By Stephen Downes
August 25, 2004
Cool School
Joe writes, "We
(COOLSchool) post our courses on the web. The courses were
created for grades 8 to 12 and some may be useful for first
year college students as well. Have a look at the
Chemistry 12 course." I had a browse through the system and
while the display was sometimes a little off (it probably
runs better on Explorer, and I don't think that the Java
really helps) it was fast and worked as advertised - try the search. There's a lot of freely
available content here. I like the model a lot - it's very
easy to search for materials sorted by subject and grade
level. Telus, Heritage Canada, Sun and WebCT are among the
partners behind this initiative. By
Various Authors, August 25, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Language Barriers
Corrected link
from last week (readers ended up looking at Wikipedia on
George Lakoff instead - sorry about that). By Unattributed,
The Economist, August 19, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
EdNA Online Passes 1.6M
Milestone
This is good stuff and I don't want to
sell the accomplishment short. But. "EdNA Online has passed
the 1.6 million milestone for quality assured educational
materials and training resources by adding ABC Online,
PictureAustralia and the Culture and Recreation Portal to
its searchable repositories." Ever since MERLOT signed its
deal with WebCT I have been a bit bothered. After I
questioned the agreement, Tom wrote in to say, "Merlot, on the
other hand is in competition with semantic web development
and other vendors of search vehicles, including Google, all
of whom are getting more universal." There is a truth to
this, of course - we always explain the need for
repositories by saying that you get x number of thousands
of hits on Google. But this suggests a differentiation
between MERLOT and EdNA and Google. What is it? Faceted
search? Federated search? Quality assurance? I wouldn't bet
the farm on out-Googling Google for any of these. Play with the EdNA interface for a bit -
perhaps do a search on 'downes' as I did - and you'll see
what I mean. So - and here I'm thinking aloud - maybe the
empasis on search is the wrong thing. Maybe we should be
thinking more in terms of a system or a network... or
something. By Press Release, EdNA, August 25, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Europeans Investigate Microsoft's
Intentions
The European Commission ""wants to
make sure Microsoft can't use the Windows monopoly to
establish and control the market for DRM" and so "it will
extend an antitrust investigation of a move by Microsoft
and Time Warner to take control of technology that could
help the music and movie industries fight piracy." Too bad
nobody in North America is willing to look at this - or,
for that matter, organizations like MPEG or IEEE. By Byron
Acohido, USA Today, August 25, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Interoperability: Why does it
matter?
"Why can't we do it?" asks Evan Arthur
to kick off this astonishing workshop on technical
standards for learning education and training held last
week in Melbourne. "Because it's just too damn hard." Kudos
to the organizers for getting this up so quickly, while
it's still fresh. In today's OLDaily I carry nine links
from the workshop - yes, nine. That's a lot, and it makes
for a pretty heavy edition, but this is the state of the
art, this is where the industry is right now. By Evan
Arthur, E-Learning Interoperability Seminar, August 17,
2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Frameworks and Technical
Architectures
This presentation provides a
really nice look at what may be called 'common services' -
network services that are shared by providers and form the
back-end support for user interfaces such as portals or
learning management systems. Interesting is the diagram
showing standards development in these areas - it's amazing
how many common services really need to be defined. Though
I notice that 'chat' and 'AV conferencing' are listed as
areas where standards exist - this is news to me (beyond
things like H.321). If anyone can point me to these
standards, I'd appreciate it. By Kerry Blinco, E-Learning
Interoperability Seminar, August 17, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
MyInternet: K-12 View
Looks at
technology adoption from the perspective of K-12 schools.
Good analysis, with a valuable diagram showing that most
schools purchase smallish systems that 'nobody got fired
for buying' - a reflection of a relatively slow uptake,
small technology budgets and limited time for
implementation (and consequent dependence on providers to
support technological needs). Tasmania is cited as the
exception that proves this rule - I wish I had more details
on that. The author concludes with a warning: "Avoid the
largest players defining [what services to use] (what if
every school decided to use Microsoft Class server.. It
could happen)." By Daniel Ingvarson, E-Learning
Interoperability Seminar, August 17, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Repository Management and
Implementation
Overview presentation looking at
the nature and role of content repositiories in education.
