Edu_RSS
Retour from Hamburg
I am in the train back to Cologne. I am thinking about, what I was seeing and hearing the last two days at the
Campus Innovation conference. The conference theme was trying to bring educatiors and administration closer together in context of e-Education. Talking about the different sessions would make this a very long post. I'll skip that. I just want to state that I got the impression that politicians and university administrators try to turn higher education in some kind of electronic commerce. »Education = content delivery&la From
owrede_log on September 21, 2005 at 7:46 p.m..
Wiener Wahlen: the candidates
There is election campaigning in Vienna. In a little more than 4 weeks the City council of Vienna is elected. Vienna is reigned by the Socialdemocrats and the only question is if they will the get out of the electorate with an absolute majority - this happened the last time in 1987 (
see the history [pdf]) Today I was asked to review the websites of the major candidates for the
local TV-channel. Well, to make the long story short. I stopped by at those si From
thomas n. burg | randgänge on September 21, 2005 at 7:46 p.m..
Span the Silos for Comprehensive Distance Education , EDUCAUSE Blogs
The author taps into a common problem: departments that operate independently tend to remain insular, and staff within those departments remain unaware of the nature and work of the other department. The solution proposed - job shadowing, wherein an employee from one department shadows one from another department for a day or so - is less satisfactory. It takes too much time and is too disruptive, with too nebulous a gain, for most employees to contemplate. It seems to me that, rather than mandating direct personal instruction (which is what job shadowing amounts to), a combination of online s From
OLDaily on September 21, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..
Moodteller: Estimating Mood Levels in LiveJournal ,
You might this this is pretty useless, except, if you can (accurately) estimate mood based on the content of LiveJournal posts, you can probably estimate any of a wide range of tacit phenomena - how much someone likes you based on email messages, degrees of customer hostility based on product feedback, anger at politicians based on letters to the editor. Way cool. Via elearningpost. [ From
OLDaily on September 21, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..
A Field Guide to Learning management Systems , Learning Circuits
George Siemens links to this "short report on learning management system product features, pricing models, implementation, etc." This isn't a guide to specific systems, but to purchaser attitudes and trends. Siemens comments that "the statistics are a bit depressing (and quite indicative of how organizations view an LMS). What did survey respondents view as most valuable aspects of an LMS? Testing, reporting, and compliance tracking." Such is the state of education, that it has come down to this. PDF. [ From
OLDaily on September 21, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..
Institutional Repository Deployment in the United States as of Early 2005 , D-Lib
According to this article, "institutional repositories are becoming well-established as campus infrastructure components " around 40% of the respondents have some type of institutional repository operating, and 88% of those that do not yet have a repository have planning work underway." Interestingly, when the authors looked at the size of these repository, they concluded that "it is clear that no two institutions are counting the same things." DSpace and bepress were the most commonly used software applications. [ From
OLDaily on September 21, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..
Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid ,
Scathing account of the continuing segregation in American schools (you can draw your own parallels on a worldwide basis). The author concludes, "The promulgation of new and expanded inventories of 'what works,' no matter the enthusiasm with which they're elaborated, is not going to change this. The use of hortatory slogans chanted by the students in our segregated schools is not going to change this. Desperate historical revisionism that romanticizes the segregation of an older order (this is a common theme of many separatists today) is not going to change this. Skinnerian inst From
OLDaily on September 21, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..
Dr. Jonassen- Let Us Learn to Solve Problems
In the ITForum discussion of David Jonassen's problem-based theory of learning, Thad Crews laments the lack of empirical evidence to support the theory. This article examines the role of empirical evidence with respect to Jonassen's theory and argues that acceptance (or non-acceptance) is not so much a matter of experimentation as of the adoption of one or another conceptual framework. [ From
OLDaily on September 21, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..
Why does...
