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by Stephen Downes
July 13, 2009

D2L Fusion

I am in the Twin Cities of Minnesota for the D2L Fusion conference. The picture above is obviously not from the cities but rather the countryside south of the city. This picture in particular is of a little slough on Highway 69 about two miles north of the Iowa border. Slide show from my short trip to the cornfields of Iowa. Stephen Downes, Flickr, July 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Flickr] [Comment]

Attend the FUSION Expert Panel Session - Virtually
I will be participating in the expert panel at the D2L conference tomorrow (13:30 p.m. Central Daylight Time (GMT -5)) on the topic "-- We Only Exist Because of the Needs of Our Students." The panel will be webcast using UStream and a (somewhat moderated) conference backchannel will be in use. The panel will be moderated by Sue McKnight. join the fun here. Various Authors, D2L Fusion, July 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Whatever
This is a summary of a talk given by Michael Wesch at D2L Fusion here in St. Paul. Wesch talks about the loss of the sense of self that can come with new technology, and looks at how different generations have dealt with new technology through the use of the word 'whatever". It was an interesting talk, with some useful ideas. Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, July 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Top-Ranked Finland Offers Reason for Rejecting National Testing
Finland consistently scores at the top of the world educational rankings. "Our educational system can guarantee that they are getting as good teaching in the capital area as in the northest [sic] part of Finland so we are not talking about bad or good schools," she said. "We don't have any elite schools and school is free." Jim Horn, Schools Matter, July 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Online Learning] [Comment]

We choose the moon
I was actually around in 1969 and watched the moon landing myself. Just looking at this site sent shivers up my spine. We have too few great noble projects today. "Celebrate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon with this real-time interactive recreation of the Apollo 11 mission. (Currently in the pre-launch phase). You can even follow the misson on Twitter." You know, I hear those objections, to our wind-power program, to Obama's health care plan, to open education and free learning, and the rest, and I just want to look at these people and say we choose to go to the Moon and make the arguments about ROI and effectiveness and data-supported decision-making just go away. Jane Hart, Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day, July 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Twitter, Online Learning, Project Based Learning] [Comment]

CamStudio
Haven't seen this before - it came up during a session at the D2L Fusion conference. "CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)." The software is free and open source. Related: ScreenToaster (yes, that's it's name) was also highly recommended. Various Authors, Website, July 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Audio, Video, Bandwidth, Open Source] [Comment]

New Study Shows Decrease in Illegal Music Downloading
Honestly, I haven't believed any of these music download studies for some time now. Just saying. Marc Beja, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

CCK09 Benchmarking CCK08 social networks in the Moodle forums (Preview of the research)
Some pretty wild graphs of the CCK08 open online course we held last year and preliminary plan for a study of the CCK09 course coming up this fall. Roel Cantada , Open Educational Tools, July 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Connectivism, Networks, Research] [Comment]

A Common Evolution for IMS Simple Sequencing?
From IMS: "Warwick Bailey, of IMS member Icodeon and Rob Abel of IMS have authored a paper that considers the options for evolving Simple Sequencing. Over the years most have concluded that Simple Sequencing has not been "simple" to implement in SCORM 2004 (the only known implementation of the specification)... The result is an approach that may work both for SCORM (self-paced online instruction) and the new Common Cartridge standard (for instructor-in-the-loop educational content)." Although document is public, access requires a (free) login to the online IMS community. I don't know why IMS requires this; it just breaks links and creates the possibility of unwanted email. Warwick Bailey and Rob Abel, IMS, July 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: IMS Project, SCORM, Metadata] [Comment]

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