Learning Management Systems: Seeking Paradigms for Collaboration
Phillip Long's otherwise reasonable discussion of ways people can influence the development of learning management systems (LMSs) is scored with an unwarranted piousness. More...
Three Tiers of Identity
This article distinguishes between three types of identity: identity that is assumed by oneself, assigned that is assigned by a second party (such as a corporate profile or social insurance number), and identity that is created in an abstract manner (such as a profile created by a marketing company). Some of these identities are needed, but others create more problems than they solve (and some - like (faulty) credit ratings, fall into both categories). More...
Professors Vie With Web for Class's Attention
You're standing at the front of the class giving your usual Thursday lecture when you notice that the clicking from the back of the room has increased in volume. It's an audible vote: your students are tuning out and taking to the web, waiting less than patiently for you to return to something more interesting. More...
Research-Based Observations
One adage is missing from this article: be careful when conducting usability tests, because you will only find what you're looking for. Usability tests are conducted by giving people specific tasks to conduct on a website. If you don't ask them to, say, bookmark a page on the site, then thinks like frames will not appear as a problem. That's why the advice in this article should be taken with a grain of salt. More...
Chatters Quieting Down
This is one of these things that should have been forseen but is still worthy of note when it happens, if only for the lesson it offers for next time. The rate at which chat room use is increasing has slowed down. Factors cited are a more focussed use of the internet, disruption caused by younger participants in the unmoderated environment, and concerns about predators. More...
Students Slowed by School Access, Time
This should be no surprise to those working in schools, but students are increasingly reporting that their internet access at school is slower than at home. The report points out that most schools use broadband connections, "contrary to students' perceptions about speed." But, silly, if you split a broadband connection a hundred ways or more, it resembles a slow dial-up. More...
Standards: Do We Really Need Them?
Useful and informed discussion of standards. After some discussion of de facto standards (what the purists would call 'specifications') and 'de jure standards', such as those approved by ISO and IEEE, the author points to the importance of open standards and suggests things you can do to start using them now. More...
The Internet in a Cup
Coffee houses... the internet of the 1600s. "A proclamation by Charles II of England in 1675... Coffee-houses, it declared, had produced 'very evil and dangerous effects...for that in such Houses...divers False, Malitious and Scandalous Reports are devised and spread abroad, to the Defamation of His Majestie's Government, and to the Disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm.'" My kind of place. By Unknown, Economist, December, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...
Winter Mist
So it has been a pretty slow news week, and today's newsletter reflects that, which some off topic but interesting items. Begin your vacation browse with this collection of photos, taken at my home in Moncton, where the weather and the melting snow produced an unusual winder fog on Christmas Day. More...
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