OriginalWorks
This is interesting. I described last week a system that allows you to publish your own book online. Well, XanEdu is today marketing a system called OriginalWorks, a system that "specializes in publishing academic work for use in your classroom, transforming your own personal work into a professional, high quality book," according to the mailout. More...
Mind of a Teacher
Steven Pinker talks about reaction to his online course, offers reflections on contemporary pedagogy ("Too often, he says, teaching is based on presenting and analysing flaws and contradictions in research data"), and levels some scathing criticism of academic publishers ("[Journal publishers] add virtually zero value, don't pay editors or writers, and make a fortune. More...
RFID Chips Are Here
Two major items make this article worth a read. The first is the clearest evidence yet that RFID tags are upon us. If WalMart is interested, everybody is interested. The second is a very clear description of some of the implications of RFID. An RFID tag embedded, say, in a pair of jeans follows the product for its entire lifetime, broadcasting its unique identity. 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...
Economics, Psychology, and Sociology of Security
My new colleague Seb sent me this link to a PDF file. The author argues that approaching the concept of security from the point of view of formal methods is a fundamental mistake. Formal systems do not allow people to break the rules or interpret the rules, and yet, this is essential. When a DRM system says "do not copy" then you can't copy. More...
Swap Songs? You May Be On Record Industry's Hit List
Reports are coming in from all over regarding widespread legal actions being undertaken by the RIAA in its battle against file sharing. More...
Developing Systems of Online Payment
This is an interesting approach to online payments, very similar to what we are developing here. The idea is that you can purchase a virtual debit card from this company, Bitpass, and then deduct micropayments from the card. More...
PILOTed
This month's edition of PILOT Online Learning Systems's monthly newsletter picks up on the topic of petterns in e-learning, a topic of interest in these pages before the, um, break. There are some nice observations in this short PDF, including a set of nine aspects to building a pattern around a certain skill. 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...
RSS 2.0 Specification Moves to Berkman
The big news while OLDaily was shut down: Dave Winer and Userland have turned over ownership of the RSS 2.0 specification to Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The move was greeted with wide acclaim, as the specification was immediately licensed under Creative Commons, which ensures that developers can build on it without fear of someone (SCO, say) coming along and claiming royalties. More...
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