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OLDaily
By Stephen Downes
February 19, 2003

Boardroom Despatches: E-learning - Will Its Day Ever Come? This oddly disjointed article asks whether e-learning's day will ever come. It concludes that it will, but in between is a somewhat suspect comparison between British and American model of learning, one that involves flying a student from Scotland to the U.S. every couple of months. I'm sure there is a point to all this - it seems to be an implicit criticism of the British school system. But the alternative described, while it may work for the author, won't work for most people. By René Carayol, Silicon.Com, February 12, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

CORES Registry Unless you are in the business of developing and using metadata this site won't be of a lot of interest. However, if you are in this business, the CORES registry of metadata schemas may become a valuable tool. The first - and potentially most useful - bit of work advanced by this project is to create "a simple Web interface for projects and services to self-register their schemas." The site also has tools and resources to help developers write and use schemas. By Various Authors, Undated [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Transforming e-Knowledge From the abstract: "This book traces the three primary indicators of e-knowledge transformation: 1) Internet technologies, interoperability standards, and emerging e-knowledge repositories and marketplaces; 2) enterprise infrastructures, processes, and knowledge cultures; and 3) cascading cycles of reinvention of best practices, business models and strategies for e-knowledge. It concludes with practical, 'how-to' guidance on accelerating your enterprise's readiness for e-knowledge in order to mobilize leaders and practitioners around the concept of e-knowledge, and develop an enterprise knowledge strategy explicitly driving business plans." By Donald M. Norris, Jon Mason, and Paul Lefrere, Society for College and University Planning, February, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Colleges Ambivalent About Anti-piracy Role According to this article, "The nation's colleges have quietly succumbed to pressure from the entertainment industry to crack down on student use of file-sharing networks to trade music and movies." But while this may true, staff at these institutions are "ambivalent" about their new role and are not caving completely to the industry's demand. "We try to do it the right way. We're trying to say you cannot violate copyright -- not that you can't use Kazaa. You can't steal other people's intellectual property," said Jack McCredie, UC-Berkeley's assistant vice chancellor of information technology. "It doesn't matter whether its music or video or somebody else's term paper." The students, meanwhile, are simply ignoring the ban. By Dawn C. Chmielewski, San Jose Mercury News, Frbruary 18, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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