Bits and Pieces — May 30, 2008

Published on May 30, 2008 in Bits and Pieces. 0 Comments

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Bits and Pieces

In baseball they call it “small ball.” It means getting away from trying to win by hitting the long ball and, instead, returning to offensive basics — singles, bunts, and stolen bases. I find it interesting that in digital education we’re going to see a rather definitive return to small ball as well.

When the Web first came into being, little pieces of educational content were all that existed. Individual instructors put together exercises and simple Web pages for their classes. As institutions entered the fray, initially they concentrated on the basics as well — a streamlined way for instructors and students to share basic information.

Of course way led on to way and people started thinking we needed more services and extended functionality. We needed gradebooks, syllabi, authoring, and other stuff. Naturally, this meant we also needed training and support. The systems kept getting bigger and we kept adding more people to make them work.

What used to require only a learner with an inquiring mind had come to involve multiple villages.

And somewhere in all of this, we lost track of what teaching and learning is really all about. It’s about the intimacy of information. It’s about the introspection and vulnerability that comes through individual growth. It’s about content in personal contexts.

Yes, at its core, learning is definitely “small.” And that’s why we’ll see an aggressive return to small ball in education over the coming years. The pendulum will swing away from more functionality in big systems to the concepts of more useful content and greater personal relevance.

This is a good thing for teachers and students. The rest will just have to adapt.

Today’s Research Clippings

1. Article: The Real Fight Over Fake News
Author: Saul Hansell Resource: The New York Times

Excerpt: ““The Daily Show” is a bellwether for the evolution of Internet video. It is also one of those programs that signify for people why they pay so much money for cable. Until recently, few of the main made-for-cable programs have been available to watch in full over the Internet, even as broadcast networks have started streaming full episodes of most of their shows. The reason is that cable and satellite systems pay large fees to networks for what they have seen as exclusive rights to their content. (Their deals with broadcast networks are less restrictive.)”

2. Article: Semantic Search: The Myth and Reality
Author: Alex Iskold Resource: ReadWriteWeb

Excerpt: “For a few years now people have been talking about semantic search. Any technology that stands a chance to dethrone Google is of great interest to all of us, particularly one that takes advantage of long-awaited and much-hyped semantic technologies. But no matter how much progress has been made, most of us are still underwhelmed by the results. In head-to-head comparisons with Google, the results have not come out much different. What are we doing wrong? For example, when asked, What is the capital of France? both approaches come back with the correct answer - Paris. Also, a lot of queries that we are used to typing into Google in abbreviated form, come back with similar results if we type them using natural language. Clearly something is off. We all know that semantic technologies are powerful, but how and why? In this post we will show that the problem is that we are asking wrong questions.”

3. Article: Introducing Edupunk
Author: Stephen Downes Resource: OLDaily

Excerpt: “The concept of Edupunk has totally caught wind, spreading through the blogosphere like wildfire. This post summarizes several recent posts and offers something like a definition (I would like to think that true edupunks deride definitions as tools of oppression used by defenders of order and conformity): ‘dupunk is student-centered, resourceful, teacher- or community-created rather than corporate-sourced, and underwritten by a progressive political stance. Barbara Ganley’s philosophy of teaching and digital expression is an elegant manifestation of edupunk. Nina Simon, with her imaginative ways of applying web 2.0 philosophies to museum exhibit design, offers both low- and high-tech edupunk visions. Edupunk, it seems, takes old-school Progressive educational tactics–hands-on learning that starts with the learner’s interests–and makes them relevant to today’s digital age, sometimes by forgoing digital technologies entirely.’”

4. Article: The Business of Education
Author: Martin Weller Resource: The Ed Techie

Excerpt: “I think we should be clear that any Vice Chancellor will already tell you that education is a business. Even if students don’t actually pay themselves and are funded by government, freedom of choice as to where they go, effectively creates a market. Lecturers, administrative staff and librarians don’t work for free and buildings don’t build themselves. Universities are therefore competing for students, and so will offer courses they think are attractive, facilities that are appealing and trade on a brand name. To this extent education is already ‘for sale’, and it is difficult to see how within current society it will change. But, the situation is likely to get more complex and if the business aspect is currently hidden then it is will become more explicit. The driving forces behind this change are numerous…”

5. Article: Social-Networking Site for University Innovation Revealed
Author: Andrea L. Foster    Resource: The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus

Excerpt: “Some recent college graduates and a Stanford University doctoral candidate in social network theory—all of whom are remarkably ambitious—have created a free social-networking site for entrepreneurs. The site is called YouNoodle, and it is designed to connect people who are involved in inventions, university technology, and business competition.”

Bits and Pieces — May 29, 2008

Published on May 29, 2008 in Bits and Pieces. 0 Comments

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Bits and Pieces

Sometimes you just want to get some thoughts down on paper with a time stamp so you can point back to them later and say, “I was saying that back in…” I’ll be expounding on a number of ideas regarding technology and education in my semi-annual report out at the end of June, but I wanted to put a quick stake in the ground today regarding some key trends and personal beliefs. So, here goes.

1. The most important advancement with regards to the future of education and technology will be organizing free learning content and making it widely reusable in more personal and customized contexts.

2. The most important technology trend over the next five years will be the “opening up” of walled platforms to embrace a new kind of learning architecture.

3. Textbooks will continue to be a commodity and won’t be free. Online learning content will be owned and created by everyone, and will be free. The best future business models in education will embrace the overlap.

4. Digital learning content will become more standardized and technology platforms will become more invisible and seemingly irrelevant. No one will care much in five years exactly what functionality BlackBoard, Angel, or others announce. It just won’t matter.

5. The Kindle is big but the smartphone is bigger when it comes to the future of distributed reading and learning platforms for education.

6. Assessment will continue to be a primary concern but the most successful programs will focus more on experiential assessment in the next two years.

7. Textbook publishers and universities will become more like movie studios — they will outsource more and more of the actual work while focusing on business, marketing, and brand development.

8. The key to customer loyalty for textbook publishers is mixing their content with user content in meaningful expressions. Blended content (with technology) creates much greater (and longer) loyalty than simple technology + premium content plays.

Today’s Research Clippings

1. Article: Google’s Android comes to life
Author: Stephen Shankland Source: CNET News.com

Excerpt: “Google demonstrated its Android mobile phone software Wednesday at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. The project, under development by Google and a number of partners in the Open Handset Alliance, is due to ship as open-source software when the first Android phones go on sale later this year. This is a view of the home screen, demonstrated by Steve Horowitz, Android’s engineering director.”

2. Article: AOL signs on to OpenSocial developer standard
Author: Caroline McCarthy Source: CNET News.com

Excerpt: “AOL will officially support OpenSocial, the developer standard created by Google for social-networking applications. The announcement was hinted at by Google Director of Engineering David Glazer in a speech at the Google I/O conference Wednesday.”

3. Article: Ozzie: Open source is greatest threat to Microsoft
Author: Mike Ricciuti Source: CNET News.com

Excerpt: “Microsoft is clearly worried about Google as a competitive threat. But the bigger worry continues to be open source, according to Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie. Ozzie, speaking at Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York on Wednesday, said that while Google is a “tremendously strong competitor…open source was much more potentially disruptive” to Microsoft’s business model. Ozzie said that since many open-source programmers aren’t beholden to shareholders they potentially represent a more formidable force in the market.”

4. Article: The Fork in the Road for Social Media
Author: Bernard Lunn Source: ReadWriteWeb

Excerpt: “Social networking is at a major fork in the road. Down one road is adding more features to a walled garden and opening up just enough, so that users seldom need to leave. Most sites are going down this yellow brick road and the prize is clearly a big one. But they may end up back in Kansas. Down the other road, lies a future of being the primary repository for your connections (aka the social graph), but with this data available via open APIs to anybody who needs it. That is a utility type model, and as with any utility, it can be hugely valuable at scale. Deciding which path to take is a real decision. A botched choice will likely end in failure, albeit via a long, slow decline.”

