mezzoblue:- While it's been a fairly quiet summer around these parts, that doesn't necessarily mean I've been slacking off. Let's run down the list.

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- David Wiley points to the new US $500m OER initiative and notes they will be free for commercial reuse. "We now know that the resources created under the AGI funding will either be licensed CC BY or placed in the public domain. We know this because no CC licenses with SA or NC clauses live up to the promises made in the above statements. And the GFDL has been relegated to the realm of the OPL." Well, we'll see how this works out. The U.S. can provide content infrastructure (I agree with Wiley on this point, that content is infrastructure) free to citizens and corporations if it wants; we'll see how it reacts to what will be the natural impulse of the corporations to block access to the free stuff. David Wiley, iterating toward...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- The standard for online courses, we are told, is firmly in place. Mark Guzdial protests. "Surely, this can't be it - it can't be that Sakai + Twitter + a blog or Wiki is what all future studies will call the 'traditional' form of online courses? What about amazingly and powerful collaborative spaces like Kansas, and provably better ways of teaching with technology like cognitive tutors Surely we can do better than what's being used today? It's that second step that's more promising. We can do much better than...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Is standardisation of curriculum 'an (un)stable and precarious achievement'? It is disquieting, writes Artichoke, "that after reading Edwards this seems increasingly likely." These reflections are based on a reading of Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. Some good stuff here, like this: "innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal state instead of trivial external events, to avoid the creeping danger of believing that objectively described events define you, as they would define a machine." Artichoke considers this in turn with respect to Richard Edwards Translating the Prescribed into...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- The meaning of a word, for Derrida, is in part defined by the alternatives it excludes. (See p. 89, here). What was the range of choices from which one could have selected? We see this explicitly in this model of Google Suggest. What questions can we ask, and what questions are excluded? What do you suggest represents this relationship visually, and interestingly, shows how by reforming language Google Suggest reforms what we can imagine. Alex Chitu, Google Operating System, March 9, 2010 [Tags: Google] [

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- I've heard this from a couple sources, that Moodle is becoming a mish-mash of conflicting technologies. This, I think, is the inevitable outcome of the module-based approach that has come to characterize open source software (and a reason why such an approach doesn't appeal to me). Donald Clark talks about the various offshoots, including Open University's pilot, which he calls a "dead end", and Kineo's commercialization. He suggests that its constructivist intentions are "a lot of rot", not implemented in practise, and "a utopian dream". Donald Clark, Plan B, March 9, 2010 [Tags: Open Source,

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Let me begin the week with this uplifting post from Dave Pollard. "When much of your life is tied up with work (collaborative or hierarchical) and the schedules and priorities of others, most decisions are made for you, or at least restricted by the constraints of society. It is a bit startling to realize that, suddenly, almost every decision I face is mine alone to make. Each decision may have repercussions for others, which I of course have to think about, but ultimately my decisions are now driven by principles, not by accommodation." What are these principles, he asks? Being generous, valuing time, and living naturally. Dave Pollard, How To Save The World, March 8, 2010 [Tags: none] [

