Wednesday, October 27, 2004

BC Commons licence. http://www.bccampus.ca/Page93.aspx It struck me that while there will be quite a few out there who have seen this before, I haven't seen it make the rounds of the blogosphere and so maybe it is worthwhile... The BCcommons Licence is a open content licence inspired by Creative Commons but aimed specifically at facilitating sharing of content created within the BC post-secondary system with the rest of that system. It has been developed by my employers (and my boss, Paul Stacey) at BCcampus. It's a kind of middle ground between "closed" content and the full Creative Commons, a way for our provincial system to promote sharing between institutions but hopefully not pushing people as far out of their comfort zone as the full on Creative Commons might. The first content to be released under this licence should be coming along shortly so we will soon see if this fills the anticipated niche and has the desired effect. And a final note: in a cool twist, the BCcommons licence itself has been released under the creative commons, so if it somehow inspires you and you think it could serve as the basis for your own middle way, dig in! - SWL [EdTechPost] 8:43:32 PM      Google It!.

Increasing Learner Retention in a Simulated Learning Network using Indirect Social Interaction. I'll leave my disagreements (and there are some) with this article for another day, and highlight the important new concepts being explored in this paper presented last week in Alberta. First is the concept of the learning network itself, according to the author, "a network of persons who create, share, support and study learning resources ('units of learning') in a specific knowledge domain." Second, it is important to note how major features of the model differ from the traditional approach - "putting the learner centre-stage means that the learner and not a teacher or an institute is responsible for his/her own learning processes", "learners are typically engaged in a variety of formal and informal learning activities", and "the participants in an LN in any given field have different levels of competence, varying from novice to top expert, and from practitioner to researcher and developer." (Note that I used the handle to link to this item - this is an experiment - I don't really believe they'll be more persistent than URLs, but we'll see). By Rob Koper, DSpace OUNL, October 15, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 8:08:12 PM      Google It!.

Yahoo Unveils Mobile Search, Google Rivalry Rages. SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Internet media company Yahoo Inc. YHOO.O on Wednesday launched its Web search service aimed at mobile phone users in the United States, opening a new front in its rivalry with Internet search leader Google Inc. GOOG.O [Reuters: Technology] 8:05:26 PM      Google It!.

Weaned on Video Games. Video gamers are getting younger and younger. And parents and the video game industry agree that the implications are likely to be enormous. By By MICHEL MARRIOTT. [NYT > Technology] 8:04:11 PM      Google It!.

'Hobbit' joins human family tree. The discovery of remains belonging to a tiny species of ancient human has been hailed as one of the most sensational finds of its type in decades. [BBC News | Science/Nature | UK Edition] 10:53:32 AM      Google It!.

With F.C.C. Consent, Cingular Buys AT&T Wireless. The $41 billion deal will create the country's largest mobile phone provider. By By KEN BELSON. [NYT > Technology] 10:19:12 AM      Google It!.

Project Gutenberg Threatened Over PG Australia [Slashdot:] 10:18:13 AM      Google It!.

Advent of the Robotic Monkeys. Researchers train a monkey to feed itself by guiding a mechanical arm with its mind. It could be a big step forward for prosthetics. By David Cohn. [Wired News] 10:16:28 AM      Google It!.

Why IBM Open Sourced Cloudscape [Slashdot:] 10:09:09 AM      Google It!.

PloneAtom 0.1.3 released. I'm pleased to announce the first public release of PloneAtom, which provides atom support for Plone. Currently it provides the atom syndication format for folderish objects, in the same way as RSS syndication is implemented. [Plone RSS] 10:02:49 AM      Google It!.

Google Acquires Keyhole Corp. [Slashdot:] This looks to be the commercial rendition of the NASA material but may be more recent.  One use case is to provide a GPS like locator for information links by connection to points on the planet.  For historians and archiologists this is a truly powerful presentation tools.  The Keyhole folks make the case for population trend tracking and marketing in the present which will help teaching human geography.  I think it is a nice step forward to seeking the planet as an connected ecosystem thanks to the zoom. -- BL 10:00:46 AM      Google It!.