Why is it considered necessary to nail down the lid of a coffin? Why don't you ever see the headline "Psychic Wins Lottery"? Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle? Why is it that doctors call what... From
Teaching and Developing Online. on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Weblogs in Higher education
One of the reasons administrators will probably struggle for some time with the idea of blogging is that there is no end in sight to the oppositional role that blogs can play. Blogs / Weblogs in Higher Education... From
Teaching and Developing Online. on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Web 2.0
If you haven't heard of it, you will: Web 2.0. It's exploding into conversations online at the moment. Is it a useful way of describing the way that the web is turning to a distributed environment where users push/pull/share content... From
Teaching and Developing Online. on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Always-on Learning Environment
Who are the students entering today's colleges and universities? Sometimes referred to as the Net Generation or Millennials (students born in or after 1982), we know that this is a group that has never known a world without computers and... From
Teaching and Developing Online. on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Is It an Article, an Ad, a Blogvertorial?
Do you think that readers will understand that a "blogvertorial" is advertising? That's the name of a new form of text advertising introduced last week on
New West, a news website covering the Rocky Mountain West (and one that has a heavy "citizen-journalism" focus). From
Poynter E-Media Tidbits on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Reporter Blogs, Interactivity: Hail the New Print Edition
Over the weekend I was in Portland, Oregon, (presenting at the National Conference of Editorial Writers
annual convention) and picked up a (print) copy of The Oregonian. The newspaper debuted a significant redesign for the Sunday Oregonian, utilizing the paper's slogan, "High-Definition News." It's meant to make the newspaper more modern, more interactive, and more transparent. This redesign clearly has been influenced by trends online. For example, there's major promotion From
Poynter E-Media Tidbits on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
More Wikis in LATimes.com Future?
After LATimes.com's awful experience with its "
wikitorial" experiment, will the newspaper and its website ever venture into
wiki territory again? (Some people inserted profanity and pornographic content into the editorial.) Perhaps, said Michael Newman, deputy editor of the editorial pages, in a panel appearance at the National Conference of Editorial Writers
c From Poynter E-Media Tidbits on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
MSNBC.com Seeks New Editor
MSNBC is "extremely profitable"; is looking for a new editor; and is trying search-engine optimization and other tools to break out of its two-year traffic "stalemate" with Yahoo! News and CNN.com, according to
this article in the Puget Sound Business Journal. From
Poynter E-Media Tidbits on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Katrina and the Citizen Publisher
The other day I spoke with Florida corrections officer (and part-time website developer) Robert Gary. In a sense, I think he's a citizen publisher. Gary, you see, is the founder of
Hurricanekatrinasurvivors.com, a clearinghouse website that people have been using to find each other in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, offer and seek help and housing, etc. Gary and his wife set up the Katrina website because they wanted to help people. As one of the first such sites, it took off quickly, generating somewhere around 4 m From
Poynter E-Media Tidbits on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Investigating and Discovering Thanks to Google
Google Maps and
Google Earth have turned out to be great investigating tools. Luca Mori, an Italian computer programmer, has discovered a Roman villa around his town of Sorbolo, near Parma -- but he found it not by walking around but by searching with Google's tools. After spotting some unfamiliar "rectangular shadows," he contacted an archaeologist and his discovery was confirmed. Mori explains his finding process in his weblog,
Quelli Della Bassa, which From
Poynter E-Media Tidbits on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Photo-Sharing Websites as Citizen-News Providers
A PR person for online photo-sharing service
Webshots wrote me to pitch the idea of paying attention to citizen news-oriented photos appearing on that site. That doesn't strike me as anything new; people have been posting their amateur photos at services like Webshots and
Flickr for some time -- and increasingly, they post news-related images. But looking at Webshots, it occurred to me that such services easily could morph into more serious citizen-news providers. Yes, that's already the case with big s From
Poynter E-Media Tidbits on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
User Comments Provide Base for Print Product
In this burgeoning age of citizen journalism (a.k.a., grassroots media), we're starting to see more print products based on online citizen content. For instance,
MaineToday.com has been working with the Portland Press Herald to create a printed newspaper section based largely on citizen-submitted online content. It
debuted this week with the name iHerald. According to MaineToday.com editor Scott Hersey, his site has been accepting reader comments for more than a year, and he' From
Poynter E-Media Tidbits on September 21, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..
