By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sarah Brittain, Pietrek Glowacki, Jared Van Ittersum and Lynn Johnson[Edit][Delete]: Podcasting Lectures, EDUCAUSE Quarterly [Edit][Delete] August 4, 2006
OK, I appreciate the scientific research process, I really do, though I am always leery of attempts to find the 'best' method for doing something (because any empiricist will have discovered long ago that what counts as 'best' varies dramatically according to circumstances). But this article really stretches my appreciation as the authors progress through not one but three separate pilot trials before discovering (ta da!) podcasting (specifically, using MP3 and RSS to syndicate audio). The 'Acquisitions Solutions' part was the (ahem) silliest, as the authors describe wiring the room's microphone system into the iPod to produce audio of "extremely poor quality and almost useless." It does not appear to have occurred to the experimenters to try other devices, such as an iRiver or even a cheap $29.95 MP3 recorder in an instructor's pocket (which might actually have done the job). What bothers me is that what this experimentation shows most of all is that the designers, committed though they were to empirical science, did not do any background reading on the subject, but rather relied on their own intuition and instinct (and on 'focus groups' of students that eventually led them to podcasting). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Darren Kuropatwa[Edit][Delete]: Won't Be Fooled Again ..., A Difference [Edit][Delete] August 4, 2006
Worth noting about the South African curriculum wiki people have been citing: "After I finished explaining what a wiki is, every one of them expressed disbelief that the government of South Africa was actually behind such a thing. So, I did some digging ... The South African Curriculum is not on a wiki. Here is the wiki everyone has linked to." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Albert Ip[Edit][Delete]: Why Most Off the Shelf Commerical Games Will Not Work in Education?, Random Walk in Learning [Edit][Delete] August 4, 2006
This paper is a draft, but I think it has significant issues to address. I have played both Sim City and flight simulators and would have to say that these are the most non-standard 'computer games' out there. They certainly do not resemble 'most off the shelf' commercial games, and they differ precisely in that they do not have any specific game objectives. To cit them, and to then leap directly to the other extreme, Thiagi's low-tech games, is to be misleading about the potential of games. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Andy Carvin[Edit][Delete]: Jimmy Wales Announces $100 Laptop Partnership, Wikiversity, Wikiwyg, August 4, 2006
This is a bit odd, but here's what Andy Carvin is reporting: "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that the One Laptop Per Child Project is including Wikipedia as one of the first elements in their content repository. (ac: though they've been talking about this for at least a year.) He also announced a new project called Wikiversity. It will serve as an online center for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities." Wikipedia has also been around for a while; here is my coverage dating from the beginning of last year. Mark Oehlert comments (a bit mysteriously). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mike Malloch[Edit][Delete]: 41 figures From the BlackBoard Patent, eLearning 2.0 [Edit][Delete] August 4, 2006
For full coverage of the Blackboard patent story, please see this Special Section of OLDaily.
Mike Malloch has performed a valuble service, extracting the 41 figures in the Blackboard patent and posting them on Flickr.
He adds, "let me just say that having spent the summer of 1998 in BlackBoard's DC offices (seconded there from the UK to do some IMS work on metadata), and having spent a lot of that time interacting with the architects of BlackBoards subsequent systems, I know that these guys did not 'invent' the VLE, and that they knew they weren't 'inventing' the VLE."
I should point out, in response to his comments, that it's not simply the learning management system that needs to be defended here. Yes, some of us don't care about the LMS - I am among them. More...