5. Article: Welcome to the Weekend Web
Author: Olga Kharif Source: BusinessWeek

Excerpt: “There’s only one Web. At least that’s been the standard response in many tech circles to the emergence of the wireless Web. The point? No matter how you get online, be it by PC or smartphone, you’ll still do the same things on the Web, using roughly the same sites and services. Really? David Witkowski missed that memo. Witkowski, an executive at a Silicon Valley startup, behaves very differently when he uses the Web on a PC compared with when he’s surfing via cell phone. From the office computer, “I pretty much live on Google,” Witkowski says. But from his Research In Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry, the amateur radio enthusiast spends a lot of time searching for gadgets for sale on Craigslist, especially when he travels and on weekends. He also checks local weather forecasts and airline schedules.”

6. Article: 6 Degrees of Wikipedia
Author: Catherine Rampell Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus

Excerpt: “A researcher at Trinity College Dublin has software that lets users map the links between Wikipedia pages. His Web site is called “Six Degrees of Wikipedia,” modeled after the trivia game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” Instead of the degrees being measured by presence in the same film, degrees are determined by articles that link to each other.”

7. Article: Zinio puts hundreds of digital magazines a click away
Author: Jon Swartz Source: USA Today

Excerpt: “The future of magazine publishing increasingly is appearing on a digital display — not just a newsstand. Advancements in software and hardware are making it easier for a growing faction of consumers — including coveted younger readers called screen-agers — to read their favorite publications on the Internet or download and read them later offline.”

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Bits and Pieces — May 21, 2008

Published on May 21, 2008 in Bits and Pieces. 0 Comments

Bits and Pieces | Today’s Research Clippings | Monthly Research | Research Archive

Bits and Pieces

So, the next version of the OLPC computer will have dual touch screens. Cool. But didn’t NintendoDS do that a couple of years ago and in a smaller form factor? Well, at least this version will really cost less than $100 they say (Nicholas Negroponte says around $75). Factor in PR inflation and we will likely end up with something like $119.99.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m actually a big supporter of OLPC’s vision of making a difference in global education through technology. I just happen to think that specialized hardware is not the way to go about it. Ultimately, the only game changer is information (content) and the communication of that information in ways that cause learners to internalize it and make it part of their life vocabulary.

Yes, you have to have some conduit for disseminating information broadly and consistently to learners and an inexpensive laptop is one possible mechanism for doing that. But there are other, more promising platform alternatives these days that place more importance on the message and less on the mechanism for delivering the message.

When the XO2 releases in 2010, my prediction is that there will be a number of touch screen smart phones available for less than $100 that will be able to deliver rich learning content. Moreover, these devices won’t need networks beyond what is already being put in place.

Maybe, instead of developing a technology platform that is unnecessary and destined to fail, we could take the money being used to develop it and spend it on… let’s say…. global learning content that would be free for all to use.

Today’s Research Clippings

1. Article: Some Useful, Some Not, Things for You
Author: Dave Parry Source: Academhack

Excerpt: “Here is a list of things I have been collecting as of late, which may or may not be of interest to those in academia . . .”

2. Article: Netflix Hitting its Online Stride?
Author: Cliff Edwards Source: BusinessWeek

Excerpt: “Movie rental company Netflix just introduced a $99 set-top box capable of streaming movies over the Internet directly to televisions in the home. The Netflix Player by Roku has enough flaws in its early incarnation to limit its uptake to early adopters. Still, it could over time stem defections from the core mail-order business as a variety of competitors, including cable and Apple, ramp up competing video on demand offerings. The Netflix Player would make available about 10,000 of Netflix’ more than 100,000 titles. The ‘watch it now’ feature has been growing in popularity, but until now has been available only on pcs with robust Web connections.”

3. Article: How to Make Facebook Useful Again
Author: Sarah Perez Source: ReadWriteWeb

Excerpt: “Oh the heels of some of Facebook’s missteps (ahem, Beacon) and the proliferation of a myriad of useless, silly, and time-wasting apps, some former Facebook users decided to quit the site for good this year. However, a handful of early adopter angst doesn’t have Facebook worried. Why is that? Because Facebook has a whole generation of users who grew up using their site for everything social back when it was just a way to network with their high school or college friends. So what are the everyday Facebook users doing that keeps them engaged in the service? It’s not throwing sheep, apparently. For many Facebook users, there are still useful apps to be found and ways to use the service that the rest of us could learn from.”

4. Article: Report: The Mobile Web is the New Hangout
Author: Josh Catone Source: ReadWriteWeb

Excerpt: “According to Opera’s survey of the more 11.9 million Opera Mini users in March, almost 41% of mobile traffic now goes to social networking — up to 60% in some countries, including the US. Compare that to about 6% of total web traffic for social networks outside of the mobile web. That’s not overly surprising, though, given the recent proliferation of new smartphones aimed at consumers (or at least phones that can view the full web), made ultra-chic over the past year by Apple’s iPhone. Says Opera, 3/4ths of mobile web traffic is now to the full web, rather than WAP or .mobi sites, which are quickly becoming out-moded.”

5. Article: OLPC XO Laptop 2.0 Has Dual Touchscreens, Looks Amazing and Future-y
Author: Matt Buchanan Source: Gizmodo

Excerpt: “At OLPC’s Global Country workshop today, founder Nick Negroponte unveiled the next-gen XO Laptop, and it totally blows the original away. About half the XO 1.0’s size and more like a foldable book, it does away with the keyboard and trackpad to go totally touchscreen—that’s right, dual touchscreens, straight out of the future, like a kid’s book in Minority Report. Folded all the way out, the displays work like a single continuous one, for say, a sweet game of Pong. Like XO 1.0, the display by Pixel-Qi will look fine indoors or in bright sunlight. Unfortunately, it really is from the future: Due in 2010, they’re aiming for $75 and one-watt power consumption. ”

6. Article: A Virtual Wager on How Many Desperate Student E-Mails a Professor Would Receive This Finals Season
Author: Jeffrey R. Young Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Blog

Excerpt: “It’s time to turn in final grades for the term, and one professor posting to The Chronicle’s forums knew he’d get the usual burst of students sending e-mail pleas for higher marks. So he asked his colleagues to send in their best guess of how many of his 300 students would send in a desperate message.”

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Bits and Pieces — May 20, 2008

Published on May 20, 2008 in Bits and Pieces. 0 Comments

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Bits and Pieces

I see bits like the need for new business models for colleges or High School = College and it makes me wonder if any of us know what we’re really about anymore. As a product designer, I can tell you my worst enemy is losing sight of my core vision. Once that happens, I’m susceptible to all the winds of marketing whimsy and temporary cultural shifts. My core vision for a product is my inner compass — it keeps me focused on what’s really important.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. I’m wondering if any of us still has the core vision for education. Have the the things we call high schools and colleges become mere marketing concepts that have no core value or meaning and are subject to the prevailing winds of any given day? And what of education in general? Do we know why we do it anymore?

I was looking over a personal mission statement I wrote some years back and it read, “My goal is to foster change in individuals and communities by bringing about greater understanding and wisdom through education.” As I review this mission, I’m still happy to claim it. It continues to align with my core life vision (I’m my own product, I suppose).

You see, I still believe that real education is not vocational but rather about helping people grow up and grow out — it’s about helping them find the wisdom they need to evolve personally and socially. I also believe that the disciplines we teach and the places we teach them are merely optional instruments for effecting that vision.

