By Stephen Downes
August 19, 2004
In the Classroom, Web Logs Are the New
Bulletin Boards
Surface-level article describing
the use of weblogs in the classroom. With a new school year
approaching in the northern hemisphere the blog phenomenon
is about to go mainstream with not thousands but tens of
thousands of teachers using them in their classes. New
experts will be annoited by the press, academic studies
will be conducted, and the inevitable backlash will be in
full force as writers will complain about the poor grammar
and trivial topic selection of the average student blog.
Via MANE IT Network. By Jeffrey Selingo, New York Times,
August 19, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
How To Start a Free Culture Chapter at Your
School
Not sure whether this will go anywhere,
but it's nice to see the initiative, and it gives people
something to watch for on campus. By Various Authors,
Downhill Battle, August 18, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Welcome
to eMachineShop
This is interesting. The website
describes it as follows: "eMachineShop is the remarkable
new way to get the custom parts you need - the first true
online machine shop. Download our free software, draw your
part, and click to order - it's that easy! Your part will
be machined and delivered. Even better, your cost is low
due to the Internet, software, and automated machines." The
L.A. Times quotes Ohio State University engineering
professor Taylan Altan as commmenting: "One of the biggest
problems we have today in American design and manufacturing
is that designers know very little about manufacturing" --
and eMachineShop overcomes that deficiency by building the
knowledge of a machinist into the design software. Of
course, I look at something like this and imagine the
learning possibilities. Via NewsScan Daily. By Various
Authors, August, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
State High School Exit Exams: A Maturing
Reform
The Center on Education Policy yesterday
released its third annual report on state high school exit
exams. The author reports that student outcomes are largely
unchanged from last year. They point to the hidden costs of
exit exams - for example, extra preparation and
rehabilitation - and note that they are borne by local
administrations. They suggest that, in the right policy
context, the exams could have a slight beneficial result,
but that currently they also have a slight negative result.
PDF. By Gayler, Naomi Chudowsky, Madlene Hamilton, Nancy
Kober, and Margery Yeager., Center on Education Policy,
August 18, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Fireworks How To: The Ultimate Aqua
Button
Nice step-by-step tutorial on how to
create aqua buttons using Firewworks (aqua buttons are
those see-through buttons you see on Apple systems). The
effect is pretty neat and the lessons show you some things
about images in general. But why would anyone want their
website to look like an Apple interface? Via Brain Frieze. By Brian Edgin, Community
MX, August 19, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
opensourceCMS
This site allows
readers to evaluate open source content management systems
(CMS). What's nice about this site is that an
administration userid and password are provided so people
can see how the system functions behind the scenes (the
systems are reinitialized every two hours). The site only
offers evaluations of systems written in PHP and using
mySQL, and only systems that do not require administrator
access to install. Via the EDTECH mailing list. By Various
Authors, August, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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