OLDaily

Konrad Glogowski[Edit][Delete]: Unending Conversation, Blog of Proximal Development [Edit][Delete] July 14, 2006

[link: Hits] How has blogging changed teaching? Konrad Glogowski outlines six things that have changed. "My classroom is now a community of inquiry where knowledge emerges from conversation - an act of engagement with ideas based on reflection, knowledge building, and collaboration." [Tags: Web Logs] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Barbara Fister[Edit][Delete]: Rice UP Back in Business - But With a Difference, ACRLog [Edit][Delete] July 14, 2006

[link: Hits] The Wall Street Journal, The Book Standard and Inside Higher Ed are covering a story out of Rice University to the effect that Rice's University Press will bgin publishing free online books with revenues drawn from a print-on-demand (POD) publishing service. The initiative is tied together with Rice's Connexions authoring system. Because it is acting as a publisher, services such as selecting and editing will be required, which will be part of the costs Rice expects to incur. And it seems clear to me that the service will depend a lot on prestige and value-add, because it is as easy for me to publish via a POD system direct as to go through Rice - which means Rice needs to put some value on the table. [Tags: Connexions, Books and eBooks] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Grant Robertson[Edit][Delete]: Minor Alternatives to Major Labels; a Crash Course in Free Music Online, thedigitalmusicweblog [Edit][Delete] July 14, 2006

[link: Hits] When the music publishers come at you again with this argument that says they believe artists should be paid for their work, why not ask them why the artists on these independent sites get much more per song than the artists on iTunes or Napster, and why not ask why these independent artists aren't even given the chance to sell their music via iTunes or Napster. And when you're looking for new music, why not try some intependent tunes instead of numbly marching to the tune of the publishing machine. [Tags: Books and eBooks] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Various authors[Edit][Delete]: The Best of the Web: Intute Launched Today, Jisc [Edit][Delete]JISC [Edit][Delete] July 14, 2006

[link: 1 Hits] Intute - the new face of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) - is a website that allows users to search from a very large collection of academic resources selected by experts from various British universities. It also offers RSS feeds of those resource listings. In addition, it offers searchers access to listings of resources aggregated by its harvester and from some special collections. There's no sign-ups, no federation to join, none of that overhead. I will say at this juncture that this is what we could have, and should have, built with the eduSource project. Certainly (and I don't mean to toot my own horn here) it is very much what I had in mind and argued for at eduSource board meetings. I will say now that we at least have a very good example in hand of what can and should be done by way of establishing a large academic resource network. This is a great start. [Tags: Project Based Learning, Networks, Academics and Academia] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Donna Cameron and Terry Anderson[Edit][Delete]: Collaborative Learning Activities Using Social Software Tools, Athabasca University [Edit][Delete] July 14, 2006

[link: 1 Hits] As the page states, "The following activities were designed for use by self-paced (continuous enrolment) students working at a distance to add a social component to their learning. The activities are customized for the Me2U system (an instance of elgg.net) at Athabasca University, but should be applicable to a variety of social software tool sets and most specifically any ELGG powered system." About two dozen activities are listed. Via Mark Berthelemy. [Tags: Customization] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Various authors[Edit][Delete]: MetaxuCafe, July 14, 2006

[link: Hits] Some fallout from the Aggregate This post Inside Higher Ed the other day. MetaxuCafe is "a network of literary blogs with over 300 members." A similar initiative, Postgenomic, aggregates "posts from life science blogs." This is the trend we are seeing now - small, subject-specific networks of a few hundred blogs. A lot like Edu_RSS. But - these days - a lot better designed than Edu_RSS. [Tags: Web Logs, Networks] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Wendy Zellner[Edit][Delete]: The Gates Effect, Fast Company [Edit][Delete] July 14, 2006

[link: Hits] I will grant that the Gates Foundation contributions to education in the U.S. are staggering. And I will grant that rigor, relevance and relationships will, in the main, have a beneficial effect on students. Spend enough money and you can make this happen. But the problem - the real problem - faced by the educational system is how to provide this to everyone equitably, and especially how to do this in an environment where people want to spend less, not more, on social services. I'd like to see the Gates Foundation succeed, and not just in the United States. And I applaud the effort. And I am aware that what we are seeing today is the investigation, the research - and not the solution, as articles such as the present one seem to imply. At least, I hope so. [Tags: Online Learning, United States, Research] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]