OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
December 8, 2004

Canada’s LCdr Roger St-Pierre Recognized for his Work with ADL
I missed this when it first came out but I found it while messing around with Edu_RSS. The presentation described "highlighted LCdr St-Pierre’s support to the ADL initiative and described him as a 'true pioneer' for authoring the first ever Sharable Content Object model" [ie., SCORM]. Nice to see this recognition. By Press Release, ADL, November 22, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Shibboleth Update a.k.a. shibble-ware
This is a great presentation, the clearest dscription of Shibboleth - a system that shares user authentication between participating universities - that I've seen. Especially useful is Slide 7 (be sure to view this in presentation mode) which shows step by step how the parts of Shibboleth interact. There's a lot to like about Shibboleth, but what I don't like is that it is more or less a closed network and that a user's identity is handled by, and distributed by, the university system. What we need is a home Shibboleth, a desktop application readers can run themselves without the need for a (very expensive) university enrollment. Via EDUCAUSE. By Michael R. Gettes , December, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Online University That Gave Cat Diploma Sued for Fraud
Well, this one is all over the blogosphere and I can't resist passing it along. An online 'university' has been sued by the State of Pennsylvania after granting an MBA to a cat. Nobody has thought to test the cat. Cat owners mutter: if it had been a dog, there would have been no questions asked. Via Slashdot. By Associated Press, PhillyBurbs.com, December 6, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Brainwave Cap Controls Computer
I want one of these. "Four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, successfully moved a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes." Of course, I would need to be able to click. By Unknown, BBC News, December 7, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Blackboard Bug--A Microsoft Conspiracy?
Constarnation in the Blackboard community as it turns out that the learning management system will only work with Internet Explorer, for now at least. One wonders what otter in Blackboard's design department decided to use Microsoft-specific extensions. By Matt Barton, Kairosnews, December 7, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Making the Most of the Blogosphere
I felt like I was flipping through my morning reads as I flipped through this slide show - the point of the presentation is to highlight not blogs per se but the many aggregator sites and filters that are beginning to spring up. Bloglines, Technorati, Feedster, Daypop - they're all there. Well, not all of them, but many. If the names just listed mean nothing to you, have a look at this presentation and follow the links to the sites. Your blog world will expand. By Jenny Levine and Greg Schwartz, The Shifted Librarian, November 16, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Creative Commons Licensed Library Launches - Delivering Mobile Editions Of Books To Phones
This item showed up in the Creative Commons feed today and was worth a look. The reference is to a site called WINK, which (as the headline promised) is launching a Creative Commons library of books for mobile phones. Following the site to the home page, however, I found something even more interesting - a service that will convert your RSS feed to mobile phone content. Here it is, and after messing around with the somewhat obscure instructions, I managed to create a mobile version of OLDaily (if you allow popups, you will see an emulation if you follow this link in your browser; presumably, mobile phone users are shown OLDaily directly). More WINK sites. Of course, now I want to build one of these directly from my own site, so I don't have to use WINK - if anybody can point me to a 'how-to' page I'll pass it along in OLDaily. By Various Authors, WINK, November 12, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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