OLDaily

Mark Harrison[Edit][Delete]: The Future of E-Learning, Kineo [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006

[link: 2 Hits] I liked this presentation, though its use of Breeze made it hard to just flip through (because of the slides with time-delayed content). And forget about cutting and pasting a pithy quote into the newsletter. Anyhow, the author points out that most of the technologies we use in e-learning have been around for a while, and that they find their greatest use in informal learning. [Tags: Online Learning, Newsletters] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Will Richardson[Edit][Delete]: Headline: Congress Targets Social Network Sites, Weblogg-Ed [Edit][Delete]Weblogg-ed [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006

[link: Hits] This has received a lot of press today, but keep in mind that it's only a proposal, and once American legislators realize that it effectively bans minors from using the internet it will be watered down or withdrawn. One would think. Will Richardson comments, "It's not safety. It's politics. It's a hot button issue. It's fear mongering. It's power, or the potential loss of it." More. More. [Tags: United States, Schools] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Charles M. Vest[Edit][Delete]: Open Content and the Emerging Global Meta-University, EDUCAUSE Review [Edit][Delete]EDUCAUSE REVIEW [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006

[link: Hits] Article based (loosely) on his talk at Snowmass last summer. In it, Charles M. Vest talks mostly about the thinking behind OpenCourseWare and a bit about open educational resources generally. It is important to understand, though, that this is a global movement, and is about more than the rest of the world being the passive recipient of MIT's largesse (sorry that sounds harsh, but that's how the article reads). In the last paragraph he gets to describing the meta-university, "a transcendent, accessible, empowering, dynamic, communally constructed framework of open materials and platforms on which much of higher education worldwide can be constructed or enhanced." More from the current EDUCAUSE Review. [Tags: Accessibility, EDUCAUSE] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Christian Long[Edit][Delete]: Sorry, We Own That Smiley Face!, think:lab [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006

[link: 1 Hits] Maybe it's overkill, but I want to list this item just to remind people why I think it is more often the copyright and trademark owners who are the thieves, and not the file sharers. [Tags: Copyright and Patent Issues] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Charles Bailey[Edit][Delete]: Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality = Digital Dystopia?, DigitalKoans [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006

[link: Hits] Essay that is mostly an overview of the three issues listed in the title (Strong Copyright, DRM and Net Neutrality) with some discussion of their impact on libraries in the last section. The conclusion, as the title suggests, is that these three things would be bad for libraries. "What may be every publisher/vendor's dream, may be every library's nightmare. Aside from a potential surge of publisher/vendor-specific access licensing options and fees, libraries may also have to contend with publisher/vendor-specific DRM technical solutions..." [Tags: Books and eBooks] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Miltiadis D. Lytras, editor[Edit][Delete]: Semantic Web Factbook, SIGSEMIS [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006

[link: 2 Hits] Hard to believe, but this is only the preliminary (abridged) edition. This 115 page PDF will overwhelm you with country reports (especially China, Ukraine and Poland), project reports and papers. Some of the interesting projects described include SemDis (discovering complex relationships in semantic data) and REWERSE (reasoning on the web with rules). The volume contains as a whole hundreds of links and references. It's almost too much, really - my preference would be to see similar information distributed once a day or once a week, spread out to give readers time to absorb it. And in HTML (and RSS), not PDF, so it's easier to read. Still, this is not to disparage the genuine contribution this volume makes, and if anything, I would like to single out the editor's committment to open access and an open research society. [Tags: Semantic Web, Books and eBooks, Project Based Learning, Research, China] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Pamela Slim[Edit][Delete]: Open Letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs Across the Corporate World, Escape From Cubicle Nation [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006

[link: Hits] This article has gained some traction in the blogosphere and resonates as well in the educational world. The message is simple: this consultant (Pamela Slim) has given up trying to teach good practice to corporate management, and is now trying to teach their employees how to escape. She writes, "I was banging my head against the wall trying to find ethical, creative ways to train your employees on the merits of your forced ranking compensation plan. No amount of creativity could overcome the fact that it is a stupid idea..." She wraps up the column with some really fundamental (but so often ignored) advice for corporate management. Things like: Stop running your company like the mafia. And: Don't train people until you know what problem you are solving. [Tags: Online Learning, Web Logs] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]