Edu_Rss

Why You Should Stop Using AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) RIGHT NOW!
Here's yet another installment in the ongoing saga of AOL's delusions of grandeur. Apparently, AOL has quietly unveiled new terms of service for its popular AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) chat service. Basically, AOL is claiming unlimited rights to all content and ideas transmitted via AIM. That's right – if, say, you use AIM to discuss a new idea for a business, book, deal, etc., AOL is claiming the right to use, publish, or sell your ideas or plans without notifying or compensating you. Whether or not such unabashed greed and thievery is legally enforceable (and I have ser From Contentious Weblog on March 13, 2005 at 10:54 p.m..

Governmental Leadership: Margot Wahlstrom Gives Meaning to the Term "Accessible"
Summary: Margot Wahlstrom is an official of the governing commission of the European Union. She writes a weblog. (Here's a link to the government itself, (Note the front page statement on corporate responsibility). Her openness and accessibility could well be copied with good effect in the US. Here's her most recent entry(click here for comments). From Connectivity: Spike Hall's RU Weblog on March 13, 2005 at 10:47 p.m..

Airport parking upgrade, privacy downgrade
Bruce Mohl has an excellent article in the Boston Globe today (read it fast before it gets flushed down the archive hole) about Logan Airport's advanced parking system. It snaps your license plate on the way in, optically decodes it, and watches which floors you enter, so it knows roughly where you've parked. Every night, humans snap all the cars, so the computer generates a daily report. Benefits: Signs can direct you to a floor with vacancies, and the 25 people/day who lose their car can be directed to it. (I have never been more than three of those people.)... From Joho the Blog on March 13, 2005 at 9:48 p.m..

sxsw: leveraging solipsism (Liz Lawley)
Unfortunately, two of the original three speakers for this panel—Stewart Butterfield and Peter Merholz —couldn’t make it today. Jeff Veen is moderating, and Tantek Çelik, Don Turnbull, and Thomas VanDerWal are the participants. Jeff Veen starts by framing the context,... From Corante: Social Software on March 13, 2005 at 7:49 p.m..

Libraries Are Essential...
Libraries are an essential service, too | csmonitor.com William Ecenbarger writes in The Christian Science Monitor about libraries and their essential place in our society. But in fact, libraries are essential. Reading is still the most basic survival skill in today's information-driven society. Moreover, the gap between rich and poor is widening, and the libraries level the playing field. Portland is very fortunate to have the Multnomah County Library as a resource for our families and students. They offer a wide variety of online and face to face services including book groups, story ti From Education/Technology - Tim Lauer on March 13, 2005 at 6:49 p.m..

Word for readers
Microsoft Word lets you view your document in several modes: Normal (=draft), Web page, printed page, outline, and print preview. Yet there's no view designed strictly for readers. That's too bad since many of us end up reading Word pages we have no editing rights to. If Word added a Read view, it could have special functionality: At the bottom of each screen would be Next and Previous buttons Adjust font family and size with a click of a button...and save your adjustments as a theme We could highlight text and have it saved on a per reader basis Typing... From Joho the Blog on March 13, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..

sxsw: eric meyer on emergent semantics (Liz Lawley)
I arrived at SXSW/Interactive last night, and am starting the conference today with Eric Meyer’s talk on “Emergent Semantics.” He starts with a laugh line—that his talk’s title is “so buzzword-compliant it almost makes me sick.” Then goes on to... From Corante: Social Software on March 13, 2005 at 5:49 p.m..

CIDER presentation on March 24
We've been invited to make a CIDER presentation on March 24 about our research program at the VLC lab. The CIDER announcement and registration details follow below. I attended Terry Anderson's session on Friday, and I think he's onto a... From Rick's Café Canadien on March 13, 2005 at 4:52 p.m..

Developing Self-Directed Learners
This topical summary looks at current research on several aspects of developing self-directed learners. From eLearnopedia on March 13, 2005 at 4:51 p.m..

