TechLearn Will Close
According to Seb Schmoller (I can't find independent confirmation at JISC or on Google), "TechLearn will close. JISC announced, on 23/12/2002, that its TechLearn Centre, based at the University of York will cease operations in July 2003. The Centre acted as a source of information and advice to the JISC community on how best to take advantage of the new technologies for learning and teaching and how these technologies might impact on strategic and operational planning. More...

Emerging Behavior of Complex Collaborative Networks
This is a difficult document to slog through, but worth the effort if you are interested in virtual communities or virtual organizations. The paper is a summary of discussions at a workshop designed to study the behaviour of complex collaborative networks. As such, it raises more problems than it solves. More...

Learning and Teaching Information Technology: Computer Skills in Context

Although today's students are raised on computer screens and internet access, the authors argue, they may not be prepared to use the interne. More...

A Durable Memento
Your word for the day is "daguerreotype" - a type of photographic portrait - and your person for the day is Augustus Washington, the son of a former slave who in the mid 1800s became a noted daguerreotypists and moved to Liberia in 1853. This exhibit of his life and work is hosted by the National Portrait Gallery and is offered here as an example of the truly unique, original and valuable educational content that can - and should - be found on the web. More...

It's Taking Off, But What Should We Call It?
The questions posed by Masie at the beginning of this column also posed several times at Online Learning 2002, so I sincerely doubt that they originated with him. That said, the observation is valid: many more people are learning informally from the web that formally through online courses. In fact, you - the regular OLDaily reader - are learning informally right now. No tests, no tuition. More...

Distance Learning at the Tipping Point
This report from EduVentures discusses the current status of fully online distance learning programs (which, I might add, is an uninterrupted and continual increase in enrollments and revenues), lists a series of success factors for online learning, and looks at options for colleges and universities regarding outsourcing. More...

Panelists Consider the 'Business Case' For Open-Source
I think this could be a significant shift in the way open source should be depicted: "When you look at the Free Software Foundation's Web site, they have an explanation right on the page: 'Not free as in beer, free as in speech.' We're not terribly interested -- from a business point of view -- in 'free as in speech,' but we don't think of 'free as in beer' as the best way to build a business either. We like to think of it as 'free as in market.'" Yes. More...

Students Shunning Animal Dissection Ritual
It was a grade nine biology class and we were supposed to do dissections. The teacher announced that anyone who did not want to cut open dead animals could opt out of it if they wished. Had I not been given the opportunity, I would probably have gone through with the dissection, but on being given the chance, I opted out. More...

Copyright: Fundamental Gap?
VNU's OLNews sent out some advice to educators on copyright issues last Tuesday, advice that seemed to me so one-sided and misguided that I was prompted to send back a missive in return. The essence of the response was that academics and instructional designers ought to stop blithely following the doctrine of blind adherence to copyright and to begin circumventing the copyright machinery by not using proprietary materials and by not signing their own copyrights over to publishers. More...

News-Reader Software Can Do Your Web Surfing For You
Overview article of the experience of using news reading software to sample news articles from around the world. Don't forget to check the list of reader software in the column on the right hand side (it looks a bit like an advertisement, but it's not). More...