By Stephen Downes
July 13, 2004
Assessing Discursive Writing
What
I have tried to do in this paper is mostly to describe the
way I mark papers (and these days, criticize blog posts -
and of course I wonder what sort of mark I would give my
own paper...). But as in everything, I do it this way
because I think it ought to be done this way. And though I
have kept the argumentation in this work to a minimum, I
believe that what I offer here provides a greater degree of
precision - and fairness - in the marking of papers. By
Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, July 13, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
A Copyright Battle Kills an Anthology of
Essays About the Composer Rebecca Clarke
The
logic of withdrawing work from circulation iin the face of
lawsuits - in this case, the withdrawal of an anthology of
essays about the composer Rebecca Clarke - is summed in
this one observation: "No one has $11-million to test the
gray areas." So long as there is justice only for those who
can afford it, there is no justice. By Richard Byrne,
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Wiki for Free Culture
Creative
Commons has started a wiki looking at the idea of how to
provide access to Creative Commons materials. By Various
Authors, Creative Commons, July, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
What is Social About "Social
Tools"?
Worth a cite, if only for this quote:
"Personal ownership of content creation is critical: in our
work with school children, parents, members of the local
community, University students, corporate sponsors, and
research colleagues, we find over and over again that
empowering users to create their own content is the key to
fostering engagement, creativity, and problem solving
skills." By George Por, Blog of Collective Intelligence,
George Por
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Household Internet Use
Survey
Margot Chiasson (she's still out there -
yay!) summarizes this nicely: The Household Internet Survey
results for 2003 were released by Stats Canada on July 8.
Use of high speed Internet from home increased from 56%
last year to 65% in 2003. An increase is reported in most
provinces but the biggest proportional increase is reported
in the Atlantic provinces. "The gain in New Brunswick was
from 37% to nearly 43%. The third most popular use of the
Internet is for searching for medical or health-related
information, after e-mail and general browsing. "Almost
two-thirds (65%) of households had at least one member who
used the Internet to search for medical or health-related
information, compared with 61% in 2001." By Unknown,
Statistics Canada, July 8, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Levels of Technology Implementation (LoTi)
Breakdown
This taxonomy of technology
integration is designed specifically for the instructional
context and provides examples and links. Very
teacher-centered. Oh, if I could only reword the highest
level. It reads: "Technology is perceived as a process,
product (e.g., invention, patent, new software design)." I
want to reword it slight to read: "Technology is perceived
only as the process or product (e.g., reading, writing,
design). In other words, technology use is at its highest
point when it disappears. People don't want to invent and
patent a better phone; they simply want to call their
friends. Don't like this taxonomy? Here's another. By Christopher Moersch,
Undated
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
DMCA Hammer Comes Down on Tech Service
Vendor
The question you need to ask when you
read this short is item is this: are you willing to buy a
product from a provider who uses the Digitral Millenium
Copyright Act to enforce a monopoly on servicing your
hardware? "The court found that third party service techs
who used the key without StorageTek's permission
"circumvented" to gain access to the copyrighted code in
violation of the DMCA, even though they had the explicit
permission of the purchasers to fix their machines." By
Jason Schultz, LawGeek, July 9, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Interactive Unit Planner
This is
interesting. This planner steps you through the process of
setting outcomes and learning objectives, selecting
readings and identifying assessments. There's a bit more
cut-and-paste than I would like (it would be nice to just
insert the suggested outcomes into the text box, for
example) but it's nonetheless a ncie step along the road.
Of course, for me, the ideal is reached when most of this
happens behind the scenes and when the student can generate
his or her own lesson plan using a tool such as this. But,
one step at a time. People interested in this item would
probably be interested in a similar project hosted by the
Tisdale School Division in Saskatchewan. iSchool's Saskatchewan Teacher's Webportal System
is a '"teacher's portal" that assists in the creation of
units, lessons or webquests. By Various Authors, Unitec
Institute of Technology, July, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Ethnography and Anthropology in the
Media
Now, if somebody searches for
'anhropology' on my site, they'll get a positive result.
Heh. In all seriousness, there is a current of new thought
linking anthropology and online social networking, as
typified by Jame's Surowiecki's The Wisdon of Crowds
(an interesting read, but the paen to capitalism in the
middle seems to go on forever). Some of this has made it
into the mainstream, and this page cites links from the New York Times and Fast Company, among others. By Maish
Nichani, Ideas Bazaar, July 8, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The Platform for Online
Deliberation
This is an interesting effort. The
Platform for Online Deliberation (POD) "is a freely
available, open-source web tool for conducting asynchronous
meetings that include discussions, document collaboration,
polls and voting among small to medium sized groups of
people." So the project is worth doing, but I think that
the authors would have done well to look at some of the
more popular open source community applications such as Drupal or
PostNuke. These applications provide much
the same functionality with a much better user interface.
POD is interesting, though, because it raises the question:
what more does a an online deliberation site require over
and above discussion, document collaboration and polling?
By Various Authors, Partnership for Internet Equity and
Community Engagement (PIECE) , July, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Know a friend who might enjoy this
newsletter?
Feel free to forward OLDaily to your colleagues. If you
received this issue from a friend and would like a free
subscription of your own, you can join our mailing list
at
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/subscribe.cgi
[
About This NewsLetter] [
OLDaily Archives]
[
Send me your comments]