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Norm Friesen previews a book, "DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education" by Anya Kamenetz. We both received email this week from the publisher announcing the forthcoming release and noting "Dr. Friesen and you are briefly noted within the text, based on a session that the author attended at UBC." In fact, I was interviewed for the book by the author in January, 2009, and as I reported to our own public affairs people, "The interview focused mostly on models of learning for the future - I talked about the idea of personal learning, the idea that assessment will be dis-aggregated, and that credentials would be granted from...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- If higher education were like an organism that evolved, what would it look like? Probably nothing like this mixed-metaphor formulation: "the pendulum swing(s) faster between proprietary integration and open modulation to accelerate the clock speed for more effective and efficient knowledge creation and distribution?" Evolution isn't teleological; it isn't based on the imperative to "adapt or die". Rather, evolution is more a process of mixing an multiplying, aided by random mutations. If the environment stays the same, most mutations fail; if the environment changes, new mutations multiply rapidly to fill the new niche. In higher education, evolution would be aided by creating a lifecycle of things that grow, flourish,...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- "The Internet is like a new computer running a flashy, exciting demo," writes David Gelernter, "but now it's time to start making the internet do what we want it to do." What the internet brings to the table, he writes, is a sense of "now" that we didn't have before - we know what people are doing now, we know what the price of aluminum is now, the weather now, public opinion, trends and fashions now. But we should refine this into a more complete mastery of time, to enable more reflective, deeper analysis of trends past and future. Scott Leslie, who sent me the link by email, asks, how much of this do we want to program into our machines? We don't want it to do our thinking for us, I think, but it should help us to newer,...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- George Siemens and I have something in common: a background in the restaurant industry. That's just one tidbit from this wide-ranging interview available on video by Ulrike Reinhard. Siemens emerges as a thoughtful and articulate advocate of personalized learning and social networks. Of most interest to me, of course, is his discussion of the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course we taught starting in 2008. But the key question is found in the title of the post, addressing how the education system can become decentralized. Ulrike Reinhard, Conversations At the Beginning of a New Time, March 8, 2010 [Tags: Personalization,

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- A longish article in last Tuesday's New York Times argues that great teaching can be taught. The basis for this proposition is a study by a former teacher named Doug Lemov who, we are told, conducted a study of the techniques used by successful teachers (as determined, in part, by standardized test scores). The advice, summed up as the eponymous "Lemov Taxonomy", a non-school of thought (I found zero scholarly references to it) that incorporates unsurprising techniques to hold the attention of students and to give them clear directions. Even supposing this produces...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- With all the talk of the "death of the VLE" one might wonder what Blackboard thinks about it. Wonder no more, as Blackboard's platform evangelist delivers a long and wide-ranging post defending the VLE in general and the company in particular. The post deserves more attention than I can give it in this short space. John Fontaine talks about the drivers for change - what features should count as core, the need for lower-cost systems, the desire to leverage emergent knowledge in a network. He responds to criticisms about the VLE's inflexibility and hegemony. Drawing on research into ten years of...

mezzoblue:- Currently one of the biggest stumbling blocks to embedded type on the web is of a legal nature rather than any genuine technological barrier. Most of the major browsers have now implemented the @font-face property, and between sIFR and Cufón there are also alternatives for providing non-standard typefaces to browsers that haven’t caught up yet.

mezzoblue:- I've been using Cufón off and on since writing about font embedding back in May. It's a great hack, but browser progress since that time has been making me feel that the native CSS @font-face rule is becoming increasingly viable. Or, at least enough so that it seems like it's time to start dabbling.

mezzoblue:- I've spent a bit of time playing around with HTML5's canvas element lately. It's a fun new toy and has a lot of potential to be useful. But the biggest headache I'm finding so far is the lack of authoring tools.

mezzoblue:- For no particular reason, I present to you a list of things that were true on August 27, 2001:

D'Arcy Norman dot net:- I just wastedspent the evening training the Faces feature of Aperture 3. Wow. It can’t put a name to a face automatically, but as you teach it, it’s spooky how well it does finding photos of people. I’ve been sitting here giggling at all of the photos I’d forgotten of people I care about. Great [...]

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Following Forterra and Metaplace, another 3D environment, There, is shutting its virtual doors. "There has closed registration, billing, and member program upgrades. Also, developer submissions are closed and rental processing will be stopped, so no more rent will be collected for neighborhoods, lots, or There homes. And, all purchases of Therebucks and member program updates... will be refunded in full." If Second Life can survive the downturn, it'll be in a good place. Karl Kapp, Kapp Notes, March 3, 2010 [Tags: Second Life] [

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Open Courseware Consortium president Steve Carson responds to David Wiley's post. Included is a link to the orgqanization's strategic plan Call me jaded, but I don't think Wiley's opinion has changed - he posts the Value Proposition to Members" on his blog without comment (just to put things in perspective - for one year's worth of OCWC's $1 million annual budget I could produce OLDaily indefinitely into the future, until I died, by living off the interest (p.s. anybody willing to give me $1 million to do that should feel free to write)). David Wiley, iterating toward openness, March 3, 2010 [Tags:

