OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
November 12, 2004

The Rising Star - MOST Workshop
This site will be where to find presentations from the Maritimes Open Source Technologies held here on Wednesday. In the mean time, my own slides are available, along with the audio in MP3 - part one and part two (about 6.5M each). By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, November 12, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Teaching History with Technology Newsletter
I spent a good part of my morning with this newsletter (I spent the rest of it writing a spam trapper for my discussion list). What gets me about this newsletter - and it's one of many I see like this - is that it lists resource after resource after resource, none of which are learning objects in any real sense, all of which are reusable (that's why they're in the newsletter), and all of which disappear from sight almost as soon as they're created, because we don't have a simple system like RSS for learning resources. Or - well - we do have such a system, but the people who get big grants to look at this write large, complex Java reference implementations that nobody but themselves can implement. And the stuff just keeps getting written, and just keeps disappearing. Everyone - if you list learning resources of any sort, record them in an RSS feed (simple!) and submit your feed to DLORN. By Tom Daccord, November, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

The Use of Computer and Video Games for Learning
George Siemens describes this as "probably the most complete analysis I've encountered." I have to agree. A comprehensive review of the literature on computer gaming as it applies to education, with overviews of the learning impact, psychological impact, and more. The survey also covers the types of ways games can be used in learning and discusses design recommendations. Keep this one; you'll be reading it again. PDF. Via E-Learning Centre. By Alice Mitchell and Carol Savill-Smith, Learning and Skills Development Agency, November, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Text Readability
Pat Lund describes the site: "It's an experiment in text readability that looks at alignment & case, font, contrast, and line length. If you click on one of the links to the expiraments, you have the option of either participating in the study and then seeing the results when you're finished, or just seeing the results right away." The sample size is pretty small (400 or so) but already the results are a little surprising. Not sure how current this site is or whether the results are being updated dynamically. By Bob Hoffman, November, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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