Ask Jeeves Takes Aim at Google
It's hard to imagine that any search engine could replace Google, but the designers of Teoma think that users will prefer their new layered approach. The company - purchased by Ask Jeeves last year - will have a lot of marketing clout behind it, but my own searches have yielded less than satisfactory results. More...
I Have My Rights!
The purpose of this article is to argue that people have no constitutional right to copy intellectual property, not even under fair use provisions. Of course, as this article is based in the U.S. Constitution, it has little applicability to the world at large. More...
New Standards
Good post on a Yahoo Group list (you will have to register and sign into elearningleaders (something I think the list owner really should change)) on why the author thinks that the IMS and SCORM standards are bound to fail. In a nutshell, the IMS and SCORM standards violate some fundamental principles of useful standards, specifically:
The XML Version of the TEI Guidelines
This is not an item for a leisurely afternoon read. Peter Suber summarizes it nicely, "The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) has approved and released version 4 of its Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange Version 3 has been in use since 1994. More...
The CBDTPA is Immune to (Conventional) Criticism
This article presents itself as a satire of the proposed Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA, which began life as a draft bill intended to be presented to the U.S. Congress called the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA)). It is intended to protect the copyrights owned by television, film and other content publishers. More...
Screen Presentation Tools: Tools for Creating Screen or Online Presentations
The title is a little redundant, but this comprehensive guide to prsentation tols is not. Covering everything from LaTeX to WML, this guide provides sample code and screenshots. The author offers his own opinions of the pros and cons of each format and links to the format home page. More...
Online Technical Writing: Examples, Cases, & Models
Teaching people different types of technical writing? You would be hard pressed to find a better online resource than this nice guide. More...
Standards Follow Practice, They Don't Lead
The point of this article is to argue that standards follow practice. The author makes a useful distinction between three major effects of standards: "primary effects of standards are the changes brought about in the things being standardized; secondary effects of standards are changes made to things closely related to but not directly dictated by the standards; and tertiary effects are changes that come about in things not directly affected by the standards but rather as an unanticipated change because of the existence of the standard." But the main conclusion is just wrong. More...
Measuring Success: Evaulation Strategies for Distance Education
After some introductory remarks, provides a good description of several stages of evaluation, including formative and summative evaluations. A nice chart of summative evaluation categories and data sources is presented. The article also looks at evaluating outcomes - a good thing - and addresses implementation concerns. More...
By Cathy Davidson. Today, I received a wonderful email from one of the finest university leaders I know. In addition to the kind of generous praise that we all love, she mentioned her own resistance, at times, to Deweyesque student-centered, active, engaged learning practice and, in particular, spoke of the great profs who inspired her own education. Many of the finest educators I know share this conviction so perhaps it's useful to write a blog about exactly this topic. More.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
