Intellectual Property in Education
The lessons are at the top of this article: "Intellectual Property is important... intellectual Property issues have been greatly complicated by modern technology... IP is not widely understood... The IP problem is not going to evaporate..." All four are true, and all four are well documented on this site, but the authors focus far too much on "official" sites and accounts, leaving many alternative voices silent. More...

The Secrets of Successful Idea People
My job - quite literally, these days - is to come up with ideas. So of course I measure an article like this against my own practice. First: think outside your discipline. "Read — and not only in subjects that are directly related to your profession." Yes, but don't just read (that traps you into linear thinking). But seek out things like Idea City and soak in the wisdom of a hundred disciplines. More...

Put “Earn” in Your Learning
Some readers have commented on the fact that OLDaily doesn't cover the corporate space as much as it might. But this is that community's own doing: if you're not going to give us anything to read, how do you expect newsletters like OLDaily to cover you? For those of you in corporate space wondering how to get information out about your products and services - this is how to do it: create some engaging commentary, put it out there for free on the net, and watch the readership spread. More...

Groove: Ten Good Reasons Not To Buy
George (I'm redesigning) Siemens picks up this nice link containing a sharp, incisive criticism of Groove. Having just used Groove to conduct an online seminar to Australia, I am in a good position to say that the criticisms are justified. Groove demands most of your system's resources, it is a bandwidth hog, its interface is awkward and cumbersome, and it is missing some essential features, such as videos. More...

Eldred v. Ashcroft: How Artists and Creators Finally Got Their Due
One of the drawbacks of online publication for at least some academics is that their work gets a wide reading and is thus exposed to the scrutiny of the Blogosphere. This article, published in an academic journal (at a major university yet) is a case in point. I don't need to offer a criticism; this review tears it to shreds. More...

Adobe's Robert McDaniels Responds (Again) to Nielsen Criticisms of PDF
The author responds point by point but I'm afraid the responses are not convincing. McDaniels writes, for example, "your second article that has mentioned excessive crashing, with no link to a study or evidence to support it." Though I have not actually counted the times it has happened to me, I can personally attest to the number of crashes. More...

What's In a Name?
It seems like an eon ago that Jay Cross declared e-learning dead, but it was only a couple of months. Kevin Kruse responds to this claim in his July column, arguing that it really depends on how you define e-learning. "If we use a broad definition, we can see the many successes of e-learning and even see how it has permeated our everyday lives." I really like his example: "I turned to my laptop and searched for 'bears nocturnal' on Google, and in a 10th of a second I received 20,500 pages of information. Of course, it only took the first page to let me know that bears are mostly nocturnal (it depends on the season and how hungry the bears are). Was this e-learning? By most definitions, no. There was no support, community, multimedia, tracking or structured ISD process. Were digital technologies involved? Yes. Did my daughter and I learn something? Yes again. To me, that makes it an e-learning experience." This, to me, not merely counts as e-learning, it is definitive of e-learning. More...

How to Make Our Ideas Clear
This essay is a bit old, but was and continues to be of significant importance in my own thought, so it was a pleasure to see it raised in today's IFETS discussion. The commentator, Michael Barner-Rasmussen, observes (edited for grammar), "The very way you pose the question limits the type of answers you might receive from the literature. Who is to say, that information (as in bits) and knowledge, as in remembered behavior-tranforming experiences have any relevant similarities? The very terms we use to describe such abstract and ephemeric phenomena often turn out to bias any 'observations' we subsequently manage." This is exactly right: the manner in which we express our thoughts in this, or any, discipline has a direct bearing on the range of theoretical options available. More...

OLDaily Back
You may have noticed lost or delayed editions of OLDaily (and thanks for the emails). You may have received a previous, abbreviated edition, explaining the case. The website is mostly working again and I am once again receiving email through downes.ca and so it's back to normal - I hope. Please note: if you sent me email last week or over the weekend it may have been lost; if I have not responded, it was lost, so please send me another note. More...

Let's Get Small
The author advocates the development of small learning modules - not learning objects, just shorter lessons. More...