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- I agree that we can't ever say "conclusively" about such a study, but games do influence attitudes. "But there's no point in being naive about it: experiences and activities influence our views, thoughts, and beliefs (duh). Even the US Army recognizes the value of games in developing skills (mindsets?) of future soldiers." George Siemens, elearnspace, March 3, 2010 [Tags: Video, Experience] [Link] [

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- The Winnipeg Free Press - never a bastion of enlightenment - is calling for tuition increases. "Manitoba students have had it easy for too long for no real purpose other than political" it argues in an editorial. "Low tuition has not opened the post-secondary doors to low-income families." Maybe not - low-income families have many barriers to face that are not addressed by lower fees. But raising tuition fees surely slams the door on any lower-income students that make it that far. Raising fees entrenches higher education as a bastion of privilege for the wealthier set, and devalues academic merit as the criterion for admission. The newspaper should recommend redressing tuition 'shortfalls' with compensating public funding, and...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- A major European report on open educational resources recommends the adoption of competency-based learning. "This report emphasises the need to foster open practices of teaching and learning that are informed by a competency-based educational framework." (p.12) I can see the reasoning: OER's enable autonomous learning, but only if learning is evaluated in terms of outcomes, not process. "The learner's autonomy, personal mastery and self-direction must be acknowledged." (p.39) This also opens learning to more providers, something explicitly embraced by the report: policy makers and funding bodies, they write, should "demand public–private partnerships to concentrate on ventures for innovating educational practices and...

D'Arcy Norman dot net:- it’s consistently the most interesting, varied, relevant, and mind-opening conference. go. register. now. even better – there’s still time to submit a proposal for a session. I’m going. May in Vancouver? What could be better than that?

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Already missing Training Magazine? You wouldn't be if you were reading this newsletter - or any of the other eight nine alternatives suggested by Karl Kapp. Kark Kapp, Kapp Notes, March 2, 2010 [Tags: Information, Newsletters] [Link] [Comment]

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- David Wiley is wondering whether the Open CourseWare Consortium is good value for money. It just raised $350K from contributing universities. "I have to continue to ask myself... If the hundreds of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on determining a governance structure, drawing up incorporation documents, establishing a board of directors and traveling to board meetings, forming subcommittees, setting definitions (that exclude projects like Connexions), etc., had instead been spent on publishing more OER, wouldn't the world be a better place?" David Wiley, iterating toward openness, March 2, 2010 [Tags:

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- "Social learning is being picked up by software vendors and marketers as the next solution-in-a-box." So notes Harold Jarche, who sees this as the next six-figure grab by enterprise software vendors. "Perhaps PT Barnum was right," he says, "and there is an innate desire to buy some magic potion to solve all our problems. Why are businesses buying their productivity tools from traveling circuses?" Jay Cross comments, "I watched vendors hi-jack the term eLearning, and I don't want to see it happen to social or informal learning." Jane Hart also...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Creative Commons is generating an "Open Database of Educational Projects and Organizations." In this post Alex Kozak asks for contributions. "We'd like to continue supporting this database to help researchers, advocates, and learners find educational projects, analyze trends in online education, and become more effective advocates for open education." Alex Kozak, Creative Commons, March 2, 2010 [Tags: Online Learning, Research, Project Based...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- This is a very interesting project, a service that will test your repository implementation. It's a bit hard to wrap your head around at first (at least it was for me) but basically you give it the URL of the services you want to test and the list of files you want to test it with, and it will act like a user, executing the services, and will return a bunch of metrics. "Each of your selected input files will be passed through the services you have selected and a variety of service and server-level statistics that can be automatically measured will be logged in the system." [ref] Which is a great idea, really. The...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Here's an interesting thought: "If you understand an idea, you can implement it in software." Is this true? If so, we would also have to assert: all ideas can be implemented in software. Which seems false on the face of it ('growing wheat' would be an obvious counterexample) unless you allow the implementation to be a simulation. The way to make sense of the assertion is to think of writing software as a form of writing. And mathematics as a form of writing. The expressive, combined with the syntactical and the grammatical. So, is the thought then true? "If you understand an idea, you can implement it in software, write it, or describe it mathematically." Is it even still the same question? Daniel Lemire, Weblog, March 2, 2010...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Quick post outlining a resurgent interest in educational metadata standards. The planets must be aligned just so, because there has been work in Dublic Core, IEEE-LOM, and ISO Metadata for Learning Resources (MLR). Irvin Flack, e-learning standards, March 2, 2010 [Tags: Metadata] [Link] [Comment]

