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OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
November 13, 2009

Media Education Project
I attended a very nice presentation by Mark Lipton on the Media Education project, a research and technology exchange initiative based at Guelph. In the newly relaunched site we see the inaugural issue of Inaugural Issue of the Journal of Media Literacy Education, a sound production tool, and more. Quite popular, and worth a look, is their Monograph Series:


Various Authors, Website, November 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Research, Project Based Learning] [Comment]

Meet Go, Google's New Programming Language
This is a very interesting development.

Google has released a brand-new programming language it hopes will solve some of the problems with existing languages such as Java and C++. The language is called Go, and it was released under an open source license Tuesday." It's very much a matter of discussion whether this language will be widely used, or whether it means using one language to program for Windows and another to program for Google platforms. Go is currently available only for Linux and Mac. Scott Gilbertson, Monkey Bites, November 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Google, Open Source, Microsoft] [Comment]

My talk at the Canadian Marketing Association: Markets are networks
It's interesting to watch David Weinberger re-examine and reconsider his original Clutrain thoughts. This is a case in point: not long ago he would have said (and did say) "markets are conversations" and leave us a bit in the lurch understanding what that meant. Now he says "markets are networks" - an improvement, and he expands on it in this post. But it brings new questions: how do you deal with non-alignment of interests? What does "authenticity" really mean? What about scale (because, contra Weinberger, most networks (including the internets) are not scale-free). And we have to return again to the conversation - but not as a euphemism, but in a serious and informative way, the way I tried to do yesterday. David Weinberger, Joho the Blog, November 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Networks, Canada] [Comment]

A WordPress Plugin App Store: Commodify and die!
Jim Groom laments "the latest business venture is a WordPress Plugin App store a la iPhone apps. Another pay to play solution that is asserts that "the future of WordPress is premium plugins." But really, could we have expected any other development? Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, November 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

School Choice, Civics Knowledge, and Fraud
The real question regarding the apparently fake Stategic Vision 'citizenship survey' (FiveThirtyEight has done a series on them and argued convincingly that their survey results are mostly fiction) is not how faked it was, but rather, who paid for such a result, and why. Mike Caulfield, Weblog, November 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Schools] [Comment]

A Pedagogy of Abundance take 2
Martin Weller: "I gave a presentation for George Siemens CCK09 course last night, which explored an idea I had proposed in this blog a while back, on the pedagogy of abundance. I wanted to explore the idea, so talked for half an hour and then we had a good discussion. You can see the recording of the session in Elluminate here." Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, November 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Web Logs] [Comment]

Where Next for Digital Identity?
There has been discussion of digital identity recently, with EDUCAUSE giving an award to 'Digital Identity Federations' and various projects being undertaken to provide signons to university systems. And I guess my main question - and which needs to be addressed - what makes universities think they will be the granters of identity? How long before people sign on with either a government identioty or a corporate (eg. Google or Facebook) identity? Identity federations won't make much sense in such a scenario. Andy Powell, eFoundations, November 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Google, Research, Project Based Learning, EDUCAUSE] [Comment]

Moodle is an Airport, Not a Total Solution!
Good discussion of Moodle taken, not as a one-stop solution to online learning needs, but a focused tool used for specific tasks. Moodle is not, says the author, a content development tool, a concurrent users' king, or a web 2.0 sensation. Related: Moodle, the wrong tool for the job. Zaid Ali Alsagoff, ZaidLearn, November 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning] [Comment]

eCollab
Harold Jarche: "I've been working with Frédéric Domon over the past few months and you may have noticed that we recently launched Entreprise Collaborative, a cross-cultural idea laboratory to exchange perspectives with experts and practitioners around collaboration and social learning in the enterprise." Harold Jarche, Weblog, November 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Free Online OCR
This is kind of neat. Upload an image, and this online application returns the text from the image. Free (ad supported). Related (and from the same source): Gizmoz - a 3D talking character that makes use of your photo. Various Authors, Website, November 13, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

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