By Stephen Downes
May 2, 2003
BlogShares
BlogShares just
officially launched after a beta test of a few weeks. I've
had a lot of fun with this game, and though I'm not
(currently) in the top 100 players, I think I've shown that
I have some knowledge of the blog market by parlaying my
initial (play money) $500 into a $75,000 total worth. Too
bad the real stock market isn't as easy to predict (or
maybe I've missed my true calling - heh). By Seyed Razavi,
May 1, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
SCORM Deployment Issues in an Enterprise
Distributed Learning Architecture
This article
is dauntingly technical, but it's a great read, clearly
illustrating why SCORM cannot be deployed in a multi-domain
environment. In a nutshell, the SCORM API interfaces
(commonly known as the 'wrapper') require that the learning
object and the LMS communicate with each other using
Javascript or a similar technology. But security
restrictions have for the last decade prohibited
cross-domain communication between these scripts. So SCORM
won't work across domains. As Stephen Lanahas comments,
"More importantly though, the architectural aproach of
SCORM actually prevents utilization of distributed content
repositories across organizations / enterprises, more or
less killing the B2B potential for the entire technology in
question (Learning Onjects)." It's a rookie mistake and I'm
surprised it got through the technical reviews. But the
solution outlined in this paper is straightforward: as AICC
does, use HTTP calls to establish communications between
the learning object and the LMS. Simple. Too simple,
apparently, for SCORM. By Jeffrey C. Engelbrecht, The
eLearning Developer's Journal, February 18, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Overcoming the Presentation Mosaic Effect of
Multi-Use Sharable Content Objects
Albert Ip
expresses dissatisfaction with the solution to the SCORM
cross-domain problem presented in the Engelbrecht article
and outlines an approach which has been used in Australia
that has successfully overcome this problem. The solution
described by these authors proposes that "before the
rendering of any content, a SCO should query the LMS for
[namespace].session.style. SCO for the style sheet to be
applied and write the style information to the client
browser." This approach contrasts with the Dynamic
Appearance model, proposed by the Canadian Department of
National Defense, which requires that learning objects be
written in XML (in my mind, a much more sane and portable
approach). This paper is available as a zipped MS-Word file
(which is what you'll get if you click on the link). By
Albert Ip, Allyn J. Radford and Ric Canale, Date Unknown
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
New-Model Scholarship: How Will It
Survive?
Search through the Internet
Archive and you get exactly none of my work. Mine is
what is described as New-Model Scholarship, "the variety of
Web sites and other desktop digital objects that faculty
and graduate students are creating that fall somewhere
short of 'published' but are worthy of access into the
future." Yet it seems destined to disappear from view when
my academic career ends. When this essay asks, "How will
new-model publishing survive," it is not thinking in terms
of financial viability, it is instead asking how this work
will be preserved for future generations (here I work on
the assumption that society might want my work
preserved for future generations - heh). The examination
that follows is a good analysis of the means currently in
place and a look at what we need to do in the future to
ensure that this content doesn't disappear forever. By Abby
Smith, Council on Library and Information Resources, March,
2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
What is a Learning Object,
Technically?
Even if you find the conclusion
unsatisfying (as I did) you will agree, I'm sure, that
there's some really good reading before we get to the end
of this paper. Taking on the much discussed question of the
definition of a learning object, the author looks at the
numerous approaches to education that could use such
resources and observes that the term "'learning object'
makes no sense to the education
community." So, "Instead of trying to create a framework to
enable interoperability and reuse of learning objects
across different pedagogical paradigms, we focus on
creating a supporting technical infrastructure to enable
interoperability and reuse of resources within specific
pedagogical paradigms." Right. Don't try to build the
pedagogy into the objects themselves. Build the pedagogy
into the systems that use the objects. By Albert Ip, Iain
Morrison, and Mike Currie, WebNet2001, October, 2001
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Proceedings of the Fourth National Technology
Leadership Summit: Open Resources in
Education
This article - really a discussion
summary - looks at the concept of open source software and
explores ways in which it can be extended to a wider range
of offerings, including educational content. The discussion
resulted in "agreement that a General Public License for
teachers could be useful to facilitate and encourage use of
Open Resources in K-12 education." It just makes me feel so
good inside to see this kind of discussion taking place -
and just so, it must be tremendously worrisome to those
publishers and corporations who have for so long made a
handsome profit promoting the hoarding and scarcity of
learning materials. By Glen Bull and Joe Garofalo,
Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education,
May 1, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Students Settle in Lawsuit Over File
Swapping
