Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
November 21, 2008

The Edublogs Dilemma: The Cost of Freedom
A bit of a kerfuffle over at edublogs about advertising in client blogs. It's not the advertising itself that people objected to, it seems, it's that they had no idea the advertising was taking place. From what I see, it's a case of good intentions gone south - the idea was that nobody who actually used the blogs would see the ads, just itinerant visitors sent in from Google searches. Problem is, this tactic made the ads invisible to blog owners, who as a result felt a bit blindsided. Christopher D. Sessums, Weblog, November 21, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Google, Marketing, Web Logs] [Comment]

Flip Video Cameras
Flip video cameras are easier to work with on PC than on a Mac, and I had forgotten about the use of Windows Movie Maker to make working with them drop dead simple. Richard Hall, DMU Learning Exchanges, November 21, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Video, Microsoft] [Comment]

Blogging Academe
Reframing and reworking of a series of points from Hugh McGuire on Why Academics Should Blog. The focus is on "three main dimensions of an academic's life: research, teaching, and community outreach. Other items in a professor's job description may benefit from blogging but these three main components tend to be rather prominent in terms of PTR (promotion, tenure, reappointment). What's more, blogging can help integrate these dimensions of academic life in a single set of activities." Alexandre Enkerli, Disparate, November 21, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Research, Academia, Web Logs] [Comment]

Online Seminar On PLEs
More online presentations. This one by Scott Wilson for the Evolve project covers the topic of Personal Learning Environments. Also, Trey Martindale offers this recording of a presentation with Clif Mims on Web 2.0 in teaching and learning. Scott Wilson, Scott's Workblog, November 21, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Web 2.0, Personal Learning Environment, Project Based Learning] [Comment]

ELearn 2008 Presentation
Slides from David Wiley on open learning. One thing about today's chaotic environment - claims that would have seemed impossible even a year ago - like, for example, "Your institution will be irrelevant by 2020" - seem plausible now. As they should - the denialists who have run our economy straight off the cliff have been wrong about the institution of education too. David Wiley, iterating toward openness, November 21, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

YouTube Tests Even Higher Quality Videos
I love these beautiful high quality videos (and I really like the Dancing Matt videos) but I wonder where the bandwidth is going to come from. Here's more from WebMonkey on how to watch the new high quality videos. Unattributed, Google Operating System, November 21, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Video, Bandwidth, Quality, YouTube] [Comment]

Article Processing Fee Comparison
Libertas Academica blog has a table of processing fees charged by different open journals. The one fee I don't see represented is "none" - even though this is (to my knowledge) the most common option. The representation of the charging of fees as "normal" and "standard" is, to my view, a bit of misrepresentation here. Tom Hill, Lbertas Academica, November 21, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Open Access, Web Logs] [Comment]

What Educational Question Is Second Life the Answer To?
It's a good question. And I've nothing but good to say of an event where the organizer wears wings to the podium. Anyhow, you get a sense of the answer to the question from the subjects of the talks, which covered issues of presence, of play, of identity, and of social contact. Niall Sclater, Virtual Learning, November 21, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Second Life] [Comment]

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