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OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
February 29, 2008

A Thing A Day

The image above is in the back room of Cose Di Casa on Queen Street East, in Toronto. It is not for sale and it is not on display - it's something I was able to see while talking with Richard Cope, the owner of the shop. Experiences like this are the reason I have taken up photography. And this is something more people are experiencing as a part of their lives. For example, a website entitled a-thing-a-day was profiled in today's Globe and Mail. The participants create one thing and post it online. The result is not only a sense of accomplishment, but also community with other people who are doing the same. My own interest in the rare and unusual - and in particular the Roman - is what led me into Cose Di Casa. And it's also that same interest that leads me to do my own thing-a-day, a photo a day, something I am sharing with a group of people. If you look at the internet, you see this happening everywhere. Future generations will mark this time as the genesis of a remarkable renaissance. Various Authors, Website February 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Flickr] [Comment]

New Directory of Open Courseware
As Peter Suber writes, "The folks at iBerry are compiling an annotated Open Courseware Finder." Something Marion Manton can collaborate with. Peter Suber, Open Access News February 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Iminta: Another Way to Lifestream What You'Re Into
This is one of the more comprehensive personal aggregators I've seen. But these aggregators are a trend now, and probably a stepping stone to whatever comes next. Mark Hopkins, Mashable February 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Collectivism and Connectivism
Terry Anderson and Jon Dron's take on the groups and networks distinction now explicitly includes four elements: individual learners, groups, networks and collectives. I consider groups and collectives to be two flavours of the same thing: groups are a tightly bound aggregation of individuals, while collectives are less tightly bound ("non personal" writes Anderson). That said, it makes sense to clearly delineate individual learning - far too many people confuse networks with individualism, which it is not. p.s. Terry Anderson writes to clarify that the topic of the five-journal collaboration mentioned Wednesday is 'right to education.' Terry Anderson, Virtual Canuck February 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Networks] [Comment]

5 Open Source E-Learning Scripts
Most readers will have heard of Moodle and maybe DrupalEd, but the last three - Claroline, Dokeos and Docebo - were new to me. Claroline is a course builder and manages collaborative activities, Dokeos is a learning management system, and Docebo is a learning content management system (LCMS). Unattributed, Flash Enabled Blog February 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Content Management Systems, Drupal, Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS)] [Comment]

The Community Network Solution
I didn't write this article at all, much less about yesterday' meeting. Indeed, I only read it today, the day after the meeting. But I might have. My diagram parallels this article - the old 'organizatioon' model at the top, the connection of power-brokers, vision statements, press releases, and a small (and usually ineffective) output. Contrasted to community networking, below, an open model made up of diverse types of organizations, individuals, institution, whatever, each pursuing their own good in their own way, networked by virtue of their self-declared focus on topics of interest. I will have more to say about this - though, that said, this article says most of what I might want to say. "Until we build better networks in our communities, lack of trust will corrode the democratic process. Conventional leaders can't move us out of this situation." Karen Stephenson, strategy+business February 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Networks, Flickr] [Comment]

Bridging the Digital Divide: Bridging the Digital Divide: Bridging the Digital Divide: Bridging the Digital Divide
In retrospect, the conclusions probably seems obvious. But this report is worth reading nonetheless, if only to ground our intuitions. "Text heavy content and establishing social networking pages on MySpace and Facebook may not be relevant to young people from marginalised communities. Service providers who are serious about engaging young people must use sites and communication tools that are relevant to this demographic." PDF. Via EdNA's Networker. Michelle Blanchard, Atari Metcalf and Jane Burns, Inspire February 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Books, Networks, EdNA] [Comment]

Copyright Toolbox
Prepared by the Netherlands' SURF Foundation, this package includes sample licenses "enabling the author to retain copyright but giving the publisher the rights to publish his/her work." Related to this is the ERC Scientific Council issued Guidelines for Open Access (PDF). Both items via Gerard van Westrienen in an email to JISC. Various Authors, SURF Foundation February 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Books, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Copyrights, Patents] [Comment]

Managing Learning Objects in Large Scale Courseware Authoring Studio
This presentation doesn't get into fine-grained detail, but readers will appreciate the workflow diagrams depicting learning objecct design and use in a distributed repository. PowerPoint presentation. Several more presentations are available from the EDEN Workshop on Cross-Media and Personalized Learning Applications on top of Digital Libraries. Ivo Marinchev and Ivo Hristov, EDEN February 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Learning Object Repositories] [Comment]

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