Cautious Welcome for FTA Deal
Australia has a new copyright regime, courtesy of a new free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States. Commentators, such as this cited here, are calling it similar to the American's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which has of course been pilloried in these pages. Other critics are warning that the agreement will mean "huge increases in copyright licence fees paid by Australians" for content. More...
Social Nets Not Making Friends
Brief article recounting the (inevitable) backlash against social networks, but without really getting into the heart of it. More...
Flickr
Roland passed along this link to Flickr, a 'live chat together with social networks that enables people to share media with one another in real time.' After you register, play around filling out your profile and uploading photos. Then, on your main page, click 'Launch Flickr' and the fun begins - a chat area where people show and trade photos. More...
Towards a Unified e-learning Strategy
Seb Schmoller links to three responses to the British government's discussion paper on a unified e-learning strategy (from the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA), Association of Colleges (AoC), and Association for Learning Technology (ALT), and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which comments, "JISC believes that the e-learning agenda must be led by student needs, not technological invention, and should be used to enhance the student experience." The responses are generally favorable, with authors expressing more caution about the impact and certainty of e-learning. More...
Who Forgot the Learner?
As Charles Churchman pointed out already decades ago, note the authors: "To conceive of knowledge as a collection of information seems to rob the concept of all of its life... Knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of information that matters." This forms the basis for this paper's sustained and intelligent criticism of the learning object paradigm as defined by SCOs and SCORM. More...
What Do Instructional Designers Design?
I haven't read this - it's a .pdf powerpoint note format in a zip file and I just don't have the patience which such a user-hostile format - but it is being quoted all over the blogsphere. More...
We Learning: Social Software and E-Learning, Part II
The second part of this look at social software in e-learning (the first part is here) looks at the mechanics of it: wikis, social network analysis tools, proximity tools and virtual worlds. It's a good discussion, but my recent experiences with Orkut have left me feeling empty - just as content is pointless without conversation, conversation is pointless without context. More...
Content Delivery in the 'Blogosphere'
George Siemens comments of this item, "Short exploration of blogging as a content delivery tool in education: Content Delivery in the 'Blogosphere'. Personally, I think the article misses the point...blogging is less about content delivery, and more about expression, self-exploration (and in some cases, dialogue)." I agree with this assessment. Blogging isn't about content delivery, it's also about interaction and engagement. More...
The appointment of a national research and innovation council was approved by the cabinet in Cyprus to promote research and entrepreneurship, Finance Minister Harris Georgiades said. He said a series of decisions were taken aimed at strengthening research and innovation for the “development of appropriate conditions which will encourage innovative entrepreneurship”, writes Evie Andreou for Cyprus Mail. More.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