Lesson Exchange
I was sitting at Starbucks talking with some of my colleagues about setting up a lesson exchange. The basic principle would be that teachers would share materials that they had created for different types of lessons or activities. Teachers wouldn't be required to contribute, but neither would we want to have leeches participating. We agreed that somehow limiting access to the files based on contribution would be the best option. Initially teachers would be allowed to download two (maybe three) files without uploading any activities. And for each uploaded activity they would then be able From
Language, teaching, and all things EFL on September 21, 2005 at 6:47 p.m..
The Grinch
This coming week, I'm doing a special focus on listening in the classroom. One of the activities that I wanted to do was a song, but since I am so out of touch with current music trends I decided to go back to my youth instead. My all time favorite tv special is How the Grinch Stole Christmas and in particular the song You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch. The song is full of great lines, is fun and I think fantastic for the EFL classroom. I found the lyrics and mp3 to the song available at Bil's Christmas Library. I took that and made a worksheet for my students. You can download the From
Language, teaching, and all things EFL on September 21, 2005 at 6:47 p.m..
JAJAH To Go Cross-Platform
JAJAH is about to release a full version of its Skype-like VoIP technology which will add more interesting abilities to its already extensive feature set. Included in the upcoming new JAJAH release are: free video messaging, the introduction of the... From
Kolabora.com on September 21, 2005 at 6:47 p.m..
George Siemens points us to an LMS Field Guide
George Siemens points us to an
LMS Field Guide. Kind of basic, and no specific reviews of products, but possibly useful to managers.
LMS Field Guide (.pdf) - short report on learning management system product features, pricing models, implementation, etc. The statistics are a bit depressing (and quite indicative of how organizations view an LMS). What did survey respondents view as most va From
Bill Brandon: eLearning on September 21, 2005 at 2:49 p.m..
On being a connector
On being a connector. The number of educators paying attention to George Siemens' ideas is growing.
Teaching Connectivism. Teaching Connectivism: "My personal knowledge is really a network of correspondences and connections. I learn by interacting with a huge network of individuals and learning objects (some are available online, some offline)." [
Connectivism Blog] From
Bill Brandon: eLearning on September 21, 2005 at 2:49 p.m..
No man is an island
No man is an island. Helen Chen is writing about students entering universities, but we are all learning to have the same confidence in and reliance on technology. My guess is that you will find much of what she has to say is germane to your situation with older workers and learners. After all, if we wire up the world for the new members of the workforce, the old fudds are going to have no choice but to go along for the ride. Who knows, the OF may find they like being "always-on."
Bill Brandon: eLearning on September 21, 2005 at 1:49 p.m..
Some technology is not for everyone (apparently)
Some technology is not for everyone (apparently). OK, so the video clip thing is kind of doubtful, where quality and length of video is concerned. But IF you know that a lot of the people you are trying to reach are in the demographic for which this phone is intended, why wouldn't you try to exploit the phone features? Doesn't mean you have to buy one yourself. Put up the AK-47.
My New Cell Phone? Doubtful!. From
Bill Brandon: eLearning on September 21, 2005 at 1:49 p.m..
Educause site uses Drupal
As I experiment with Drupal for a couple of potential uses, I see that Educause is using it to host a community of blogs, podcasts, etc. Wondering out loud why AECT isn’t as organized as Educause. Of course Educause receives significant sponsorship ($) from hardware and software companies, and seems to promote hardware and software as [...] From
Martindale Matrix on September 21, 2005 at 12:50 p.m..
