November 24, 2006
OLDaily
[link: 1 Hits] Review of MQtv, the
new site from Macquarie. "It contains videoed interviews with academics and researchers ranging across a variety of interesting topics. There's also a podcast site where you can access interviews on subjects such as tips on how to write a novel." The reviewer writes, "I think the name is not a very good one. I realise that the rationale is to portray this section as some kind of news channel, but 'tv' smells old-school to me." Via
ZDNet,
Thomson Peterson. [Tags:
Schools,
Research,
Academics and Academia,
Thomson Corporation,
Podcasting] [
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[link: Hits] Good choice of reading material: "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Good discussion, too. Some thoughts. First, 'flow' is what Papert and others today call "hard fun". Also, a lot depends on the width of the 'flow' channel. Third, the edges of the flow channel are fuzzy and variable depending on time of day, hunger, sleepiness, and more. And finally, the 'flow' channel is different for each individual student in a class, which makes designing for that channel for a class tricky, if not impossible, which is why you want to personalize experience. [Tags:
Experience,
Personalization] [
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[link: 2 Hits] I had a nice time reading this 11-chapter online book this morning instead of doing my work like I'm supposed to. As the site says, "E-Learning Concepts and Techniques is a collaborative e-book project by Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania's Department of Instructional Technology students and guest authors." The result is a quite acceptable introductory level text that not only covers the basics of traditional instructional design but also manages to incorporate mor contemporary approaches, from Siemens on learning design to the use of games in e-learning delivery. If you need an introductory text to get you up to speed in the topics discussed in OLDaily, this definitely will get you started on the right track.
(Oh - and a note for people who say there is no distinction between groups and networks: this was a
network production, because each person wrote his or her own part autonomously; a
group version of the same book would have all the authors collaboratively (and not independently) author the book as a whole).
Also on the subject of free online books, I also took a quick look at
these software programming books published by Microsoft. As Rich Hoeg says, the ebook sites are very high quality (and worked fine in Firefox). [Tags:
Books and eBooks,
Online Learning,
Microsoft,
Project Based Learning,
Networks,
Quality,
Games and Gaming] [
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[link: Hits] Kind of the way I think about this stuff: why can't the whole thing be a game? "While he goes about his day's surfing, blogging, chatting, tagging, gaming, posting, uploading, downloading, Justin wants to experience the same visible sense of goal-oriented progress he gets in World of Warcraft when he looks at his screens and sees exactly what level his activities have earned him." Links to
Howard Rheingold's summary and video of Justin Hall's
presentation (.mov video) on the concept. [Tags:
Web Logs,
Schools,
Experience,
Chat and Chat Rooms,
Games and Gaming] [
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[link: 1 Hits] A very one-sided article that signifies its bias in the first sentence. The article, quoting industry sources, attacks the professors' posting of chapters of books online under fair use provisions. "It [the doctrine of fair use] can be interpreted differently by different courts under the same circumstances." Well, yes. But the main thing is: "'"We can't compete with free,' says Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs with the Washington-based publishers group, whose members include McGraw-Hill Cos. and Pearson Plc." So what the publishers are doing is signing agreements with universities - this story cites a precedent-setting agreement with Cornell - to prevent professors from posting chapters online. Of course, the losers in this deft side-stepping of the right of fair use are the students.
Related:
CBS Recognizes That You Must (And You Can) Compete With Free (TechDirt): "CBS execs seem to finally be coming to terms with the lack of scarcity in digital economics and the fact that you compete with "free" because you have to." Hm? [Tags:
Books and eBooks] [
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[link: Hits] Second Life does the wrong thing, and declares Copybot to be a violation of its terms of service (now
there's some creative reading). This Wired article praises the company's attempts to create a user-created copyright realm. Without 'enforcement' by Second Life, however, such attempts are polite fictions. The people in Second Life will learn - copyrights are government interventions in the marketplace intended to favour the publishers. Which makes the question of 'balanced' copyright legislation all the more complex, because it requires a look at
other government interventions (or in this era of unrestrained commercialism,
non-interventions) which may affect that balance. [Tags:
Books and eBooks,
Copyright and Patent Issues] [
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[link: 1 Hits] Useful. The developers write, "OCW MetaMod for Moodle provides instructors and designers with the ability to mark individual resources or activities within a Moodle course as 'private' (only visible for registered students) or "shared" (allowing anonymous guest viewing). Additionally, the OCW MetaMod for Moodle provides for tagging of resources and activities as either Copyrighted (C) or Creative Commons license/Copyright cleared (CC)." [Tags: ] [
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[link: Hits] Mike Seyfang (and no doubt more than a few others) disagrees with my use of the 'non-commercial' caluse in my Creative Commons license because (as I've said) "you have to let go of trying to control future use of your digital (learning object) content... so that it can be re-mixed and passed forward". The reason I use the non-commercial license is that I believe that allowing commercial use will
reduce and
restrict future use. In other words, I believe that the non-commercial license is the most open. Why? Because when commercial use is allowed, then companies can offer a wide range of resources in closed markets (like the school system), but
only for a price - the free version of the resource will be
excluded from the market by non-compete cslauses and other gerrymandering of the market. [Tags:
Online Learning,
Learning Objects,
Schools] [
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I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumberance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle.
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