Photo: Survivors, pulled from their apartment building by a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, sit on the floor of an HH-65 Jayhawk rescue helicopter here today (August 30, 2005). U.S. Coast Guard photograph by Petty Officer 2nd Class NyxoLyno Cangemi.

So I made it to Manchester, UK, and after spending part of this afternoon trapped in an elevator, made it to the conference site with enough time to write a brief newsletter. Yes, it has been that sort of day. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to an interesting time tomorrow - and to getting my exercise using the stairs. [Comment]

I have talked about the similarities between news media and learning for some time now, and so it's not surprising to see Elliot Masie seize on a hot topic and use CNN's coverage of recent events to make some similar points. But I like even better Alan Levine's summary of online media versus online learning - the contrast describes in stark relief the direction in which learning ought to - and will -go in the future. But maybe we can do a bit better than CNN, learn to cast a wider eye, and avoid single-focus coverage of sensational events to drive viewership. [Comment]

Just the sort of article the Chronicle likes to run - a plucky individualists takes a stand against the invasion of evil technology. Well, OK, I exaggerate. But not by a lot. [Comment]

Michael Geist offers advice to Canadian political leaders that I could have written myself: "the premiers would do well to focus on three issues: distance education, access to knowledge, and an innovative research environment." [Comment]

Personally I think that focusing on the use of e-portfolios in assessment is missing the point a bit. But this seems right: "Whether you~{!/~}re using an ePortfolio as a job-hunting tool or an assessment tool, you want the people who inspect it to come away with an entirely new understanding of who you are and what you~{!/~}re capable of accomplishing." Good article overall with a number of examples of e-portfolio development and use. [Comment]

The author summarizes: "The specific example of a podcasting blog is Japancasting: Free educational broadcasts on Japanese culture, history, language, society, religions, and educational system. Ancient legends are analyzed with discussion questions to discover East Asian values. Listen to voices of people from around the world, professors and students in English, Japanese and Chinese. For English as a Foreign Language study there are links to illustrated scripts for reading while listening, and links to online sources for further research about Japan. Subscribe to download to an MP3 player like iPod via iTunes, podcast directories or the Japancasting site, where episodes can be clicked on to listen by computer (Webcasting)." [Comment]

It's a pretty light treatment, but nonetheless a sign of the wave of research that will show that blogging has beneficial effects in learning. The article describes "preliminary findings of PhD research by Anne Bartlett-Bragg, a lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney... '[The students] are thinking more critically,' she says. 'They are learning to be responsible and they're communicating outside the boundaries of the classroom and the institution, and they like that.'" In my view, what makes the difference between blogging and other sorts of journaling is the audience. As Bartlett-Bragg says, "They get such a buzz when they make a comment on another person outside the boundaries of the institution and that person responds, or even gives them some further reading." [Comment]

Welcome to the weekly readers, who have missed out on the great move to the new system. Today I flex it a bit, beginning with this page, which lists the most popular ten links from the last week. You'll also see the beginnings of my rating system, not fully operational (use the 'Back' button after you vote) but generally functional. Also, if you mouse over the author's name and the publication, you'll notice that they, too, are links to pages featuring links from those respective sources. This is still just the beginning of the new functionality - what we went through this week was much more than a design change. I'll update the code listings before I leave for Britain on Sunday (but again, this is still very much a work in progress). I arrive in Manchester Monday afternoon; I might do a newsletter but don't count on one until Tuesday. Meanwhile, I'll see some of you at the Edu-Bloggers Meetup Tuesday evening. [Comment]

Leigh Blackall has a happy discovery while giving a presentation at TAFE NSW Illawarra. "I came across the usual things that make TAFE a bit of a joke... access denials, not being set up to play MPEG4 movies, and other stuff I can't really recall just now, but then the joke turned on me! It was when I was up to the bit about wikis - using wikipedia, wikiversity, and the South African Curriculum wiki as examples. I thought I'd be smart and type in 'TAFE NSW' as a search in wikipedia. Cocky as always I pre-empted the results expecting a no show for my search when BAM! There it was! A wikipedia entry on Technical And Further Education in Australia!" [Comment]