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- So what are your options when presenting in Second Life? This is particularly relevant because I'll be presenting briefly at a conference in Second Life next week. If not the usual PowerPoint slides - which Alan Levine feels is "perversely wrong" - then what? Audio only? Really, that's the only practical alternative - it takes me maybe 15 minutes or so to make a slide, but would take days to create the equivalent 3D representation. Audio I can handle - but yeah, you need "that great FM radio voice." Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, March 2, 2010 [Tags: Audio,

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Criticisms of instructional design. "Instructional designers are increasingly the tools of management, not folk helping academics. In an increasingly managerialist sector, the 'correct' directions/methods for learning and teaching are increasingly being set by government, government funded bodies (e.g. ALTC and AUQA) and subsequently the management and professionals (e.g. instructional designers, staff developers, quality assurance etc.)" In a comment over the weekend suggested we defer to cognitive scientists who have "developed an understanding of how people learn." My own assessment of cognitive science is that it is as often political as scientific, intended to serve a...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Tony Bates cites a report from Kenya. "The Ex-Street Children Community Organisation (ECCO) has developed an eLearning programme here that provides street children with a platform that not only enables them to share ideas with each other but also to communicate with rest of the society." Tony Bates, Weblog, March 1, 2010 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- I won't linger on this, but want to cite it as evidence that e-learning can effect the emotions. Janet Clarey considers the criticism that online media is making us insensitive. "This made me think of a highly emotional e-learning course about palliative care," she writes. But you have to design it with care. "Content that needs to tap compassion may need to be designed without rapid digital exchanges common to social media." Which means - conversely - that if we're becoming indifferent about life and death, it is because we are designing this indifference in to our media. Janet Clarey, Workplace Learning Today, March 1, 2010 [Tags: Online Learning,...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Facebook is evil, says Eben Moglen, and what we really need are personal web servers. His argument is typically overstated (I don't think Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has really "done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age"). But I agree with this: "We need a really good web server that you can put in your pocket and plug in any place. It shouldn't be any larger than the charger for your cellphone. You should be able to plug it into any power jack in the world or sync it up with any wi-fi router that happens to be in this neighborhood." Thanks to Gary lewis for the link; he also sends this link...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- I have to agree with the author, it's time to get some democracy into philanthropy. As Sami says in D'Arcy Norma's mega-thread on TED, "Let me know when TED covers this topic." It won't, of course; TED is focused on exactly the opposite, the triumph of a privileged few over democracy. But as Michael Edwards argues, when applied to philanthopy, ownership by the private sector, with its business-driven next-quarter focus, makes things worse. "Serious questions are raised by privatising the search for solutions to global problems. For one thing, who decides which problems get attention? ... Even more troubling, corporate philanthropy deflects...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- The message of Diane Ravitch's recent book is that there is no research base supporting proposals for reform. "There is NO research base supporting any of the provisions so-called "reformers" advocate - not for charters, not for merit pay for teachers, not for using test scores as the sole measure of the performance of teachers and schools, not for approaches such as those advocated by Teach for America for teachers nor New Leaders for New Schools for principals." Instead, many of the provisions may actually make things worse. "Removing public oversight will leave the education of our children to the whim of entrepreneurs and financiers. Nor is it wise to entrust our schools to inexperienced teachers, principals, and...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- The media may change, but are writing and text "not going anywhere", as Negroponte says? It's hard to imagine a more efficient vehicle for communication, even if we are tempted to skim text in the new information-rich internet. "The multiple quotations in this posting are an example. The video or audio material from which they came represented considerably more time viewing, active listening, and transcribing on my part than it will take any reader of this posting to "consume" them. Many gigabytes of video material can be represented by a few megabytes of words."Indeed. If there is anything that will replace text, it would gave to be something that is equally abstract, and it is in that, I would say, that we need to look...

