Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
April 24, 2008

Boolify
This is a really neat application that helps you visualize boolean searches. And I think that this sort of approach to creating queries could be extended a lot - my first thought was that it could function as a generic sentence constructor, which in turn would be really usefuil for language learning and logic. There are also curriculum resources. Via Miguel Guhlin. Various, Google, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Visualization, Online Learning] [Comment]

Jorum to Move to Open Access
This was covered by several sources - Jorum, a national learning object repository in Britain, is moving to an open access model (can Australia's Le@rning Federation be far behind? Even Britannica is doing it, sort of). Here's the announcement at JISC. "This will make it easier for lecturers and teaching staff to share and re-use each other's teaching resources. JorumOpen - as it will be called - will also provide a showcase for UK universities and colleges on the international stage." Andy Powell, eFoundations, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Great Britain, Online Learning, Learning Object Repositories, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Learning Objects, Open Access, Australia] [Comment]

New Webportal: Science Without Borders Launched
The headline pretty much says it all: "Science without Borders (SWB) initiates, facilitates and supports cooperation between higher education teachers and students, scientists, researchers and other stakeholders of the academic sphere between Africa and Europe." Inge de Waard, Ignatia Webs, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Portals, Africa, Research, Academia, European Union] [Comment]

Learning 2.0 Formal Methodologies?
I thought that this was an interesting attempt, even if I would not subscribe to it wholeheartedly. The author takes the formal dimensions of traditional learning - objectives, time, measurement, improvement and content or knowledge - and maps them to Learning 2.0, defined loosely as a combination of social networks, collaboration, and the rest. I think that the main problem is that there isn't going to be a simply mapping like that. It's like when people ask, "how do i use blogs to teach English?" Blogs aren't a teaching tool, and you shouldn't just expect to use Web 2.0 tools to do Learning 1.0 tasks. Viplav Baxi, Viplav Baxi's Meanderings, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Networks] [Comment]

OLPC Developers Are Not Open Source Fundamentalists
Things are gettiung ugly over on the OLPC blog. One person notes, "One Laptop Per Child needs high quality software on its machines, but the amount of abuse ladled out over OLPC's developer community is incredible. First they are called 'terrorists', and then it was 'fundamentalists'." And in another post, we read that "Nicholas Negroponte now seems to think that all of Sugar's problems can be solved by outsourcing a Sugar-on-Windows port to developers in Uruguay, who will be funded by Microsoft." Guest Writer, One Laptop Per Child News, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Quality, Portable Computers, Microsoft, Web Logs] [Comment]

Is Blackboard's Lawyer Calling D2L's Customers?
This is just weird. Blackboard's lawyer is calling Desire2Learn customers to get them to switch? Tell me, how much confidence in a company would that inspire in you?? meanwhile, the court has denied D2L's motion to stay based on the Patent Office's non-final rejection of the patents. Michael Feldstein, E-Literate, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Desire2Learn, Blackboard Inc.] [Comment]

Google Gives Up On Supporting OAI-PMH for Sitemaps
Is this a turning point for OAI? Sure, the format can survive without Google using it to create sitemaps. But still, the low response to Google's program is troubling. OAI never did achieve the popularity of RSS, especially outside academic circles, and at some point, people may be wondering about the need for the request syntax (as opposed to a simple harvest). Paul Walk, Weblog, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Google, Content Syndication, RSS, Academia] [Comment]

LOM Working Group Meeting
Recording of the most recent IEEE Learning Technologies Subcommittee LOM (Learning Object Metadata) meeting. At 4 hours, it's a scorcher. But I applaud the committee for making the effort. Various Authors, FlashMeeting, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Metadata] [Comment]

Social Conference Tools - Expect Poor Results
Tony Karrer summarizes a list of recommendations from Dave Warlick where he suggests that conference organizers should use social networking tools. That's not such great advice, says Karrer. "There's a fundamental flaw in all of these ideas that lead to poor results. The flaw is that it appears that people are quite willing to attend conferences without any up-front effort, back-end effort and probably the minimum effort during the conference." Well, true, but your results will vary depending on your audience - the educamp crowd, for example, is more active than the corporate crowd. But, really, it's just like school or college, isn't it? The real advantage is obtained by the people who aren't there, who couldn't afford the expense. I tend to focus my efforts on people who are not attending the conference. Tony Karrer, eLearning Technology, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Online Learning, Networks] [Comment]

Watch Videos of the BbWorld Commerce '08 Keynote Addresses
Videos from the rfecent Blackboard conference: "Mark Milliron of Catalyze Learning, who discussed the newest generation of students and how they prefer to learn... Adrian Sannier from Arizona State University, who discussed the evolution of strategic campus technology alliances." Videos are WMV, but the quality is very good and the streaming works fine. Access them directly from this page. The speakers are both pretty dynamic (I was not familiar with them) but the content is about what you would expect, drawing from the usual sources (Oblinger, Moore's Law, Kurzweil...). Various Authors, Blackboard, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Video, Quality, Blackboard Inc.] [Comment]

Arts 2.0: Examples of Arts Organizations Social Media Strategies
This is a list of quite a few examples. Following a short intro in which she describes a process in which "everyone is a curator" Kanter looks at arts organizations' use of blogs, Flickr, Facebook, twitter and YouTube. Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog, April 24, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Twitter, Video, YouTube, Flickr, Web Logs] [Comment]

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