Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
March 19, 2009

Horizon.K12
The Horizon Project has released a report on trends in technology for the K-12 sector. There's a wiki, the PDF version of the report and a set of slides. Various Authors, New Media Consortium, March 19, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

URL Shorteners: Is a Custom One the Solution?
So of course the spammers have started infiltrating to short URL sites (like tinyurl, my own fave) in an effort to attract traffic to their sites. Any system that involves one person putting content on someone else's website will eventually attract spam. So the answer to the question in the title is: yes. Ah, but how. That is the more interesting question. Steve Borsch, Connecting the Dots, March 19, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Spam] [Comment]

Digital Literacy Debate

Coverage of a debate simmering in Britain over the publication of the 'Digital Britain' report. Discussion ensued. "stop fighting the "last war" and start to think about the real sociological and economic changes that are occuring before they sweep away all this dated thinking." In particular, a Fake Digital Britain report was authored, consisting essentially of a paragraph by paragraph criticism of the original report, was launched by Tony Hirst and Joss Winn. Picture credit CollaboraiveSociability by vaXzine. Josie Fraser, SocialTech, March 19, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Great Britain, Flickr] [Comment]

OCW Numbers
Some impressive numbers from OCW. "We estimate more than 53.7 million individuals have now visited OCW or our translation sites... OCW servers have now delivered over 3.1 billion files ('hits') since launch... 8.5 million zip files of full course content have been downloaded from the site... 2.1 million OCW videos have been downloaded from iTunes, and OCW videos have been viewed more than 2.5 million times on YouTube." Related: Open Education Videos around the world: The Making Of. Stephen Carson, OpenFiction, March 19, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Video, OpenCourseWare, YouTube] [Comment]

Bad Titles and the Need for Theory to Inform Practice
I agree that 'The Wisdom of Crowds' is a bad title. As Dave Snowden suggests, "crowds are herds; we see that with the blogosphere, response to opinion polls and many other examples." And that's why understanding Surowiecki's three conditions - independance of opinion, relevant diversity and decentralization - is important. The world doesn't neatly divide into the cynefin categories, though. You can't draw a nice neat line between complex and chaotic - there are degrees of independence between agents. That's why I describe semantic conditions (diversity, autonomy, openness, connectedness) rather than categories: I am describing parameters, not classifications. And that, too, is the problem with theory informing practice. Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge, March 19, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Ontologies, Semantic Web, Wikipedia, Web Logs] [Comment]

Twitter for Conference Back-Channel Chat
I'm just keeping an eye on this sort of work because I want to ensure that the same functionality is available for my 'conference chat' (cchat) system. CChat is RSS-enabled by default in gRSShopper but you have to create a template, which I haven't done yet. Steve Hargadon, Weblog, March 19, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Twitter, Chatrooms, RSS] [Comment]

POCKET
The POCKET project is wrapping up, with a bevy of useful outputs. The project website links to the main result, a content development guide that can be used to facilitate the conversion of materials into open and freely accessible educational resources. The project also participated in a number of events over its lifespan. Pocket supports standards such as RSS 2.0, OUXML, IMS Common cartridge, Moodle backup, and more. The blog I'm linking to here is basically a history of the POCKET project Sarah Darley, POCKET, March 19, 2009 [Link] [Tags: IMS Project, RSS, Project Based Learning, XML, Web Logs, Online Learning, Linking and Deep Linking, Accessibility] [Comment]

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