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This feed has been discontinued, please unsubscribe. [2006-01-14]
This feed has been discontinued and you should unsubscribe. The feed reader you are using does not support standard HTTP mechanisms for announcing that a feed has been discontinued so you will receive this message until you manually unsubscribe. Please contact the provider of your feed reader and encourage them to support the use of HTTP 410 response codes. Your feed reader identified itself as "Edu_RSS/0.2 libwww-perl/5.79" From
Seb Schmoller's Fortnightly Mailing Home Page on January 13, 2006 at 8:49 p.m..
Movable Type error message
Jay Allen at Movable Type told me why I was getting this error message when I tried to post this afternoon: Can't locate XML/RSS/LP.pm in @INC (@INC contains: > /path/to/my/MT/install/plugins/spamlookup/lib > /path/to/my/MT/install/extlib lib > /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5 > /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/i386-linux-thread-multi > /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/i386-linux-thread-multi > /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.3/i386-linux-thread-multi > /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.2/i386-linux-thread-multi > /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1/i386-linux-thread-multi From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 7:48 p.m..
test
please ignore. debugging. thx.... From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 6:48 p.m..
test
please ignore. trying to debug a problem. thx.... From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 5:49 p.m..
Clay's course
Clay's course The syllabus for Clay's course on "Social Facts" wants to make me turn my baseball cap backwards and re-enrol as an undergrad. Sounds fantastic. [Tags: clayShirky]... From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 5:49 p.m..
Michael Feldstein - Blackboard by the Numbers - E-Literate
Michael Feldstein analyzes Jim Farmer's study. "OK. So. Blackboard pays a quarter of a million for a new customer. That's adds up to be more than 30% of the total amount of money that they bring in. How, exactly, do they stay in business? How do they grow?... Blackboard needs to acquire 185 new customers every year to hold steady, 371 to get 5% growth, and so on, up to 742 new customers needed to grow at 15%. How many new customers a year has Blackboard been getting? 152. Less than they need to break even." [
Link] [Tags From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Diana G. Oblinger and Brian L. Hawkins - The Myth about Online Course Development - EDUCAUSE Review
The myth is that "A Faculty Member Can Individually Develop and Deliver an Effective Online Course." The authors explain, "Developing and delivering an online course requires numerous and varied skills--skills that are unlikely to be found in a single individual. Teams will probably be more effective." It is interesting to contrast this article with
one on the same subject I wrote in 1998. In it, I identified three motivations for the use of course design teams: "the need for standardized course packages... economics... [and] control From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Brian L. Hawkins - Twelve Habits of Successful IT Professionals - EDUCAUSE Review
From the
most recent issue of EDUCAUSE Review, this article offers a reasonable - though not perfect - list of factors promoting success for IT professionals (of course, the definition of 'success' here is implicit). Things roll along fine until we hit principle number 5, where the article takes a turn, equating 'success' with (it seems to me) obedience. They "understand the limits of their advocacy," the author cautions. They are careful when speaking publicly. They don't whine. It feels as though the arti From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Teemu Leinonen - (Learning) Nodes are Here - Still and Again - FLOSSE Posse
Teemu Leinonen points out that the current bout of scepticism regarding learning objects is a continuation of a longer-running discussion. And the idea of 'object' or 'node', he writes, is already well-enough entrenched on the web. "There is maybe nothing new in the LO thinking. We already have the Web where content is as reusable and modular as it can be." And he adds, "The world of reusable and modular content - the web - is today better than a few years ago. Some people call it web 2.0. I would call it comeback of the web." Sounds right to me. [
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Neil C Cranston - Game, Set and Match: Bureaucracy 1, Schools 0: Time to Change the Rules? - Centre for Innovation in Education
Though the topic of this essay is the relation between schools and central administrative organizations, I think that the argument can be applied more broadly, to the relationship between any entity in an organization. Of most value is the table comparing 'traditional' and 'revolutionary' management of the organization. Consider, for example, the difference between "promotion is the reward of those who 'look' and 'sound' like their superiors" and "difference and diversity in thinking, attitudes and ideas are valued and rewarded." Which one more resembles From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Tony Hirst - USB Study Stick - OUseful Info
Kind of a neat idea, drawn from Google's recently release Pack, "a free collection of essential software from Google and other companies." What would an educational Pack look like? Portable office, Firefox, calendar and RSS reader? How about a a portable personal learning enviroment (PPLE) (I like that)? How about a
wiki on a stick? Or even Wikipedia on a stick? [
Link] [Tags:
Wikipedia,
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Attention: Reinventors
(via
Stephen Downes) Maybe we should start a club, and this
might be our manifesto. I especially like: 1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them. 5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value. 10. E From
weblogged News on January 13, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
DJ-ing MLK
I've still been thinking about the
teacher as DJ metaphor, the idea that now that we have access to a much wider array of materials, and that creating content is getting easier, we might think about moving away from that traditional follow the lesson plan mode and instead create playlists of content and assignments that teachers can pick and choose from based on the needs and interests of the students. Inherent in this concept is that whatever mix is se From
weblogged News on January 13, 2006 at 1:47 p.m..
