By Stephen Downes
July 15, 2004
UK Department for Education and Skills Hosts
Launch of LAMS Roadmap
Big news today as the
roadmap for the development of LAMS - the Learning Activity
Management System (LAMS) - is announced by the UK
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and its
inventor, James Dalziel of Macquarie University in Sydney,
Australia. LAMS is a "software program that allows teachers
to design, manage and deliver online collaborative learning
activities. They can sequence individual tasks, small group
work and whole class activities, and incorporate 'Learning
Objects' into sequences where appropriate." A key point of
today's announcement is that LAMS will be released as open
source software (OSS) under the Gnu Public License (GPL) in
late February 2005. More on LAMS. See also LAMS
International. This announcement is only to be
applauded, and I wish the LAMS foundation success through
the development process and after. Thanks, James, for the
link. By Press Release, LAMS Foundation, July 15, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Lord of the Rings Domain Fight Enters Realms
of Fantasy
J.R.R. Tolkien's books will not pass
into the public domain for decades, and the movies will
take even longer, but the studio's and publisher's
assertion that they own the rights to the word 'Shire'
ought not last much beyond next Tuesday. As the Register
explains, "it would be impossible to argue with the legal
letter's initial assertion: 'shire' is extremely well known
in the UK. In fact, it has been well known since around
600AD - not long after the Romans had wandered off." Not to
be missed, if you haven't seen it already, is a link to
Groucho Marx's famous reply to Warner Brothers after the
studio tried to block the release of A Night in Casablanca.
By Kieren McCarthy, The Register, July 14, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Ethiopian
Teacher Education Portal
This site is a trove of
information about teaching and for teachers in Ethiopia.
The site contains news, information, links and more,
including resources for the Teacher Development Program
(TDP) and for the Teacher Education System Overhaul (TESO)
program. Built with PostNuke, it recently won a Gold Award for Ethiopian websites. Just
shows what you can do with free software and a little
participation. By Various Authors, July, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Democracy in the Balance
Not quite
my usual fare, but I wanted to share this article that
identifies many of my concerns, concerns I feel not just
when I look south of the border but also when I look at the
environment here at home. "Money has democracy in a
stranglehold and is suffocating it.... That's why so many
people are turned off by politics. It's why we can't put
things right. And it's wrong. Hear the great Justice
Learned Hand on this: "If we are to keep our democracy,
there must be one commandment: ‘Thou shalt not ration
justice.'"" It should be noted that when people opt out of
politics, they opt out of rule of law also. As it becomes
clearer that the law serves special interests, the moral
imperative to follow a law vanishes. We tread on dangerous
ground when we cede the mechanisms of society to a certain
sector, one that harsher and harsher laws won't make right.
By Bill Moyers, Sojourners, August, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
eScholarship Title List
437 books,
released for free public online access, by University of
California Press, following, as Peter Suber notes, the
pioneering lead of the National Academy Press, though while the
latter is in PDF, the University of California Press is in
HTML and hence is much easier to read online. The site also
provides linking assistance and a spreadsheet. Outstanding. Other sites
hosting free online books include E-Editions - University of Nebraska
Press, Baen Books, Hoover Institution, and, of course, Project
Gutenberg. By Various Authors, University of California
Press, July, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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