Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
July 5, 2007

The Right to Click
I think that the managers of museums and libraries need to rethink who owns the cultutal artifacts in their possession. These items - the images they record having long since passed into the public domain - belong to the people. They belong to all of us, collectively. Which means there is something very wrong in their attempts to make the use of those artifacts impossible - in this case, by banning copying. Other museums ban photography (like the museum in Taiwan, that wouldn't allow me to photograph 6,000 year old artifacts - I really really think the expiry date has passed, and I doubt that the creators will be motivated into creating any new 6,000 year old artifacts). Come on now - curators of the world, give us our heritage back. Dan Lockton, Architectures of Control July 5, 2007 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Transition Network Open Space
How are open spaces conferences conducted. The conference is conducted without an agenda and a set of speakers - but it is not without structure. Rather, the structure develops as the conference progresses. People who want to convene topics put their suggestions up, people who are interested gather, discussions are held, notes are taken, and whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. If you intend to have an open spaces conference, show this video to participants - it's only three minutes and makes an opaque concept clear. More good stuff from Alex Munslow. Via elearningpost. Alex Munslow, YouTube July 5, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, Video] [Comment]

Gnomes Rain From Azeroth'S Skies
Something that hasn't come up a lot - yet: spam in virtual worlds. There is already a pretty well established history of advertising in video games (for But this is of a different order - the spam, in the form of corpse graffiti, was created by players, not game owners. This just raises the spectre of spam objects filling places like Second Life with advertising - and what's to stop them? Tony Walsh, Clickable Culture July 5, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Video, Marketing, Gaming, Spam] [Comment]

Wikipedia Accounts for 1 in 200 Page Views
Some good reviews for a remarkably balanced article on Wikipedia to appear recently in the New York Times, including this one that captures the astonisging statistic captured in the headline. Lynette, Flickr July 5, 2007 [Link] [Tags: RSS, Wikipedia] [Comment]

Podcasting: A Teaching with Technology White Paper
Julie K. Little links to this white paper from Carnegie Mellon University on podcasting. As the report says, this white paper tends to corroborate earlier results. Students do not listen to all the podcasts and they do not view the podcasts as a replacement for lectures, seeing them as helpful as reviews. In classes where the podcast replaces the lecture (and the time is devoted to practical study and labwork) they resent the extra time needed to listen. Still, the class is reported as being the most meaningful, and they demonstrate stronger project work skills. The record concludes with the stunningly obvious - podcasting has no inherent value; it depends on how it is used. Who could have known? Julie K. Little, EDUCAUSE Connect July 5, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Podcasting, Project Based Learning] [Comment]

XCRI - eXchanging Course Related Information
Web pages describing an XML format for the exchange of course information. I think that XCRI is a step in the right direction, however I would sound a note of caution here. The reason I suggested RSS is that millions of people already have RSS readers, and robust RSS parsers exist in pretty much every computer language. XCRI does not appear, from the documentation, intended to be used in this way. So courses advertised in XCRI will not be readable in RSS readers. Designers should be careful to resist the temptation to try to include all possible data in a syndication format. That said, even an approach such as XCRI is infinitely better than having people from the institution complete forms on some vendor or government website. Various Authors, JISC July 5, 2007 [Link] [Tags: XML, Marketing, RSS, Content Syndication, Information, Metadata] [Comment]

 

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