OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
December 21, 2004

Just Another Wacky Day in December
So anyhow, today started with me missing my 6:30 a.m. flight to Ottawa - so if you're expecting me, I'll be in the city tomorrow. What else? My discussion board continues to emit sparodic, unreplicable errors in which the entire thread is not formed, But happily, it works sometimes - long enough, at least, to get this cogent response from Scott Wilson on Personal Learning Environments and a response from Fen Labalme on i-Names. What else? Several people reported that the domain name for IDTL (and consequently, several of my links) is not working. Apparently it had expired. Or had it? The domain expires January 4, 2005 - but it appears that the domain name registrar (amd I confirmed this for myself) jumped the gun, listing it as unoccupied. What weirdness. Of course, the domain continues to work fine where I am, so this appears to be a localized problem. Oh well. Gotta go phone my hotel now. By Various Authors, Stephen's Web, December 21, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Copyright Clearance Center Releases New Report on Copyright in the Digital Workspace
Interesting report surveying internet use in the corporate space. According to the results, the internet is widely use for research (and is often the sole source of research). More surprisingly, file sharing is widespread in the corproate environment. "Employees seek out information that is relevant to business objectives. Once they find it, they frequently share it with others for a wide range of purposes often without realizing that their actions may violate copyright law." It's a habit as old as work - once you find something interesting, you share it with your friends and colleagues. But of course, you can't just toss a digital magazine onto the lunch room coffee table or post an article to a bulletin board or office door. In today's new environment, this practice has become illegal. The article concludes with stern warnings about the risks corporations face if their employees are caught sharing information. Better that companies ponder how much today's new copyright laws would cost them in royalties if they had to pay for each copy of a document read by an employee. PDF. By Unattributed, Copyright Clearance Center, December, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Instructional Design Models
George Siemens points to this very useful - and very comprehensive - list of instructional design models, organized by epoch (modernist and post-modernist) and model, pointing toresources, writings and home pages for each model. By Martin Ryder, Dece,ber 1, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

President's Blog
So you toil and toil at your college, promoting the idea of blogging, but you don't really get any take-up. But still you toil away, and then one day, your college gets a new president, and the new president launches a blog. All of a sudden, it's like you're in the Promised Land. That, anyway, is what happened to George Siemens, and this is his college president's blog. By Jeff Zabudsky, Red River College, December, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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