Scott Leslie summarizes: "While this writeup does put some more meat on the bone and help us understand more about Learning Design, Tools Interoperability Profile and repository interoperability, I can't help but think that recording some of these sessions (and maybe some screen recorded demos too) would be helpful for spreading the word and illustrating the concepts to a wider audience. Maybe next time ;-) Still, seems reason to hope that we're moving along from abstract specs to support interoperability to actual working systems, hooray!" [Comment]

Good list of important trends, including open source business, complexity, social networking and the wisdom of crowds. This is also a pretty good list of important trends in e-learning, and regular readers will have noted that i return to these themes again and again, trying to tease them out and explain what they mean. [Comment]

Description of the development and deployment of s number of e-learning titles by the Azim Premji Foundation along with a summary of a study. "The findings of this research carried out over a twelve-month period by the Spastic Society of Karnataka,showed that there were improvements in social intelligence, social behavior, communication and motivation in most children. This finding is echoed across the other research findings. Moreover, these aspects are also reinforced with anecdotal evidences that one comes across on visits to these schools." Thanks to Roger Casselman for the link. [Comment]

This is a pretty good example, it seems to me, of how to use games productively in learning. Instead of trying to create a game specifically designed to teach math, a teacher has adapted an existing game - fantasy football - to draw out those elements that foster the learning of math. The idea here is that the foundational knowledge is not taught on its own, and in the abstract, but rather, that it emerges through the process of attempting to succeed at some other (more interesting and relevant) activity, in this case, fantasy football. [Comment]

Report based on 'Speak-Up Day for Students' held in late 2004, an event where students were asked to describe their (ideal) use of technology, and Visions 2020, a polling of some futurists on what they expected to see. A profile emerges. "Every student would use a small, handheld wireless computer that is voice activated. The computer would offer high-speed access to a kid-friendly Internet, populated with websites that are safe, designed specifically for use by students, with no pop-up ads... In completing their schoolwork, students would work closely and routinely with an intelligent digital tutor, and tap a knowledge utility to obtain factual answers to questions they pose..." The profile feels a little massaged to me, and I wonder whether the questions or context didn't lead them on a little. Still, by 'safe' the students meant, mainly, no viruses, pop-ups and hackers. And by 'intelligent digital tutor' the students seemmostly to have meant 'robot'. PDF. [Comment]

Another one of those 'impact of technology on teaching' studies is released as the research agencies line up to be included in 'back to school' specials in newspapers and magazines. This one reveals by now familiar trends: "Computer technology has changed teaching 'a great deal.' (but) Teachers increasingly cite computers as effective teaching tools, but just over half integrate computers into daily curriculum." Via EdNA. [Comment]

From EdNA, this notice: "EdNA Online will be releasing its next generation data repository and administration platform this Sunday September 4 2005... The new system will support a range of content types such as learning objects, news items and calendar events and a range of metadata schemas including AGLS, Dublin Core and Learning Object Metadata (LOM). The system also has the ability to store content in any data type, such as Word and PDF documents, images and movies, in addition to support for future content types such as e-portfolios and learning designs." [Comment]

Google's book scanning project is rolling ahead. "On Tuesday, the search goliath rolled out stand-alone book search services in 14 countries. The same day, the Text and Academic Authors Association (TAA) became the latest publishers' organization to call Google's opt-out strategy backwards." It is interesting to observe that the United States, with stricter copyright regulations, is simply being left behind by Google. [Comment]

The authors offer an extended definition of three major types of educational technology: the learning content management system, the learning management system, and the course management system. It is interesting to note that the use of course management systems is greater in the U.S. than elsewhere. They then offer seven "pedagogical lessons" derived from their student of this technology, ranging from new roles for instructors to new approaches to learning content. A bit introductory, but reasonably clear. [Comment]

We tend to restrict our thinking to the computer screen (or the mobile device) when we think of online learning. The author of this paper offers the useful recommendation that we consider the wider environment. "Each student and instructor is involved in a shared learning experience, but all students and instructors are also lodged in idiosyncratic local environments that shape their experiences and indirectly shape the experience of everyone else in the virtual classroom." Drawing on student comments, the author offers some preliminary reflections on how the computing environment shapes the online experience. In general, people enjoy the freedom customizing their own space offers. "By embracing customization, we allow students to adapt their individual spaces to maximize their own comfort. Students can sit in comfortable chairs, wear pajamas, eat dinner, and let the cat walk on the keyboard." Nice kitty! [Comment]