Personally, I don’t have any hope that we will ever “reform” what we call formal education today. I think that faith in institutional progress of this kind is always misplaced. But what about faith in the people in education and, more importantly, in the individual? I’ve got lots of that faith and it’s why I’m just as excited about education today as I have ever been.

Real education will outlive today’s marketing whimsy and political turmoil. Real education will find a way. It always does.

Today’s Research Clippings (May 17-May 19)

May 19, May20

May 19

1. Article: High School = College
Author: Tim Stahmer Resource: Assorted Stuff

Excerpt: “The national “challenge” index, a simplistic ranking based solely on the number of students taking AP and IP tests, is on the web now and will be in the dead-tree edition of Newsweek later in the week. Back in March, Mathews asked his readers to send him stories of how the index has affected their schools. A sampling of the responses are featured in his Class Struggle column this week. It’s interesting that only one of the ten responses offers unqualified support for his scheme.”

2. Article: American Higher Education Is Going Global: Implications for CIOs, National Networks, and Federal Policymakers
Author: Jeffrey S. Lehman Resource: EDUCAUSE Connect

Excerpt: “U.S. universities have come to see their universes in global terms, most visibly in brand-new overseas campuses. But just as important are joint teaching and research projects that dramatically intensify the flow of data to points halfway around the world. Historically, such data flows have required the physical transportation of people or storage media from place to place. Dramatic improvements in networking technology, however, are changing academic leaders’ perceptions of the kinds of collaborations that are possible. The most ambitious forms of network cooperation test the capabilities of the global cyberinfrastructure, with bits crossing campus, regional, national, and international networks. Each of the four tiers is a vital link. Each involves a different set of actors, challenging us to develop new policies and governance structures that respond to the concerns of each level, as well as a truly global perspective that is not yet effectively captured. Our national policy community must step into this void, helping demonstrate the range of possibilities and the choices we face, while respecting and reflecting that people in other countries will likely perceive matters differently from us.”

3. Article: Social network death spiral: How Metcalfe’s Law can work against you
Author: Andrew Chen Resource: Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen

Excerpt: “Does everyone remember Metcalfe’s Law? It was formulated by Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and co-founder of 3Com, who stated:

The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n²).

For those that are interested in the math behind it, basically the idea is that if every new node in the network connects with every pre-existing node, then as you gain nodes, you non-linearly increase the number of connections that everyone has with everyone else. That’s pretty neat, and for the social networking folks who are aggregating large audiences and treating their businesses like communication utilities, it’s both logical and helpful to think that these social communities abide by network effects like Metcalfe’s Law. In fact, it’s a DIRECT reason why these networks want to get as big as possible, and have a social graph that’s as comprehensive as possible, and why they should ultimately be opposed to Data Portability. And I think we’ll see these players’ strategies ultimately reflect these strategies.”

4. Article: Colleges Must Shake Up Their Business Models to Counter New Competition Online, Former FCC Chairman Says
Author: Jeffrey R. Young Resource: The Chronicle of Higher Education — Wired Campus

Excerpt: “America’s leading colleges and universities must “embrace massive experimentation” to stay competitive as more and more educational choices become available thanks to the Internet, said Reed Hundt, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and a senior adviser on information industries to McKinsey & Company, during a conference late last week on the future of the Internet.”

5. Article: Social sites help casualgames reach the next level
Author: Mike Snider Resource: USA Today.com

Excerpt: “Casual games are making connections with social networks to make a play for even bigger audiences. The reach of online casual games is already impressive: One-third of people ages 6 to 44 have played them, according to market tracker The NPD Group. Globally, casual games on PCs, game systems and handhelds, played online and off, generate about $2.25 billion annually, according to the Casual Games Association.”

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May 20

1. Article: Now at Napster: 6 million DRM-free MP3s
Author: Jasmine France Resource: CNET News.com

Excerpt:”Probably the biggest piece of digital music news to come out of CES 2008 was that Napster was planning to offer its complete catalog of more than 6 million tracks in the unprotected MP3 format. On Tuesday, with the launch of version 4.5 of the software and store, that announcement becomes a reality. Although digital music stores such as eMusic, Amazon MP3, and even Napster itself already had MP3s on offer before this point, the collective catalogs of all three didn’t even come near the volume of tracks you can find in the entire Napster library. All four major labels and thousands of indies are represented in the store, and every track will be available at the standard 99 cent price point.”

2. Article: Six Mobile Breakthroughs
Author: David Haskin Resource: School CIO

Excerpt: “A century ago, communicating in a hurry meant sending a telegram. If you needed to go yourself, you went by train. Flash forward to today’s world of e-mail-ready smartphones and 3G wireless access. If you think those are handy, then get ready: Newer technology is emerging that will significantly change how we stay in touch when we are mobile — nearly as much as telephones and airplanes have changed lives over the last 100 years. We asked several futurists and industry experts to describe these mobile technologies and their impact on our lives. They aren’t talking about maybe-someday technologies, but applications that will be here in the next year or two. Some of them are even starting to be available now. It’s a good time to be mobile.”

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Bits and Pieces — May 19, 2008

Published on May 19, 2008 in Bits and Pieces. 0 Comments

Bits and Pieces | Today’s Research Clippings | Monthly Research | Research Archive

Bits and Pieces

Please, tell me you weren’t one of the people who were surprised when you learned that 20% of Americans have never used e-mail. Actually, I find it remarkable the number isn’t higher. In case you’ve missed the point, this 20% is now the defining benchmark for the “digital divide” in our country. Yes, we can talk about digital literacy and other levels of digital awareness or sophistication, but the baseline indicator of being part of the digital world is communication via e-mail.

These are the 20% who, when you ask them for an e-mail address to get back to them on a business transaction, say, “I’ve been meaning to learn about that.” These are the 20% who seem to glide with the greatest of ease through airport terminals because they have no laptop, Blackberry, cell phone, etc. Just a couple of trips ago in fact, I heard an older gentleman say the following in the security line at the airport: “I don’t have a computer and I don’t have a cell phone. I’ve been in business 50 years — never needed such nonsense before now and don’t plan on starting at this late date.” Yes, he is one of the 20%.

Unfortunately, the digital divide is about more than age. It is also about poverty and literacy. It is about people who can’t afford any technology and about those who couldn’t use it even if they could afford it. Today, however, I am choosing to be optimistic. When I look at how far we’ve come in the past 10 years, suddenly 20% doesn’t seem like such a big number at all.

[Ed. note: A gentleman friend of mine — a representative of the 20% — was at the library recently and was asked for his email address. When he told the librarian he did not have an email address, or even a computer for that matter, she replied, “Then you must live in a state of grace.”]

Today’s Research Clippings (May 17-May 19)

May 17, May 18, May 19

May 17

1. Article: Semantic Search With Powerset: Transforming Publications Through Semantic Search Technology
Author: Robin Good Source: MasterNewMedia

Excerpt: “A new search and ‘discovery’ engine has been recently unveiled and made accessible to everyone online. The new search engine called Powerset, promises to improve the entire search process by allowing you, the user, to express your search queries via keywords, phrases, or simple questions. On the search results page, Powerset provides search results while also aggregating information from multiple sources and leveraging the best content available inside Wikipedia.”

2. Article: The Importance of Being an Early Adopter
Author: Stan Schroeder Source: Mashable

Excerpt: “At the time of Twitter’s humble beginnings, it didn’t seem very important to actively use the service. Most people I know sat on the sidelines and waited to see if this new thing is worth their time. Some, like Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel, were active on the service from the very beginning, following as many people as they could and updating their Twitter feed as often as possible (Scoble has over 11.000 updates at the moment). And although many would see this as colossal waste of time, the fact is that these Twitter pioneers now exert a huge amount of influence through this new medium. Whenever Twitter is mentioned in mainstream media, Scoble gets a nod. Whenever he tweets, he gets loads and loads of replies, which turns almost every one of his tweets into an interesting conversation.”

