OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
July 13, 2005

Can Video Long Tail Boost Learning And Educational Opportunities?
When we look back, we will say that the turning point was Live 8. No, not for African development; there's much more to be done yet. No, it was the turning point for online video - the live AOL coverage was widely touted as vastly superior to MTV's lacklustre effort and the concerts continue to be available online for download (something that will only enhance DVD sales). Robin Good notes, "Call it Open Source Television, Internet of Video, Internet Television or any other name you like, the essence remains the same: a huge amount of openly accessible video content is already becoming available on the Internet." And more is on the way, with (for example) CBS announcing it will become a 24-hour broadband service. If you missed Live 8, at least take a few minutes to listen to Nelson Mandela - it would sure be nice if the turning point for online video was, after all, the turning point for Africa. By Luigi Canali De Rossi, Robin Good, July 11, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Digesting Alt-I-Lab 2005
Summary of the plenary sessions at the recent Alt-I-Lab conference. Written with a bit of scepticism, the article describes the delegates' intent to resolve intellectual property issue and to look more closely at portfolios and personalization. Discussion of the quality of e-learning proved to be a slippery topic, with comments ranging between claims the e-learning has been a success and question whether we need to "pull the plug" or that "a second try was necessary." By Wilbert Kraan, CETIS, July 12, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

eLearn Magazine
elearn magazine has launched a new look, with an RSS feed, sections and comments. The text-sizing is a bit funky, at least in Firefox. But articles now have their own page and comments have been enabled, so all in all, a positive change. By Lisa Neal, ed., eLearn Magazine, July 13, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

IMS, ADL and IEEE LTSC will Collaborate to Update And Standardize Content Packaging
"The updated specification will be accredited as an IEEE standard and the profile of the Content Packaging specification included as a key component of SCORM 2004, which will be revised to comply with the resulting standard." useful if you pur e-learning on a CD-ROM or hoard it like books in a library. By Press Release, ADL, July 8, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Paul's Personalized Google News, circa 2031
It's a bit over-the-top, but learning in 2031 is more likely to look like this than like an LMS. By Philipp Lenssen, Google Blogoscoped, July, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

CC Licensing for WordPress: Now with AJAX
Now why can't learning objects be associated with ODRL rights expressions in the same way as WordPress now associates Creative Commons licdenses with blog posts? Of course they could - but try convincing people of that. By Nathan Yergler, Creative Commons, July 12, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

The Price of Canadian Heritage
I would think this will change in time, once our government gets past the idea of charging Canadians user fees to access their own culture and content, but in the mean time it is important to note the sorts of barriers that are being placed between Canadian schools and Canadian culture. Especially for the rights to copy a 155 year old photo (presumably in the public domain by now). Anyhow, this is something that has to change, soon. By Michael Geist, July 10, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Hieraki - Hierarchical Wiki Software
Scott Leslie links to this structured wiki - think of it as a merger between outlining and collaborative authoring. Worthy of note is Noc, a learning object repository built on top of Hieraki. In a separate but related development, check out this example by Michael Orchard (described here with more here). By Scott Leslie, EdTechPost, July 12, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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