Boxing and the Cool Halls of Academe
Hockey is a lot like boxing - close enough that some wags say the two are indistinguishable - and if there are lessons to be learned in boxing, the same lessons are available to be learned in hockey. At any rate, like the author, many of my own life experiences were shaped in the arena, and while my hockey career was completely undistinguished, I would never have traded it for anything. More...

P2P Services in the Clear
A huge victory for file sharing. "Peer-to-peer file-sharing services Morpheus and Grokster are legal, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday." The article continues, "The decision is a blow for record labels and movie studios which sued the peer-to-peer operators claiming that the services should be held liable for the copyright infringement of their users." It is refreshing to see a court finally line up with reason. More...

Some Clarifications About the Commonwealth List
Glenn O. Brown responds to the criticisms of the Creative Commonwealth proposal highlighted in this space (and echoed by a number of commentators) last Wednesday. His first point is that "It is never a foregone conclusion that a project in discussion will be adopted by Creative Commons." This gives me some hope. More...

Instructional Technology Institute
I will be giving a keynote at this conference the first few days of September hosted by David Wiley (who I'm looking forward to finally meeting) in Logan, Utah. Looks like a great program, opening the first day with a talk by Lawrence Lessig. More...

Play and Learning in The Brain
Maish Nichani summarizes this nicely in elearningpost: "Nice article on the importance of play in learning. Learning is not all about external rewards and punishments, rather “the human brain determines our learning potential, and subjective experience is, clearly, more than just stimuli and responses. More...

Goodbye Groove
I've had Groove on my desktop from time to time, to give presentations and the like. It is not currently on my desktop and not likely to return, mostly for the sorts of reasons outlined in this item. Michael Feldstein follows up, extending the discussion to Sakai and OKI. More...

Moving Out of the Traditional Classroom
Survey article noting the rise of non-traditional education in the United States. "New educational options -- such as charter schools, home schools and distance learning -- are gaining ground and remain a subject of debate." Lumping the three into a single category as this does, the article is a little misleading. More...