Friday, February 25, 2005

TaskStream backs ePortfolio study - Corey Murray, eSchool News. Ask Helen Barrett of the University of Alaska College of Education how students feel about creating learning portfolios, and she'll tell you a story about a group of high school seniors in the Pacific Northwest who got together on graduation night and bui [Online Learning Update] 8:23:11 PM      Google It!.

SoFIA Releases First 8 Open Content Courses. Sofia (Sharing of Free Intellectual Assets) intends to do for the community college level what MIT's Open Courseware offers for upper division courses- free, open content courses you can use in whole or part. Free with Creative Commons licensing. The first 8 courses are available from their gallery: The pilot grant open content initiative, Sofia (Sharing of Free Intellectual Assets), was initiated in March of 2004 under the leadership of Vivian 'Vivie' Sinou, Dean of Distance & Mediated Learning at Foothill College. "Open" content refers to material that is freely available for use by faculty, students, and self-learners. The Sofia finalists include the following content contributed by faculty from five California Community Colleges: Creative Typography, by Carolyn Brown, Foothill College; Introduction to Java Programming, Steven Gilbert, Orange Coast College; Elementary Statistics, by Susan Dean and Barbara Illowsky, De Anza College; Physical Geography, by Allison Lenkeit, Foothill College; Musicianship, by Don Megill and Dave Megill, Mira Costa College; Enterprise Network Security, by Sukhjit Singh, De Anza College and Mike Murphy, Foothill College; Web Page Authoring, Jo Anne Howell, Gavilan College; and Macromedia Flash, by Marcia Ganeles, Foothill College. I just skimmed Web Page Authoring and found it clean, comprehensive, with not just content, but assignments, exams, and discussion areas. Are these Learning Objects? "course objects?" Who cares what you call it, it's good stuff... and it is free. Keep an eye on SoFIA, she's a looking gooooooood... [cogdogblog] 8:21:22 PM      Google It!.

Stem Cell Injections Pioneering Step Forward? [Slashdot:] 8:19:00 PM      Google It!.

good Will thinking. What: Will Richardson, the person behind weblogg-ed and a contributor to eSchool News Online - edtech insider, is not afraid to think out loud...in a very public space. He has had many posts that have helped me to think more critically about technology and education. Here are a couple of recent posts. Please be sure to read the responses from Will's readers as they can be equally enlightening. Snippet O' the Day I've been grappling lately with just how wholeheartedly to embrace the "all information is now socially constructed" meme that's building out of the Read/Write Web environment. If true, if we are entering an era where the information we rely on is in constant flux, under constant collaborative revision, then we ... [edugadget] 8:14:40 PM      Google It!.

Markdown. Sweet. A free and open source Perl script that translates ordinary text into correct HTML or XHTML. Works a lot like a wiki script, except that it can function as a plug-in for Moveable Type, Blosxom, or BBEdit (along with, presumably, your home grown Perl programs). I can't wait to play with it. There's also a PHP port by Michel Fortin. And an HTML to (Markdown style) text, by Aaron Schwartz. By John Gruber, Daring Fireball, December 17, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 8:11:23 PM      Google It!.

Cutting Through - helping you to cut through the information and technology clutter » How to use personal wikis [Edubloggers Links Feed] 8:07:22 PM      Google It!.