By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. David Wiley[Edit][Delete]: On The Inanimate Nature of Learning Objects, Iterating Toward Openness [Edit][Delete]Iterating toward openness [Edit][Delete] February 1, 2006

[link: 2 Hits] You can't blame readers, really, for thinking that a post titled "RIP-ping on Learning Objects" might have had something to do with burying them, but David Wiley advises that people should read the text after the title, which I suppose is only reasonable. "Learning objects are neither alive nor dead," he writes. "I'm as firm a believer in the value of reusable educational resources as I ever have been". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unattributed[Edit][Delete]: iTunes U, Apple [Edit][Delete]Apple [Edit][Delete] February 1, 2006

[link: 6 Hits] OK, this sounds like a good idea: make university classes, seminars and lectures available as audio feeds. Except that it's iTunes, which means you have to take the Apple iTunes pill (or, as the website says, except variable results on other players). There's obviously also a strong commercial component to this as well, which pretty much cuts out the service for those who need it most. Or as Miguel Guhlin says, "iTunes and Windows Media Player: Two sides of the same coin - Tyranny." Don't be lulled into the same fallacy with audio content as so many were with web-based content. There's no golden rainbow out there (except maybe for a select few big name institutions, and even that's iffy). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Terry Anderson[Edit][Delete]: Comparing Formal, Open and Self-directed Learning, Virtual Canuck [Edit][Delete] February 1, 2006

[link: 7 Hits] Terry Anderson bridges the gap between formal learning and informal learning with open learning. He looks at the properties of each, and concludes that open learning offers more advantages than either other alternative. One wonders, though, at the valuations; they seem a little arbitrary, and not entirely accurate. Anderson rates open learning a 3 out of 3, for example, for "Freedom of Pace." Unless things have changed since I was at Athabasca, though, students face time limits (it was six months per course while I was there). Open learning is also offered through paced seminar courses. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors[Edit][Delete]: Working Draft for ISO/IEC 19788-2 Metadata for Learning Resources, ISO [Edit][Delete] February 1, 2006

[link: Hits] The International Standards Organization (ISO) is rewriting learning Object Metadata; this link (to a PDF file) is a draft of the new standard. The draft has been circulating for a few days among the standerati and has received, well, a bit of a rough ride. The standard doesn't resemble what I would do, but there are some good bits - for example, the rights section now allows the document to point to a URL of a rights statement. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Jeff Lebow and Dave Cormier[Edit][Delete]: Connectivism and Connected Knowledge, Elearnspace [Edit][Delete]ELearnSpace [Edit][Delete] February 1, 2006

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. DIT goes live with first Irish MOOC
Dublin Institute of Technology, April 25, 2013
I found it interesting to look in and around what was advertised today as the "first Irish MOOC" (I have no idea whether that's true). It is offered by the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and facilitated by DIT staff member Anne Green. But it appears to have been developed in Singapore (and that's where the advertising came from), at a company called GetReskilled, which specialized in Pharmaceutical and medical device industry; they have a list of short self-paced courses they offer prospective students. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The ROLE Sandbox
ROLE - Responsive Open Learning Environments, April 25, 2013
I saw this in my LinkedIn stream today: "The ROLE Sandbox (http://role-sandbox.eu) is a permanent hosting environment for widget-based personal learning environments. Everybody is welcome to create or join learning spaces in the ROLE sandbox. Access is easy. Just register or use your OpenID. Connect to the ROLE widget store to install widget bundles to learn about languages or science. Give feedback on everything you like or dislike using the 'Idea' button." Sign-in didn't work; I had to use my Google ID. More...