OLDaily
by Stephen Downes
Sept 28, 2016
US school's unmanned boat reaches Welsh coast
BBC News,
2016/09/28
A driverless boat (pilotless boat?) created by students from Kent School in Maryland was recovered in Wales. They launched The Osprey with a time capsule onboard off the New Jersey coast on 13 June and tracked it across the ocean. Projects like this are always great educational experiences. "Our excitement was at fever pitch. We're going to wait for our head teacher to make contact with the school in the US and then hopefully do a live weblink with them and open it up." With luck the boat can also be used to instruct the BBC on gender-neutral language.
Educational Software Patents: A Call to Vendors
Michael Feldstein,
e-Literate,
2016/09/28
As described here September 1, Elsevier won a patent for an online peer review system, something the open source Online Journal Systems has been doing for decades. This post continues the discussion from Miichael Feldstein, noted for his coverage of the Blackboard patent case. He called on "educational institutions to gather together and sign a pledge that they would not procure products from companies that assert education-related software patents," but in the face of utter indifference this seems unlikely to happen. So now he's calling on software companies to respond. "The right thing for vendors to do here is to create what’s known as a patent pool. Any patent owner who contributes to the pool pledges to only use that patent for defensive counter-suits."
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