December 13, 2005
OLDaily
In another installment of the longest breakfast ever, Ed Tech Posse runs part two of my conversation with Dean and Rob in Regina. We look at the nature of popular phenomena and popular culture (and share some of our most embarassing album purchases). [Tags: ] [
Comment]
The point of this item - with which I am in sympathy - is that not only is copyright expanding, but its increasingly pervasive nature is becoming a medium for social control. To think of where copyright has gone in the last decade or so, "Imagine buying a bed and being told that you were only licensed to use it for yourself..." And to imagine the future: "While we're all doing the chicken dance at weddings, playing World of Warcraft in secret and trying to lose the 'love handles' we acquired over the winter, the so-called entertainment companies are in the process of stitching up our cultures in ways that are beyond imagining." And finally, "that the current legal 'owners' of so much of our cultural inheritance consider it all merchandise says a lot about them." Too true. [Tags:
Copyright and Patent Issues] [
Comment]
"Michael Jordan didn't become the greatest basketball player but going to the basketball lab for 45 minutes a week". Seems kind of obvious, when you put it like that. [Tags: ] [
Comment]
Jeremy Hiebert links to this article looking at informal learning as it develops in Slashdot. The author approaches the subject with what I think is the right perspective, observing, "Systems function, at times, in ways that cannot be attributed to any of the individual parts of the system separately. Such systems are termed emergent systems..." And more, he argues, such systems are self-organizing systems. This is a hard concept to imagine, but ask yourself: how is it possible for a tree to grow without management telling it how to organize itself? Slashdot and the tree - same phenomenon. "In what is essentially a self-directed learning effort, Slashdot participants organize their own learning around authentic, real-world problems which they choose." [Tags:
Web Logs] [
Comment]
Yahoo! announces a partnership with Moveable Type. Linking to the story and elsewhere, Brian Lamb comments, "It will be interesting to see how well these apps are integrated into the interface, and if being under the same roof means these toys will play better with each other as tent-poles under the Yahoo Hosting Big Top than they do out in the world wild web... Interesting that it's a hosting arrangement, not an acquisition. Whither Typepad? And I wonder if Yahoo tried to buy out Six Apart the way they did Flickr and del.icio.us." I wonder whether we'll see movement from Yahoo! on something like OpenID now. That would tip the scales. [Tags:
Yahoo!,
del.icio.us] [
Comment]
This is new to me, so I thought I'd pass it along (it never ceases to amaze me how much is new to me). JoAnn Hackos writes, "Obviously, something else must influence XML authoring if it is to move past the tipping point. That 'something else' is arguably DITA.... it provides us with an informational architecture standard around topic-based authoring that is unique to technical information." Learn
more about DITA from the always useful Cover Pages. Via
Column Two. [Tags:
XML,
Metadata] [
Comment]
Seb Schmoller sends along this link from a new (to me) blog decribing the various descriptions of e-learning 2.0 (or learning 2.0, or variants). Good survey, a bit on the cynical side (though he's nice to me, which makes me happy ;)). [Tags:
Online Learning,
Web Logs] [
Comment]
Good crisp presentation looking yet again at traits of the net generation (in this paper styled as 'the millennials') but backed with some actual research and drawing out the implications for educators, a list of which should be posted on the wall of every school. [Tags:
Schools,
Research] [
Comment]
Useful presentation surveying the use of and plans for identity management at (mostly) U.S. universities. Some items of interest: the major reason universities are looking at identity management is for reasons of security and privacy (80 percent); enhanced services comes second (60 percent). Another bit: the typical userid and password combination far outranks other technologies being used and even considered for use (
kerberos was also popular). And you have to figure, any presentation that quotes Nietzsche in the second slide is going to be worthy of consideration. [Tags:
Privacy Issues,
Security Issues] [
Comment]
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I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumberance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle.
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