Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
April 18, 2008

If Books Liberated Us From Kings, Can Sims Liberate Us From CEOs?
Part of the reason I rail against the commercialization of learning is that the commercial sector is itself a product of the industrial age. Perpetuating hierarchal structures to deliver learning - whether free or otherwise - is to perpetuate the corporate order - and it is from just that order I hope information technology will free us. Clark Aldrich, Weblog, April 18, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

How to Build the Mesh - #3: Shared Structured Content Servers
Marc Canter continues his series on 'how to build the mesh'. "It's about shared Events, Reviews, local ads and info, maps, digital assets, even people databases or aggregated groups. Having APIs that can specify 'Walnut Creek, April 20th, 2008 at 4:20 PM' kind of accuracy and granularity. That means that the service needs Open APIs so developers (like us) can access it and rely upon it as infrastructure. Structured Content as infrastructure." Marc Canter, Marc's Voice, April 18, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Web 2.0 Success Stories Driving WOA and Informing SOA
Article with a pretty good diagram on the changing synamics of online applications and services.



Via Mohamed Amine Chatti. Don Hinchcliffe, ZDNet, April 18, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Web 2.0] [Comment]

Getting Off the Sauce...
Charlene Croft is done weblogging. She writes, "While I do still fundamentally believe that the Internet and Web 2.0 platforms still are useful in knocking down some of the walls which block our passage into the age of the New Enlightenment... some of the walls that are getting sledgehammered are in fact, load-bearing walls.... I am disembedding myself from Web 2.0, which, for me, inflated my ego to the point where I thought that my identity predominantly and fundamentally was the character I created and managed through my virtual personas." Charlene Croft, Meta-Culture, April 18, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Web 2.0, Web Logs] [Comment]

RSS Microblogging Vs Twitter Et Al
David Davies asks, about Twitter, "Why not just use RSS in the first place? You could create a lightweight RSS client that outputs your status, one-liner pearls of wisdom, or anything else you wish to tell your 'friends' about." And he concludes, correctly, "The benefit of a single service access point I guess is that it makes it easier to find new sources or feeds..." That's what took RSS so long to catch on; you could never find the feeds. I remember when RSS first started up, the aggregators (like 'News is Free') wouldn't publish the RSS feed addresses, so there was no way to find feeds. Any distributed system faces this issue. David Davies, Weblog, April 18, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Twitter, Books, RSS] [Comment]

Amazing Deep Learning On a Sick Day! This Floors Me!
Vicki Davis picks up on a use of e-learning: to give students work on sick days. "This student was SICK and yet was so engrossed and curious about this project that her SICK day became a day of very deep learning and change for her." OK. But by coincidence, just a few hours earlier, I was looking at another student using e-learning on a sick day. Or sick on elearning day - it's not clear. Here she is. "fuh, elearning day. syiok cos there's NO school. but th thing is, there's too many assignments... i tried finding eng but couldnt, so i did geog first." Vicki A. Davis, Cool Cat teacher Blog, April 18, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Online Learning, Project Based Learning] [Comment]

Hey, You! Pay Attention!
This is what happens when you have professors totally unequipped to deal with internet access in the classroom: blocked wireless access. Not that it stops students from playing chess, sorting pictures or reading saved web pages while the prof drones on. What would I do? Well, first thing, I'd set up a backchannel, displayed on a screen in the front of the room, to focus students on what was going on. I'd set up a second screen and have someone Google-jockey. And my main screen would be showing more than just power point slides: it would be displaying student work, which we'd be discussing. The lecture? Captured, edited and then podcast, for listening prior to class. Andy Guess, inside Higher Ed, April 18, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Wireless, Podcasting, Google] [Comment]

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