Translating Constructivism into Instructional Design: Potential and Limitations
Constructivism is a learning theory and not an instructional-design theory, note the authors, raising the question of how instructional designers are supposed to design for it. The authors offer an approach that favours "a more pragmatic approach that focuses on the principles of moderate - rather than extreme - constructivism and makes use of emergent technology tools," surveying active learning, authentic learning, multiple perspectives and collaborative learning. More...

BlogTrace
Lilia Efimova shares this link to Blog Trace, an application that analyzes blog posts for vocabulary and interaction. A diagram of the application is provided. More...

SmarterChild...Your IM Buddy
The importance of this item isn't the cute toy, it is, as Marc Oehlert observes, "the integration into workflow." he writes, "People are already using IM (Instant Messaging) more and more in their daily routine so the idea of making automated knowledge bases available via a well done chat bot is dead on." Along these lines, James Farmer explores several multiple-Account IM clients. More...

Enterprise Services - the REST version
This item is mostly for my future reference - Scott Wilson offers a RESTful (non-)replacement for IMS read-only Enterprise web service using a URL-based syntax. More...

A Twelve Step Program For Identifying and Eliminating Organizational Change (Culture)
It you need a chuckle to start (or end) your day, this twelve-step program is for you. More...

Infrae 'Railroad Repository' for Plone or Zope
Scott Leslie writes, "I am really not sure why I haven't seen more of this, as the longer I look at the LOR problem the more sense it makes to me that 'conventional' repositories can be reasonably easily built on the back of existing (large and relatively stable) open source Content Management Systems." Gosh yes. More...

Developing a University Course For On-line Delivery Based on Learning Objects: From Ideals to Compromises
Scott Leslie finally located this item after a search, and we're glad he took the time. The essay contains interesting documentation of an instructor and his assistant's attempt to create an online business course using learning objects. After a search through repositories proved fruitless, after scouring the web for free resources turned up little of value, and after copyright and delivery issues threw additional roadbloacks, the authors gave up and bought a prepackaged course with book and online support. More...

Public Release of Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment
From the announcement: "The Sakai Project today releases its open source Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) software to the public. Members of the Sakai Educational Partners Program (SEPP) have been reviewing the beta version of the software since their highly successful conference with 170 attendees in June. This release to the public is Sakai Release Candidate 1 (RC1), and it puts the full code in the hands of any institution that wishes to begin using or understanding the Sakai software." The website asserts in nummerous locations that the software is open source, but appears nowhere to specify whether this means GPL or something else. More...

Eduforge Wiki
George Siemens links to a number of useful guides to the use of open source technology available at this website (and, since it's a wiki, you can add your own knowledge or information to this page as well). More...

After IE Is Dead Is The Google Browser Next?
Robin Good waxes poetic about Google's desktop search - a little toolbar that sits in your taskbar and gives you instant access to search without having to launch your browser. Instead, it launches a Google Browser; because of this capacity Good notes "the Google browser appears to me as a significant and insofar unnoticed competitive weapon in Google's hands." Never one to leave things alone, I quickly added Edu_RSS and OLDaily to the custom searches. More...