By Stephen Downes
August 16, 2004
I Want MemeStreams as a Web Service
I don't care about a web service; an RSS feed
would do (and do better, since I can't be bothered with all
the overhead a web service entails). MemeStreams is a system whereby members rate items and where the items
displayed on the front page are an aggregation of those
ratings. Unfortunately, as Michael Feldstein notes, you
have to be a member to take part (note well: somebody will
eventually discover that ratings can be syndicated as well,
allowing such systems to be distributed, as I have
described in several papers). By Michael Feldstein,
E-Literate, August 16, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Ghost Sites: The Museum of
E-Failure
It's like a lesson in what not to do
on the web. This site features more than a thousand failed
online enterprised. Sites like Book Tailor should offer a well-worn
warning for those of us who follow - but strangely, doesn't
seem to. Via CHI weblog elektronisch publiceren. By
Steve Baldwin, May 24, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
New Quality Certification Framework CEL to be
Presented at Online Educa Berlin
From the Online
Educa news service, "The European Foundation for Management
Development (Efmd) and the Swiss Centre for Innovations in
Learning (SCIL) have built up a new quality certification
framework for e-learning programmes. It is currently being
applied, tested, and evaluated in several pilot studies,
which will be introduced and analysed in a workshop led by
Markus A. Wirth from the University of St. Gallen,
Switzerland, at Online Educa Berlin." The program was
actually announced at the end of June; I haven't
seen discussion of it elsewhere. By Press Release, Global
Learning FachNews, August 16, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Moving Out of the Traditional
Classroom
Survey article noting the rise of
non-traditional education in the United States. "New
educational options -- such as charter schools, home
schools and distance learning -- are gaining ground and
remain a subject of debate." Lumping the three into a
single category as this does, the article is a little
misleading. And the usual bugbear - the isolated learner -
is elicited as a criticism of the set. Another, better, report documents student
satisfaction with online schools. Via ADL. By Amy Cox, CNN,
August 13, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Do You *Really* Need an LMS?
James
Farmer riffs on George Siemens's criticism of the Online Course Development: What does it
cost? article. The recommendation in the report - get
an LMS - is questioned. How much does an LMS cost, and is
it worth it? Siemens writes, and I agree, "LMS' are most
useful for an organization to monitor and track learning
and for sequencing content. If that is an organization's
primary view of learning, then sure, use an LMS. If, on the
other hand, learning is primarily viewed as an informal
dialogue, collaborative content creation, or a function of
communities, then many effective tools exist. Some
examples: Groove, Plone, Skype, SNA tools (like Multiply),
Convea, aCollab, etc. IF you want to manage learning, use
an LMS. IF you want to foster dialogue/community building,
use a collaborative tool. Either option, thoughtfully
implemented, can result in cost savings." By James Farmer /
George Siemens, Incorporated Subversion, August 16, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Goodbye Groove
I've had Groove on
my desktop from time to time, to give presentations and the
like. It is not currently on my desktop and not likely to
return, mostly for the sorts of reasons outlined in this
item. Michael Feldstein follows up, extending the discussion to
Sakai and OKI. "These two points sound roughly like what
OKI and Sakai, respectively, are trying to do for world of
course management systems. But are they going to be
successful? How lightweight is OKI? (Certainly not as
lightweight as RSS, is it?) Why is it necessary for OKI to
be programming language-specific (i.e., it requires Java)?
How easy is it, really, to write a service that plugs into
Sakai via OKI?" By Martin Terre Blanche, Collaborative
Learning Environments , August 2, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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