Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
June 12, 2007

Trends and Impacts of E-Learning 2.0
I am in Taiwan and so - of course - my downes.ca email has crashed and burned. I have no email coming in or out, and the email newsletter has been disabled (RSS is still ok though). And it's really hard to work with tech support people with a 12-hour time difference.

But I'm having a great time. And I've posted slides from my workshop and presentation on Slideshare. I have video from the presentation too, I'll see if I can't post that (I would do more video but I can't get around the DVD produced by video cameras - of all the useless formats to give me to use! I can't find any easy way to turn it into something my computer understands (ie., can do something with besides just play).

Did I mention I'm really jet-lagged? Anyhow, I fly home Friday and if you're one of the people waiting for email from me, don't worry, I haven't forsaken you. Stephen Downes, Slideshare June 12, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Newsletters, Video, Open Content, RSS, E-Learning 2.0] [Comment]

Trends and Impacts of E-Learning 2.0
I am in Taiwan and so - of course - my downes.ca email has crashed and burned. I have no email coming in or out, and the email newsletter has been disabled (RSS is still ok though). And it's really hard to work with tech support people with a 12-hour time difference. Especially when I'm really jet-lagged.

But I'm having a great time. And I've posted slides from my workshop and presentation on Slideshare. I have video from the presentation too, I'll see if I can't post that (I would do more video but I can't get around the DVD produced by video cameras - of all the useless formats to give me to use! I can't find any easy way to turn it into something my computer understands (ie., can do something with besides just play).

Did I mention I'm really jet-lagged? Stephen Downes, Slideshare June 12, 2007 [Link] [Tags: E-Learning 2.0, RSS, Open Content, Video, Newsletters] [Comment]

It'S Time to Consider Open Source in Education
I've seen this in a few places and I'll copy the post from Steve Lee : Weblog: A 2 part article in Tech News World: Part1 is general and Part2 covers education. Steve Lee, Weblog June 12, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Web Logs] [Comment]

Apple Announces Windows Browser
Safari for Windows? It doesn't even work properly on a Mac! Via John Connell. Unattributed, BBC June 12, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Microsoft] [Comment]

Technologies of Collaboration
Overview slide show presented to ASTD listing (and linking to) a variety of cpllaborative technologies. Useful, but pale blue on mini-PDF slides is not the best format for readability (I had to enlarge to 250 percent to read the links). The remarks in the blog post are interesting: "About half of the training professionals had used Google Earth, but almost none had tried Second Life. In fact, I had the impression that much of what I showed was completely new to most of the attendees." Gary Woodill, Weblog June 12, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Web Logs, Linking and Deep Linking, Google] [Comment]

What Are the Big Problems in Ed-Tech?
I echo Tim Lauer's reaction to Tom Hoffman's statement: "We've got a situation akin to letting the clerks in the purchasing department decide whether or not the books ordered by teachers and librarians are acceptable." This also strikes me as worth citing: "Utter chaos around privacy, safety and liability. The 'practical' advice being promoted seems out of sync with empirical evidence... the problems are driven by anxious parents, who aren't exactly rational actors." Hoffman is right. Put the other problems to the side - there are issues of basic rationality here. Tom Hoffman, Tuttle SVC June 12, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Privacy Issues] [Comment]

Good LORd
James Farmer cites D'Arcy Norman: "A bunch of folks (myself included) took up the task of building software to let people easily publish, describe, share, find (and hopefully use) digital assets or learning objects (assets with a bunch of metadata tacked on the side). I think it's fair to say that the experiments failed pretty dramatically." Well yes. Farmer suggests people don't add content to these institutional repositories because it does nothing for them (and we're all pretty selfish, he says). And "you may, actually, shudder, need to employ a genuine human bean of sorts." Yet people have creted millions of blog posts, podcasts and videos without being paid. So what's up? People like to create content, and thy like to help each other - they aren't inherently selfish; there's lots of evidence to show they want to share, even if there's no benefit to themselves. What they don't feel the need to do, though, is to provide institutional-type content to institutional-type repositories. And it's fair to ask - why would they? James Farmer, incorporated subversion June 12, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Books, Video, Podcasting, Learning Object Repositories, Learning Objects, Web Logs, Metadata] [Comment]

 

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