OLDaily

Rob Reynolds[Edit][Delete]: The Relevance of Textbooks, XplanaZine [Edit][Delete]XPlanaZine [Edit][Delete]Xplanazine [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 4 Hits] So I'm just about to leave for a short stop in London and a longer one in Malmo, Sweden (if the weather allows me here in blizzard-ridden eastern Canada). Wish me luck! Hence, no issue of OLDaily tomorrow, and the weekly is a day early this week. On that note, we begin this week with this item questioning whether it makes sense to publish textbooks online. [Tags: Canada] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Terry Freedman[Edit][Delete]: Free Market, February 2, 2006

[link: 7 Hits] Terry Freedman comments at length on my remark about "doing something good, not greedy." He writes, "why is selling content deemed to be not ok, whilst selling or, more accurately, renting your expertise to an employer is ok?... Why use such patronising and disparaging language about people whose only 'crime' is to try and earn an honest living in a different way than you do?" I respond at some length in the comments. [Tags: ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Jolande Leinenbach[Edit][Delete]: "10 Golden Rules Manifesto" to develop the European Digital Content Industry, Elearningeuropa [Edit][Delete]ElearningEuropa [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: Hits] Though there are some good bits, mostly around the area of broadband access, the document described is a mostly backward-looking and regressive proposal. The authors argue that there should be more licensing of commercial e-learning, that strong DRM is "an enabler", that there should be "a Common Core of Content," and that publishers already supply a sufficient amount of personalization and customization of materials. [Tags: Books and eBooks, Online Learning, Customization, Personalization] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Vicki A. Davis[Edit][Delete]: Why Blaze Lonely and Unpopular Trails That Will Become Highways of Tomorrow?, Cool Cat Teacher Blog [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 4 Hits] Nancy White recommended the Cool Cat Teacher Blog, which in turn impressed me with the first post I read. Excerpted in this post: "'Dr Brand...do you really think it is worth it?' No! The word sprang to Paul's lips. He almost spoke it. But something silenced it. Perhaps it was the memory of reawakening life in the eyes of Krishnamurthy. [His first patient.] Or an older memory of three figures turning hopelessly back down a steep mountain path. Or no memory at all, but that strange imperative which compels some men to blaze lonely and unpopular trails which will be the highways of tomorrow. 'Yes,' he replied firmly." Just the sort of lift I needed. [Tags: Web Logs] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Announcement[Edit][Delete]: EdNA Communities Closing Down, EdNA [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 1 Hits] Not as bad as it sounds, as communities are encoyraged to move to EdNA Groups, the service that was launched last year. "Each Group receives a space in which they can choose from a range of tools to facilitate communication and collaboration. For example, you can set up web forums and live chats; share web-links, files and images; create web pages and wikis; poll or survey members, and add RSS newsfeeds from EdNA Online. Groups can be public (open to all) or private (invitation only)." [Tags: Chat and Chat Rooms, EdNA] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Ray Grieselhuber[Edit][Delete]: How to Make Wikipedia Better (and Why We Should), Online Journalism Review [Edit][Delete]Online Journalism review [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 6 Hits] Personally, I don't think the author gets the point. The suggestions he offers - forcing editors to register, demanding references and reasons for changes, clearing copyrights for all materials prior to posting - would only marginally reduce the number of errors (after all, Britannica has almost as many errors) and would create significant barriers to input. Had any of these been in place at the start, Wikipedia would not exist. The point of something like Wikipedia is that it is easy to contribute, and errors are cleared up after the fact by the community. This means that readers will need to be aware that Wikipedia is sometimes wrong. But is this a bad thing? What would be worse, I think, is blindly trusting a source that is sometimes wrong, such as Britannica (or your local newspaper). People should read critically, rather than rely on others to create a (false) sense of security about what they read. [Tags: Wikipedia, Copyright and Patent Issues, Security Issues] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Harold Jarche[Edit][Delete]: Failure of Online Communities, Jarche Consulting [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 8 Hits] Harold Jarche cites Jay Cross, who remarks en passant, "After the session, several people told me they really appreciated Bill telling it like it is. Early on, he said that while he thought he was pretty good at fostering online communities, 90% of the communities he sets up fail." Bill probably is good at setting up online communities. But I wonder whether a community that has been set up is doomed to fail. I wonder whether, instead, what we should be looking at as community is the interactions between people in a distributed environment - such as the network of blogs and readers and commenters that make up what might be called the edublogging community (actually several communities, but I digress). A seminar, a meeting space, an online discussion board - these are not communities. They may be a place the community meets, but if the community doesn't have a life outside these spaces, it will not survive for long in them. [Tags: Web Logs, Online Learning Communities, Discussion Lists, Networks, Interaction] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Robert Roy Britt[Edit][Delete]: Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams, LiveScience [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 2 Hits] A headline from fifty years ago? No, it's from last week. The Western Union telegraph has a long and storied history but it's odd to think of people still sending telegrams in 2006, illustrative of the time it takes one technology to replace another. Still, I never sent a telegram in my life. Now, I guess, I never will. [Tags: ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]