OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
November 8, 2004

10 x 10
This is one of the more interesting applications of RSS I've seen. "Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories." By Various Authors, November 7, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Savannah
"Imagine ‘being’ a lion, imagine the sights and sounds you would come across, imagine the challenges you would face to stay alive, to protect your cubs, to ensure your pride’s survival in the face of man-made and natural obstacles. Then imagine what it would be like to enable children to experience this ‘first hand’ as part of their education." This is the sort of thing I had in mind when I talked about online learning getting learning out of the classroom and onto the savannah where it belongs. Via Alan Levine, Albert Ip. By Jo Morrison, et.al., NESTA Futurelab, May, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Daily Lesson Plan
Yet another example of free online learning content, this daily lesson plan from the New York Times is obviously centred around American politics and issues, but is a good example of free online learning provided in order to promote goods or services. This link is to the daily lesson plan; an archive is available from the link in the left-hand column. Via e-Learning Centre. By Various Authors, New York Times, November 5, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Virtual Trader
As I've talked about learning environments in the past this is the sort of thing I've had in mind. Virtual Trader is a stock market simulation - it allows you to make investments and trade stocks in a simulated environment - no money risked. As you look at the home page, notice how educational resources (learning objects?) are embedded into the game as a way of helping plyers learn about the subject. Note: the game would not let me sign on because it couldn't match my postal code (which is Canadian) to a UK street address. Why such information is needed is beyond me - and when it fails to work, it really gets annoying. Via e-Learning Centre. By Various Authors, November, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Tools for Schools
Reposted from WWWEDU: "This issue of Tools for Schools highlights 21 effective strategies for teachers' professional growth, which are described in more detail in a new NSDC book, "Powerful Designs for Professional Learning" (Lois Brown Easton, 2004)." Don't expect detailed descriptions of the strategies - the article is essentially a grid mapping the tools to options on what they can be used for and who can use them. By Various Authors, National Staff Development Council, November, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Online Learning Environments
Massive list of links covering blogs and blogging, chat, computer-mediated communication, ommunity building online, e-mentoring, e-moderation, teaching and learning online and wikis. By Teresa Almeida d'Eça, November 6, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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