HotOrNot + Google Map + Wikipedia
TopSpotOrNot lets you rate the satellite images of various spots, combining HotOrNot, Google Maps, Wikipedia and Google images. All it needs is Flickr and del.icio.us to be 100% Cool Site Compliant! (Thanks to wanagi for the link.)... From
Joho the Blog on September 21, 2005 at 12:48 p.m..
Boobs for Katrina
Irina Slutsky interviews Justin Ross, the person behind Boobs4BourbonSt, a site where men and women can donate topless photos of themselves and visitors can only see the girls/guys going wild if they forward proof that they've donated at least $5 to the Katrina relief effort. So far the site has raised over $13,000. Snippet: Irina: ...What kind of job you want after graduation? Justin: I'm leaning toward something in government. Not necessarily a congressman or senator, but I think I'd really enjoy being an aide or assistant to one. Maybe work my way up to working in the preside From
Joho the Blog on September 21, 2005 at 11:47 a.m..
Me on Tagging on All Things Considered
NPR's "All Things Considered" last night ran a three minute commentary of mine on tagging. You can hear it here, thanks to Michael Shook. Here's a near-transcript: Google is smart, but here's a tough problem for it. Let's say you type in "africa," "agriculture" and "grains" because that's what you're researching. You'll get lots of results, but you may miss pages about "couscous" because Google is searching for the word "grain" and doesn't know that that's what couscous is made of. Google knows the words on the pages, but doesn't know what the From
Joho the Blog on September 21, 2005 at 11:47 a.m..
Anthropology in Business
BBC on
business anthropology: "These days we're the tribal people, it's us they're observing as we go about our daily lives and over the past few years especially, what we do and why we do it is becoming of increasing interest to business." From
elearningpost on September 21, 2005 at 11:45 a.m..
Newsflash: Goatee gone. Chin and upper lip, released unharmed, recovering at Walter Reed hospital.
As so many predicted, my summer fling with a goatee and moustache has, with the changing of the leaves, ended. We have, rather fashionably, annulled the relationship. It was just too high maintenance, requiring near-constant tugging and twisting, especially the delicious little bits on the border with the shaved areas. You know who you are. Um, were. I couldn't maintain my beard and write my blog. It really came down to that. And while I was in having my goatee and moustache removed, I had them further weaken my chin and, what the heck, add some more moles. BTW, I... From
Joho the Blog on September 21, 2005 at 9:49 a.m..
Moodteller: Estimating mood levels in LiveJournal
Now
this is cool. Imagine the implications for such a system in organizations. We currently analyze approximately 5000 LiveJournal blog posts per hour using statistical language processing methods and estimate, according to the textual features of the posts, the percentage of them which are "happy", "sad", "excited", and so on; we do not use the mood indication given by LiveJournal. After the estimation is done, we check how good it is by examining the real indications given by the bloggers. The g From
elearningpost on September 21, 2005 at 9:47 a.m..
Cuidado con la chica de la foto
Sugerente campaña del Ministerio de Salud y Asuntos Sociales de Suecia para poner de relieve las manipulaciones que sufre la imagen de la mujer en los medios: VÃa: inusual... From
eCuaderno v.2.0 on September 21, 2005 at 8:50 a.m..
Webdesign changed
I have been doing HTML pages since 1994 when xMosiac 1.0 hit the FTP servers worldwide. The only really radical changes to webdesign for a very very long time had been a) JavaScript, b) tables and c) frames. I hesitate to include CSS, because it was kind of buggy and browser specific for a long time. There have been many other smaller things around but these I would not consider seriously because those brought only few advatages while the payoff was huge: you needed Plug-Ins or it was not working on any browser. Flash might be a small exception, because that worked well across browsers, but Fl From
owrede_log on September 21, 2005 at 8:45 a.m..
Workshop on Blogging
I am in Hamburg at the
Campus Innovation conference to offer a small 90-minute workshop on blogging together with
Nico Lumma. There are amny represenatitives from the E-Learning community and university here. The room is supposed to hold 10 people, but the organizers told me that minimum 24 attendees are expected. There seems to be quite some interest in this topic. I hope I can spur some ideas... From
owrede_log on September 21, 2005 at 8:45 a.m..
