By Stephen Downes
May 25, 2004
Building the School of the
Future
Streaming media presentation (not
viewable in Firefox) from Microsoft outlining its vision of
the school of the future. It looks at where children are
going online today - a good place to start - and notes that
significant numbers of them do things like access foreign
newspapers or practice e-commerce. We should ask the
question (frequently posed by critics) of whether a laptop
will make a difference; we need to look at the entire
learning environment. As a case study, it looks at the
School District of Philadelphia, where Microsoft has a
partnership. By Mary Cullinane, Microsoft, May 25, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Collaboration at ASTD Next
Week
Blogging up a storm this week is Harold
Jarche, reporting on the ASTD conference now taking
place. He refers us to this fascinating discussion taking
place on Jay Cross's website in which, in response to the
conference, Hal Richman says "I am beginning to see the
collaboration thing as a clash of civilizations. There is a
thread running through the LMS/training outsourcing world
that sees people as input/output devices to be trained.
Informal learning and collaboration are for quiche eaters."
I am inclined to agree with this assessment - I place
myself on the 'collaboration' side of the house (actually,
I think there's more to it than just that) and find a
disconnect between the way I approach things and the way
the learning design commununity as a whole approaches
things. Jarche also points to Mark Oehlert's coverage of the conference. By Jay Cross,
Internet Time, May 20, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
LearnNB
Launched yesterday (I'm
glad Harold Jarche was there to blog this, though I knew
about this and the next item they had slipped my mind) is
the new LearnNB. Picking up (I hope) where TeleEducation NB
left off, LearnNB is intended to "collaboration among
learning industry enterprises and institutions in New
Brunswick; allied export marketing; career growth and
networking for regional workplace learning and performance
practitioners; and an online community of practice for
e-learning professionals, wherever they may be." Via
Jarche. By Various Authors, May 24, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Ensemble Collaboration
Launched at
the ASTD conference, Ensemble is a system that allows for
the integration of 'collaboration objects' into a learning
management system for use with an online course. Ensemble's
demo site includes sample course content from Skillsoft,
NetG, KNet and Mindleaders, and sample LMS displays from
the usual popular systems. Via Jarche. By Various Authors,
May 24, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Sender
Policy Framework
Could we be on the verge of a
breakthrough in the spam problem? As ClickZ summarizes, "a
new field that would be added to the e-mail "envelope"
called "RFROM." (The "R" stands for responsible.) This
field would contain the e-mail address responsible for
sending of the message, and it could be checked by a
receiving mail system before the e-mail is accepted." Meng
Weng Wong writes, "Some news on the convergence between SPF
and Caller-ID can be read at ClickZ, InfoWorld, and news.com. I also announced a slideshow to the SPF-discuss and MARID mailing lists." Do view the
slideshow - it's nothing but HTML with a nifty page-turner
and graphically describes the proposal a lot better than
the articles can. By Meng Weng Wong, May, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Everyday Systems
I am an urban ranger,
I walk, it's what I do.
The city is my wilderness,
Sky scrapers are my trees...
By Reinhard Engels, May 24, 2004
[
Refer][
Research][
Reflect]
Working Reference
I do wonder
what's up with this page. Perhaps Dan Carnevale (a writer
for the Chronicle of Higher Education) can fill us in?
Here's my theory. The text is white on white, so
you have to highlight the page to see it... By Unknown,
May, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Audacity
Mentioned in the article
below, Audacity is a free digital audio editor. This link
is here for my use later, since I've been searching for one
of these. It can be downloaded here. By Various Authors, May, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Something for Nothing: The Free Culture
AudioBook Project
Lisa Galarneau sent me this
nice item giving a bit of an insider's view of the
activities following the free release online of Lawrence
Lessig's new book, Free Culture. What I like about
this article is not simply the statement of the argument in
favour of free distribution (though there is that) but the
way it describes how, when the book was released, people
began to use it, making audio transcriptions,
translations, even a wiki site. The story not only reflects
the changing economics of content distribution, it shows
that readers are no longer content to be passive consumers.
The want and need to be able to work with, to interact
with, the material. By Suw Charman, Chocolate and Vodka,
May 24, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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