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by Stephen Downes
July 15, 2009

IMS Learning Tools Interoperability
Session summarized from today's IMS meetings in Montreal. Summary (with link to code) of development work in LTI. Very interesting but all-too brief. Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, July 15, 2009 [Link] [Tags: IMS Project] [Comment]

An Overview of Common Cartridge
Session summarized from today's IMS meetings in Montreal. Pretty technical but still informative look at the Common Cartridge specification, recent updates, and implementation. Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, July 15, 2009 [Link] [Tags: IMS Project] [Comment]

The Future IMS Learning Design
Session summarized from today's IMS meetings in Montreal. Two talks suggesting Learning Design may need to be completely rethought, and one sugesting that it's pretty much as needed. Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, July 15, 2009 [Link] [Tags: IMS Project] [Comment]

Learning Design Tools (Demonstrations)
Session summarized from today's IMS meetings in Montreal. Discussion, demonstrations and arguments around the IMS Learning Design specification. Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, July 15, 2009 [Link] [Tags: IMS Project] [Comment]

Standards for Pedagogically Relevant Learning Environments
Session summarized from today's IMS meetings in Montreal. Overview of work done in Common Cartridge, learning repositories and Learning Design. Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, July 15, 2009 [Link] [Tags: IMS Project, Learning Object Repositories] [Comment]

Democratic Group's Proposal: Give Each Student a Kindle
The Democratic Leadership Council, identified by the NY Times as "a left-leaning think tank" (which it isn't really) has proposed "that government should furnish each student in the country with a digital reading device, which would allow textbooks to be cheaply distributed and updated." One wonders, why not put actual netbook computers into the hands of students, something that would be cheaper and would free them from Amazon's proprietary format and restrictive APIs. Brad Stone, New York Times, July 15, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Books] [Comment]

D2L09 UNconference Video
Barry Dahl writes, "The D2L UNconference was a blast last night at the Liffey, an Irish pub in St. Paul. Kyle Mackie did a great job as emcee or chief organizer. Here's a short video (4.5 mins) containing several snippets from the evening, although not all presenters are shown." More fun than function, but that's OK. Barry Dahl, Desire2Blog, July 14, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Video] [Comment]

Visualising Where the Money Goes: Westminster Quangos, Part 2
They've been around for a while, but Tony Hirst is making some nice use of syndicated data to create quangos to help visualize complex data. Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, July 14, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Visualization] [Comment]

Amazon Cripples Mobile Apps With New API Restrictions
This is an odd one: Amazon.com has released new terms of service that prohibit any mobile applications from accessing its API. The suggestion is that this new restriction is intended to kill competition to SnapTell, recently acquired by Amazon. A large number of developers are upset, but you know, building a platform-sepcific app was one of the thing I recommended that you not build in the future. Scott Gilbertson, Webmonkey, July 14, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

New questions raised about ISP disclosure
One of the things about ISP traffic shaping is that it creates an artificial scarcity, and therefore, a market. And everybody who touches that traffic - from your home provider to the backbone to wifi hotspot providers, coffee shops, hotels and the rest - has a part of that market. So what they begin to do, naturally, is to charge companies - Google, Facebook, etc., to NOT throttle and slow down their signals. Of course, they don't want you, the consumer, to know about all of these backroom deals, because if you know, you might not go to the sites that are paying for a speed premium. The net effect is to route consumers toward commercial content, and to essentially block free and open content. Hence the issue about openness. Related: new NetNeutrality.ca launches. Matt Hartley, National Post, July 14, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Google] [Comment]

Persona Editor Google Tech Talk
More goodness from Marc Canter as he presents something called the 'Persona Editor'. Anyone can create this according to the spec outlined here, he says ("I'm open sourcing the idea.") The idea is to create a two-way street where you can both read and write data to these social networks and personal information management systems. Like, say, a PLE. Marc Canter, Marc's Voice, July 14, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Privacy Issues, Networks, Google] [Comment]

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