Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
January 20, 2009

Rise of the Cohort, Educational and Otherwise
"The 'class' is dead, as is the 'audience'," writes Mike Caulfield, "Long live the cohort." Indeed. More on that shortly. Tran|script, Mike Caulfield, January 20, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Skype Interview- Around the World with 80 Schools Project.
I've been watching this project unfold over recent weeks (see more here and here). Silvia Tolisano, LangWitches, January 20, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Audio Chat and Conferencing, Project Based Learning] [Comment]

Video Hosting Solutions and The Challenges of Being Not-American
Scott Leslie isn't talking about Hulu, which simply blocks non-Americans (talk about annoying, sheesh). He explains (citing Brian Lamb) "something those living in the US may not realize - your Patriot Act and the way it treats private data... violates our privacy policies, either institutional, provincial or federal." He links to some Canadian alternatives, including video.ca, a Canadian video hosting site. Scott Leslie, EdTechPost, January 20, 2009 [Link] [Tags: United States, Privacy Issues, Online Learning, Video, Canada, Wikipedia, Web Logs] [Comment]

Wake Up and Smell the New Epistemology
"A better and more productive response begins with us - faculty members and administrators. We cannot expect a skeptical populace to reverse course of its own accord. The onus is on us to better convey the value that a robust intellectual life adds to the public good. And we need to begin by respecting our students (and the wider public) not just as persons but as the arbiters of knowledge that they have become." Translation: academics, get over yourselves, get out there in public and do some real work, and do it openly where everyone can see and if necessary criticize. Via Diigo. Tim Clydesdate, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 20, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Patents, Academia] [Comment]

The Complete Toolbox for Authoring Rich Learning Content
Adobe has waded into the world of e-learning content development. "With Adobe eLearning Suite, Adobe didn't just bundle products together for use in a specific discipline - it delivered a complete, integrated workflow for eLearning content creation and delivery. For example, now with Adobe Captivate, users have the ability to easily incorporate mobile-based content by taking advantage of Adobe Device Central CS4." Various Authors, Adobe, January 20, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning] [Comment]

Anti-RDBMS: A List of Distributed Key-Value Stores
This is one of those things that's way out there, difficult to wrap your mind around but too cool to ignore. The idea here is to replicate the basic functionality of a database - specifically, the capacity to store data by some sort of identifier (a 'key') - but distributed across a large number of networked computers. The advantages are that it's scalable - as you grow, simply add more computers - and it's fault tolerant - even if some computers go down, data replication means that it's still available. Via Diigo. Richard Jones, Weblog, January 20, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Networks, Cool] [Comment]

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