Flash & audio chess
Chess blogger Dennis Monokroussos points out a lively and successful experiment by Chris Kilgore with annotating and playing through one of his best chess games so blog readers... From Weblogs in Higher Education on March 13, 2005 at 4:51 p.m..

Frankston on Brand X
Bob Frankston talks about two important Supreme Court cases coming up — Grokster and Brand X — with an emphasis on the latter. In Brand X, as I understand it, an ISP sued because it was denied access to a cable company's broadband lines. At stake is whether cable companies, granted munipal monopolies or near-monopolies, will be able to create walled gardens. (Bob provides an excellent set of links so you can read it about it on your own and correct my misrepresentation.) Bob notes elsewhere that these cases are well-timed for discussion at David Isenberg's Freedom2Connect From Joho the Blog on March 13, 2005 at 3:48 p.m..

Separating Content from Presentation for Pedagogy and Reusability
A post on the OpenACS discussion board clued me in to a neat little technology piece called S5. Basically, it takes a single, simple HTML file and turns it into a cross-browser slide show. No more messy, crufty PowerPoint-exported HTML; this is nice and clean. (Check out the demo to… From e-Literate on March 13, 2005 at 2:57 p.m..

JHSPH OpenCourseWare
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's pilot OpenCourseWare (OCW) project provides free and open access to the School's most popular courses to students, self learners, and educators anywhere in the world. From eLearnopedia on March 13, 2005 at 2:52 p.m..

Sony, Apple Seek Fame With a Little Flash - Michael Singer, Internet News
Once a business storage tool, Flash drives are becoming the profit-maker of choice for digital music player manufacturers like Sony and Apple. And they have the enterprise reeling over their storage ability. One only has to look as far as the latest gen From Techno-News Blog on March 13, 2005 at 12:49 p.m..

Microsoft to buy Groove Networks - Martin LaMonica, CNET News
Microsoft on Thursday said it will acquire Groove Networks and make Groove's founder, Ray Ozzie, chief technology officer at the software giant. Microsoft said it will incorporate Groove's "virtual office" collaboration software into its Office line of de From Techno-News Blog on March 13, 2005 at 12:49 p.m..

Exploits Circulating for MySQL Flaws - Ryan Naraine, eWeek
At least two public exploits are circulating for a trio of vulnerabilities in the open-source MySQL database engine, security experts warned on Friday. According to alerts released on security mailing lists, the most serious flaw can be exploited by malic From Techno-News Blog on March 13, 2005 at 12:49 p.m..

Himmelpfortgasse
Hah, one of my favourite films not only cause I live on it. Don't have a TV nor a VCR. Are there any DVDs available?Der Film, der ein Studio in den Ruin trieb: "thomas n. burg | randgänge on March 13, 2005 at 11:46 a.m..

College Expels Student Who Advocated Corporal Punishment
Supporting corporal punishment is one thing; advocating it is another, as an education student at Le Moyne College learned. From New York Times: Education on March 13, 2005 at 8:45 a.m..

New Inquiry on Fund Use at Schools in Roslyn
The new investigation concerns the district's capital budget and its former supervisor of buildings and grounds, who oversaw construction and repair projects. From New York Times: Education on March 13, 2005 at 8:45 a.m..

Drinking Game Can Be a Deadly Rite of Passage
The "power hour" tradition involves 21-year-olds going to a bar at midnight on their birthdays and trying to down 21 shots in the hour or so before the bar closes. From New York Times: Education on March 13, 2005 at 8:45 a.m..

China Plans to Cut School Fees for Its Poorest Rural Students
The move comes in response to criticism that the education system is increasingly corrupt and discriminates against poor rural students. From New York Times: Education on March 13, 2005 at 8:45 a.m..

How Public High School Students Fared in Five Subjects
New York City's four-year high-school graduation rate rose last year, to 54.3 percent from 53.4 percent in 2003. Regents test scores also improved slightly. From New York Times: Education on March 13, 2005 at 8:45 a.m..

Amid the Usual Nail-Biting, Warming Up to a New SAT
In what some observers call the most sweeping changes to the SAT since it was first given in the 1920's, the test has been revamped. From New York Times: Education on March 13, 2005 at 8:45 a.m..

