OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
November 25, 2004

L'ingénierie pédagogique à l'heure des TIC
I am in Montreal for this conference taking place all day tomorrow at McGill University. Though my talk is in English, this website - and most of the talks - are in French. By Various Authors, November 25, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

When Plagiarism's Shadow Falls on Admired Scholars
Rip. Mix. Burn. Two Harvard professors are caught with unattributed remix content in their books. Piracy? Plagiarism? Of course not - it was all an oversight. The punishment? "'The discovery is the punishment,' Professor Gillers said." Sure. Let's punish students in the same way, then, or underground remix artists. Let's face it: creativity rests deeply on the work of others, and attribution is more a matter of professional courtesy than a matter of law. At least, in the world of Harvard Law professors. By Sara Rimer, New York Times, November 24, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Learning Object Repository Software
Review and comparison of six learning object repositoriy solutions: HarvestRoad Hive, Intrallect Intralibrary, NorthPlains Telescope Enterprise, Ex Libris Digitool, Concord Masterfile and Dspace. The products are compared on a matrix of 44 features and 10 feature groupings. Worth reading as well is the discussion and background, as the authors interview various learning object experts, such as Ed Walker and Mike Mattson. One of the authors, Scott Leslie, also identified additional open source tools, but these weren't included in the report (unfortunately). MS Word document. The spreadsheet, in XLS format, is available here. Via EdTechPost. By Scott Leslie, Bruce Landon, Brian Lamb, and Russell Poulin, WCET EduTools, November 12, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Charter Schools Fall Short in Public Schools Matchup
People opting for charter schools to improve learning may want to think twice as a study released by the U.S. Department of Education shows they perform less well than the public system. A proponent of charter schools, however, argues that this shortfall is due to their targeting disadvantaged students. However, "even when allowances were made for race and poverty, the charter schools were still less likely to meet state standards than regular schools." By Sam Dillon and Diana Jean Schemo, New York Times, November 23, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Keynote Address on Workflow Learning
Jay Cross sets the stage for the emerging idea of workflow learning in this presentation outlining the topic. In addition to the 20 minute presentation (in audio, video and who knows what else) find here a 'workflow learning family tree' diagram offering a nice look at the concepts leading to workflow learning. By Jay Cross, Workflow Learning Symposium, November 25, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Beyond the Lost Horizon
Via jay Cross, this set of slides from inustry analyst Trace Urdan's presentation at the Workflow Learning Symposium offers some sober thought for the e-learning industry. It's not the $60 billion industry it expected, but rather a $6 billion industry swamped by corporate business process software. By Trace Urdan, Emergent Learning Forum, November 17, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Emergent Learning Forum
Among the presentations worth viewing at the November Emergent Learning Forum were Tom Hill's talk on learning in business processes (audio for Hill's talk and others may be found at the Learning Economics Group website) and Ted Cocheu, CEO of Altus Learning Systems, who notes, "Formal learning methods have a negative or inverse relationship to competence." By Various Authors, November 17, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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