22.08.09
Every now and then I like to do graphical searches related to Learning Objects and Open Educational Resources because I find that these searches sometimes yield different frameworks for understanding the information and sites that emerge than I get from my regular reading of rss feeds and blog entries. Recently I tried the new WikiMindMap and was pleased to see that the entry for "Learning Objects" is very good; the entry in Wikipedia for "Open Educational Resources" is a bit sparse, but not bad for starters. If you try "OER" alone as the search term you'll get not only Open Educational Resources but Oregon Electric Railway, Odaku Electric Railway, Offense Efficiency Rating, and Oxygen Efficiency Ratio.
Getting outside Wikipedia. I used my favorite graphical search engine, Kartoo. The Kartoo search for "Open Educational Searches" put the fairly new OER Commons right at the center of the display which I thought was accurate and timely.
A colleague, Dr. Russ Poulin from WCET, recently recommended the clustering search engine Clusty, so I tried it for both "Open Educational Resources" and "Learning Objects." Ten times as many results were returned for the second search term than for the first, indicating (I suppose) that Learning Objects have been discussed longer in the professional literature than Open Educational Resources. I liked the way Clusty ordered and outlined the results.
Finally, I did a search in Google for "Graphical Search Engines" and discovered a kind of meta search engine tool called, appropriately, the Graphical Search Engine Comparison Tool from SEO Tools. This handy tool permits the user to select two from among five popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Vista, and AlltheWeb) and then enter search terms for the two different search engines (e.g., Google and Yahoo) to compare their results. The resulting display shows which links are at the top, middle, and bottom of one search vs the other and what percentage of the sites overlap in the searches (in this example, 46% for "Learning Objects," 36% for "Open Educational Resources"). Using this tool will convince searchers how important it is to NOT rely on a single search engine. Highly recommended. ____JH
22.08.09
Here's the link the to wiki syllabus for David Wiley's Fall 2007 course about Open Education. There's still time to sign up for this online course. "The goals of the course are (1) to give you a firm grounding in the current state of the field of open education, including related topics like copyright, licensing, and sustainability, (2) to help you locate open education in the context of mainstream instructional technologies like learning objects, and (3) to get you thinking, writing, and dialoguing creatively and critically about current practices and possible alternative practices in open education." Those who don't want to participate in the course will still find value in the online readings and the links to OER sites. ____JH
RSS
12.01.09
This informative and provocative video contains a Library of Congress presentation by Dr. Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University, who explores the digital ethnography of YouTube. Wesch and his students conduct their research using "participant observation" on YouTube. Wesch makes very effective use of XML, screen captures, music, pictures, re-mixing, and video presentation techniques to convey his analyses of the cultural significance of Web 2.0 media trends. Wesch's work is a fine example of using a medium to explain a medium--something like Marshall McCluhan using Television to explain the impact of TV on society. See Wesch's other videos, "The Machine is Us/ing Us" and "Information R/evolution," and consult Mediated Cultures for updates about the Digital Ethnography Working Group's studies. ____JH (Thanks to iThinkEd and openculture for citations of Wesch's work.)
_____
"Web 2.0 is about linking people in ways that we've never been linked before."
"Media mediate human relationships; when media change, human relations change."
"YouTube exhibits a seriously playful participatory media culture."
"Networked individualism."
"The Web is us."
22.08.09
This guideline information was cited in Open Access News. These tools will be useful to students and instructors in both science and technology. ____JH
"ResourceShelf has put together A Quick Look at a Few Free Science Search Tools. Among the tools and resources it covers are BioMed Central, CiteSeer, DOAJ, Global Science Gateway, Google Scholar, Highwire Press, Microsoft Live Search Academic, National Science Digital Library, OAIster, PubMed Central, Science.gov, Scirus, and Scitopia." [Open Access News]
RSS
22.08.09
Inside Higher Ed reports on Blackboard's latest loss, which is good news for universities and colleges who use open source software because we can be sure that despite their disclaimers, Blackboard would certainly move against open source courseware if they succeed against Desire2Learn and other private companies. Blackboard's loss is also an affirmation of common sense since anyone with long-time experience in course management software knew that Blackboard's patent claims were simply assertions, not valid original contributions to courseware delivery methods. ____JH
____
"Both companies appealed the parts of the case they'd lost to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has nationwide jurisdiction over U.S. patent claims. Its highly technical decision upheld the lower court's conclusion that Blackboard's claims 1-35 were invalid. But the three-judge panel rejected the lower court's finding that Blackboard's patented learning system had originated the approach of giving a single user with a single log-in multiple roles, such as being a teacher in one course and a student in another."
"The appeals panel embraced Desire2Learn's argument that such technology existed in 'prior art,' in this case previously existing course management systems such as Serf and CourseInfo 1.5. The appeals court essentially ruled that the lower court judge had framed Blackboard's claim incorrectly for the jury, said Bruce T. Wieder, a lawyer for the Washington firm of Dow Lohnes who was not involved in the case. Having done so, the Federal Circuit court "could have said, 'This is how you should have interpreted it, you go look at it again,' " Wieder said. "But instead, the court said, 'Since we've seen what was argued, we now can say that the district court wouldn't have come to any conclusion,' and declared those claims invalid."
Usługi zwi±zane z szeroko rozumian± reklam± w internecie pozycjonowanie , tworzenie stron www, tworzenie sklepów, indentyfikacja wizualna.