Vientos de agua
Anoche pude ver el capÃtulo 3 de la serie Vientos de agua que estrenó Telecinco la semana pasada. La dirige Juan José Campanella (El hijo de la novia, Luna de Avellaneda). Una historia muy familiar: emigrantes de España a Argentina en los años treinta y de Argentina a España en la ... From
eCuaderno v.2.0 on January 13, 2006 at 9:53 a.m..
Portugal: III Encontro de Weblogs
Fernando Zamith anuncia en JornalismoPortoNet Weblog que el 3º Encontro Nacional sobre Weblogs tendrá lugar los dÃas 13 y 14 de octubre de 2006. En esta ocasión, el evento será acogido por la Universidade do Porto y organizado por la Licenciatura em Jornalismo e Ciências da Comunicação (LJCC) y el ... From
eCuaderno v.2.0 on January 13, 2006 at 9:53 a.m..
Interlink Headline News 4.000
El primer diario electrónico de Argentina, Interlink Headline News, llega a su edición 4.000. La fórmula: se trata de la combinación de liviandad y profundidad, de detección de tendencias y de habilidad para trenzarlas entre si. De haber pescado muchas veces la pauta que conecta lo digital con el mundo ... From
eCuaderno v.2.0 on January 13, 2006 at 9:52 a.m..
Erzählen und Zuhören in Organisationen
Ein interessanter Beitrag, der sich ganz dem Thema "Story Telling" widmet, findet sich in der aktuellen Personalführung. Im Vorspann heißt es: "Koordinationsleistungen in Organisationen lassen sich heute nicht mehr allein mit einer traditionellen Steuerungslogik erbringen, weil die Rahmenbedingungen des... From
www.weiterbildungsblog.de on January 13, 2006 at 9:51 a.m..
Talent Management Systems Make Inroads With Employers
Was kommt nach Learning Management Systemen? Konsequenterweise die Integration weiterer Personalprozesse wie Performance Management, Kompetenzmanagement oder Recruiting (um nur einige Stationen zu nennen). Was von der Sache her so einleuchtend scheint - nämlich die Prozesse und Systeme, die Mitarbeiter betreffen,... From
www.weiterbildungsblog.de on January 13, 2006 at 9:51 a.m..
Lifetime Learning Tax Credit
January 13th is the first day you can file 2005 taxes online with the IRS. H&R Block helps you determine eligibility for the Lifetime Learning Tax Credit. For more tax advice, see nationaltaxadviceday.com.... From
Adult/Continuing Education on January 13, 2006 at 9:51 a.m..
PLE Project Summary
The last five years have seen a major uptake of VLEs by colleges and universities. The vast majority of these are large, institutional systems, which are predominantly course based providing support for content distribution, discussion and assessment, mainly through proprietary tools. There are several problems with this approach of which two are of most concern. * VLEs are not easily customised to suit the needs and preferences of individuals* As learners move between institutions, they may need to learn the interfaces to different VLEs.An alternative ap From
Seblogging News on January 13, 2006 at 9:50 a.m..
Stephen Downes ~ MyGlu
Stephen Downes has created MyGlu, is a Javascript that takes an OPML file and generates a web page from the RSS feeds associated with that OPML. Similar to SuprGlu, except you can a page with your own look and feel. From
Education/Technology - Tim Lauer on January 13, 2006 at 9:50 a.m..
Chinese revolution turns hi-tech - Spencer Kelly, BBC
Sixty years after the revolution engineered by Chairman Mao, China is in the midst of a different revolution - of a digital variety. Since Mao's death in 1976, China has changed enormously, racing to catch up with the rest of Asia. Mobile phones and cam From
Techno-News Blog on January 13, 2006 at 9:50 a.m..
