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...By Cathy Davidson. I’m often asked why I start with pedagogy, given the larger, far-reaching institutional reforms and social ambitions that The New Education, HASTAC, and the new Futures Initiative program all advocate. My answer is simple and pragmatic: If your personal goal is equality in a world where inequality is structural and violent and pervasive, you can at least start with your classroom as a place in which to model a better way. More...By Cathy Davidson. In a quite beautiful response to the recent New York Times op ed about why laptops should be "banned" in every classroom, Mark Sample, who teaches "Introduction to Digital Studies," compiled a list of "Ten Things We Did With Laptops In Class Instead of Banning Them." I urge you to go to his blog and read about these ten fascinating things (listed at the bottom of this blog). Most of these are as technical as they are creative. More...By Cathy Davidson. Every day, since the Sept 5 publication of The New Education, I have received 5-10 emails from people who are changing their universities-- or are hoping to do so. In the latter group, a comment I'm asked often asked is: "How can you be such an optimist? How can you believe higher education can change?" And then often, more personally, they ask: "How can we do this? What are the steps? Can you help us?". More.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
