefficiency'). By The Economist, The Economist,
reprinted in DEOS-L, May 10, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Scholars and Scripts, Eyeballs and Epistemes:
What it Means to Publish
These PowerPoint slides
are well worth a quick view, displaying graphically as they
do the increase in journal prices and the increase on open
access publications and requests. Some neat discussion as
well about the different publishing traditions in different
disciplines. The presentation is broadly in support of open
access, defines the 'Gold', 'Green' and 'White' models of
open access, and suggests that we are nearing the 'tipping
point' in publishing models. By Blaise Cronin, OCLC, April
29, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
IMS/SSP Comes So Close...
David
Wiley is back to doing cool things with the launch of his
Open Learning
Support pilot project, which adds discussion board
support to half a dozen or so OpenCourseWare courses at
MIT. This has led him to consider the question of social
interaction specifications in IMS/SCORM, something well
worth looking at. By David Wiley, autounfocus, May 7, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Commonwealth of Learning...
continued
The latest from the Commonwealth of
Learning Conference (I hope you are enjoying these): BC E-Learning Research Sites; Mimio, a
poor man's version of SmartBoard; Television goes to school; Burrokeet, intended to be an open source
Learning Content Management System; Helen Barrett's website
on e-portfolios; an overview of andragogy; the Free
Software and open Source Foundation for Africa
(FOSSFA); an AUCC study on the relation between class sizes and student satisfaction; a
webcast describing John Seely Brown's Community Law; and Metclafe's Law. By Various Authors, COL,
May 10, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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