mezzoblue:- In the spirit of Dear Adobe, I submit the following two minute Photoshop gripe:

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Tim Bray says of the patent system, "The whole thing is too broken to be fixed." He cites a stream of recent events, including the ongoing harassment of RIM, the argument that they do nothing to spur innovation, evidence. showing patents do not increase innovation, and the huge drain litigation creates. "While we all might agree that, in theory, it'd be good to introduce legal structures that provide incentives for...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- The IIPA may be lobbying the U.S. government to consider open source to be a form pf piracy. According to this report, "the International Intellectual Property Alliance, an umbrella group for organisations including the MPAA and RIAA, has requested with the US Trade Representative to consider countries like Indonesia, Brazil and India for its 'Special 301 watchlist' because they use open source software." The "Special 301 watchlist", of course, is the list of intellectuual property violators. Sad and shameful. Unattributed, The Guardian, February 26, 2010 [Tags: File Sharing, Open...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Starting March 1, education.au and curriculum corporation are being merged. The new website reads, "Education Services Australia Limited has been established through the merger of Curriculum Corporation and Education.au Limited. While the new website is under construction, please access our existing websites by clicking on the logos below for information and news." Kerrie Smith, You are Never Alone, February 26, 2010 [Tags: Mergers and Takeovers, Australia] [

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- So you're hiring: do you chose the BSc Computer Science, or the "Google Qualified Developer"? Like other technology companies, Google is coming out with its own certification program, but unlike other companies, a Google Qualified Developer is likely to have a range of directly applicable skills for internet development. Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, February 26, 2010 [Tags: Google] [

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- It's pretty clear that some of the authors involved did not take the "10 rules" seriously. Others, meanwhile, got a little carried away (reminding me of the 'postcards' being exchanged in Barbara Ganley's Joyce-reading circle. "They feel like little bursts of felt response–by readers who love to read and love to feel the pen on a card, having to move within the confines of that small white square, and caring enough to take the time to find a postcard." As Al Kennedy says in his ninth rule: "Remember you love writing. It wouldn't be worth it if you didn't. If the love fades, do what you need to and get it back." Ah yes, but then there are...

Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily:- Presentation from Gráinne Conole based around 5 facets of a course. "The categories were Guidance and Support, Information and Experience, Communication and Interaction, Thinking and Reflection and Evidence and Demonstration." Well, yeah, but I am left wondering about the theoretical basis for this characterization. Why, for example, are 'information' and 'experience' lumped together in the first model. Why are 'content and activities' together in the second (which consists of "Guidance and Support, Content and Activity, Communication and Collaboration, and Reflection and Demonstration")? Educational theory loves taxonomy, but on most days I fail to see the benefit. Gráinne Conole, e4innovation.com, February 26, 2010 ...

D'Arcy Norman dot net:- a discussion board post for my “conceptualizing edtech” course, archived for posterity. It was written for an audience (fellow students in the course) that may not have much background in living online, so I settled for using terminology they may have seen before. It’s also supposed to be a brief post, so I didn’t go [...]

D'Arcy Norman dot net:- Rereading Alan’s post on his blog hiatus, where he takes a month off of posting on his blog to comment elsewhere, I was struck (as always) by the patterns in activity he described. I decided to take a closer peek at the activity on my own blog – I’ve been thinking a lot about discourse [...]

mezzoblue:- Last we left off, I'd just started going down the road of playing with @font-face, sans IE. This is the follow-up where we bring Internet Explorer back into the equation and look at the hoops we need to jump through to bring it in line.

D'Arcy Norman dot net:- It looks like the University of Calgary is planning a series of TEDx events: TEDxUofC – the first one being next week, just days after the TEDxYYC event. After previously saying I wouldn’t go to a TEDx event because of the way they’re set up, I’m happy to post that they don’t have to be that [...]