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May 18

1. Article: Wikitexts: Learning Better by Writing the Book
Author: Dave Fontaine Source: TechNewsWorld
Excerpt: “Educational technology has largely kept up with changing times, but one thing that hasn’t evolved much is the textbook. They’re still made up of printed pages — lots of them — and usually out of date by the time they’re published. Educators are discovering now that collaboratively written wikitexts could be the answer.”

2. Article: Survey: One-fifth of Americans have never used e-mail
Author: Steven Musil Source: CNET News.com News Blog
Excerpt: “The digital divide is apparently alive and well. About 20 percent of all U.S. heads-of-household have never sent an e-mail, and about 20 million households, or 18 percent, are without Internet access, according to a study released earlier this week.”

3. Article: Why WetPaint & Other UGC Sites Get Big Money
Author: Alistair Croll Source: GigaOM
Excerpt: “First the money flowed to social sites like Facebook that showed the world how to get users to interact. Then it moved on to ‘roll your own’ platforms like Ning that allowed people to build their own social microsites. But as Web 2.0 startups get increasingly specialized, the money is following, as today’s announcement from social publishing platform Wetpaint of a $25 million Series C funding round, shows.”

4. Article: What is a VLE?
Author: Doug Belshaw Source: dougbelshaw.com

Excerpt: “To my mind, and you’ll have to read the aforementioned Becta functional specification for VLEs to really see what I mean, everything that should be ‘mandatory’ for a VLE seems to be merely ‘recommended’. Instead, it’s those things such as communication, record-keeping and assessment that are mandatory and core to the specifications. What does this mean in practice? The potentially transformative Web 2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, VOIP tools, RSS feeds, etc.) mentioned as ‘recommended’ in the specification take second place and will either not be included at all or take second place to the other features. I really hope that pressure from teachers, parents and students means that all VLE suppliers are forced to enable these tools in a meaningful way.”

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May 19

1. Article: Study: Internet has small influence on consumers
Author: Anick Jesdanun, Associated Press Source: USA Today
Excerpt: “The Internet is routinely used when making buying decisions, but its influence is small compared with offline channels such as friends and sales personnel, a new study finds. Sunday’s report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project looked at consumer behavior in purchasing music, cellphones and homes or renting apartments. It found the Internet’s role to be indirect. ‘The Internet helps people eliminate irrelevant alternatives,’ said John Horrigan, Pew’s associate director. ‘The Internet may influence the choice modestly but has important consequences in getting better deals and in having a more focused search process along the way.’”

2. Article: Reuters Launches Calais 2.0 - Now With Pop-Culture
Author: Josh Catone Source: ReadWriteWeb

Excerpt: “Thomson Reuters’ Calais, a semantic markup API that we first reviewed in February, has reached its 2.0 release. The latest version aims to fix one of the main issues with Calais — that it was too focused on business. Because Calais has roots as Clearforest, the rules it applies while parsing text are biased toward the language of business, which meant that its utility was limited. Version 2.0 has added new semantic entity types in an effort to rectify that. Calais 2.0 has a dozen new semantic entity types, which Reuters says will increase its utility for “pop-culture publishers and bloggers covering media, music, entertainment and sports, as well as those covering pharmaceuticals, medicine and healthcare.” In addition to expanded semantic identification capabilities, Calais 2.0 can now prints results in the Simple Tags format and Microformats, as well as the original RDF.”

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Bits and Pieces — May 17, 2008

Published on May 17, 2008 in Bits and Pieces. 0 Comments

Bits and Pieces | Today’s Research Clippings | Monthly Research | Research Archive

Bits and Pieces

David Chartier had a nice article this week that made me do some thinking — No off switch: “Hyperconnectivity” on the rise. You see, I had trouble getting my posts up on Thursday and Friday because of hyperconnectivity (rather than lack of connectivity). But it wasn’t hyper-connectivity in the sense that I had too many e-mail messages or to much reading to do on my aggregator. No, those things are actually symptomatic of a larger problem. You see, the real and deeper problem with hyper-connectivity is that it makes us think we can actually get more done than we really can.

Case in point. My daughter was visiting for a long-promised father-daughter week in Boston. The only problem was that I also had some pretty big product design deliverables at work. Well, I’m a pretty fair multi-tasker so I figured I could get to work extra-early every morning, leave after lunch and, after doing tourist stuff with her the rest of the day, could sneak in some work late at night.

I probably don’t need to tell you how my little plan worked out. The inability to make a few blog posts turned out to be the least of my time miscalculations. All I can say is that, luckily, no father daughter relationships were harmed int he making of this reality. I only wish I could say the same about all my deadlines and deliverables.

What I did become aware of is the sense of false time elasticity our hyperconnectedness gives us.Somehow, because we can multi-task and accomplish so much in a normal day, we become unrealistic about what is really possible (or advisable). We try to squeeze in more than we should or possibly can and that’s when the stress really happens.

Chartier is right about there not being an easy off switch when it comes to being connected (personally, I don’t really want one). But the switch isn’t the real problem. My real weakness is in being lured into thinking and believing that I can do more than is humanly possible.

I learned my lesson last week. Now I’ll see if I can put it into practice.

Today’s Research Clippings (May 14-May 17)

May 14, May 15, May 16, May 17

May 14

1. Article: Online Learning Tips
Author: Miguel Guhlin Resource: Around the Corner - MGuhlin.net
Excerpt: “Although the article Your 5 Best Tips for No-Fail Production by Matt Villano in Campus Technology (May, 2008) magazine was intended for a higher-ed audience, I found myself reading the article with some interest. I also didn’t know about Moodlerooms…”

2. Article: No off switch: “Hyperconnectivity” on the rise
Author: David Chartier Resource: Ars Technica
Excerpt: “Many of us leave our day jobs at the office and come home to our families, prime time television, or possibly an hour or two of World of Warcraft. According to a new study from Interactive Data Corp. (IDC) and sponsored by Nortel, however, an emerging demographic of ‘hyperconnected’ individuals in the workforce doesn’t have an off switch. While these Internet-thirsty gadget hounds are a respectable minority right now, IDC says the need for connectivity is on the rise—and the enterprise needs to be ready. So do the psychiatrists.”
3. Article: More Americans snipping landlines in favor of cell phones
Author: David Chartier Resource: Ars Technica

Excerpt: “Traditional telephone landlines in the US are slowly going the way of the rotary dial. According to a new survey from the National Institutes of Health, the majority of US residents still have both a home and mobile phone, but many are increasingly snipping the wires on their traditional home phone service in favor of a wireless phone. Conducted by the CDC between July and December of 2007, the NIH survey includes responses from 24,514 adults aged 18 or older, and 9,122 children under the age of 18, from 13,083 households. In the context of the survey, a “wireless family” is defined by anyone in a family owning a working mobile phone. More than one family can live in a household, however, accounting for situations where multiple single-person families (individuals) or unrelated roommates live together.”

4. Article: Researchers: written English language will weather LOL storm
Author: Jacqui Cheng Resource: Ars Technica

Excerpt: “Concerned parents and disgusted Internet elitists often criticize teenagers for their use of abbreviated speech and shorthand online, frequently arguing that it is ruining their language skills. It turns out that’s not the case, however, according to new research from the University of Toronto to be published in the spring 2008 issue of American Speech. In fact, not only is ‘IM speak’ not destroying anyone’s language skills, it is actually being characterized as ‘an expansive new linguistic renaissance.’”