Summary of "a nationwide survey of Internet use by U.S. college faculty." According to the authors, "Faculty are catching up to their students in other technological skills, like instant messaging, as well. But the advantages of some of these communications technologies may be limited to venues like online–only courses, which are still a small percentage of college courses overall. Issues raised in the findings fall into three categories: infrastructure and professional development, and teaching and research." [Comment]

You know, it's funny how the first question always seems to be, "how can we make money off it?" I look at podcasting, and what I see is a way to do something I couldn't before: to preserve my talks and make them available to a wider audience. And if you look at the social drivers - the ability to time-shift audio content, freedom from an excess of advertisements, access to diverse content - it isn't the commerical aspect of podcasting that is driving its popularity. Anyhow, this article offers an abridged history of podcasting, explores the social drivers, and then outlines some business models: sponsorships, advertising, donations and subscription fees. The usual unimaginative selection. [Comment]

In my recent talk, Principles of Distributed Representation, I drew on Charles Vest's talk, and specifically, the properties he attribues to successful university systems. Vest's talk is now available online as an MP3. [Comment]

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?" [Comment]

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). [Comment]

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. [Comment]

OK, we'll keep things a bit short today. The expected technical problems did in fact occur but here it is, the new look of OLDaily. Right now, things are pretty basic. The biggest change, aside from the nifty theme, is a greater emphasis on the authors of the posts I cite. Links now redirect through a hit counter (I track traffic only, and not individual users) which will help me rate links (a bypass will be made available in a few days, for those who don't want to be counted. The comment link not only allows you to comment but will also be the gateway to the post's permanent location and to a range of features related to each post - but it's pretty basic for now. And while you can comment today without logging in, this will be changed shortly; a login will be required to post comments (but never to merely read). Anyhow, though there's not a lot to look at now - think of it as a brand new house with the paint still fresh on the walls and the workers scurrying out the back door. Over the next weeks, I'll be moving in the furniture, and then we'll really see this thing fly. Anyhow, for now, please send me your comments, and if you are having problems, don't hesitate to write. [Comment]

Jay Cross, in conversation with Tony O'Driscoll, recounts his experiences reading Gloria Gery in the 1990s on the subject of workplace learning. "We must reflect deeply on the way work presents itself to the user and build our systems on the metaphors that are connected to the work context itself. The context is the workflow, and the content is what the user needs to perform work within that context." [Comment]

The traditional scheduling of school classes - starting at nine, each one running for fifty minutes - depends on the dubious asumption, as the author notes, that "students arrive at school ready to learn in the same way, on the same schedule, all in rhythm with each other." Not only that, the author also bemoans the gradual shrinkage of learning time. "Common sense suffices: American students must have more time for learning. The 6-hour, 180-day school year should be relegated to museums, an exhibit from our education past. Both learners and teachers need more time -- not to do more of the same, but to use all time in new, different, and better ways. The key to liberating learning lies in unlocking time." But merely extending school hours is no solution either, in my view. Via 2 Cents Worth. [Comment]

E-learning is still strong in government, according to this report, because "The federal government is in a financial jam, and it's banking on e-learning to reduce the costs of technology training." The author is highlights the weaknesses of e-learning (in the course of three "reality checks") but points out that the purchase of a new e-learning system is cheaper than the annual salary of an additional staff member. [Comment]

A fitting post as my first post on the new system (I know, it's at the bottom of the newsletter, that's how I arrange things), describing the angst of Flickr users as they face impending conversion to the Yahoo! ID system. I remember when Netscape was swept into the AOL fold, I lost my coveted downes@netscape.com UserID. I also wrote ages ago about the tribulations of WELL members felt when their site was sold to Salon. That's the danger of hosted services - but by bit, you're drawn into this great centralizing vacuum cleaner, losing your identity bit by bit. Why is this an appropriate link? Well, part of what I'm up to is to keep the web distributed and identities unique. [Comment]

