Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
February 19, 2008

Distributed Discussions On Repositories
Hm. How about a post on repositories that begins, "Our current approach, fundamentally, is totally, completely, utterly wrong, isn't it?" Thus Brian Kelly links to Panlibus which channels Andy Powell: "...our focus on the 'institution' as the home of repository services is not aligned with the social networks used by scholars, meaning that we will find it very difficult to build tools that are compelling to those people we want to use them." Quite right, I would say. And we also have Paul Walk, who agrees, with caveats: "a resource-oriented-architecture (eg., a Web 2.0-style REST architecture) and the service-oriented-approaches being encouraged by the e-Framework could complement each other if intelligently and judiciously applied." Brian Kelly adds more voices to this discussion, well worth a look to catch a sight of the shifting waters. Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus February 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Networks, Web 2.0, Learning Object Repositories] [Comment]

Compound Microformats
Pretty nifty demonstration of how to mix and match microformats (though the popup XML code cause Firefox on Linux to taste its breakfast). And, of course, the other half of the problem is in allowing people to easily generate the complex microformats that would accompany a statement like "I am now at Semantic Camp London (February 16 - 17) Imperial College London UK ( 51.498, -0.179 )." Richard Rutter, Website February 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Great Britain, Microformats, XML, Metadata] [Comment]

International Edubloggers Directory
This is a neat idea: create what is essentially a blog and then invite individual bloggers to submit profiles of themselves, including photos. Output is by RSS feed, of course, and there's a handy list of the members. I am waiting for the Creative commons licenses to be applied before signing up - that said, I look forward to being able to integrate information from this list into my own website services (which the CC will allow). More commentray from Doug Johnson. Patricia Donaghy, Website February 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: RSS, Web Logs] [Comment]

Institutional Repositories and E-Journal Archiving: What Are We Learning?
"The survey suggests that as institutions progress from the planning to the operational stages, they become more positive about the perceived benefits of IRs (institutional repositories)." Archivists are also concerned about online journals. "if a publisher fails to maintain its archive... there are no practical means in place for libraries to exercise their permanent usage rights and the scholarly record represented by that journal would likely be lost." The current issue of the Journal of Electronic Publishing has ten other articles, including a summary of EDUCAUSE Librarian. Kathlin Smith, Journal of Electronic Publishing February 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Academic Publications, Academic Journals, Books, Learning Object Repositories] [Comment]

Google Nixes FeedBurner'S All Time Stats
I'd feel sorry for the Feedburner people, but having dealt with link misdirections for so long (RSS points to Feedburner, not the actual post, which means I always have to stop and open the actual page and cut and paste the real URL) I'm way past sympathy. So here's what you get for letting Google manage your RSS feeds: your stats now stop at 30 days. Kristen Nicole, Mashable February 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Google, RSS] [Comment]

Newspond
This is an interesting take on the news aggregator. But I wouldn't give up on Digg just yet - it looks like the service is especially adept at picking up 'press release' style news stories, but not much more. Still, there's some good thinking here. Via Mashable. Various Authors, Website February 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Microsoft Aims to Win Student Developers' Hearts with Free Dev Tools
Here's why I dislike 'educational licenses' so much. It seems like a good idea: Microsoft is providing students with something like $3500 worth of Microsoft software development applications. But "Microsoft plans to verify individuals' student status by using "various reputable student databases to confirm student identities." In addition to that fishy sort of identity-collecting sevice, the upshot is this: people who can afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars worth of tuition fees get the free software, while people who cannot afford the tuition get nothing. Via GMSV, which also notices the irony of offering free software to wealthy Stanford University. Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet February 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Student Record Systems, Microsoft, Tuition and Student Fees] [Comment]

Have We Reclaimed Instructional Design?
This post looks at David Merrill's 1996 paper Reclaiming Instructional Design and poses the question. "Twelve years later, where do we as a field stand on instructional design? Not really anywhere different" even though "the field's voice has definitely shifted from a more structured, behaviorist perspective to a more open, constructivist perspective." Maybe. But I think the idea of 'instructional design' as a whole is facing challenges from a more ecological perspective, one characterized by e-learning 2.0 and connectivism and the rest. John H. Curry, EffectiveDesign.org February 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Online Learning, E-Learning 2.0, Constructivism] [Comment]

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