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May 15

1. Article: Verizon picks Linux—but not Android—for mobile platform
Author: Ryan Paul Resource: Ars Technica

Excerpt: “Mobile carrier Verizon Wireless has joined the Linux Mobile (LiMo) Foundation and has announced plans to adopt the open source software platform. Linux-based phones will be available from Verizon next year, alongside other devices that run competing proprietary operating systems. The LiMo Foundation is an industry group that was founded by leading handset makers. Their goal is to collaboratively develop a comprehensive Linux-based mobile software stack that can be modified easily and used at no cost on a wide range of hardware devices. Key members include Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung, and LG.”

2. Article: Why Twitter Matters
Author: Stephen Baker Resource: BusinessWeek

Excerpt: “It’s easy to laugh at nonsense on Twitter, the microblogging rage. ‘My nose is leaking,’ writes someone called Zapples, ’so imma go to sleep now.…’ But I’ve heard lots of similar drivel (and even produced some myself) on the phone—an important technology if there ever was one. The key question today isn’t what’s dumb on Twitter, but instead how a service with bite-size messages topping out at 140 characters can be smart, useful, maybe even necessary. Here’s why I’m looking. In the last few months, the traffic on Twitter has exploded, growing far beyond its circles of bleeding-edge tech enthusiasts and hard-core social networkers.”

3. Article: Analyst: Amazon.com’s Kindle to generate $750 million by 2010
Author: Erica Ogg Resource: CNET News.com

Excerpt:”Calling it the iPod of the book business, CitiGroup analyst Mark Mahaney says the Kindle e-book reader will generate three-quarters of a billion dollars for Amazon.com in less than two years. That should account for up to 3 percent of Amazon’s business. See his chart and reasoning here. His calculations assume that unit sales will grow from 189,000 by the end of this year to 2.2 million units in just two years. By then he assumes the price of the device will be just below $300. Mahaney also points out that Amazon does have the largest selection of e-book content.

4. Article: 50 Ways to Tell a Story
Author: Alan Levine Resource: CogDogRoo

Excerpt:”It was not long ago that producing multimedia digital content required expensive equipment and technical expertise; we are at the point now where we can do some very compelling content creation with nothing more complex than a web browser. In this workshop you will:

  • Design a basic story concept that can be created in a web 2.0 tool using images, audio, and/or video.
  • And then create it quickly using one of 50+ different web tools that are free to use.
  • Plus, you will share in this wiki site your example and observations on the value of the tool

We are using the word “story” in a general sense; it may be a deeply personal one of the digital storytelling variety, or it may be a tale of a travel trip, or a simple multimedia presentation.”

5. Article: New Facebook Chat Feature Scales to 70 Million Users Using Erlang
Author: Todd Hoff Resource: High Scalability

Excerpt: “I’ve done some XMPP development so when I read Facebook was making a Jabber chat client I was really curious how they would make it work. While core XMPP is straightforward, a number of protocol extensions like discovery, forms, chat states, pubsub, multi user chat, and privacy lists really up the implementation complexity. Some real engineering challenges were involved to make this puppy scale and perform. It’s not clear what extensions they’ve implemented, but a blog entry by Facebook’s Eugene Letuchy hits some of the architectural challenges they faced and how they overcame them.”

6. Article: (Serious) Games in 5 Paragraphs
Author: Clark Quinn Resource: Learnlets

Excerpt: “Serious Games (or, to be Politically Correct™, Immersive Learning Simulations) have hit the corporate learning mainstream, so you should be asking yourself: ‘why are people excited?’ Quite simply, because games (I’m not PC™) are probably the most pragmatically effective learning practice you can get. Sure, mentored real performance is the ideal, but there are two potential hiccups: scaling individual mentors has proven to be unrealistically expensive, and mistakes in live practice often are expensive, dangerous, or both. Why do you think we have flight simulators?”

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May 16

1. Article: OLPC and Microsoft will make Windows available on XO
Author: Ryan Paul Resource: Ars Technica

Excerpt: “The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project announced yesterday that Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system will be available on XO laptops in addition to the open source Linux operating system. The Windows-based XO systems will be deployed in upcoming pilot programs next month. The OLPC project has developed a low-cost education laptop which it is attempting to sell in bulk to governments in developing countries. The project has been plagued with a steady stream of serious problems that have left it on life support. The software platform change look like a desperate last-minute attempt to sustain the project, which some say has abandoned its education goals.”

2. Article: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower
Author: Professor X Resource: The Atlantic

Excerpt: “My students take English 101 and English 102 not because they want to but because they must. Both colleges I teach at require that all students, no matter what their majors or career objectives, pass these two courses. For many of my students, this is difficult. Some of the young guys, the police-officers-to-be, have wonderfully open faces across which play their every passing emotion, and when we start reading ‘Araby’ or ‘Barn Burning,’ their boredom quickly becomes apparent. They fidget; they prop their heads on their arms; they yawn and sometimes appear to grimace in pain, as though they had been tasered. Their eyes implore: How could you do this to me?”

3. Article: Why old media is running scared of Google
Author: Charles Cooper Resource: CNET News.com

Excerpt: ” think Piper Jaffrey’s Gene Munster offers a better answer when he wrote in a recent report that Google “has forced old media companies to realize they must act immediately or lose relevance in the Internet space.” He may be right about that. These companies typically came late to the party when they recognized that lots of their customers (and advertisers) were heading to the Internet. And thanks to the Yahoo novella, we’ve seen how even a company like Microsoft, which doesn’t fit under the “old media” label, finds itself scrambling to find answers to the Google question.”

4. Article: RIM’s Lazaridis: Qwerty is the next big thing
Author: Natasha Lomas Resource: CNET News.com

Excerpt: “Q&A BlackBerry maker RIM has been very busy this week hosting the Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando, Fla. One of the announcements causing the biggest stir was the BlackBerry Bold–touted by some as the device to rival the iPhone.

The most exciting mobile trend is…
Full Qwerty keyboards. I’m sorry, it really is. I’m not making this up. People are running out of their two-year contracts and they’re coming into the stores and they want to be able to do Facebook and they want to be able to do instant messaging and they want to be able to do e-mail and they ask for those features thinking that they’re going to get another flip phone and they’re walking out with a (BlackBerry) Curve or a Pearl because they’re the best devices for doing those kinds of activities. And so what is the defining factor? The keyboard. ”

5. Article: The Nightmare of Social Networking Systems
Author: Syzygy (Jamie C.) Resource: AFI Screen Nation

Excerpt: “This video was created a part of the Horizon Project 2008 (http://horizonproject2008.wikispaces.com) where I was asked to envision the future of social networking as it evolves into social Operating systems. I combined animations with an interview of my teacher (an active edublogger) to create the final film. Here is the link to the world wide Horizonproject2008 http://horizonproject2008.wikispaces.com/Social+Operating+Systems”

6. Article: Testfest: Learning imapct conference day 4
Author: Derek Wenmoth Resource: Derek’s Blog

Excerpt: “What a learning experience! Locked in a room with around 40 “geeks” talking in a language that would require considerable interpretation for most (including me), our task was to put a range of applications and processes to the test to see how well they performed in terms of meeting the Common Cartridge specifications developed by the IMS Global consortium. The test was simple enough - to submit a content “cartridge” that had been created using each of the processes being examined to a “testing application” that analysed the code line by line and provided feedback in terms of how many errors were found. The second step then was to open the import the cartridge into an LMS system and open it to see how it operates in that environment. None of the participants had been able to do either of these things with the particular applications being used prior to the test, so it was a real test in that sense!”

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May 17

1. Product: Omnisio
Reference: Jane Hart Resource: Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day

Excerpt: “Omnisio lets you select clips from videos you find on YouTube and other video sites, and easily post them on your profile page or blog. Even better, you and your friends can add comments directly in the video! With Omnisio you make and share your own shows by assembling clips from different videos. Do you have a video and some powerpoint slides that go with it? With Omnisio you can show them both side-by-side - synchronized - and give your viewers a rich and interactive experience! Great for conferences, lectures and corporate training.”

