Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
November 2, 2007

Remembering CAREO
D'arcy Norman reports that CAREO - the Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects - is being mothballed. "CAREO was important, back in 2001-2004, as a prototype. As a sandbox for trying out some of these concepts. As a place to easily host metadata and content and try the repository model. From that perspective, I think it was a huge success. Without CAREO, I would likely still be saying that we need centralized institutional repositories to tightly manage resources. But, because of CAREO, I now know that we don't need repositories at the institutional level. Personal repositories are much more powerful, effective, and manageable." Yes, that's what I would take away from the experience as well. D'Arcy Norman, Weblog November 2, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Experience, Learning Object Repositories, Metadata] [Comment]

Statistics Canada: 26 Percent of Canadians Use Internet for Learning
If you're wondering, that works out to about 8 million Canadians, an impressive number by anyone's tally. And I would say that this figure is under-reported, missing informal learning in its definition of "education, training or school work." Still, I would make the point so strongly as th obvious advertorial content proclaiming that 80% Of Young Adults Say They Would Choose to Go Back to School Online related by the Online Universities weblog. Richard Nantel, Weblog November 2, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Adult Learning, Canada, Web Logs] [Comment]

Best Education Blog
The 2007 Weblog awards nominees have been announced. So far as I can judge, none of the finalists in the education category are actually about education; they are political blogs, mostly focused on U.S. K-12 educational policy, or they are blogs by educators, or by students. You have to wonder about the nomination process. Needless to say, neither this blog, nor any of the educationl blogs regularly reported here, made the cut. Various Authors, Website November 2, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, Ontologies, Web Logs] [Comment]

Oregon Attorney General Says No to RIAA
The University of Oregon is telling the RIAA that it will not send information on students, and has filed a motion to quash the RIAA demand. There is a Slashdot discussion on the issue. Unattributed, Recording Industry vs The People November 2, 2007 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

When Educational Resources Are Open
Good analysis of what happens when educational resources are open (and, for that matter, why we want them to be open): "When educational resources become open into the natural intertwingularity of the Internet, their hierarchical tree forms, boxing into categories, and ordered sequences quickly break down." Creating open resourcs does not only change the structure of learning, or the structure of society, but it changes the structure of those resources themselves, and hence, of our understanding of what it means to know and to learn. "The only other place I know of where this kind of open connectivity happens is in your brain and mine. Ideas are patterns we connect from all sorts of parts and pieces floating around in memory and observation. The jump seems easy to make to realize that cognitive connectivity-thinking-is alike in many ways to pattern forming in the open Internet." Judy Breck, Educational Technology Magazine November 2, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Ontologies] [Comment]

OpenSocial, Killer Apps and Regular People
SixApart (LiveJournal, Movable Type, Vox) announces support for OpenSocial, writing "Honestly, we don't care much about the political battles between big tech companies: We're doing this because this is what it takes for new features, applications, and experiences to happen in the right way for the vast range of communities that we serve." MySpace has joined. Wired also weighs in quoting Jonathon Abrams: "Previous efforts like FOAF [friend of a friend] and OpenID were pretty complicated. For something to be useful from the user's perspective it has to be simple and easy." Meanwhile, view screenshots and screencasts from Marc Andreessen. There's a lot of figuring out to do. And I should also add that as I write there is a huge debate taking place in the open social graph community about whether the Google API is either open or social. There have already been ominous statements from Plaxo about "whitelisting" and such. Stay tuned for more on this item. Anil Dash, SixApart November 2, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Experience] [Comment]

Math Education For The Benefit of MasterCard
Discussion of a Roger Schank piece about business perceptions of American education. You certainly have to wonder what their thinking is. Schank writes, "Math is core to MasterCard's business? Are they doing a lot of trigonometry over there at MasterCard? Congruent triangles on the MasterCard logo? How exactly is math core to MasterCard's business? Ah. They mean they like people who can add. I am sure they do." Tim Stahmer, Assorted Stuff November 2, 2007 [Link] [Tags: United States] [Comment]

 

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