By Stephen Downes
July 27, 2004
More RSS Joins for the Ocotillo Action
Groups
The experiment continues and the Small
Pieces Loosely Joined is beginning to illustrate the sort
of complexity and sophistication possible with low-tech
low-control processes. These systems will soon outstrip the
capacity of any centralized learning management system
(imagine trying to centrally administer each cell in the
growth of a tree, or each stream in the flowing of a river
system). Alan also asks, "whether [blogs] will fly with the speed and
grace of a lead balloon" citing a slow uptake. But we
don't need everybody blogging, no more than we need
everybody writing books or producing movies. Let people
settle to their own comfort zone, and don't try to force
it. There are plenty of roles to go around. By Alan Levine,
CogDogBlog, July 27, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
A Fully Personalized View Of The Internet:
Frassle
Robin Good summarizes: "Frassle doesn't
make intelligent decisions for you, but it uses information
you provide to learn, over time, what's important to you.
It helps you to organize things you find on the net. Best
of all, frassle doesn't need lots of care and feeding—if
you write a blog or keep bookmarks in your web browser,
you're already producing all the information frassle needs.
Frazzle is a Personalized Directory." Important. By Luigi
Canali De Rossi, Robin Good, July 27, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
When the Convention is a
Classroom
When the Progressive Conservatives
held their convention in Ottawa to elect Joe Clark their
leader and eventual Prime Minister, it was a great learning
experience for me. Aside from listening to the delegates
and touring the booths (Flora Macdonald gave me an apple) I
took home a ransom of souvineers - buttons, posters,
banners, and one delegate. So I envy the thousands of youth
volunteers at the Democratic convention in Boston. The best
learning occurs outside the classroom. That said, many more
thousands of students are getting the convention experience
through the numerous blogs covering the event. Not
close enough to touch a delegate, perhaps, but miles ahead
of what any generation previous could expect. By Teresa
Méndez, Christain Science Monitor, July 27, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Three Reasons to Publish an E-Newsletter AND
a Blog
I ask this question from the opposite
perspective - given that I have RSS feeds, Javascript feeds
and a webpage, why do I continue to publish the email
newsletter? And of course the answer is that the majority
of my (known) readers sontinue to do it by email. But I can
report that every time I send out an issue my email inbox
gets hammered by anti-spam messgaes, on-vacation messages
and assorted errors and failures. It comes with the
territory and is really only a problem if I have to use
Outlook Web Access from a cybercafe. Anyhow, this article
tries to convince the authors of email newsletters that
they should run their publication as a blog. Via Serious
Instructional Technology, which (by the way) has moved.
By Debbie Weil, MarketingProfs.com, June 22, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
701 Tips for e-Learning
On the one
hand, reading this book is addictive; I was up to tip
number 70 or so before I realized I had been drawn in. On
the other hand, the staccato delivery wears a little thin;
by tip number 70 I realized it wasn't going to draw to
anything like a conclusion. Of course, that's not the
intent and it's not really a weakness. This free PDF is
well worth downloading and reading - the advertisements
aren't even a problem (and an interesting technique). This
is the best to come from the Masie Center in a very long
time. By Elliott Masie, Masie centre, July, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
MSN NewsBot
Microsoft has launched
a beta version of what it calls NewsBot - essentially a
clone of Google News (and another recommender style news
service, but I forget the name of it off the top of ny
head). The The UK version has been around since last
year some time. According to the site, "Newsbot (beta)
responds to your reading preferences. Clicking on articles
determines what we base your recommendations on." They say
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But I wish
Microsoft would stop flattering everyone else and come up
with something innovative. Shees, they have the staff for
it... By Various Authors, Microsoft, July 25, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Blogs and Wikis as WebQuest
Tasks
Corrected link from yesterday. Sorry for
the inconvenience. By Bernie Dodge, NECC 2004, June 25,
2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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