By Stephen Downes
November 19, 2003
New Feature: Reviews
Those of you
who have read my Resource Profiles paper will have noticed
the bit where I talk about evaluative metadata. This is an
announcement of the implimentation of such a feature in
Blogware: "Blogware is one of the first (if not *the*
first) blogging tools to support Reviews and Review
metadata. Reviews are essentially article entries with a
twist. Sitting at the core of this feature is support for
the RVW module for RSS 2.0, an extension to the RSS
specification that '...allows machine-readable reviews to
be integrated into an RSS feed, thus allowing reviews to be
automatically compiled from distributed sources.'" The
article also links to last May's Review (RVW) Module for RSS 2.0. I have a
similar prototype running, but alas, as
it does not yet make the metadata available, it lags the
Blogware implementation. How can this not come to the world
of learning resources, where the need is even greater? By
Ross, Blogware, November 1, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Solveig Singleton on Open Source, Games, and
Public Policy
Given that games are widely touted
as the guture for online learning (especially by me) the
implications of this article are interesting. The central
thesis of the item is that there are few open source games,
and the author seeks to explain why. "The open source
business model seems to have trouble
coming up with large initial investments at the cutting
edge of innovation, where risks are greatest," argues the
author. The lessons drawn for public policy are that
government sponsored technological development should not
be released as open source (to reward companies for the
'risk' they took, though the logic here defies me, since it
is the public, not the entrepreneur, that took the risk)
and that government procurement policies should be neutral.
The paper drew a large number of replies that, in my view, effectively
undermine its central presumptions (especially as I spent
many years of my life programming these very same
'non-existent' open source games). By Solveig Singleton,
PoliTechBot, November 18, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and
Classrooms: 1994–2002
Though this document
appears to report the blindingly obvious (the head in
TechLearning News was "School Internet Use Soars") it is
nonetheless a treasure trove of information about scholl
access as of 2002, including information on availability,
laptop acdess, use of filtering software, and much more. By
Anne Kleiner and Laurie Lewis, National Center for
Education Statistics, October 29, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
SCO: GPL Threatens $229B Software
Market
I may not like them - they are, after
all, undermining open source software. But they sure make
the issues clear, even if their depiction of the other side
reads like a caricature. SCO CEO Darl McBride "likened the
notion of free software to a variety of movements including
file sharing, the dot-com bubble, and even free love. He
predicted that the proprietary and open-source worlds were
on a 'collision course,' that would ultimately result in
the end of the GPL license." By Robert McMillan, InfoWorld,
November 19, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
UK Schools' Websites
Somebody saw
an awful lot of school websites in the last few months as
all 3644 school websites in Britain have been visited,
catalogued, and listed in this new version of the database.
By Various Authors, SchoolsWebDirectory, November, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Plans for the BBC Digital
Curriculum
Because half the material will be
produced externally, the European Commission plans to give
£150 million to the BBC to produce free teaching resources.
This document is a central planning document for that
initiative in preparation for a conference for independent
producers next week. The priorities revealed are
interesting: three central principles expressiong some of
the cautions no doubt expressed in back rooms ("There will
be no cherry-picking of small areas where content is easier
to deliver") and a statement of both teacher and student
needs. By Various Authors, BBC, November, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Making Sense of Learning Specifications &
Standards:
A Decision Maker's Guide to their Adoption
The
second version of this longish (82 page) PDF document is
now available for download. Based from the point of view of
SCORM, this document introsuces readers to the concept of
learning objects and metadata. Through the use of case
studies, the paper is able to get into not only the use of
but the make-up of the learning objects. This is not an
issues paper; it is an explanation paper, but from a clear
point of view: the use of learning objects to support mass
personalization. By Elliott Masie, ed., The Masie Center,
November, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Know a friend who might enjoy this
newsletter?
Feel free to forward OLDaily to your colleagues. If you
received this issue from a friend and would like a free
subscription of your own, you can join our mailing list
at
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/subscribe.cgi
[
About This NewsLetter] [
OLDaily Archives]
[
Send me your comments]