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Interesting site highlighting the 'future of the book' (but what looks to me like multimedia presentations on the web - which may indeed amount to the same thing).
Kim White writes in
Kairosnews that "The aim is to draw attention to a broad range of experiments that identify ways in which digital media and networks are expanding the potential of textbooks, redefining the role of teacher and student, and converging to create new ecologies for educational institutions." Definitely worth keeping an eye on. [
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Nicely done wiki presentation (so you can add to it) of the topic, beautifully illustrated and rich with links and examples. Topics covered include personalized media, social software, RSS feeds (which they call web feeds, even though they shouldn't), tagging, Creative Commons licensing, the network learning model and future VLEs. You can also follow along with the Elluminate recordings or listen to the
MP3 Audio. If you need to do a presentation on these topics, you would do well to begin here. Via
Alan Levine. [
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Peter Hope yesterday flagged this development as something worth watching. "Boeing Australia, HarvestRoad and DEST have collaborated to demonstrate the use of repositories
to share content between SCORM training modules and S1000D technical publications based on authoritative data sources." According to the flyer, which advertises a seminar in Melbourne in October, "The demonstration will show a shared content object repository, implementing a change to shared content, output to an S1000D-compliant technical publication format (and) output to a SCORM-compliant training module, wrapped by a learning management system, in computer-based training format." [
Comment]
According to the author, "the concept of transient identity comes in to play when the ownership of personal identity is transferred back to the individual." It is transient because it is identity fixed at a certain point in time - the last time user info was entered into a website registration, for example. The author maps transient identity against Kim Cameron's
Laws of Identity and finds it faring pretty well, though of course no system of identity is without its problems - "data retention, data quality, trust between provider/consumer, identity theft, data loss." Still, as transient identity is applied against these problems, it still appears remarkably robust. [
Comment]
"In Web 1.0," writes the author, "a small number of writers created Web pages for a large number of readers." Enter Web 2.0, however, and this equation changes, "a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into “microcontent” units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we’re looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways." Good, though too brief, summary of the ideas behind Web 2.0. [
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"A more market-oriented system of higher education can do much better than the state-dominated model." This is the central message being advanced in this series of articles, and the Economist is not above routine rhetorical sleight of hand to make the point (consider, for example, the false dichotomy drawn between "techno-utopians" and "cultural conservatives." Or ponder the omission of Canadian statistics in the comparisons between the U.S. system and purportedly "state-dominated" models). That said, and with the requisite grain of salt added, this series (click 'Next Article' at the bottom of the page) is required reading if you value the university system, because it outlines in detail the plan for destroying it, and with it, the idea and intent of a public education. Via elearnspace. [
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Pretty nice Master's Thesis on blogs, the business of blogs and blogging as conversation. While it doesn't really break new ground (the survey, in which I think I participated, adds very little), and while the range of resources consulted could be wider, the essay nonetheless offers a good introduction to the topic and is written in an engaging and well-informed tone. I especially enjoyed the third chapter, 'Word of Mouth', which traverses some conceptually difficult territory with ease and clarity. The same author quite rightly
takes Wrigley's to task for their travesty of a blog advertising Juicy Fruit. [
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