October 11, 2006
OLDaily
[link: 24 Hits] Sketchy converage of this conference being held in Spain. Wish there was more description of the sessions, as the papers are not online. Still, even the one-liners are pretty good - like this: "a Michigan professor, James Porter, tells us how Napster (the file-sharing craze) is affecting literacy development (and publishing), in ways that Marx would approve;." Leaves us wondering, though, whether he's for or against. [Tags: ] [
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[link: 2 Hits] The LMS company has found a way to copy another idea, creating a way to run the system offline. "The next release will be SCORM compliant and will be able to be downloaded to a Flash (USB) drive. At this point, the computer would still need have the Backpack client on it--but in the future--it may be a web-based solution so that a student could use it at a library or other public computing commons." Not too likely on that last bit - because then the content could be used by
any system, not just Blackboard - and who wants that? (Still waiting for coverage of the
Blackboard Q&Aat EDUCAUSE.) [Tags:
SCORM,
Blackboard,
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[link: Hits] The celebratory glasses of orange juice tell the story (at least, we'll assume it's orange juice). "Open source VLE Bodington has released their first full release under the Apache License V2.0." Congratulations to them. [Tags: ] [
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[link: Hits] They've done it to music and publishing, why not fashion? I'm not a fashionista but even I know that if they make knock-offs illegal that will be the end of the fashion industry. But that seems to be where the U.S. copyright industry is now headed. Carmen Marc valvo perhaps says it best: "Fashion is more evolutionary than revolutionary -- you're always inspired by something else. Besides, I don't think anyone copying me would be able to do it the same way." Come to think of it - science, literature and art work that way too. Via Hotlinks via Kottke. [Tags:
Paradigm Shift,
Copyright and Patent Issues] [
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[link: 2 Hits] "I'm a simple man, like you." That's how one of William Shatner's commercial messages begins, and it works because of the audacity of the 'like you' message. The same sort of audacity is present in Google's first newsletter for teachers. "Today, teachers like you are using technology in innovative ways to help students build knowledge." Oh really! responds the teacher. Nice of you to tell us. I think it's nice that Google is helping education, but I think the company would better serve its (and education's) objectives were the flow of information to go the other way. [Tags:
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[link: 1 Hits] The big surprise of my recent Africa trip was this: I could view videos from YouTube just fine even when logged on via a (slow and cranky) Vodacom wireless setup running 3G. What made this possible was the small Flash video files and the capacity of MX to stream them into the display. And what is also significant about the Flash videos is that they always work - none of those weird 'missing codec' errors - and they are multiplatform. This article captures all this and more, as it chronicles how Flash video developed and why. Via
Amy Gahran,
Steve Safran. [Tags:
Wireless] [
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