Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
October 3, 2008

The Continuum's Ends

Is the divide between 'reactionary' and 'progressive' in education widening? I would agree, it is. And it's not just about technology. Johnson says, "Technology use is the most obvious culprit for stretching the continuum, but there also seem to be other factors at work - improved communications, more voices, and an explosion of theories and practices and philosophies of education." Doug Johnson, Blue Skunk Blog, October 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

A History of the Social Web
We linked to this draft essay by Trebor Scholz in our CCK08 course and he turned around and took it down (maybe it was sensitivity to some criticism on the part of some our students). Thanks to the goodless of Google cache, the essay is still available here, and thanks to the Creative Commons license, I can post it on my site here. And here is a criticism of Scholz's essay. Trebor Scholz, Google Cache, October 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Google] [Comment]

How a Canadian Cracked the Great Firewall of China
From where I sit, I want to only say this: the news here isn't that the Chinese government is spying on Skype calls. Governments - of all stripes are spying on web content of all types, and all internet companies - from ISPs to search engines to social network services to Skype - are bending over backward to help them. No, the news is we're supposed to get all upset when the Chinese do it and ignore the cases where our own governments do it. Me, I think we should observe the lesson about the nature of the relation between governments and large corporations generally. It's very close, and the favours work both ways. More from the BBC. Matt Hartley, Globe and Mail, October 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Audio Chat and Conferencing, Networks, Canada, China] [Comment]

YouTube University: UCLA
As Bryan Alexander reports, "Another American university is publishing content through YouTube. UCLA now has a channel, stocked with course and campus videos. Course content, to pick one example, has its own channel." In the long run, we probably won't want Google (or its subsidiaries) hosting all of our online university content. But it is useful to see the model in action. Bryan Alexander, Liberal Education Today, October 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: United States, Books, Video, Google, YouTube] [Comment]

Help, I Have an Instructional Design Master's Degree and I Can't Create E-Learning
It's worth pausing for a moment to consider the several layers of irony in that headline. "This month's ASTD Big Question relates to a person who graduated from a theory-only program in Instructional Design and was not provided with the experience of actually creating instruction using any of the latest tools." Or, they could subscribe to OLDaily, where we demonstrate online learning one every day (twice a day for the duration of the CCK08 course). Karl Kapp, Kapp Notes, October 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, Experience] [Comment]

CaptureFox Movie
Jane Hart reports, "Capture Fox Movie is a Firefox add-on and a handy tool to create tutorials about a software, a web site or anything that can be displayed on your computer. It records your screen frame by frame. You can also record your voice." Jane Hart, Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day, October 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

If Facebook Worked Like Blackboard
This post shows so clearly the difference between the educational mindset and the open learning mindset (another from David Wiley, who is on a roll): "Imagine if every fifteen weeks Facebook:

• shut down all the groups you belonged to,
• deleted all your forum posts,
• removed all the photos, videos, and other files you had shared, and
• forgot who your friends were.

David Wiley, iterating toward openness, October 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, Books, Video, Blackboard Inc.] [Comment]

Places to Go: Connectivism & Connective Knowledge
I don't normally link to articles that throw up a login barrier, even if it's a free login as it is here, but I do want to point to this article in Innovate in which I describe out massive open online course, CCK08. Stephen Downes, Innovate, October 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Connectivism] [Comment]

Thomson Suing Zotero
Michael Feldstein takes an interpretation that seems charitable to Thomson in its suit against Zotero, at least in my view. Feldstein explains, "The dispute is not around Zotero's functionality in general but a specific feature that allows Zotero to import EndNote's proprietary file format.... I'm not talking about "stealing" an idea about what features would be beneficial in a software category. I'm talking about stealing the actual work product in the form of 3,500+ laboriously created import format files." It's not the labour that matters, it's the originality and the degree of copying. What Thomson's work original? Is it flat out copied by Zotero? Because if it's just a format being used by some other company, I would say Thomson is overstepping its bounds. More here. Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, October 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Ontologies, Thomson Corporation] [Comment]

This newsletter is sent only at the request of subscribers. If you would like to unsubscribe, Click here.

Know a friend who might enjoy this newsletter? Feel free to forward OLDaily to your colleagues. If you received this issue from a friend and would like a free subscription of your own, you can join our mailing list. Click here to subscribe.