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Bits and Pieces — May 14, 2008

Published on May 14, 2008 in Bits and Pieces. 0 Comments

Bits and Pieces | Today’s Research Clippings | Monthly Research | Research Archive

Bits and Pieces

As a consultant for technology products related to languages, I have often been asked about various Text to Speech (TTS) products. Anyone (English, Spanish, and French) now can have access to a nice TTS service via Read the Words. Besides being a wonderful service, this is yet another great example of how the rapid evolution of technology and Web-based business models can outstrip traditional business thinking by making elite functionality available to the masses.

Desktop publishing put the means of printing in everyman’s hands and the Web made the means of distribution ubiquitous. Blogs have made everyone on the Internet a possible news person and Wikis have allowed the average citizen to compete with the experts in terms of reference materials. And these days, anyone with a guitar and a MacBook can be the next pop superstar producing his/her own music label.

Everywhere we look, production and distribution have become more accessible and the phenomenon of pushing these capabilities down to the individual has put pressure on traditional businesses and their business models. With regards to the future, the question is not whether this trend will continue — the genie is way out of the bottle on this one with no lid in sight — but rather which industry leaders will be able to adapt and embrace the concept of the individual-in-control.

One of the biggest battlegrounds for this phenomenon over the next decade will be education. How will schools and institutions deal with the fact that people can get as good or better “unsupervised” educations as they can within the formal walls of academia? How will publishers adapt to the fierce competition from “popular” content sources that offer similar materials and services at little or no cost?

Traditional businesses have generally countered the individual-in-control phenomenon by brandishing the twin swords of expertise and quality, things they say grassroots or individual producers cannot provide. Unfortunately for education providers, that defense is starting to ring hollow in other markets and will likely be completely worn out within the next several years.

The reality is that traditional education providers — institutions and content companies — will need to re-assess their business models and determine new ways of generating revenues from customers. If they can’t do that, they will be in grave danger of becoming completely irrelevant.

Today’s Research Clippings (May 13-May 14)

May 13, May 14
May 13

1. Article: Sony-BMG releases more DRM-free music
Author: Greg Sandoval    Source: CNET News.com

Excerpt:  “Sony BMG, one of the top four recording companies, is releasing more DRM-free songs through a partnership with Dada USA, a mobile-entertainment company based in Italy. Songs from Sony BMG artists such as the Foo Fighters, Kelly Clarkson, and The Strokes, will be offered through a new music service, Dada Entertainment, where users can pay $9.99 to obtain 15 tokens. Each token can be redeemed for a music download or ringtone or other content such as games or wallpaper. The unprotected MP3 files can be transferred to an iPod, mobile phone, or any other digital music-playing device, the companies said Tuesday. Over-the-air downloads aren’t ready yet, but Dada said in a statement that it expects to launch that in coming months.”

2. Article: Educational Simulations
Author: D’Arcy Norman    Source: D’arcy Norman dot net
Excerpt: “I’ve been collecting some links to interesting educational simulations to show faculty members. There’s some great stuff out there. The list is NOT comprehensive, and I’m not including LOTS of great simulations. This is just the list I give to faculty members asking about effective educational simulations.”

3. Article: Online Video for the Very Young
Author: Josh Catone    Source: ReadWriteWeb
Excerpt: “It’s no secret that YouTube’s age demographics skew young, but young still means 18-34, and much of the content on the site would be inappropriate for children under the age of 13 — the COPPA cut off age that YouTube adheres to as the minimum allowed for anyone to sign up on the site. Totlol is a new video site that launched in beta this week aimed at children aged 6 months to 6 years. The site is community moderated to ensure that video content is always appropriate for small children. When I first read ‘community moderated video site for kids under 6 years of age,’ my immediate reaction was, ‘bad idea.’ Community moderation, after all, isn’t foolproof and before the community has time to react, often bad stuff slips through. But Totlol is set up in a way that parents are able to screen and weed out bad videos before they reach the eyes of their children.”

4. Article: What’s Next for Data Portability and Why is Facebook Still Holding Out?
Author: MacManus    Source: ReadWriteWeb

Excerpt:  “One of the buzz phrases we’ve heard a lot this year is “data portability”, which means the ability to move your personal data between different applications and vendors. It has its own standards group, called naturally enough DataPortability.org. Some of the big Internet companies have signaled their support for data portability - in January Google and Facebook joined DataPortability.org, and in February Microsoft announced a strategy shift towards Data Portability for its core products Windows and Office. ReadWriteTalk host Sean Ammirati this week interviewed Chris Saad, the co-founder of DataPortability.org, to ask him how the group has been progressing - and perhaps more importantly where it’s headed next.”

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May 14

1. Product: Read the Words
Reference: Julie Lindsey    Source: Product Web Site
Excerpt: “ReadTheWords.com is a free, web based service that assists people with written material. We do this by using TTS Technology, or Text To Speech Technology. Users of our service can generate a clear sounding audio file from almost any written material. We generate a voice that reads the words out loud, that you request us to read.”

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Bits and Pieces — May 13, 2008

Published on May 13, 2008 in Bits and Pieces. 0 Comments

Bits and Pieces | Today’s Research Clippings | Monthly Research | Research Archive

Bits and Pieces

The advent of the Web often lures us into grandiose thinking (for better or worse). These days, it’s had me thinking about the Library of Alexandria and the concept of amassing all the world’s knowledge on specific subjects into a central location (I did warn you with the use of the word “grandiose”). More specific to my own interests, it’s had me thinking about the need to collect (actually or virtually) all the open Web-based resources for educational subjects into a common repository.

In the past, as a Spanish instructor, I have scoured the Web for additional practice exercises, cultural clips, etc. There is actually an overabundance of such resources so it’s not just finding them — I also have to cull through them and select the ones that will work best for me.  After that, I have to insert them into my course in the proper places. Of course, I am not alone in this effort. It’s an activity mirrored by most language instructors and language learning centers around the world. It is the same activity, incidentally, that publishers and their authors also go through with every book and workbook edition. We are all searching for the same resources in the same widely distributed and unmapped locations, and we are doing it over and over again like we’re caught in some sadistically repetitive strange loop.

So, what I think (better yet, dream) about is a common library that organizes all these resources (and allows new ones to be added constantly), and presents them to me in a meaningful way that lets me find them and use them in my courses without having to explore the Wild Web anew every year. This of course, would be a library of the people — a library of users and tags, and good old RDF.

Related to this idea, Tony Hirst has an interesting post about the use of Open University course codes to tag content and user groups across the Web. That made me think — in the library I dream about, why not go ahead and have a field for course codes too? Okay, let’s add one for all the common textbooks as well. As long as we’re dreaming, let’s dream of the ultimate place where you can find whatever you’re looking for in precisely the way you need or want to find it.

That’s my happy thought for the day. And tomorrow too.

Today’s Research Clippings (Last 24 Hours)

1. Article: Google Friend Connect Tries to Strangle the Social

Author: Marshall Kirkpatrick Source: ReadWriteWeb

Excerpt: “Later tonight Google will launch a new service called Friend Connect, aiming to “bring the social” to any page around the web. Unfortunately the service takes a bunch of open technical standards yearning to see the light of day through mass adoption and puts them in a dark little box where they will struggle to breathe. Google could have worked with other large companies and with the creators of these standards (some are in the Data Portability Working Group that Google joined, for example) to tackle the hard questions around data exposure, integration and privacy. Instead they are pushing their Open Social standard around in an iframe. Easy is very good, but co-operation could have come up with something better than this.”

