OLDaily

I hadn't seen this before Daniel Lemire sent me an email, but there's still plenty of time to get your submissions in - the deadline is October 31, 2005. Basically, the question is whether Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council should institute a process of open archiving, or as the email says, "Should SSHRC adopt a regulation requiring that one copy of all research results be deposited in an institutional repository? Should such a regulation apply to all forms of research outputs..." Searching through Google I've seen a number of submissions on this already. Anyhow, get your word in; it's a chance to make a difference. [Comment]

Ironically, the link to the website is inaccessible here at the conference (probably because it uses port 8081) but the text of this conference summary blog post was accessible to me through RSS. A bit terse, but it offers a number of links. [Comment]

A one-liner from Scott Wilson that concludes "... conference wireless access didn't routinely block chat? I'm at ALT-C and suffering AIM withdrawal" (That's the entire post so you don't need to click on the link). The conference also blocks VPN, which means I am not able to easily send emails, so if you're waiting for a response from me, sorry, I will respond, really, but it may be a day or two. While writing I will say that Scott was admirable in his endurance at the Edu-blogger meet-up last night. [Comment]

Discussion of a phenomenon we will be seeing a lot more of over the next few years, online video snippets made by professors using laptops, screen captures, and maybe video cameras. The technology is to the point where almost anyone with a ffew hours to spend can learn how to do it, and the bandwidth is reaching the point where it actually makes sense to do them. [Comment]

I'm somewhat intrigued by the idea of a semantic wiki, but express caution that it could get complex (and hence, obscure) in a hurry. I mean, straightforward prfopositions involving concrete entities ("Berlin is the capital of [[is capital of::Germany]], Berlin has [[population:=3.390.444]] inhabitants" seem so intuitive. But semantics has a way of getting away from you. For example, quantification, conditionality, modality and propositional attitudes all offer challenges for expression. How would you mark up a sentence like "It is widely believed that the same people responsible for the first attack were responsible for the second"? NJot a problem in Wikipedia, where standard English may be used - but a poser in a semantic wiki, leading us to ponder, first, whether a semantic markup converys any obvious advantage over naturage language, and second, where semantic markup alters the intent and meaning of the expression, creating some sort of pseudo-sterile version of knowledge. [Comment]

Is that what they're going to be called? Educational podcasts, I mean. E-pods? Anyhow, author Margaret Maag has created her, um, e-pod and in so doing offers a nice example of the practice. You can view the blog, but to access the audio clips you have to access the XML, presumably using your own ipodding application. [Comment]

A series of new CETIS briefing papers is now available. "One of the new additions is a briefing on the IMS Accessibility for Learner Information Profile (affectionally known as AccLIP) spec.... The other addition, a briefing on the IEEE LTSC LOM standard, has been available for a while on the CETIS Metadata and Digital Repositories SIG site." [Comment]

Interactive videoconferencing, in addition to meeting academic objectives, according to this article, also results in some side-benefits. "In addition to enhancing students’ academic learning, our students are becoming more culturally tolerant and aware." [Comment]

Jay Cross captures in a compellingly written post an approach to instructional design that aligns very closely with my own way of thinking, one based on, as Stuart Brand wrote, "power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested." [Comment]