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OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
June 5, 2008

Read at Work - Brilliant!
So if the classics are presented in PowerPoint format, do they become OK to read at work? And - one wonders - what would be the objection to reading the classics - as books - at work? Alec Couros, Open Thinking and Digital Pedagogy, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

G-G, Negative Content, and Blogging Rarely Is Ok
I must say, I really don't like Garfield, the comic strip, at all. It's just not funny. Remove Garfield, the cat, from Garfield, the comic strip, though, and you get this really brilliant creation, "an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?" Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Libpunk
Based on edupunk, "Kathryn Greenhill... has coined the term "libpunk" to refer to technologies which libraries have taken upon themselves to create and implement, using non-proprietary or open-source software and without the traditional institutional alliances. Meanwhile, Leigh Blackall writes a nice reflective post on edupunk. Tony Hirst riffs on his video. Kate Pitcher, The Delicious Burden, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Edupunk] [Comment]

Q-Tools: An Approach for Discovery and Knowledge Work
This is an interesting way of abstracting the way systems - sch as, say, RSS readers - manage information. Examples of Q-tools include the Prism (one input, multiple outputs), the razor (binary sorting), the generator (creates new information), the peeler, and more. Dave Gray, Weblog, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: RSS] [Comment]

LETSI Announces a Call for Participation
LETSI - the organization that took over SCORM from ADL - has issued a call for participation "concerning the technical and pedagogical requirements for future learning systems interoperability." Press Release, JISC, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, SCORM, Interoperability, Metadata] [Comment]

Interview with Erik Duval
Erik Duval is president of the ARIADNE Foundation and chair of the IEEE working group on Learning Object Metadata. This interview is in two parts. Part one is "about the snowflake effect and its relevance to the agricultural and rural communities." Part two continues that discussion. Unattributed, EA-TEL, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Virtual Worlds Wike
From the presentation this morning. Various Authors, Website, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Loving the Collision, Not Just Hugs/Content
In general, requests for the inherent properties are misplaced ('inherent properties' sometimes also thought of as the intrinsic properties, essential properties, or defining properties). Very few properties are inherent, and none of these are complex. Things related to meaning (see below), use, role, learning, behaviour, culture, and the like, are complex properties, and are observable only as a consequence of the interaction of a thing with its environment. There are no inherent properties of a teacher - what matters is only that people can learn from such a person. Christian Long, think:lab, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Interaction] [Comment]

Start Pages As Environments for Self-Organized Learners
Webtops such as Netvibes and Pageflakes are as close as we get in commercial tools to a personal learning environment. This presentation explores that idea, comparing fourteen 'start pages' from the perspecting of their use as learning environments. Malinka Ivanova, eLearning 2.0 Technologies and Concepts, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

D'arcy's Camus Moment
As Martin Weller notes, Camus writes, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide." Weller adds, "He argues that a search for meaning and deity is absurd, and once we realise this, suicide is a logical conclusion: 'The subject of this essay is precisely this relationship between the absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd.'" What I have discovered is that meaning is not intrinsic to things - and hence, the meaning of life is not to be found in the life by itself (no more than the 'meaning' of a lolcat is found in the lolcat by itself) but rather in the social, political, and cultural surround that life finds itself in. That is not to say that meaning is extrinsic to things (that is, defined solely in terms of these external referents) - it is in the combination of the two, the interaction and connection between the two. Because meaning is essentially complex, which is why it has resisted definition to this point. Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Interaction] [Comment]

iTunes U
This week marks a big increase in the scope of iTunesU. Its expansion to European sources is covered here, with numerous links. It has also expanded in to Australia and New Zealand. iTunes has also increased its movie audience. Diug Dickinson, , June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: RSS, European Union, Australia] [Comment]

Defining Informal Learning
As definitions go, this is a decent taxonomy describing formal, non-formal, informal and accidental learning. Wolfgang Greller, Wolfie's e-Blog, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Do You Speak Canadian?
Interesting post partially because of the analysis of what would constitute an appropriate language test and partially because it exposes what amounts to a complete misrepresentation on the part of the Toronto Star wherein reporter has simply made up information about a putative language test purportedly being proposed by the government. Sad. Arnold Zwicky, Language Log, June 5, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Canada] [Comment]

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