Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
January 16, 2009

Events 2009

Keeping you up to date on my plans for 2009: I'll be at Podcamp Halifax January 25, as an attendee. Then, in early March, I'll be on a panel at South by Southwest in Austin. Early April sees me at LearnX in Sydney, Australia, then it's back to New Brunswick to speak at a Canadian Defense Academy and Tactics School event at Gagetown. In May I'm scheduled to speak at Challenges 2009 in Braga, Portugal. And finally, in June I will be speaking at Ed Media in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am not paid for conference appearances, nor do I pay for them; I spend very little on travel, as travel expenses are almost always covered by the organizer when I speak. I limit my distant events to no more than one a month.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity: Now Live On YouTube and iTunes
OK, these aren't quite free courses - but combined with a serial feed, community, and free range instructor they could be. Watch this space: big changes will be happening very shortly, based on open content,like this. (Oh, I will say I find the whole "What's the theoretical minimum for thinking intelligently about modern physics" a bit off-putting - it should not be a point of pride that your program is dumbing down the material). Dan Colman, Open Culture, January 16, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Video, Open Content, YouTube] [Comment]

SOA Is Dead; Long Live Services
"Once thought to be the savior of IT, SOA instead turned into a great failed experiment-at least for most organizations. SOA was supposed to reduce costs and increase agility on a massive scale. Except in rare situations, SOA has failed to deliver its promised benefits." Anne Thomas Manes blames the failure of institutions to adapt to SOA. "The small select group of organizations that has seen spectacular gains from SOA did so by treating it as an agent of transformation." But I think it was just the wrong technology for the time. Via Brian Kelly. Anne Thomas Manes, Application Platform Strategies, January 16, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Teaching How to Learn
Konrad Glogowski writes, "Instead of separating our students from the world they're getting ready for, instead of cocooning them in protected classrooms, we need to give them opportunities to learn from and with people who share their passions." Konrad Glogowski, Blog of Proximal Development, January 16, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Institutional Repository On a Shoestring
This article is worth a look because it describes a low-cost repository at a small school, Humboldt Digital Scholar. But when the article describes something being done "on a shoestring" it would be nice to see some indication of actual costs. More from the current issue of D-Lib. George Wrenn, Carolyn J. Mueller and Jeremy Shellhase, D-Lib Magazine, January 16, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Learning Object Repositories] [Comment]

We Are So Not Ready To Spend $1,000,000,000 On Ed-Tech
While "a billion dollars coming into the industry isn't a bad thing," says Tom Hoffman, "but we're not as ready for it as I'd like to be." Maybe not. But if it is distributed wisely - not to big 'home run' style projects, but to people working on small and interesting projects, the money will be sent to people who are ready for it. Tom Hoffman, Tuttle SVC, January 16, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Project Based Learning] [Comment]

As State Increased School Aid, Grades Went Up
"Five years after Maryland increased spending by $2 billion to provide greater academic equity, students have made remarkable gains in reading and math." For those people who say that extra funding does not result in performance improvements, you can now say, sometimes it does. Which makes more sense, of course, than the logic-defying claims that money has nothing to do with achievement. Liz Bowie, Baltimore Sun, January 16, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Academia] [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.