2. Article: Twitter and the Architectural Challenges of Life Streaming Applications
Author: Alex Iskold Source: ReadWriteWeb

Excerpt: “Because Twitter is getting more popular, every glitch in the service is now felt more acutely. Going without Twitter for many people is even harder than going without email, and so outages lead to complaints. Complaints pile up and become debates, asking questions like: should Twitter be converted into a protocol and become decentralized? Is that the way to scale Twitter and make it more reliable? If not, how can that goal be accomplished? To me, the answer to decentralization is a firm no. First of all technically it won’t solve the problem. At least not in any way that Twitter folks can’t solve it themselves. The whole question actually misses the main point. We love Twitter as an application, and its strength is the fact that people know where to find it, people love the What are you doing now? question. Amongst a sea of copycats, it was Twitter that took off and that’s why we know and love it. Twitter is Twitter and it should not be anything else.”

3. Article: HBO in Your Pocket
Author: Josh Saul Source: Condé Nast Portfolio.com

Excerpt: “Apple is close to announcing it has signed a deal to sell HBO programs and movies on the iTunes website, according to HBO employees involved in executing the agreement. The deal marks the first time that Apple has agreed to a separate price structure for a content provider, one of the employees said. The HBO insiders said that the new service would be launched and announced simultaneously, most likely in a week or two. ”

4. Article: Student Research with ChaCha
Author: Liz Kolb Source: From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning

Excerpt: “Chacha is a free resource which allows anyone to do research via mobile phone. I am so excited about this resource because it allows students to connect learning to their everyday lives anytime, anywhere! All you have to do is call ChaCha (toll free number!) at 1-800-2242-242. Then ask a question. I asked “how old was George Washington when he died?” Hang up. In about 30 seconds to 2 minutes you will receive a text message answer. My answer came in 40 seconds, and it was “George Washington died at Mount Vernon on December 14th, 1799 at the age of 67.” Wow! Fast and accurate. According to ChaCha, the answers are found by “guides” who have to “pass a test”—which does not mean that each answer is entirely accurate. Keeping this in mind, I still see this resource as an opportunity for learning, below are a few ideas.”

5. Article: Student Voices Episode 3: Chris, Craig, and Graeme
Author: Darren Kuropatwa Source: A Difference
Excerpt: “In this episode of Student Voices three Advanced Placement Calculus students, Chris, Craig, and Graeme, talk about a wiki assignment they did to prepare for the exam. Then the conversation transitions to a discussion of the many things they learned while doing their Developing Expert Voices project. It ends with a challenge, the result of which will be featured in a future podcast.
You can find their project scattered across YouTube. It’s called DEV: Watch and Learn; soon to be aggregated on the project blog. Let Chris, Craig, and Graeme know what you thought about the podcast by leaving a comment here on this post or on the mirror of this post on their class blog.”

6. Article: OUseful Info
Author: Tony Hirst Source: Abject Learning
Excerpt: “Over the last few weeks, I’ve started thinking about the “social life of URL’s” and by extension the “social life of OU course codes”. A couple of things have also prompted me to look again at social bookmarking (OUseful.info was heavily dominatd by social bookmarking issues in it’s early days!) - one was an internal email, another was AlanC’s Introducing students to social bookmarking. Although many insitutional learnig environments are built on the assumption that we need a private place for students in the same cohort to work together out of the gaze of the public eye, the rise of social sharing sites means that course activity is starting to leak onto the public web… In Facebook, there are now several dozen OU course related groups (set up by students themselves) and keyed by OU course code, as well as society groups, regional groups and so on…”

7. Article: Google Fiend Connect to bring social networks to your life
Author: David Chartier Source: Ars Technica

Excerpt: “The barriers around social networking sites are finally crumbling as all the major players bring out their demolition crews. Both MySpace and Facebook have announced new data portability initiatives that will let users exchange data, make friends, and interact with third-party social networks. Now, Google has donned its own hard hat in the form of Google Friend Connect, promising to bring social networks and their features to the rest of the Internet. Previewed by Google in a press release, Google Friend Connect will provide secure authorization APIs for any website owner to embed applications and features of any social networking site that hops on board. The advantage, however, is that these features will be provided as snippets of code that website owners simply place where they want on their sites. This removes the expensive overhead of programming these features and brings social networking integration to the “long tail” of the rest of the web.”

8. Video: Learning to Change
Reference: David Warlick Source: YouTube

Excerpt: Via David Warlick: “Learning to Change is from the DigitalArts Alliance, of Pearson Foundation, and CoSN. A lot of it, I’d heard, and I continue to be intrigued by Stephen Heppell’s concept of the “Nearly Now!” But the statement that really struck me was the first one, delivered by Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN. He said that… The U.S. Department of Commerce Ranked 55 industry sectors by their level of IT intensiveness. Education was ranked number 55 — below coal mining.”

9. Article: BeBook e-book reader makes its debut, doesn’t run BeOS
Author: Donald Melanson Source: Engadget

Excerpt: “If you can get past the tinge of disappointment in learning that something named the BeBook isn’t actually the BeOS-based laptop you’ve been waiting for all these years, you may be only slightly less disappointed to know that it’s another fairly ordinary and somewhat overpriced e-book reader. Coming in at a hefty €330 (or $510), this one ditches newfangled features like built-in WiFi or EV-DO, with it choosing instead to focus on basic features like a six-inch E Ink display, 512MB of internal memory, and an SD card slot for expansion. You’ll also get support for all the usual document and image formats, as well as some basic MP3 playback functionality. If that somehow sounds like the e-book reader you’ve been waiting for, you can order one now and get free worldwide shipping.”

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Bits and Pieces — May 12, 2008

Published on May 12, 2008 in Bits and Pieces. 0 Comments

Bits and Pieces | Today’s Research Clippings | Monthly Research | Research Archive

Bits and Pieces

So — last Friday afternoon my wife goes to the campus bookstore to pick up textbooks for our son’s intercession course (don’t ask me why she’s doing this for him because I do not know). She finds the books with relative ease, although she is a little surprised there are no prices marked anywhere on them. Two books are required for his class — one a spiral-bound collection of articles the professor has collected and the other a traditional textbook. They are both thin and unimpressive in appearance, but my wife knows about the high cost of textbooks and she figures the total will come to around $60 or maybe even $70.

She takes them to the counter and the girl at the register tells her, “That will be $110.”

“What!?” my wife says.

“$110,” the cashier repeats.

“For these two things? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

The cashier, a student at the university — a girl whose job is to check out textbooks — leans forward and says in a hushed tone, “I know. Textbooks are such a ripoff.”

Nuff said.

Today’s Research Clippings (May 8-May 12)

May 8, May 9, May 10, May 11

May 8

1. Article: Toolbox or Trap? Course Management Systems and Pedagogy
Author: Lisa M. Lane Source: EDUCAUSE Quarterly

Excerpt: “Creating an online class is a task of construction. A course management system (CMS) provides faculty with a set of tools, a kit to use as we build our classes. We want to construct classes according to our own pedagogy—what we know works with our learners and our teaching style. If we were building something tangible out of wood or metal, for instance, it would be silly let the tools in our toolbox determine what we construct and how we construct it. I wouldn’t set out to build a Victorian dollhouse and switch to a modernist garden bench because I couldn’t find the scroll saw. And yet this type of shift often happens when faculty encounter a CMS.”

2. Article: Amazing Add-on for Blogs: Apture
Author: Will Richardson Source: Weblogg-ed News
Excerpt: “Thanks to a short post from Lawrence Lessig (now on his regularly scheduled month long blog hiatus, btw) I’m using Apture for the first time to demo what I think is a powerful new potential for blogging. (Click on Lessig’s name above to get a sense.) In an amazingly easy way, I’m now able to add all sorts of multimedia context to whatever I am writing about, in a way that transcends just “regular old” linking. It’s one of those tools that immediately made me want to be back in a classroom with students, learning with them the ways in which writing and hypertext continue to evolve.”

