Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
August 8, 2007

Has Blackboard Filed Another Patent Suit?
We reported in these pages last July when Blackboard announced its plagiarism detection service. I wrote, "Blackboard does not even blush when it claims that 'SafeAssign is a unique plagiarism prevention service because student and/or faculty papers are included,'" mentioning the oft-cited TurnItIn. Well now the other shoe has dropped. More from Alfred Essa and immagic. Michael Feldstein, e-Literate August 8, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Cheating, Blackboard Inc.] [Comment]

Which World for 3D Webbing?
I talked with someone from Sun about their own (Java based) 3D world servers. Meanwhile, this article also mentions Open Croquet and Multiverse. We are still a long way away from this being a useful technology but there's a lot of work being done in a lot of places. As Scott Wilson says, the thing abourt metaverses is, there is a lot of them. Tony Hirst, OUseful Info August 8, 2007 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

An Ontology and a Software Framework for Competency Modeling and Management
While we have been talking about web 2.0 and personal learning environments, the educational technology standards community has been forging ahead in its own direction, now working on the development of specifications to define competences. "Acquiring new competencies is the central goal of any education or knowledge management process," writes Gilbert Paquette as he presents "an ontology for designing competency-based learning and knowledge management applications." My own feeling is that learning is not reducible to sets of competences, that the whole is, indeed, greater than the sum of the parts. PDF. More articles from the current issue of the Journal of Educational Technology and Society. Gilbert Paquette, Journal of Educational Technology and Society August 8, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Semantic Web, Knowledge Management, Ontologies, Online Learning] [Comment]

Clive's Columns
Looking at the lists of technology collected by Jane Hart, Clive Shepherd writes that he is "swimming against the tide with [his] love of huge, complex, expensive desktop tools." Still, he reasons, they should be used. Thus the production of Clive's Columns, a Creative Commons licensed text containing 33 of his columns on e-larning and blended learning. PDF, naturally. Clive Shepherd, Weblog August 8, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Blended Learning] [Comment]

 

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