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22 octobre 2019

UK Schools to Shun Vista and Office 2007

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. UK Schools to Shun Vista and Office 2007
Dave Warlick reports on a Becta recommendation that schools avoid new Microsoft software."Becta said the cost of a widespread deployment of Vista in schools and colleges was currently estimated at around �160m, while the benefits were unclear." The report was published in January, which is why it is currently difficult to find on the Becta website. More...

22 octobre 2019

Wired but Not Web 2.0: A Brief Look at the Pew/Internet Study On Adult ICT Use

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wired but Not Web 2.0: A Brief Look at the Pew/Internet Study On Adult ICT Use
Good summary of the latest Pew study (though I will admit to being peeved by their sole focus on American internet usage - a more international outlook would be much more useful, even for Americans). Also, "kids and teenagers were not part of this study," which really skews the results. This one has cute names, like 'omnivore' and 'connector' to describe different types of use. Sessums offers some analysis of the results, suggesting "you might consider a weekly weblog or listserv newsletter to keep parents apprised of classroom activities and events." Um, hm. More...

22 octobre 2019

Thomson Leaves Learning Market

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Thomson Leaves Learning Market
If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said Thomson was making a play for virtual control of this market. Now they're out, dumping Thomson Learning for $7.75 billion. What's changed? Tony Karrer offers some links to some discussions looking at, say, content vendor value. It may be that between the free software and the open content and the learning communities there just wasn't a large enough market to control. Anyhow, I think this is big news, because there is no obvious company poised to step in where Thomson is leaving off. More...

22 octobre 2019

Microsoft Takes On the Free World

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Microsoft Takes On the Free World
In a move that should surprise nobody, Microsoft has played the patent card in its ongoing battle against open source software. As though this will make Vista an attractive alternative. Leaving aside the audacity of the move if any company has depended on copying others, it is Microsoft) the strategy depends not so much on actually having original intellectual property as it does on the threat of a huge software giant suing the competition. What Microsoft wants to d is create both risk and cost to the use of free software. As a business strategy the tactic may well work even though some heavyweights (such as IBM) are behind free software. But what Microsoft - and its customers - should understand is that the company is very deliberately acting against the public interest in order to improve its market position. Which means that its success will only be as far as its legal reach. More...

22 octobre 2019

Mobiles, Micro Content and Personal Learning Environment

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mobiles, Micro Content and Personal Learning Environment
Critical reflections on personal learning environments. "I am pretty critical about the concept of PLE," wrtes Teemu Leinonen. "I am critical about it because it doesn't put in a center community, but emphasizes content." I personally think that community as such is vastly overrated - community (group) implies a sort of conformity with which I am not comfortable. But content is also vastly overrated, so Leinonen. What do I think should be emphasized? Choice. Control. Autonomy. More...

22 octobre 2019

Another Life Unexpurgated

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Another Life Unexpurgated
Jay Cross offers quite a good overview of the use of virtual worlds in business (and especially business learning) applications. "The thoughtful application of VW technology," he writes, "will significantly enhance the experience and transfer of learning." How? Co-creation, social sandboxes, and enriched experience. He surveys a number of companies offering virtual world services, including Second Life, There, Multiverse, and Forterra, among others, and looks at some implementations, including IBM, Apple and the New Media Consortium. More...

22 octobre 2019

Dave'S Top 10 Musings On the Encouragement of Community in Multi-User Virtual Environments

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dave'S Top 10 Musings On the Encouragement of Community in Multi-User Virtual Environments
Some interesting thoughts on the topic. I don't agree with some of the musings - "There should be shared or mutually supported goals," for example (why do people always insist on shared goals? meaning, of course, their own goals, that everyone should share). Others make good sense to me, like "Members need to be able to control the presentation of their identity." Ten muses in all, all of which are worth, um. More...

22 octobre 2019

Open Complimenting Closed?

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Complimenting Closed?
Link to a discussion on the linkage between personal leaning environments and learning management systems - "open complementing closed". The idea, writes Fraser, is that the PLE is being used to supplement the weakenesses of the learning management system - and specifically, personalization. But there are various aspects to customization and personalization, and it's not exactly clear you can just join some web 2.0 apps to an LMS. Via Marion Manton. Also worth thinking about is the personal learning network as described in The Illuminated Dragon. More...

22 octobre 2019

Top Ten Missing Features of Second Life As an Educational Simulation Platform

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Top Ten Missing Features of Second Life As an Educational Simulation Platform
See? I could have been a lot more critical of Second Life last week. By asking for thing like "Dynamic AI Characters, with which participants can repeatedly try new behavior to see how they react," for example. Or any of the other nine things Clark Aldrich thinks (reasonably) is missing from Second Life. More...

22 octobre 2019

Report On The WWW 2007 Conference

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Report On The WWW 2007 Conference
Summary of the WWW conference just completed in Banff. Worth noting is the concept of 'linked data' which is (or seems to be) a semantic web "in which data can participate." By, um, being linked? "Tim [Berners-Lee] described the Tabulator generic data browser which he had developed". More...

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