Legitimate music downloading enjoys dream week - Reuters
There was so much legitimate downloading in the final week of 2005 that it recalled the impossible tallies research firms used in the late 1990s to dazzle venture capitalists and scare the daylights out of major-label executives. In the seven-day stretc From
Techno-News Blog on January 13, 2006 at 9:50 a.m..
This feed has been discontinued, please unsubscribe. [2006-01-13]
This feed has been discontinued and you should unsubscribe. The feed reader you are using does not support standard HTTP mechanisms for announcing that a feed has been discontinued so you will receive this message until you manually unsubscribe. Please contact the provider of your feed reader and encourage them to support the use of HTTP 410 response codes. Your feed reader identified itself as "Edu_RSS/0.2 libwww-perl/5.79" From
Seb Schmoller's Fortnightly Mailing Home Page on January 13, 2006 at 9:49 a.m..
Conversation Network
Doug Kaye, founder of IT Conversations, has launched his new project, The Conversations Network, "a non-profit online publisher of recordings of spoken-word events." IT Conversations is now officially one "channel" of The Conversations Network, which is transparent to users, so don't worry. Doug will add more channels, and encourages people to submit high-quality recordings of spoken-word events. I'm on its board of directors, so I'm totally not unbiased, but I'm on the board because I've been excited about this idea since Doug first broached it. [Tags: itconversations From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 9:49 a.m..
Unpacking Google Pack
The Google Pack of free software consists of packages I've either already installed or already uninstalled. It's way more boring than what we're used to from Google. But ZDnet UK has an interesting take on it: It's an upgrade channel, a path straight to your desktop. Microsoft has one with Windows Update; Google wants the same. Expect this to develop rapidly, with many more options such as Open Office " too big, too many implications for the first release " and plenty of pre-installs on new computers. So long as Google doesn't do what Microsoft does with its automatic. From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 9:49 a.m..
ESBNs
The Electronic Standard Book Numbering database has launched. It lets publishers get a unique ID for each copy of e-content. That makes it very different from ISBNs that provide a unique ID for each edition. So, Bantam would have an ISBN for a new paperback edition of Hamlet, and if they sold it in electronic format, each "copy" could have its own ESBN. It's all part of the attempt to impose the restrictions of the physical on the digital, enforcing scarcity where there is none. The site gives no information about who is behind it, which turns out to be... From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 9:49 a.m..
Institutionalized: The book
A few weeks ago, I got a promotional copy of a novel in the mail. Institutionalized is written by "Fred Smith & Joe Schmoe," whom I suspect are pseudonyms. (Since the book is copyrighted by Noel Guinane and Cassandra Helm, I'm pretty sure I'm right about that.) I enjoyed it despite itself, and I'm not entirely sure why. The book tells about ten weeks in the life of Institutionalized Industries, a global plastics manufacturer. It's a rough ten weeks, starting with the egomaniacal CEO hiring a maverick VP of Sales pretty much on a whim. The vp is as close... From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 9:49 a.m..
Open Neuros
I don't know nothin' about Neuros products, but I like their open source approach, including a wiki and a feisty public stance against legislation that would hobble video recording equipment because Hollywood doesn't want us to record what we want. [Tags: drm digitalRights neuros marketing]... From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 9:49 a.m..
ESBN - background
I blogged briefly yesterday about ESBN, a way of branding individual copies of digital content (an idea that doesn't make me all that happy because it plays into the hands of copyright totalitarians). There's not a lot on the ESBN site about who's behind it, so I sent a letter to the info address and received the following helpful explanation from Chris Matthieu, presented verbatim (although I added the links because it was a pure text msg): I am the founder of ESBN.ORG. Some of my previous start-ups include: GetVocal.com, MayWeHelp.com, and PizzaOnline.com. While trying to dete From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 9:49 a.m..
Social filtering of news: Request for help
For the book I'm writing, I'd like to find examples of sites/services that aggregate and filter news and posts by using your social network as a filter. That is, you can tell the service (implicitly or explicitly) that it should use what your friends find interesting as a guide to guessing what you'll find interesting. A site like Digg.com isn't a good example because it doesn't let me specify some particular people as having interests that should weigh more heavily than the overall community's interests. (Digg is an excellent example of something else, though :) From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 9:49 a.m..
