OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
June 24, 2005

"Schome": Lifelong Learning and the Third Space
Some good messages in this post. The author describes a project started by Peter Twining of the Open University's Knowledge Network to develop wiki-based resource focused on "the education system for the Information Age." Also raised is the concept of 'shome': "According to the OU, in future, learning will happen in (or at?) a place called "schome"--not school, not home. Catchy, or not, the title is all about ubiquity." By Catherine Howell, Ida Takes Tea, June 24, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

A Learning Object Repository in Motion (Feeling a Little Bit aggRSSive)
Looks like this could be interesting. "Imagine that each of the tags in the image above (biology, bioinformatics, etc...) was linked to a set of RSS feeds drawn from learning resource collections, weblogs, journals, library collections, news sources, or whatever else users might find useful in an educational context. Users can add new feeds to the collection and apply existing tags or create new ones much as they do in Flickr or del.icio.us." The link wasn't posted as of this writing, but should be available "in half an hour or so". By Brian Lamb, Abject learning, June 23, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

GLS02: James Paul Gee on New Paradigms for Learning
Summary of a talk by James Paul Gee in which he points to some failures of the U.S. educational system and asserts that "the solution to these crises is in our face: it’s popular culture and games; this is where it’s getting solved, not in our schools." Also interesting is this point raised by a questioner: "one way of thinking about schools is that school is a game, too. certain ways of thinking, certain things across each area, certain identities – it’s just not a good game." More coverage from the GLS03 conference includes Cory Ondrejka on user creation and David Squire on games, learning and identity. By Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian, June 23, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

pOWL
Nice work - just released, a semantic web development kit written in PHP. For people who like the open and accessible approach to this technology. "Features include: Support for viewing, editing of RDFS/OWL ontologies; Sophisticated widgets for data editing; Questioning the knowledge base with RDQL (query builder) or full-text search; extensible via it's plug-in concept. By Various Authors, SourceForge, June 23, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

MicroContent is Everywhere
Those of us who were involved in the early days of learning objects will see a lot of similarity between that concept and this description of microcontent offered at the Microlearning 2005 conference currently taking place in Innsbruck. Similarity, at least, that persisted up to the point where the concept was captured by content producers and converted into something that would be sold by vendors, organized into 'packages' by resellers, and passively consumed by learners. But this account of microlearning returns to the original idea - dynamic, flowing content not produced by some sort of content industry but by the consumers themselves. As a means of conversation and interaction, not pablum to be spoonfed is some sort of misguided instructional design. By Arnaud Leene, Microlearning 2005, June 23, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Fighting Fake Diplomas in India
When I proposed my self-identification scheme a little while ago, a common question was, how do we know whether declarations of external credentials, such as diplomas or degrees, are genuine. This item points to the easy and inevitable answer I provided: educational institutions post lists of their graduates and degrees online. Like this item describes. But how do we know the university record points to a given self-identified person? The university record points to the personal record. Instead of just listing names - which are silly unverifiable character strings - it points to URLs. This is what will happen; it's only a matter of time, because there's no other sensible way to do it. By Unknown, Wired Campus Blog, June 21, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Software Piracy 'Seen as Normal'
Some sanity in the reporting of what has come to be (misleadingly) called "piracy". According to this study, "people did not see downloading copyrighted material as theft." Well no kidding. "People are more accepting of it, even if they didn't engage it in themselves," said Dr Bryce. "They don't see it as a great problem on a social or economic level. They just don't see it as theft. They just see it as inevitable, particularly as new technologies become available." Right. And it's not theft, the constant caterwauling by industry and media to the contrary. By Unattributed, BBC News, June 23, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

(Critical) History of ICT in Education - And Where We Are Heading?
According to Eric Duval, technology has had to day a minimal impact on the way we learn. Why is this? To a large degree, writes the author, because the old cultures get mixed in with the new ones. "The old models just never disappeared but are present in a form or another in the new paradigms." The future of learning onloine, argues the author, is in open and social learning. And I agree. By Teemu Leinonen, FLOSSE Posse, June 23, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Remember...
[Refer] - send an item to your friends
[Research] - find related items
[Reflect] - post a comment about this item

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]