June 21, 2012
Presentation
Models, Technological Resources and Knowledge Management
Stephen Downes, June 21, 2012,
XIII Encuentro Virtual Educa, Panama City, Panama
To offer effective e-learning it is important to get the model right, but this is difficult. I suggest that the internet itself is the model we need to use. This suggests a set of open learning resources that extends beyond content and even conversation but also activities and interactions.
Seeking Systemic Change: Higher Education in a Digital, Networked Age
Mary Grush,
Campus Technology, June 20, 2012.
George Siemens says it like it is: "Academics are not driving the change bus. Leadership in traditional universities has been grossly negligent in preparing the academy for the economic and technological reality it now faces. They have not developed the systemic capacity of the university to function in a digital, networked age." Related: "We also believe that higher education is on the brink of a transformation now that online delivery has been legitimized by some of the elite institutions."
Google Signals YouTube's Free MP3 Ride Is Over
Erika Morphy,
E-Commerce Times, June 20, 2012.
What's good for the Google clearly is not good for the gander. The grandfather of all scraping sites, Google made its billions sending robots to download, analyze and extract data from other people's websites. Now it is sending a 'cease and desist' to a company doing the same to one of its own services. YouTubeMP3 is a simple service that does one thing: it provides you with an MP3 version of any YouTube video. The company says what it does is legal and is refusing to shut down its service. Time may be running out, though, so I'm taking the opportunity to convert some old Runaways videos. The quality isn't the best (it's YouTube, after all) but I'll never find this audio elsewhere and it's easier than playing them while recording with Audacity (I feel like I did when I was a teenager tape-recording King Biscuit Flower Hour concerts off the radio).
[Link] [Comment][Tags: YouTube, Video, Podcasting, Google, Quality, Audio]
The Battle over C-11 Concludes: How Thousands of Canadians Changed The Copyright Debate
Michael Geist,
Weblog, June 20, 2012.
Michael Geist wraps up the debate over C-11, the new Canadian copyright law, as follows: "Despite the loss on digital locks, however, the passage of Bill C-11 features some important wins for Canadians who spoke out on copyright." There's a really good table in the article that shows many of the user-centric reforms that made their way into the bill through years of redrafting. All of that said, though, "There is no sugar-coating the loss on digital locks... other countries have been willing to stand up to U.S. pressure... nce Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the call for a DMCA-style approach in early May 2010, the digital lock issue was lost." All true. But it does povide a single point of focus that some future government may address. And in the mean time, I need to construct a simple (and very flimsy) digital lock to protect my website from inspection.
Gates Foundation Announces $9 Million in Grants to Support Breakthrough Learning Models in Postsecondary Education
Press Release,
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, June 20, 2012.
The Gates Foundation is widening their gaze a bit as projects include MyCollege Foundation and University of the People. As usual with this sort of program, though, the rich get richer: recipients include EDUCAUSE, for four winners of the Next Generation Learning Challenges'; MIT to support edX, a joint venture between MIT and Harvard; and CUNY, to support the New Community College (NCC) at CUNY. Somebody needs to explain to me why an institution like Harvard would need a foundation's help.
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