On Reusability (in learning objects)
The XPlanaZine article by Susan Smith Nash appears to have kindled some thoughtful commentary on the blogosphere (on a Saturday, no less). I agree completely with her reservations (as well as those of Darren Cannell). Reusability is pretty much a... From Teaching and Developing Online. on March 13, 2005 at 4:54 a.m..

CATE 2005
The 8th IASTED International Conference on Computers and Advanced Technology in Education (CATE-2005) August 29-31, 2005 Oranjestad, Aruba (Caribbean) http://www.iasted.com/conferences/2005/aruba/cate.htm IMPORTANT DEADLINES: Submissions (papers, sessions, tutorials) due---- April 1, 2005 Notification of acceptance--------------------------------- May 1, 2005 Final manuscript due---------------------------------------- June... From Rick's Café Canadien on March 13, 2005 at 2:52 a.m..

Gigapxl Project
I showed this site to my ECMP 355 students a while back, and they were amazed. The Gigapxl Project is aimed at ultra-high resolution photography. Be sure to check out the amazing image gallery. Kind of puts my Canon S500... From Couros Blog - Frequent Rants from an Ed. Tech'er on March 13, 2005 at 1:54 a.m..

25 dificult questions you'll be asked in a job interview
This is an very interesting collection of interview questions for job interviews. Very good to be prepared for those in case you plan to have one. [via JobBlog] From owrede_log on March 13, 2005 at 12:46 a.m..

Keeping Blogging Safe For Kids
I know many of you who read this are K-12 teachers, and have been experimenting, or at least contemplating the use of blogs with your students. The following is a good site which list pointers on how to keep young... From Couros Blog - Frequent Rants from an Ed. Tech'er on March 12, 2005 at 11:54 p.m..

Kids' lives 'saturated' by media, study says
I have not decided if this is a negative or positive finding, either way it is not a surprising one. It makes one wonder about the sit in rows and listen to me school environment. A report issued Wednesday by... From Teaching and Developing Online. on March 12, 2005 at 11:54 p.m..

The Problem with Learning Objects.
It is nice to see someone else agrees with me...here is my posting from October 4 2004 Learning Objects a time saver or not? Here is the situation... I have been given the job of creating on online course. I... From Teaching and Developing Online. on March 12, 2005 at 11:54 p.m..

Leading the transition
Leading the Transition from Classrooms to Learning Spaces One of the most important activities of a college or university is enabling student learning. Historically, the place where faculty and students came together for formal learning was in the classroom. However,... From Teaching and Developing Online. on March 12, 2005 at 11:54 p.m..

A New Red Scare
I will have much more to say about this story line at a future date (there is the Wall Street Journal article to consider, the Chronicle article, and more) but probably not in this forum. But for now, this item is noted and logged. What I will say here is that this is a deliberate and organized political campaign targeted at higher education and that academics should be concerned. More here. By Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, March 7, 2005 [OLDaily on March 12, 2005 at 11:45 p.m..

Microsoft to Buy Groove Networks
Groove had its problems but it was still far ahead of anything Microsoft ever produced. That makes Microsoft's acquisition a good move for both companies. If Microsoft is smart, they will integrate Groove's functionality into the Windows operating system (or at the very least, make it an integrated application, like Word or PowerPoint). Another category killer, if they can hold off the antitrust attorneys (and there's no reason to believe they couldn't). By Martin LaMonica, ZD Net, March 10, 2005 [OLDaily on March 12, 2005 at 11:45 p.m..

Networks of the Australian Flexible Learning Community 2005
By email today: "The [Australian Flexible Learning Community] Community website will be closing down on 31 March 2005 to mark the transition to the new Networks of the Australian Flexible Learning Community project which is part of the 2005 Australian Flexible Learning Framework." By Unknown, Australian Flexible Learning Network, February 22, 2005 [Refer][Research][OLDaily on March 12, 2005 at 11:45 p.m..