Streaming Media Patents Being Enforced.

Patent holder unplugs porn network. A holding company that has a stack of streaming media patents briefly shuts down a network of pornography Web sites in an ominous sign for mainstream providers of streaming Web content. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

Is this really "ominous"? If you read the article, you find that most of the mainstream providers have already bought the requisite licenses. The porn sites were shut down because they wouldn't pay. Seems fair to me. Too bad they couldn't have been shut down forever.

We need to find out exactly who is being required to purchase licenses. A February 14 article in CNET News ("Streaming patent claims go to court") says:

Acacia began its license-seeking process last summer, approaching companies in the adult entertainment business. Since that time it has begun approaching mainstream Webcasters as well, asking for license revenue that ranges between 0.75 percent and 2 percent of companies' revenue related to the streaming business.

So it looks like they are going after the really big outfits in court. Virgin Records and Microsoft, for example. What about the use of streaming media by Joe's Barn Door Company in its Web-based employee training program? or Bill's Streaming Media Service Bureau? Probably we will pay for the right to use the technology when we acquire a license to use specific software. Until we get big enough to show up on the radar in Acacia's Legal Department. I guess that will be a nice problem to have.

A lot has happened in this area in the last year, and these patent suits will continue to shape the future of e-Learning and the ability of entrepreneurs to provide services. Web frames, e-commerce, and JPEG are just three of the basic technologies that are being claimed. Watch for the effect of these on the cost of entry into the e-Learning provider arena. Can "Mom-and-Pop" e-Learning Shops continue to participate, or will this be the catalyst that forces the long-anticipated shakeout of the industry?

9:05:42 PM    

Keeping up with Live Meeting.

Microsoft touts communications services. An executive at the software giant talks up the new Live Meeting Web conferencing service and future technologies aimed at helping office workers share information. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

Still to be seen how useful this will be to those of us who provide services to organizations, and for training. The pricing will be a key element, and it could open up another opportunity: small remote conferencing setups, something like the ones that Kinko's pioneered several years ago.

9:00:05 PM    

Distance Learning: Step by Step.

This (following James Farmers' comments) is my first, fast look reaction to the paper. James' comments first, though, since he pointed the paper out to me.

Step by backwards step.

I just wrote a long critique about this and then IE crashed and now I'm 8 minutes away from a meeting.

Short version: Don't even go near this paper (.pdf)... 'Distance Learning: Step by Step' unless you'd like to get thoroughly disenchanted with the way online education is being put out there... whaddyaupto JITE?

[update: ahha! so that was the link... thanks George]

[James Farmer's Radio Weblog]

I am surprised by the content of the paper. Granted, I do not have a doctorate in Education and all of my experience over the last 35 years has been with adults in workplace settings. My postgraduate work was 30 years ago, and it was in Human Behavior. I admit that the authors have far more in the way of credentials than I do, and they are experts in education. I admit that I have an extreme bias against lecture as a primary and exclusive delivery method. And granted I only spent a few minutes (ok, an hour) reading it, I'm grumpy because I have a muscle in my back that has been in spasm for two weeks and I am distracted by my father's illness and by looming publication deadlines for the Journal and an article that is requiring far too much of my attention to edit. But still ... what ARE these authors saying (and it's Nova Southeast I wonder about, as much as I wonder why JITE published this thing)?

In other words, I am going out on a limb here -- maybe I got the authors' point wrong.

The paper seems to argue that (1) we teach lower level cognitive skills to children and traditional college students, and higher level cognitive skills to adults and graduate students; (2) it is most appropriate to deliver lower level cognitive skills via classroom lecture and to deliver higher level cognitive skills via online means. I can't possibly have understood the paper. The "stepwise" plan looks to me to be far more complicated and rigid than necessary, and it's done from the "teacher" point of view rather than looking at the learning tasks faced by the "student."

My experience suggests that progressions designed for adults must usually address the lower levels in Bloom's Taxonomy as well as the upper levels, and that it works better with adults to use a combination of classroom and online settings to get the job done regardless of the level. In fact, in my opinion, the results are better when you leverage the potential of "live" settings for the higher levels. I wonder, as well, whether children and traditional college students don't also require higher level development as part of their education. Even young children can handle synthesis.

I don't have enough time right now to write a reasoned, thorough response, but I just have grave doubts about this whole "step by step" thing. I think instructional design requires a more holistic approach with respect to objectives and methods, at least in the settings with which I am familiar. More later, when my deadlines are dealt with and I am less worried about my dad.

8:12:56 AM