OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
May 11, 2005

EDUCAUSE Podcast on Project Governance
D'Arcy Norman links to this podcast by Lisa Kosanovich on project governance. The talks starts out pretty well. She describes administrivia, that sort of project management that drives us all nuts, as "a more reactive approach to problems that arise" and tracable to things like design problems "being resolved in a vacuum". Her four principles of project management seem sound to me: assigning roles and responsibilities, creating a change management and scope steward, setting out communication rules, and setting up schedule tools and principles. After the first fifteen minutes or so, the talk seems to drift. By D'Arcy Norman, Dâ€™Arcy Norman Dot Net, May 9, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

BBC Eases Rules on News Feed Use
The BBC made some more friends worldwide today as restrictions previously limiting use of their RSS feeds were waived. Even more interesting is todays's announcement of BBC's Backstage, "the BBC's new developer network, providing content feeds for anyone to build with. Alternatively, share your ideas on new ways to use BBC content. This is your BBC. We want to help you play." Cool. By Unattributed, BBC, May 11, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Open Learning and Large Learning Objects
I keep meaning to do some Googling for some supplentary links for this item. The main point is that Utah State University's Open Learning Support has expanded from supporting MIT's OCW to also supporting Rice University's Connexions. The author, unfortunately, misses this point, so you have to hunt for it behind a garbled title, multiple blockquotes and embedded lists, and unclear links (sorry Spike, but it really is hard to read). But, you should know about this (it seems to me), so I pass on the item with only one additional link, to this tiny announcement from January. Perhaps David Wiley can update us all with an informative blog post. By Spike Hall, Connectivity: Spike Hall's RU Weblog, May 7, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

mLearnopedia: Your Mobile Learning Resource
eLearnopedia introduces us to mLearningopedia, a comprehensive resource on mobile learning. On the one hand I am an unabashed enthusiast for wireless connectivity and networking. On the other hand, I'm not sure about learning on a two-inch screen. But there's no doubt that mobile learning has caught the latest run of the fad train. There may be something there - but it seems to me that the hype has arrived before the grassroots applications, which suggests to me that something's amiss. Caution. Oh, but do visit this resource, which is quite good. By Judy Brown, May 11, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Why You Should (or Should Not) Use the Yahoo! Music Engine
I figure that this is about the best marketing blog post ever, and after giving it a read I downloaded Yahoo!'s new music player. The player connects to Yahoo!'s Launch music service, which has been around for a while now (I gave up on it when the ads outnumbered the songs). The download was a breeze, but the player uses Internet Explorer, which fired off a stream of Javascript errors while failing to import my local music. It won't let me search the catalogue unless I subscribe, and it won't let me subscribe unless I live in the United States. Which makes it, to me, junk. See how quickly good publicity turns sour? By Ian Roger, Yahoo!, May 11, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Five Ways to Enhance Your Learning
This very light piece is nonetheless a useful overview of how some of what we know about the brain applies to learning. By Ronald Gross, About.com, May 11, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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