By Stephen Downes
June 16, 2004
Kennebunkport
Live from Halifax
airport, where they have fast and free wireless access...
this link is to my photos of Kennebunkport, which would
have left me with very pleasant memories had my pre-booked
cab not been an hour and 47 minutes late this morning,
causing me to miss my train and almost my flight. I guess
the cab situation there is something all the hotels know
about, but simply tolerate... after all, who uses cabs?
Anyhow, the photos are nice. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's
Web, June 16, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Academic Weblog Ranking
Schemes
Some commentary from Seb, who was ignored in
this list of academic blogs" and from David Brake as
well, who comments, "It occurs to me once again how people
seem to have internalised the inequities that result from
ranking schemes like these (which also help to drive
Google). How could Alex think for a moment that one way to
'maintain quality' of a list of academic weblogs was 'only
allowing blogs that had been linked to by other, already
established blogs'?" Just for the record, a total of 474 blogs link to Stephen's Web, which
would make me second on the list of "top academic blogs,"
or third, if the author also included Seb. In any case, I
agree with Seb: "I guess I could sum up my thesis thus: if
you're on a Quest for the Really New, you shouldn't act as
if link rank is everything." By David Brake, Blog.org,
June 16, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Weblogs.com Blogs Closed Down
Last
month, Movable Type demonstrated for us the dangers of
proprietary software, raising license prices dramatically
and killing hundreds (maybe thousands) of blogs in the
process. This week, we saw a graphic demonstration of the
dangers of hosted solutions as weblogs.com suddenly decided
to cease operations, raising a hue and cry in the
blogosphere, killing hundreds more blogs, and spawning a
wealth of coverage, much of which is listed at this link.
Such graphic examples (and those of us in education have
seen many more such) and yet people still do not learn. By
Clancy, Kairosnews, June 16, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Just Another Ant
Rob Wall has
started a new Ed Tech blog, confirming, he suggests, Alan
Levine's suggestion that the lifespan of such entities is
about one year. Present company excepted, of course. By Rob
Wall, June, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Collaborative, Open Textbook
Nice. I'll just quote from Boing Boing:
"OpenTextBook.org is a collaborative project wherein
university students (and others) can turn their course
notes into a giant, open textbook. You need to know how to
use CVS to contribute and edit the book, but there's a
daily PDF snapshot of the state of the project, which is
looking pretty good!" This - and not the LMS - is where
online learning is headed. Observe, and learn. Daniel Lemire also has coverage. By Cory
Doctorow, Boing Boing, June 15, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The Seven-year-old Bloggers
This
article is making the rounds, and so it should - the
concept of a seven-year-old expressing his or her thoughts
in the same medium as (*gasp*) professional educators and
journalists is a bit staggering. A bit humbling, too, when
you think that in ten years or so these kids will be
grizzled veterans of online writing and about to enter the
university system. By Giles Turnbull, BBC News, June 14,
2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
E-Learning: Challenges to the
Neo-conservative Model?
The author asks, "How
much so called e-learning is really a proprietary VLE being
used as a convenient content repository?" The rush to buy
these systems, argues the author, has "created a level of
conservatism and potential resistance to change that is, to
understate the case, 'unfortunate' and may yet cost us
dear." By Derek Morrison, Auricle, June 16, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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