Though the presentation consists mostly of (useful)
questions, it seems to me that the core is in this
observation: "Historically, educational resources have
existed within an owner centered culture with professional
groups or individuals administering key tasks of ownership,
acquisition, management and access control. Digital assets
are situated within a more user centered culture where
ownership, management and access control may be distributed
across institutional roles and communities." By Neil
McLean, E-Learning Interoperability Seminar, August 17,
2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Managing Repositories - Response to DEST /
JISC-CETIS White Paper
The best bit of this
presentation comes after the conclusion, so don't simply
shut the viewer when you hit the 'Questions?' slide. Good
overall look at content repositiories and shared content,
with an extended discussion of why peer-to-peer approaches
cause more problems than they solve. "OAI Harvesting,"
writes the author. "Now that s common sense!" I agree. And
I would extend OAI to include RSS. And I would lump
federated systems (especially those exemplified by standard
LCMS systems) in with the criticisms of peer to peer. By
John Townsend, E-Learning Interoperability Seminar, August
20, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Digital Rights Expression and
Management
Good overview presentation of digital
rights management in learning with an emphasis on issues.
The centrepiece of the presentation is the digital rights
management ecosystem diagram produced by Geoff Collier,
Harry Picariello, and Robby Robson for the Alt-i-Lab
conference last month in San Francisco. As you study this
diagram, note the unary role students play as consumers of
content and the necessary intervention of teachers as
distributors of content. What happens when students access
content directly, and what happens when students become
producers of content? By Jon Mason, E-Learning
Interoperability Seminar, August 17, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Intellectual property rights management
within The Le@rning Federation Initiative
These
slides are unfortunately sketchy, but nonetheless provide a
useful overview of the approach to digital rights
management being taken by The Le@rning Federation. Within
the context of seven characteristics of the Australian
educational system (a long chain of use, a low
understanding of rights by users, immature technology and
standards) a system of upfront licensing (rather than an
offer - acceptance model) with an emphasis on expression
(rather than enforcement) is described. PDF, slides.
By Nigel Ward and Nicky Pitkanen, -Learning
Interoperability Seminar, August 17, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Learning Activity Sequences, Content Design
and Development
Overview presentation (PDF,
slides) of the role of learning design and an introduction
to LAMS - the Learning Activity Management System,
developed at Macquarie University. I like the use of the
recipe analogy to explain learning design: learning objects
are like the ingredients in a recipe, but a recipe must
also consists of a series of procedures for assembling them
into a meal. Embedded in the presentation is a link to a
much more detailed slide show describing LAMS in detail with
many screen shots.
For those wanting more, follow the link in the slide
presentation to this article describing the
implementation of LAMS. By James Dalziel, E-Learning
Interoperability Seminar, August 7, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
ADL Update - SCORM 2004 and
CORDRA
This update on ADL's SCORM process is a
must-view (even though it's a very large PDF of a slide
presentation - get yourself a coffee while it's
downloading). The thrust is that SCORM is mostly finished
and widely accepted (38 LMS's have been certified SCORM
compliant; Oracle and Microsoft have about a million tagged
objects, Cisco 1.4 million). What is needed next is a
system to search for and loacte these resources. ADL's next
major initiative, therefore, is CORDRA - "Content Object
Repository Discovery and Registration/Resolution
Architecture". By Dan Rehak, E-Learning Interoperability
Seminar, August 17, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Liberation Theology for the Lands of
Diversity? Free Software in Asia
This resource
is from last year, but is nonetheless an indispensible
resource for people interested in the development of free
and open source software in Asia. After an overview the
author provides us with a detailed country by country
survey. Did you know there are open source initiatives in
Laos? Mongolia? Great stuff, drawn from first-hand
knowledge. Via Courous Blog. By Frederick Noronha,
February, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
RSS Usability Guidelines
With RSS
feeds being viewed directly in services such as Bloglines
it becomes increasingly important to attend to RSS feed
usability. This article offers a few quick tips, mostly
common sense, to make your RSS feed more user-friendly. Via
Soulsoup. By Helge Fahrnberger, helge.at,
July 21, 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]