Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
February 15, 2008

Ridiculously Easy and Inexpensive Course Hosting Will Never Fly
Brian Lamb nails it. "This approach is fatally flawed in a number of respects and it will never catch on. For one thing, it is far too cheap, and can never justify escalating technology infrastructure budgets. Worse, instructors and students could adopt this technology with minimal assistance or oversight from instructional technology specialists." Meanwhile, I wanted to comment to David Wiley, but couldn't because his comment system won't let me log in, that he should get in touch with Tony Hirst, which is also doing interesting work with the RSS delivery of online course materials. Brian Lamb, abject learning February 15, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Open Content, RSS] [Comment]

Patients Say Yes, Yes, Yes to Wiihab
They tried to make me go to Wiihab
I said no, no, no. Karen Ventii, Science to Life February 15, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Wii] [Comment]

An Operating System You Can Play With in C#
Is the successor to the Windows operating system going to be a small, lightweight C#-based open source system? It could be, if Cosmos attracts any significant percentage of Windows developers. The first version was just released - you can download it, build a boot disk, and begin writing applications right away. The Microsoft developers are already interested; here's a Channel 8 article. Here's some coverage on ZDNet, which gives you a flavour: "We are also developing a TCP/IP stack. Imagine instead of deploying half a dozen virtualized OS's, deploying many dozens of dedicated OS's. One that only does DNS, a few that only do HTTP, etc. One instance, one function." More coverage from Scott Hanselman. Alfred Thompson, Computer Science Teacher February 15, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Operating Systems, Open Source, Microsoft] [Comment]

Global U.
Most nations view their education systems as vital tools to forward the national agenda. Thus, mixing education with corporate learning is fraught with risk, as "the free-trade culture of the WTO is one in which public services are automatically seen as unfair government monopolies and should be turned over to private for-profit providers whenever possible." The perils - and imbalance - of such a perspective will become apparent when an educational organization the equivalent of al Jazeera tries to set up a campus in New York or Washington. But this, I suspect, will be a trend. Andrew Ross, Inside Higher Ed February 15, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning] [Comment]

Website Adds New Navigation and New Content
The E-Framework website has been redesigned. There's an RSS feed (that I've signed up for). There is also a nice getting started page, with different information for different types of people. I also like the participation features, such as the wiki, communities and process overview. The E-Framework is developing a set of service-oriented learning and support applications for educational institutions. People writing titles should note that generic references - like 'Website' - are meaningless; to be usable in RSS, titles should refer to specific entities, like 'E-Framework Website'). Announcemment, E-Framework February 15, 2008 [Link] [Tags: RSS, E-Framework] [Comment]

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