Rosenfeld and Mernit's new ventures
Susan Mernit has moved to Yahoo Personal, which is excellent news for Yahoo. And since she's now blogging about the personals space, it's good news for all of us, too. And Louis Rosenfeld, doyen of Information Architecture (damn! I just looked up doyen and it means "senior member," which Lou chronologically is not, but I've always wanted to use the word so I'm going to even though it's wrong — yeah I'm a little cranky this morning) has launched Rosenfeld Media, "a publishing house dedicated to developing short, practical, and useful books on user experience From
Joho the Blog on January 13, 2006 at 9:49 a.m..
Learning vs. Education
Interesting threads running through a lot of blogs right now that I wish I had more time to dive into. Basically, they revolve around what learning is (as opposed to education) and what the future might bring in terms of "Personal Learning Environments" (PLE). And the underlying question here is what role do schools and teachers play in all of this.
Stephen sees a world where, because we now can, we manage our own learning and build our own communities: It's just you, your community, and the web, an environm From
weblogged News on January 13, 2006 at 9:47 a.m..
The death of enterprise software
Joe Lamantia has written two interesting blog posts on the death of enterprise software. The first post looks at increased competition from smaller players in the market. To quote: For enterprise software, I think organizations will turn away from monolithic... From
Column Two on January 13, 2006 at 9:47 a.m..
Site maps and site indexes, revisited
Jared Spool has posted another article on the value of site maps. To quote: Before the holidays, I generated blogosphere fervor when I mentioned I think it's a potential waste of valuable development resources to construct and maintain site maps... From
Column Two on January 13, 2006 at 9:47 a.m..
James Farmer - The Inevitable Personal Learning Environment Post - Incorporated Subversion
The barrier to the personal learning environment (PLE) is not technological, argues James Farmer. "Major institutions aren't going to start switching their LMSs to our PLEs any time soon and yes security, ip, maturity and (above all IMO) the structuralist transmissive models that LMSs on the whole play up to and re-enforce make this a difficult journey." Still, "stranger things have happened." Farmer suggests that personal aggregation will play a key role (and I agree) and that the blog (such as offered by WordPress) forms the basis of this environment. I'm not as inclined to say "ea From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Bruce Mau - An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth - Bruce Mau Design
Interesting and relevant. A document, as
James McGee points out, "to get you beyond thinking differently but doing differently." A good start, but it seems to me that the objective is to get to the point of, if you will, 'being differently' - to become the changes you want to see in your life. As in, "Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and th From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Michael Geist - IDRC Launches Open Archive Initiative
You don't hear about the
International Development Research Centre (IDRC) much, a Canadian aid agency, but it has been around for a long time (they were a fixture, and a lot of help, when I was involved in development education in the 1980s with the Arusha Centre). But as Michael Geist writes, "In 2004, it provided financial support to Creative Commons South Africa, playing an important role in making that initiative a reality. Now it has set its sights on a major new open archive that will provide full Internet access to the IDRC research archive." Outs From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Unknown - Personal Learning Environments and Virtual Learning Environments - myWORLD Open Source ePortfolio
This is a very useful analogy and might be the best approach yet to the divide between personal learning and learning management systems: "To explore hostile environments we bring micro-climates with us in the form of clothing, space suits, boots, sea kayaks, ships, aeroplanes, etc. I may well choose to enter a VLE clad in my PLE or go off exploring on my own or with friends without feeling the need to let the teacher know." The blog author's name appears nowhere on this blog, which I am seeing for the first time. [
LinkOLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Lorcan Dempsey - Flickr and the Library Pictures - Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog
Interesting item on a collaboration between Flickr and Library Australia which allows people to upload images to the Picture Australia service through Flickr. The tag-line is what's intriguing: "Putting the library in the user environment, rather than expecting the user to be in the library environment. Creating structures for user contribution. Presenting a library service through emerging web and social tools." Yeah. Hard to "exploit" though. Via CETIS-metadata. [
Link] [Tags:
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Bruce Schneier - Real Story of the Rogue Rootkit - Wired News
The office is shut down for our big move (which is no joy for me, but that's a different story). So this morning it was down to the dentist, where my results were unusually happy. So, in a slightly less gloomy mood, I walked across the street to the mall, went to the Sony store, and complained about the Sony rootkit to a sales clone. Just thought you'd like to know. [
Link] [Tags: ] [
Comment] From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Shelley Powers - Debate on DRM - Burningbird
Good discussion of digital rights management. Read past the initial post and into the comments, where the real action happens. I appreciated, though, the author's comments on debate: she's quite right - the A-listers of the world don't debate, they quip - and usually only to each other. But what happens in the comments is a known-down all-out debate, with some knowledgeable people (Seth Finklestein, Julian Bond, Michael Bernstein) who do debate - and on other peoples blogs! Most views are well represented here; this quote (from mcubed) most closely represents my own: "The bigges From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Matthew Fox - 50 Ideas for Free Elearning - Kineo
List of open source tools (and ideas for using them) in e-learning. The title is a bit misleading - you won't see a numbering from 1 to 50, but there could well be 50 ideas scattered through the pages (I didn't count them). Covers everything from blogs to wikis to podcasting to learning management. At the very least, read the '5-minute insights' at the beginning of the document: PDF. Via
Kineo. [
Link] [Tags:
Online From OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Various authors - ESBN.org
The ESBN database launches. The Electronic Standard Book Number (ESBN) is the unique identifier of electronic media. "An ESBN is used to establish and identify one downloaded or issued copy of electronic media such as an e-book, digital document, and streaming audio/video." As David Weinberger
comments, cynically (but probably accurately), "It's all part of the attempt to impose the restrictions of the physical on the digital, enforcing scarcity where there is none."
