By Stephen Downes
August 31, 2005
OLDaily
So anyhow, today has been a day dedicated to repairing my discussion section, also known as the Threads Community, which suffered a massive meltdown during the data transfer yesterday. Today, the Comment link should be working, the Threads link located at the top of the HTML newsletter, and things showing up where they should. I've also tightened up the styling (and you'll notice that the colours and the banner change with every issue). [
Comment]
Michael Feldstein has been looking at the concept of the (Web 2.0) 'Learning Management Operating System' over the course of several posts. He asks whether there need to be e-learning specific features. Two things occur to him: calendaring and grading. As to the former, it should be noted that work is already being done on a calendaring format (maybe not for
JSR-168, but this strikes me as inconsequential); I discuss some of my own thoughts on this work
elsewhere. Grading may require dedicated development, or it may be representable using a more generic ratings format. Anyhow, this is a good discussion, and Feldstein's thoughts on the LMOS are worth following. [
Comment]
Not sure what's going to come of this, but WebCT's joining the whole portfolio movement is worthy of note. "WebCT... today announced the Portfolio Design Partner (PDP) initiative featuring a group of customers who will help define the scope and functionality of new ePortfolio software called the WebCT Learner Portfolio. WebCT will release the WebCT Learner Portfolio, which will be tightly integrated with their e-learning systems, next year." Wonder whether it will interoperate with Flickr. Or with DeviantArt. [
Comment]
It was the example that caught my eye in this item. "But when he expressed frustration at not being able to revive a dilapidated industrial area, the youngster's reply astounded him: 'I think you need to lower your industrial tax rates.'" And while Albert Ip goes on to make some useful points about the effectiveness of games, I take pause at the inculcation of particular world views embodies in the game's logic. In the world of Sim City, lowering taxes is always good. Yet we want to think twice about fostering that thought, without critical reflection, in a child's mind. [
Comment]
This is a significant announcement, as it opens the possibility that Skype will be embedded in a wide variety of applications. For example - imagine being able to call the author for clarification from within the document where you are reading his essay. Via
Howard Jarche. [
Comment]
A study reveals that more than half of scientific papers are wrong and suggests "many papers may only be accurate measures of the prevailing bias among scientists." A sardonic Slashdot author wonders, "what if his paper is one of the wrong ones?"
[
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This article deconstructs (and slices and dices and serves for dinner) a narrow view of online gaming offered by The New Atlantis's Christine Rosen. Calling the article "ostentatiously, yet uselessly learned," Bryan Alexander asks why the author quotes a 1920s Samuel McChord Crothers essay while at the same time passing over Wittgenstein and other classic texts in gaming, misreading James Paul Gee, and serving scant mention of social gaming and massive online role-playing games (MORPGs). And he ets to the crux of the matter: "There's an old, old conservative fear of cultural behavior changing without appropriate controls (for 'appropriate', read 'the speaker', or 'people the speaker likes')." Via
Abject learning. [
Comment]
Drawing on a post from Will Richardson, Scott Wilson observes that "many teachers aren't likely to be happy with the downside of the small-pieces approach, which is cobbling together a whole range of tools," and then proceeds to map out an approach that "is primarily a piece of glueware for doing the cobbling together, while retaining most of the flexibility that the small-pieces syndication world promises." I like the approach, though I would seek greater simplicity of design (for example, at the bottom of the activities diagram, Wilson draws separate panes for sources, titles and the resource itself, which though standard for feed readers, is (in my view) needlessly cluttered). [
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Results from the recent CDW-G's 2005 Teachers Talk Tech survey. "More than 85 percent--say they are trained on the Internet, word processing and e-mail software, but 27 percent say they have had little or no introduction to integrating computers into lessons." Via Edutopia. [
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Projects & Collaborations
Browse through the thousands of links in my knowledge base
sorted according to topic category, author and
publication.
Research
Browse through the thousands of links in my knowledge base
sorted according to topic category, author and
publication.
About Me
Bio, photos, and assorted odds and ends.
Publications
You know, the ones that appear in refereed journals of Outstanding Rank.
Presentations
Lectures, seminars, and keynotes in a wide variety of
formats - everything from streaming video to rough notes.
Articles
All my articles, somewhere around 400 items dating from 1995.
Audio
Audio recordings of my talks recorded in MP3 format. A podcast feed is also available.
Calendar
What I'm doing, where I'm doing it, and when.
Photos
A collection of my photographs. Suitable
for downloading as desktop wallpaper.
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About the Author
Stephen Downes
Copyright ¿ 2004 Stephen Downes
National Research Council Canada
Contact: stephen@downes.ca
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