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OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
April 2, 2009

Get Your Popcorn Organised! Edublogs Live Web Events Are Ready To Roll!
Edublogs is launching a live web events service. If there is a trend I've seen here in Australia, it's this. "Anyone can join these live web events. They will be delivered in realtime using Elluminate complete with audio, chat and desktop sharing." Sue Waters, The Edublogger, April 2, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Chatrooms, Audio, Australia] [Comment]

I Don'T Care About Filtering . . .
The whole article is worth a read as an examination of the rationalle behind filtering sites like YouTibe can quite consistently be applied to the internet as a whole. Which means that we had better be sure what we are doing. Bionic Teaching writes, "I don't care about filtering. I accept that we're going to have filtering but we better start looking at our rationales for filtering and for all the other "this is the rule" things we do in education. We have created a place where wisdom goes to die, a mediocre land where we're scared of any mistake. That's awfully sad." Tom Woodward, Bionic Teaching, April 2, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

An Open Cloud Manifesto
I am mostly in support of this 'open cloud manifesto' posted by Bryan Alexander. But really, there's only one point from the manifesto that is crucil: "Cloud providers must not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms and limit their choice of providers." The rest pretty much follows from this. Bryan Alexander, Liberal Education Today, April 2, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

When Every Student has a Laptop, Why Run Computer Labs?
This is a trend. "Only four freshmen showed up at the University of Virginia in 2007 without a computer of their own, and the school has decided that it's no longer worth the expense of running campus computer labs." More from Ars Technica. And in another trend, "members of the UM PIRG group staged a protest over the state of textbook publishing by creating a textbook graveyard on their campus for the books that the campus store would not buy back." cel4145, KairosNews, April 2, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Online Learning] [Comment]

John Seely Brown On Tinkering
The process outlined by John Seeley Brown could be described in any number of words, but 'tinkering' is probably an apt name for a research methodology that consists of building things to see what happens. Which is what I do. This is a video embedded into a blog post. Raj Boora, EDITing in the Dark, April 2, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Video, Research, Web Logs] [Comment]

Here's the Latest
A D2L page responds to coverage of the Blackboard in the Chronicle of Higher Education - the Chronicle article is blocked behind a paywall, so most people can't read this, which appears to be Blackboard's only statement on the matter. In an unrelated item, a Blackboard employee appears to undercut faculty motivations. "The taxes of every fast food employee who may never walk on a campus are supporting students who go to schools, colleges and universities around the world... if they value not only their current academic freedom, but their ability to retire in old age, another form of freedom, they should think hard and fast about how they can contribute to the public good." This is known in psychology as 'projection'. And to put the response bluntly: what will Blackboard do for the common good? Because the ongoing legal campaign isn't it. Press Release, Desire2Learn, April 2, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Project Based Learning, Academia, Blackboard Inc.] [Comment]

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