Edu_RSS
CouchSurfing Rides Again
After the budget-conscious travel-lodging site suffers a massive data crash, its worldwide community of couch surfers and backpackers springs into action to resurrect it. In Monkey Bites. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 10:45 p.m..
YouTube's Unfair Terms
The insanely popular video site owns the right to redistribute anything that's been uploaded to its servers, and small content producers could end up getting ripped off. Plus: Crippled Verizon Razr sinks into the murky depths. In Listening Post. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 10:45 p.m..
Rants 'n' Raves: The Packrat Gene
Readers wonder if the need to collect is inherited, accuse Wired.com of having a bias, and suggest that game developers intentionally make games that are fun to struggle with. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 8:46 p.m..
Senate Says Yes to Stem Cells
Lawmakers approve a bill that would expand federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, but President Bush has promised to veto it. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 7:45 p.m..
Amy Gahran - Tracking News Ripples in the Public Conversation - Poynter Online
We're beginning to see more structure enter the blogosphere as the idea of tracking blog 'conversations' takes hold. I first worked with this last year in Edu_RSS -
click the 'conversation' link on this page (hint: the posts with more asterisks have more conversation). This article looks at a similar initiative from Nielsen's BlogPulse. I still think conversations work better when limited to a peer group (eg., your personal social network) rather than the entire internet - click on the Jay Rosen 'con From
OLDaily on July 18, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Bob Jolliffe - Aligning the Ideals of Free Software and Free Knowledge With the South African Freedom Charter - First Monday
The author observes that while "the free software movement (and related efforts in the fields of science and culture) draws upon a tradition of freedom rooted in an American libertarian tradition," it is important to align "efforts to promote free software and free culture with the rich existing tradition embodied in the South African Freedom Charter." Existing inequalities in property ownership cannot simply be entrenched, he argues, particularly in view of the IP 'land grab' taking place in Africa today, an appropriation that represents nothing less than a new colonialism. Quite so From
OLDaily on July 18, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Graeme Daniel - ScreenCasts and ScreenCasting - wwwtools for teachers
Graeme Daniel looks at the topic of screencasting with his usual thorough touch, offering links to advice and examples before looking at the use of screencasts in education. I especially appreciated his caution: "the relative ease of putting a screencast together can be something of a trap, and a considerable number of candidates for possible use as examples were discarded because they were taking forever to arrive, screenshots were too indistinct, sound levels were too low, speech was impossibly fast, or messages were poorly put together." [
OLDaily on July 18, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Craig W. Smith - Synchronous Discussion in Online Courses - Learning Circuits
The article is subtitled "A Pedagogical Strategy for Taming the Chat Beast" and that gives a pretty good sense of his attitude toward chat. No chaos and disorder for him! "The sense of community and connectedness was overshadowed by frustration. I wanted to have the opportunity to interact with the students in a more spontaneous manner while still retaining some semblance of order that would replicate a seminar-type environment." Most of the suggestions have to do with keeping quiet when other people are talking and staying on topic. The thing is, though, chat is natively a multi-threaded envi From
OLDaily on July 18, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Artichoke - He's Thrown a Kettle Over a Pub, What Have You Done? - Artichoke
I really don't like Artichoke's writing style - but I like what he says (which means he gets to write it however he wants). Stuff like this, for example: "Perhaps with minimally directed inquiry we are trying to implement a pedagogy for learning that confronts and compromises what already exists, we are introducing change into a fiercely defensive technology, AND most significantly we are using success criteria based on maintaining the same old same old." Right. [
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OLDaily on July 18, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Alan Levine - Still Head Scracthing at Technorati - Cogdogblog
The A-List blogosphere has been remarkably quiet about this, and people keep quoting Technorati
State of the Blogosphere figures uncritically, but Alan Levine is quite right to question the aggregator's credibility. I also do my own ego-surfing and have wondered about the mysterious changes in ranking, inconsistent numbers of links, and just plain weirdness (like jumping from "19 posts in the last 7 hours" to "19 posts in the last 5 days" as happened as I typed up this item, a span of about 5 minutes). Technorati is one of the From
OLDaily on July 18, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Dave Cormier - educationbridges.net - An Elgg for Teacher collaboration - Dave's Educational Blog
Another new online learning community. Dave Cormier writes, "Alex and Arvind have set up an elgg at educationbridges.net. Go sign up. Join the party." That's all very fine, but when I see things like that, I always ask, "What's wrong with what I am doing here?" The point is, these communities always want me to go there - but then my comments are spread all over the net under different identities. I want to stay here - if an ELGG wants my comments, why can't it pull them from a (filtered?) RSS feed, and if it wants me to read the comments of it's members, why can&apos From
OLDaily on July 18, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Mark Morton - Evidence of the efficacy of Active Learning - EDUCAUSE Blogs
No doubt people will enjoy this. The author writes, "I reviewed a number of studies of the efficacy of Active Learning, extracted the most salient passages, and pulled them together into a single document." Not that many examples, but how many quotes do you need like this? "Both within a class and between classes, classes scored higher and less variably on items testing materials presented via active learning compared to lecture, autonomous readings, or video without discussion coverage." [
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OLDaily on July 18, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
Tony Karrer - Better Questions for Learning Professionals - eLearning Technology
My online presentation for today was delayed until Thursday due to technical issues, which is just as well, because Tony Karrer has come out with a set of "better questions". For example, "How can I provide a development process, tools and systems that foster informal learning in a way that I know will have impact on the performance that I care about and that is repeatable?" But - again - who is the "I" in this question? The learner? The teacher? The CEO? The way we ask suggests so much about what we expect for an answer, for better or for worse. [
OLDaily on July 18, 2006 at 5:45 p.m..
The Adorable Lebowski
Cute animated series can only be improved by audio from The Big Lebowski. In Table of Malcontents. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 4:46 p.m..
Dining Out in High Style
Relax and (gulp) enjoy the view. Event organizers serve your dinner party 50 meters in the air -- table and all, suspended by crane. In Gear Factor. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 3:46 p.m..
Fuel Economy Stuck in Neutral
Despite the move to hybrids, lighter weight materials and the ability to turn off cylinders, vehicles on the road suck up just as much gas as ever. In Autopia. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Gonzales: Bush Blocked NSA Probe
Under sharp questioning from the Senate Judiciary Committee, AG Alberto Gonzales says the president is responsible for nixing an internal probe by Justice Department lawyers of the warrantless eavesdropping program. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Brits Float Solar Boat
It may be slow, but developers hope the 42-passenger Serpentine Solar Shuttle cruising a lake in London's Hyde Park will usher in an era of solar-powered transportation. A 60-passenger sun-run train and a 300-passenger Thames ferry are in the works. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 1:46 p.m..
The Curse of Storage
Our ever-growing collections of information and objects can lead to thoroughly modern crises that echo the past. Commentary by Momus. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 6:45 a.m..
Stem-Cell Cheat Sheet
Politicians sometimes tailor stem-cell science to make it fit their arguments. Here's the straight skinny on the science behind the Senate vote that could lead to the first veto of Bush's presidency. By Kristen Philipkoski. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 6:45 a.m..
Busting Burglars With Spit, Vomit
The Justice Department is helping police detectives solve simple property crimes with advanced DNA analysis. Can CSI: Special Shoplifting Squad be far behind? Luke O'Brien reports from Washington. From
Wired News on July 18, 2006 at 6:45 a.m..