The students, of course, never really
had a choice, the industry knew it, and the settlements -
no more than $17,500 - prove it, each being less than that
probable cost of mounting a defense against the RIAA's
ridiculous lawsuit. There is no justice when capitulation
is the only option available to you, when the instruments
of justice - such as the courts and legal support - remain
out of your reach because of your meagre means. From
beginning to end this case is a travesty and while the RIAA
probably thinks it won, it cannot possibly understand the
deep, deep anger and resentment that such actions cause. By
Dawn C. Chmielewski, San Jose Mercury News, May 2, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Open Source Courseware -- Evaluation and
Rating
This is a great resource - a listing of
major open source courseware platforms, rated and evaluated
(with a clear and rational set of evaluation criteria). The
article also begins with a pragmatic and honest assessment
of open source solutions in general, frankly admitting that
they're not for everybody and clearly stating that they
require a certain degree of expertise and committment to
operate. If you are in the market for an LMS or similar
platform, make sure you read this article before signing on
the dotted line for a commercial (and expensive) enterprise
solution. By Bob Reynolds, Explana, April 28, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Electronic Journals in the Field of
Education
This site contains "only links to
electronic journals that are scholarly, peer-reviewed, full
text and accessible without cost." And having reviewed this
list and scanned a number of the journals (which should all
have RSS feeds - a great volunteer task for someone
who wished to promote open access would be to create and
maintain feeds for these resources) I have only to ask:
what reason could anybody possibly give for supporting
journals in this field that are not on this list? I ask
you! By Tirupalavanam G. Ganesh, AERA SIG Communication of
Research, April, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The Curriculum of the Body in the Age of
Electronic Mediation
I think that Norm Friesen
is right to say that we need to look beyond the simple
accounts of interaction offered by the early theorists of
computation. But I do not agree that we should go so far as
to say, with Friesen, that "computers cannot enter the
world of obligation and concern that ultimately gives
language its meaning." Pulling out the phenomenalism of
Merleau-Ponty doesn't establish the case. When
Merleau-Ponty says that emotions such as love and anger are
"directly manifest" to us, rather than interpreted, he is,
in my view, wrong: there isn't some sort of direct person
to person interaction that does not go through the media of
communication and interpretation. But where Merleau-Ponty
is right - and where a proper criticism of Friesen's thesis
ought to begin - is in the assertion that not all
communication is accomplished through the mediation of
signs or symbols representing a certain state, idea or
emotion. When we perceive a tiger, we do not (necessarily)
create a 'tiger' token in our brains; we infer immediately
from sensation to perception via properties of the
sensation itself, not through an intermediary language.
Today's computers do require a translation to signs, and so
are not able to emulate this human capacity. But there is
no reason why the cognitivist paradigm ought to prevail
forever in computational theory, certainly, no more reason
than it would prevail in the psychology of perception. By
Norm Friesen, Language & Literacy, Fall, 2002
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
David vs. Goliath
More discussion
of the potential - and in my view, likely - move of the
enterprise software giants like SAP and PeopleSoft into the
e-learning market. This article predicts that the
powerhouse vendors will garb 25 percent of the LMS market
by the end of 2004, most of it from their existing customer
base. It's hard for LMS companies to compete with that, and
hard to match their research dollars - topped by Saba at $3
million per year - with the resources amassed by companies
such as SAP, which spends $200 million a quarter. "By late
2005, 50 percent of today's independent LMS vendors will
cease to exist." Is that a bad thing? No - I've been
telling people for the last couple of years to get out of
this market. It's old technology. Those that listened,
survive. Those that didn't, don't. By Joel Schettler,
Trainingmag, May 2, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
RIAA Messaging Gambit Faces
Countermeasures
The RIAA's recent strategy of
sending spam over file trading networks to discourage the
sharing of music files is likely to backfire as hackers are
now able to determine the origin of the annoying messages
and strike back at these (previously) hidden servers. By
Kevin Poulsen, The Register, May 1, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
New Jersey Institute of Technology Prohibits
File Sharing on Its Campus
Probably a sign of a
trend, the move by this campus reflects the concern that
administrators feel over the recent billion dollar lawsuits
filed against students by the music industry. But look,
this is a temporary solution at best, because what makes
music downloads stand out today is the size of the file. As
file sizes in general increase - inevitable as the use of
multimedia rises - then it will be impossible to
distinguish between legitimate downloads and those that
offend the music industry. By Scott Carlson, Chronicle of
Higher Education, May 1, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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