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Anna Muoio - The Secrets of Their Success - and Yours - Fast Company
I don't seek to achieve 'success' in the sense usually intended by any of these commentators - for me, 'success' is a very specific emotional state, a mixture of happiness, harmony and satisfaction. Hard to explain. And for me, very elusive. Still, much of what is described in this article describes the external conditions that (sometimes) lead to the achievement of that state. I liked, for example, what Helen Tworkov had to say: "The most important ingredient for success is the willingness to fail, to be made a fool of, to fall on your face a hundred times a day. And From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Unattributed - Reaching your Market: Web Strategies for VET Providers - Australian Flexible Learning Framework
According to the prefix, "The report provides a mix of best practice examples, screen captures of websites to illustrate how other organisations have implemented and action points to help you understand what should be prioritised for further developing your website." It then launches immediately into email marketing and registration (and charging a subscription) for premium content. Some of the ideas are good - for example, video blogging and calendar services. But most of it is about search engine optimization and keywords. PDF.
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
George Siemens - Meaning Making, Learning, Subjectivity - Connectivism Blog
I keep postponing this link because I want to write a response to this. But maybe I should just post the link and let it speak for itself, saying for now only that George Siemens questions my assertions about the subjectivity of knowledge. "I'm comfortable stating that everything we see/do is personally interpreted. In many cases, however, an objective concept exists as a tempering point for assigning value to my subjectivity." I'll get my chance to discuss this with him online shortly; for now I'll simply ask what that objective concept could be and how we would know we got it From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Press Release - Liberty Alliance Releases People Service in Latest Version of Liberty Web Services - Liberty Alliance
I can't get into the technical details of this because it's going to take time (that I don't have) to grok the details. But the announcement is significant enough: "The Liberty Alliance Project... today announced the public release of the latest version of ID-WSF 2.0... People Service allows consumers and enterprise users to manage social applications such as bookmarks, blogging, calendars, photo sharing and instant messaging from a common layer." All good, but what Liberty offers a federated identity service, which can limit membership to selected partners and trusted services, From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Tim Bray - Don't Invent XML Languages - Ongoing
In this follow-up to his article the day before,
On XML Language Design, Tim Bray observes that of the 600 or so extant XML languages, maybe five or six (I would add RSS to his list) have had any impact. There are reasons for this, and I would say (consistently with Bray, I think) it's this: although it's hard to design an XML language, it's a lot harder to design one than it is to use (in any meaningful sense) a new one. [
Link] From
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Ellyssa Kroski - The Hive Mind: Folksonomies and User-Based Tagging - InfoTangle
Good introduction to the concepts of folksonomy and tagging, though if you are familiar with the topic you won't learn a lot that's new. Especially useful is the list of advantages and disadvantages of folksonomies. The author concludes, correctly, "The advantages to top-down hierarchical taxonomies for library collections are without question. For cataloging the Web, however, they just aren't feasible." A lot of people working on traditional (structured and formal) semantic web applications will learn this the hard way. Via
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..
Jeremy Hiebert - Personal Learning Environments - HeadsPaceJ
Jeremy Hiebert responds nicely to the concern that personal learning environments cannot replicate the functionality of learning management systems: "Isn't this a bit like criticizing the design of a screwdriver because it doesn't work well for hammering nails? As far as I know PLE's were not created to facilitate the process of institutions educating students -- they're designed to help learners manage their own learning. Pretty much by definition, they are not institutional." [
Link] [Tags: ] [
OLDaily on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 a.m..