Welcome to TextChoice
This is pretty interesting. The announcement of this Thomson product, TextChoice2, carried in University Business, notes that it "features a digital database of content that teachers and professors can use to create customized materials." The interface is unfortunately quite slow and it's not really user-friendly, but if you dig a bit what you'll find is that they divided up their texts into 10 or 12 page chunks, which you can select and arrange into your own 'custom text'. More...
IP Telephony Cookbook
IP Telephony Cookbook
Now online, "the IP Telephony Cookbook was developed as the final deliverable of the TERENA IP Telephony project as a reference document for setting up IP Telephony solutions at university campuses and NRENs." Most people aren't going to want to read this document, but it is required reading for system administrators (so forward this link their way). More...
Encouraging Interaction in Online Classes
Encouraging Interaction in Online Classes
The new issue of the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning is out. I feature two articles, beginning with this survey article by issue editor Brent Muirhead. More...
Mixing Morals With Education?
Mixing Morals With Education?
The take on this news article is that colleges and universities ought to be teaching students morality, and that institutions are somehow lacking when they say things like, "ollectively we are silent on the issue of morality." Of course there is a big difference - glossed over in the discussion - between teaching students about morality in general and teaching them to adhere to a specific set of morals. More...
FCKeditor
National Education Computing Conference
National Education Computing Conference
The National Education Computing Conference is on now, and is getting a fair amount of blog coverage. You can follow it using Edu_RSS - just click on this link. More...
Supporting Student Autonomy Online
Supporting Student Autonomy Online
David Wiley hits the mark with this set of notes for his forthcoming talk at Strathclyde, addressing autonomy and informal learning as key strategies. "As I pursue my own personal interest in open sustainable learning," he writes, "autonomy is a key issue." Quite so. More...
Challenges for the Semantic Web and Information Systems from Culture
Challenges for the Semantic Web and Information Systems from Culture
An intelligent look at some of the complexities involved in building a semantic web, beginning with the observation that the computerization of knowledge has elided much of what we know about semantics in the process of transforming text to boolean constructs. More...
Microsoft Research DRM Talk
Microsoft Research DRM Talk
True story: while I was in Saskatoon, knowing that Air Canada shows movies only on flights longer than 3 and a half hours, and facing a three hour and 22 minute flight, I bought a copy of Gangs of New York and set it up to play on my computer. I test-played it for a couple of minutes, packed my computer, and caught my flight. More...
How Microsoft Lost the API War
How Microsoft Lost the API War
Two good think pieces on Microsoft. This first item is a little technical but a good read even if you don't follow it completely. Essentially, the author argues that, since Microsoft has changed its (mostly secret) application program interface (API) so frequently in various versions of Windows, developers have abandoned Windows as a software platform and are now programming for the world wide web. More...