Student as Producer: A Pedgogy for the Avant-Garde
Mike Neary, Learning Exchange, October 7, 2010.

Well this is interesting. "The underlying purpose of Student as Producer is to intellectualise teaching and learning in higher education, challenging the liberal humanist, and increasingly
discredited notion of the neo-liberal university, to confront its own revolutionary intellectual culture and tradition by engaging with critical social theory (McLean 2006)." You have to go through quite a bit to get to this (or you could jut jump to the bottom of page 7 here, skipping the Marx and Vygotsky). Here I thought it was just so they could gain authentic practice in the discipline of their choice so they could gradually develop an expertise over time.

Also worth noting: this is volume 1 number 1 of Learning Exchange, a brand new open access journal based at the University of Westminster. Good initiative; now if only it had an RSS feed. Via

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Open Media means more than just Open Video
Marc Canter, Marc's Voice, October 7, 2010.

I think Marc Canter is basically correct, and that the open video movement needs to see video as something different that merely the presentation of a succession of images alongside an audio track. "Unless we have interactivity as a major ‘data type' and we provide simple, easy to use timeline editors (or other editing paradigms) that enable teachers, designers, artists and academics to creator interactive courseware, ads, scientific visualization, etc. - then your Open Video movement will be just that - only Video." So who is going to build an Open Flash?

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Why McGraw-Hill Bought a Lecture-Capture Company
Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 7, 2010.

Interesting analysis by the Chronicle's Jeff Young on McGraw-Hill's purchase of Tegrity, a lecture-capture company. The decision is rooted firmly within the mainstream. "Students place a high degree of value in the content the instructor offers - what's being presented in class, that's what's going to be on the exam." But it also embraces a picture of a social network surrounding proprietary content. "Tegrity and McGraw-Hill do share a vision for a future digital-learning platform that supports open learning, and is powered in part by user-generated content." But note well - the lecture itself isn't user-generated content; it's proprietary content, and is probably being seen as something that could be marketed and sold to the students who have already paid to watch it.

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Can copyright bill survive with all its kinks?
Kate taylor, Globe and Mail, October 7, 2010.

Globe and Mail coverage of Canada' proposed copyright legislation, heavily biased in favour of its passage, summarizing progress to date as it approaches second reading (a law requires three votes, or 'readings', to pass in Canada, after which it is generally approved by the Senate and Governor general). The bill is generally supported by the tech community, or would be except for is digital lock provision, which basically overrides the rights otherwise granted to consumers. The music publishers (and not 'creators', as depicted in the article) are opposed to the bill, because it allows (barring digital locks) time and format shifting of media.

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