Technologies for Learning, Thinking and Collaborating
http://www.rsmart.com/index.php
Another startup supporting specifically open source educational applications, this one based in Phoenix. Their initial offering is around the Open Source Portfolio Initiative product, but they promise to expand this to include uPortal and Sakai support. – SWL
http://www.xplana.com/newsletter/newsletter.php
I stumbled across this newsletter from the folks at Xplana through my referrer logs (apparently they are also a CMS company in addition to producing the Xplana blog). If you go through the section titled ‘Useful Research’ you’ll find many posts you have already read before, from many edtech blogs you read. Some of them are just repostings of the original post without anything added; while their link points back to the original post, they are otherwise unattributed.
I seem to think there was a screaming hissy fit about this about a year ago in the ed tech blog space, which I have no desire to revive. But I’m wondering if someone can tell me if by providing the RSS feed to my site I should somehow simply accept this usage of my words? Personally, I think this isn’t o.k. – if you want to redisplay my feed somewhere else, great, but do so by at the very least also displaying the site’s title and a link, even if all I post are just my little annotations to others’ resources. Otherwise, feel free to re-post any links I’ve pointed to – I can’t stop you – but describe them with your own words.
But I am interested in hearing what others think, as I am certain this is not the only place where people’s posts are simply reposted wholescale but without much other attribution. Should I just accept that by offering syndication of the site, that it’s contents will show up elsewhere? – SWL
Via elearning dialogue newsletter comes two interesting pieces. The first, “A Student View of CMS,” is from a 3rd year student at the University of Puget Sound and details his views of his instructors’ uses of Blackboard, and reveals some of the basic things students hope to find in their online courses.
The second is the ECAR study on students’ uses of IT. It gives an interesting picture of the increasing IT competencies of today’s undergrads (the so-called ‘digital natives’) and the last two pages give some details on student uses and attitudes towards CMS. – SWL
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/
story/0,1280,-4540199,00.html
Jacques Derrida died on Saturday. I just found out. I hadn’t known he was sick. It was primarily his work (and to a lesser extent that of his own inspirations, Freud and Heidegger) that led me to study critical theory for my M.A. I even made a pilgrimage of sorts to Oxford to see him speak (it was during the same trip that he was awarded his controversial honorary degree from Cambridge).
People claim he was difficult to read. He was difficult to read, but not because he was trying to be difficult. His difficulty arose instead because he understood that the style in which one says something cannot be divorced from what one is saying, and he was trying to write in a style that was both a part of an extremely long intellectual heritage and simultaneously trying to depart from it. For my own part, I always found it easiest to read him while listening to be-bop jazz in the background. He shall be missed. – SWL
http://www.thetyee.ca/MediaCheck/current/
UBCBookBotKillJoy.htm
The University of British Columbia’s main library is implementing a system in which books are shelved in stacks accessible only to computer controlled robotic cranes. Users will call up books from computer terminals and they will be fetched for them.
Makes a lot of sense, especially as the volume of works explodes and the physical space can’t expand to keep up. This article, though, in part laments this innovation, noting it will likely cause the “lost pleasure of [the] ‘unexpectedÂ’,” that title beside the one you were searching for that actually ends up being the treasure you needed but hadn’t sought. (read more…)
Continue reading “Library ‘Robots’ and the joy of browsing”
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue40/morgan/
Related to the last post, this article from the latest issue of Ariadne gives a good introduction to the Search/Retrieve URL Service, a protocol designed to “define a standard form for Internet search queries as well as the structure of the responses.”
Even if the specific topic isn’t greatly of interest to you, the article may be useful in having one of the most stragithforward explanations of the difference between SOAP and REST-based web services, and why, contrary to all the hype, there is still some value in SOAP-based services. – SWL
http://devil.lib.ed.ac.uk:8080/dplus/
Via the latest CETIS Quarterly newsletter (thanks Stephen) came news of this interesting U.K.-based project. According to the precis on the E-Learning Framework site, the project will deliver “web services and toolkit[s] capable of searching various library and resource gateways and transforming the search results to reusable and standardised schemas for e-learning purposes.”
If I’ve understood correctly (and it’s entirely possible I haven’t) what will be provided is middleware that will enable the core services of search/expose, request/deliver, and submit/store, across heterogenous repositories (from Z39.50 library systems, to LORs, to Amazon and more) through a single set of web service interfaces. Crikey! – SWL
http://www.campus-technology.com/news_article.asp?
id=10041&typeid=155
Well worth the read, this measured and non-reactionary piece by Stephen Acker contemplates the need for institutions to engage and integrate eportfolio systems with their existing course management systems in order to facilitate both sides of the teaching and learning equation. As much as I am at times attracted to ‘loosely-coupled small tools’ visions of some of my fellow edtech bloggers, this strikes me as closer to what will actually emerge in most institutions over the next few years. – SWL
Via David Mattison came news from the library world of this service aimed at undergraduates and the librarians that support them. RedLightGreen is a service from the Research Libraries Group (get it?) that allows users to search over 130 million library catalogue entries. The user can then automatically create citations in either MLA, APA, Chicago or Turabian styles, and with one click also check their local library for title availability. The service is free to anyone; if you are like me and only have to do academic citations irregularly, this is invaluable. – SWL
http://www.bccampus.ca/Page93.aspx
It struck me that while there will be quite a few out there who have seen this before, I haven’t seen it make the rounds of the blogosphere and so maybe it is worthwhile…
The BCcommons Licence is a “open content” licence inspired by Creative Commons but aimed specifically at facilitating sharing of content created within the BC post-secondary system with the rest of that system. It has been developed by my employers (and my boss, Paul Stacey) at BCcampus. It’s a kind of middle ground between “closed” content and the full Creative Commons, a way for our provincial system to promote sharing between institutions but hopefully not pushing people as far out of their comfort zone as the full on Creative Commons might. The first content to be released under this licence should be coming along shortly so we will soon see if this fills the anticipated niche and has the desired effect. And a final note: in a cool twist, the BCcommons licence itself has been released under the creative commons, so if it somehow inspires you and you think it could serve as the basis for your own middle way, dig in! – SWL