Flexible Learning Leaders
If you are in Australia especially, you will want to have a look at the reports posted by 30 flexible learning leaders from across the country. Though the quality of these reports varies, most are complete and a number offer interesting and useful observations. More...

Copy Controls and Circumvention: Don't Get Around Much Any More
A clear article written for the non-lawyer summing the opposition (at least in the case of 2600, a hacker magazine that posted links to DeCSS DVD decryption software) to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). More...

OU Attracting More Young People
According to a press release distributed by Britain's Open University, the number of young people studying at a distance is increasing rapidly. What's interesting isn't the number of people, it's the reasons they give. They find it cheaper, according to the release, they want to start working right away, and they find the university a bad place to study. More...

Oprah, Bill Gates and the Future of Books
Nifty article with a good insight into why e-books are not taking off on the net. If you think about it, when we buy music, we also buy a separate player - a Sony Walkman, for example, or a stereo syste, "But when a publisher sells us a novel," writes the author, "they?re also including the 'player'?the display mechanism traditionally called a 'book.'" We have no history of buying text players, and so have no inclination to buy them for electronic content. More...

Conductors Pose First Challenge to Copyright Law
I ask you: is this the sort of future you want to live in? "The URAA pushed the costs for sheet music for works by such composers as Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev from less than $100 to at least $1,000 -- and this only to rent the music. More...

An Education In Cynicism
It just strikes me as silly in this day and age that there should be anything like a shortage of spaces in college and university classes. But there is, and it isn't helped by people trying to be admitted into the 'right' institutions and the institutions' admissions practices. "What we have, for the moment, is the spectacle of some of America's most prestigious educational institutions engaged in behavior that can only be described as antisocial. They have subordinated students' interests to their own. This is hypocritical and indifferent to any larger social good." More...

Distributed Computing Case Ends With Probation
You may have read in OLDaily a few weeks ago about the case where a computer administrator faces heavy fines and long jail terms for installing a distributed processing system on school computers. Well, the case is over, he was - astonishingly - found guilty and given a year of probation and a $2,100 fine. More...

The Erosion of Democracy: From Critique to Possibilities
I have long felt that there is a connection between education and democracy and it may be because I am the product of an educational system that viewed the process of democratic involvement as one of its central objects. Now there is a book by a group of Canadian authors who argue that the connection between education and democracy is under threat from reforms in advanced learning. More...

Designer of Free Course-Management Software Asks, What Makes a Good Web Site?
I don't want to be such a critic, but really - if MIT and Stanford are supposed to be so leading edge, shouldn't they be further ahead than this? "Step 1 is to have a basic system that covers things like posting documents, making announcements, giving quizzes, having a home page. That's a star we can almost reach. We're getting close." Sheesh, guys, take an afternoon, download some simple tools, buy a copy of Hot Potatos. More...

Ask a Philosopher
I don't know - reading through the wonderful and varied questions (this month's first question: "Is there a philosophical justification for nudism?") just seems more civilized than sitting in rows and learning "European Philosophy from Descartes to Kant." Anyhow, this site makes my list of cool sites. More...