La diferencia está en los detalles
Hoy, de regreso en la Universidad, me encuentro con la agradable sorpresa que siempre representa el embalaje de Amazon. En esta ocasión me llega The Tipping Point de mi lista de deseos por gentileza de Eduardo Pedreño. Hablando de proyectos... From
eCuaderno v.2.0 on September 21, 2005 at 6:51 a.m..
October edubloggers meetup
The next meetup is scheduled for Saturday October 8th 2005, in Birmingham. Why should you come?Well, Birmingham is a culturally diverse, vibrant city - the second largest in Britain - and has more canals than Venice. If you're a not huge canal enthusiast, or tempted by the excellent shopping opportunities, then why not come just to hang out with other edubloggers? And talk about ed From
Seblogging News on September 21, 2005 at 6:49 a.m..
The structure of collaborative tagging systems
Scott Golder and Bernardo A. Huberman have written an article that explores collaborative tagging systems. To quote: Collaborative tagging describes the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content. Recently, collaborative tagging has... From
Column Two on September 21, 2005 at 6:46 a.m..
The future Of web design is content management
Martin Lemieux discusses the growing importance of content management systems for web designers. To quote: This is somewhat of a call out to all web design companies. If you cannot offer content management to your clients, you may be left... From
Column Two on September 21, 2005 at 6:46 a.m..
Google Moves Into Wi-Fi Arena
The little search engine that could continues evolving into a Hydralike monster. Its newest head will chew its way into the wireless internet world, making Google a direct competitor of ISPs and telecom companies. From
Wired News on September 21, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
More Clout for Microsoft Execs
The Redmond monolith shakes up its corporate structure, investing more decision-making power in the hands of its top executives in order to make the company more competitive. From
Wired News on September 21, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
Copyright Lawsuit Targets Google
The search giant's bold plan to scan and index books from university libraries hits another obstacle: a lawsuit filed on behalf of 8,000 authors that accuses Google of 'massive copyright infringement.' From
Wired News on September 21, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
Bot Builders Scramble for Cash
Inventors show off machines that climb walls, change shape and chase people around the room. But a new report finds U.S. funding for civilian robotics research is dwindling. Michael Grebb reports from Arlington, Virginia. From
Wired News on September 21, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
Nix the Ban on Sports Drugs
Rules restricting athletic enhancers like steroids are hypocritical and ultimately unenforceable. But there is another way to level the playing field -- let the players set their own limits. By Mark McClusky. From
Wired News on September 21, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
Fraud Sinks Subway's Sub Club
Dratted technology forces sandwich and ice cream franchises to discontinue their customer-appreciation programs. What's a card-carrying customer to do? By Jacob Ogles. From
Wired News on September 21, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
Squid Labs: Suckers for Novelty
When five guys from MIT wrap their tentacles around tough engineering challenges, a flurry of innovation ensues. Quinn Norton reports from Emeryville, California. From
Wired News on September 21, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..
How to Build an Accessible Curb Cut
Because this site gets a number of hits on accessibility specifications of actual curb cuts, I thought I would post a couple of resources for misguided visitors. Specifically I'll outline the little that I've been able to find out about curb cuts and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Definition First off a definition
from the Wikipedia entry on curb cuts: A curb cut (US) or dropped kerb (UK) is a ramp leading smoothly down from a s From
Curb Cut Learning on September 21, 2005 at 2:52 a.m..
Petitioning parliament by mouse - Jane Wakefield, BBC News
If e-government seems to be mainly about doing tax returns online, then e-democracy is its more exciting cousin, promising to put citizens at centre stage of the political process. E-democracy projects are springing up all over the UK. They range from on From
Techno-News Blog on September 21, 2005 at 2:49 a.m..