In the winter of 1997-98, sheltering from Brandon's cold norther storms, I wrote the basis of a database system that would become the foundation for my website, the NewsTrolls blog, and with the addition of an email system in 2001, OLDaily. Now, unless something weird happens to the code (always a possibility), today's newsletter will be the last issue published and mailed using the old system. Yes, just a new coat of paint (actually, the subscription script and some security features) and the new EduRSS02 will be ready to roll into production, at least on the blogging and newsletter side (the integrated harvesting will come in October). This is a major step for me, the result of a lot of work, and the new system will be a strong platform on which to implement a lot of what I've talked about over the last year or so: the semantic social network, single self-identification, RSS referencing, and more. For now, here's the code, such as it is (please note that it is still very much under construction and that this does not constitute a release, just good open source practice).

CRLFAnyhow. Tomorrow's newsletter should arrive as usual. You'll see some format changes, but nothing shocking. Should your newsletter not arrive, or somehow be gibbled, please send me an email and I'll get it fixed. This should be a smooth transition, but I've been in this business long enough to expect anything. Thanks in advance for your patience. [Comment]

I have updated my Calendar page, linking to the various conferences I will be visiting this fall, including talks in Manchester, Ottawa, Toronto, Gander, and Heerlen. Shoudl be a busy fall, which is why I've been sweating the mignight oil to get this coding done. [Comment]

Signed by Tim Berners-Lee, among other luminaries, this letter responds to the public letter by Sally Morris, theExecutive Director of ALPSP, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, concerning the RCUK's proposed research self-archiving policy. The authors call "unsubstantiated" Morris's claims that open archiving would cause "disasterous consequences." They write, "all the evidence to date shows the reverse to be true: not only do journals thrive and co-exist alongside author self-archiving, but they can actually benefit from it -- both in terms of more citations and more subscriptions." [Comment]

A group of instructors has started a petition to convince Google to stop advertising essay services, asking the search engine to "stop undermining education through their policy of displaying ads that encourage plagiarism and academic fraud through the sale of pre-written and made to order term papers and essays especially when these ads are displayed on web sites that promote education." 171 signatures to date, up from the 22 I saw when I looked yesterday. [Comment]

I was reading through the Perl.com Newsletter yesterday and followed this link on the information that "Brainbench has updated its certification exam to cover Perl 5.8." The link took me to this test, but more interestingly, to Brainbench in general. Now fair warning: to take most of the tests you have to pay a fee. But still, the model was worth a look. In addition to the test, you can access learning resources, online classes, and discussion groups. The tests themselves are online multiple choice tests and surprisingly tough. Though I managed to pass the two Perl beta tests (which would mean I'd be certified in Perl, woo hoo!) I failed the CSS2 test. And though the tests are online, it would be simple for a prospective employer to proctor a test. [Comment]

"The e-book reflects a portion of the author s work in distance education during the past five years. It is a book of readings that is designed to provide relevant assistance to online teachers and students who are striving to do their best in this exciting new educational arena." [Comment]

Here is a question worth asking: "Is it possible to organize a student’s four years in a more developmental manner, gradually cultivating a way of life that uses time effectively for lifelong learning — rather than just lifelong busyness?" [Comment]

Volume 2, Issue 2 of the Association For Information SystemsCRLFSIG on Semantic Web and IS is now available as a 60 page PDF (which, given its topic, seems ironic). [Comment]

Unintentionally, I think, the authors present a stark contrast: a two-columned PDF that is almost unreadable on a computer screen, interspaced with nifty little graphics that capture meaning much more effectively than the dense text. The main point is that "21st century literacy is the set of abilities and skills where aural, visual and digital literacy overlap. These include the ability to understand the power of images and sounds, to recognize and use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute them pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new forms." As Kathleen Bennett writes, "A new language is being born: 'rich in ways that extend traditional forms of communication with visual imagery and sound' and it is a global imperative that we understand this far-reaching phenomenon." [Comment]

Nothing we haven't seen here before, but it's nice to have a clear statement of the issue. "Today Canadian universities spend millions in copyright licenses that are arguably unnecessary. This expenditure effectively represents a subsidy to Canadian publishers from taxpayers as well as from students who are facing escalating tuition fees at a time that they can scarcely cover their monthly rent." Hear, hear. [Comment]