3. Article: Like Taking Candy From a Baby: How Young Children Interact with Online Environments
Author: Warren Buckleitner Source: Consumer Reports WebWatch
Excerpt: “Young children are embracing the online world in increasing numbers, mirroring the growth of high­speed Internet connections. But what do children do online? Do Internet sites designed for children offer legitimate options for fun and learning? Or are they an example of exploitation in the new media frontier, tools of commerce designed to manipulate children into asking parents to buy toys, subscriptions, lip gloss or a ticket to a forthcoming movie? Our ethnographic observations of ten New Jersey f amilies ov er the course of several weeks uncovered numerous examples of both. ”

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May 9
1. Article: Facebook Answers MySpace Data Availability With Facebook Connect
Author: Corvida Source: ReadWriteWeb

Excerpt: “Yesterday, we brought you news of MySpace’s surprising Data Portability partnerships with Yahoo!, Twitter, and Ebay, which will allow MySpace users to port their public profiles, photos, videos and some friend data from one site to another. Facebook, not looking to be outdone, has announced plans to launch their new Facebook Connect platform, which has similar functionality to MySpace’s Data Availability. acebook says they’re “committed to enabling people to communicate and stay connected wherever they go” and looks to execute on this statement with Facebook Connect. The Facebook Connect platform will essentially be a new version of their API that was released back in May 2007. The new API will give developers the opportunity to develop tools that will allow users to port their connections, privacy settings, and networks from their Facebook account to other third party websites. Essentially, third party websites will have access to features that have only been available to third party applications on Facebook itself.”

2. Product: PhET
Reference: Chronicle of Higher Education Source: Product Web Site
Excerpt: “The Physics Education Technology (PhET) project is an ongoing effort to provide an extensive suite of simulations for teaching and learning physics and chemistry and to make these resources both freely available from the PhET website and easy to incorporate into classrooms. The simulations are animated, interactive, and game-like environments in which students learn through exploration. In these simulations, we emphasize the connections between real life phenomena and the underlying science and seek to make the visual and conceptual models that expert physicists use accessible to students. Our team of scientists, software engineers and science educators uses a research-based approach in our design – incorporating findings from prior research and our own testing – to create simulations that support student engagement with and understanding of physics concepts.”

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May 10

1. Article: Why Filtering is the Next Step for Social Media
Author: Corvda    Source:  ReadWriteWeb

Excerpt:  “If there’s one thing to be learned from social media tools, it’s that these services were not made to interact with one another. Complaints are rolling in and heated discussions are taking place about the noise levels within social media platforms. Here’s a look at why noise levels are high and why filtering should be the next step for social media platforms.”

May 11

1. Article: Social Networking Sites Turn Users into Profits
Author: Jon Swartz Source: USA Today.com
Excerpt: “Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking sites have been the rage of the tech industry for more than a year. Following investments by Microsoft and News Corp., the companies are valued in the billions of dollars and are considered blueprints for how to build a website. Yet a deeper question lingers: How are they going to consistently produce profits to match their soaring valuations? t is a parlor game that has Silicon Valley buzzing. With online ad spending booming into a nearly $50 billion market this year, there is plenty of money to be had. Big-name advertisers are drooling over millions of young, affluent consumers who are spending more time on their online profiles than in front of TV and movie screens. They are particularly smitten with the prospect of tailoring ads to people’s specific interests.”

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Bits and Pieces — May 9, 2008

Published on May 9, 2008 in Bits and Pieces. 0 Comments

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Bits and Pieces

Jim Groom is putting up a great series on e-portfolios. Depending on how you look at them, e-portfolios may be one of the most important learning tools for the future as we face sociological changes that demand lifelong learning over much longer life spans. More than mere archives, however, e-portfolios of the future will be increasingly interactive and intelligent. They will be able to help us measure personal growth  and determine new areas of learning interest.

Originally, e-portfolios were designed to help us assess what had been accomplished in four years of college and to help us get jobs. The game has changed significantly, however, and the next wave of e-portfolios will necessarily move beyond the institution and get individually personal. My guess is they will also embrace most of Donald Clark’s 10 facts about learning.

Today’s Research Clippings (May 8-May 9)

May 8, May9

May 8

1. Article: This ain’t yo mama’s e-portfolio, part 2
Author: Jim Groom Source: bravatuesdays

Excerpt: “An Example of a blogfolio? Robert Lynne, a graduating Art major at UMW, will be my example for this post. I hope he can forgive me constantly harassing him, but his blogfolio (to quote D’Arcy) is a model of at least one way you can imagine the portfolio logic working. Rob has used his blog for several classes, an Art History course, an Art Studio course, a Sculpture course, as well as a Poetry Workshop course. He has had his blog for the 2007/2008 academic year, and the space demonstrates some of the questions of creative control, sequence, and serendipity that I mentioned earlier in regards to Chris and Phaedral’s concerns.”

2. Article: MySpace Embraces Data Portability
Author: Heather Havenstein, Computerworld, Source: The New York Times

Excerpt: “MySpace Thursday unveiled its response to one of the most contentious issues surrounding social networking - information portability with a new project that allows its users to share content from their profiles with any Web site. The new MySpace Data Availability project is its first in a series of initiatives by the company to support data portability, allowing users to take the content they create in one network and easily add it to other sites, MySpace said. Until now, social networking sites like MySpace have favored the “walled garden” approach, where they essentially lock their users into their own site.”

3. Article: Have You Changed Your Opinion on eBook Readers?
Author: Source: Slashdot

Excerpt: “The Kindle made waves when it came out, but they’ve now had the chance to calm. How many of you have been using your eBook readers since you’ve received them? How many of you forgot you had one, and how many of you swear by your reader? I like my single-purpose (well, dual — music player) Sony Reader because I actually use it to read, rather than multitasking myself to death. Is this technology as convenient and useful as you expected?” [Slashdot dicussion follows]

4. Article: Educause Survey: Top Ten IT Issues in Higher Education
Author: Catherine Rampell Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: “Educause, the higher-education-technology consortium, released the results yesterday of its 2008 survey on the top IT issues in higher education.

The top-10 issues “most important for… institutions to resolve for strategic success” are:
1) Security
2) Administrative/ERP Information Systems
3) Funding IT
4) Infrastructure
5) Identity/Access Management
6) Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity
7) Governance, Organization, and Leadership
8) Change Management
9) E-Learning/Distributed Teaching and Learning
10) Staffing/HR Management/Training”

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May 9

1. Article: Aplia Launches Web-Based Interactive Homework System
Author: David Nagel Source: Campus Technology

Excerpt: “Cengage Learning’s Aplia division has launched a new Web-based homework system called Grade It Now. The system combines aspects of practice problems with graded problems to encourage students to improve results as they work.
Grade It Now is designed to encourage student effort by providing feedback and by implementing a “try and revise” approach to answering problems”

2. Article: 10 facts about learning that are scientifically proven and interesting for teachers
Author: Donald Clark Source: Donald Clark Plan B

Excerpt: “In comments after my post ‘BBCs Paxman Demolishes Brain Gym’ I was challenged to provide 10 facts about learning that are scientifically proven and interesting for teachers. The problem I had was whittling it down to ten! So here goes: 1) Spaced Practice; 2) Cognitive overload; 3) Chunking [PDF on chunking techniques used by air traffic controllers]; 4) Order; 5) Episodic and semantic memory; 6) Psychological attention; 7) Context; 8) Learn by doing; 9) Understand peer groups; 10) Murder the myths [e.g. learning styles, Bloom’s taxonomy]”

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