The Learning Marketplace.

This online book by Stephen Downes links a number of essays that have appeared on the web. The book is available for downloading as an MS Word file. Stephen's OLDaily is an important presence in the field of online learning; it's helpful to have a collection of his central ideas about learning objects. JH ____

The Learning Marketplace: Meaning, Metadata and Content Syndication in the Learning Object Economy. In September, 2001, just for fun I created a 'book generator' and, for posterity, 'authored' two books using it: Knowledge, Learning and Community (a.k.a. Book 1) and Democracy and Freedom (a.k.a. Book 2). Inexplicably, because I link to them utterly nowhere (and haven't for years) they still generate about a hundred downloads a month, give or take, as you can see in my stats. And more recently, I have noticed again a need for a consolidation of my work, especially that of the last three years. Hence, I have compiled Book 3, this time in nice MS Word format suitable for printing (or publishing, should anyone want to do that, or for giving me a PhD, should anyone feel I merit one). I have even added a short introduction and thematic introductions to the articles. Caution: after you get to the web page (which is a simple launcher for people who can't download through their email client), you are looking at a 2.1 megabyte download. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, January 21, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] [EduResources Weblog--Higher Education Resources Online]

11:50:15 PM    

My Left Big Toe is a Learning Object.

This is just for fun. I think. -- BB

When ever a discussion turns to "defining learing objects" my attention span goes out the door. With more than 500,000 Google-hits (link above), it is not any more clear what a LO is.

The "Learning Object Virtual Community Of Practice" bears the cheery acronym LOVCOP, but it has been a ghost town since summer 2003. The virtual tumbleweds are blowing down main street and the saloon is slient.

But I have read some things recently where it seems that almost any multimedia lesson created, any web page, every single flash goober, seems to bear the hot label of a"learning object." Therefore, I proclaim that everything that exists is a learning object, including my left big toe, so we can drop the silly jargon and move on to what counts...

11:47:55 PM    

my.Yahoo beta-testing RSS support.

N/C (see my earlier notes today on this subject) -- BB

Third-party aggregrators watch out, an old-school portal is on the verge of supporting RSS in a big way. Jeremy Zawodny introduces the approach, featuring a respectful robot and including support for weblogs.com-style pinging (http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2) as well as a RESTful URL/bookmark approach (http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://rss.lockergnome.com/) ) for faster spidering.

8:25:32 PM    

Online Learning Communities.

This link will lead you (eventually) to a 14-page pdf. Thanks to Ray for posting the link. -- BB

What are the conditions for and characteristics of effective online learning communities? - Australian National Training Authority. This guide is premised on the notion that ‘online communities’ are an increasingly important part of the way we will operate, as teachers, learners, and citizens of a networked world, and, the benefits we accept from these new ways of working. This gui [Online Learning Update]

11:59:05 AM    

UK: National Learning Network.

This is new to me, don't know anything about it, but I want to do some digging to find out. -- BB

National Learning Network: Paving the way to excellence in e-learning.

National Learning Network: Paving the way to excellence in e-learning

"The document, Paving the way to excellence in e-learning, has been produced by the National Learning Network (NLN) Materials Team, which is responsible for commissioning and managing the production of hundreds of hours of e-learning materials that are delivered free to the learning and skills sector... The document covers important issues such as pedagogy, accessibility (both design and technical requirements), technical standards and quality assurance."

11:54:26 AM    

Customers can subscribe to RSS feeds via My Yahoo!

As noted in the previous post, this may be a way for your customers to get your newsletters without email and without adding a new piece of software to their systems. Should work from behind firewalls, too. It would be better if you could get customers to install a newsreader that didn't require using a browser to read feeds, but this is a good alternative. All they need do is add a free Yahoo account (which many of them may have already). -- BB

My Yahoo! RSS Beta Launched. Finally! Better late than never, congrats to Jeremy and the team!

QUOTE

It's been under development and testing for a while (it even tried to sneak out recently) and is now ready for you to play with. Now you can add nearly any RSS feed to your My Yahoo page. That includes news sites, weblogs, searches, and more. Think of this as the natural evolution of one of the oldest web-based news aggregators.

UNQUOTE

11:31:01 AM    

Another report about spam filters blocking legit email.

Just add this to the growing list of problems with email. Note that Yahoo's RSS module is now in beta, so it may be possible for customers to easily subscribe to an RSS feed of your electronic newsletter and other customer communications. I will post an entry on this directly. -- BB

40% of legitimate email not going through

a recent article highlights an alarming trend.  Thanks to our spam friends, legitimate uses of email are being squeezed into non-existence.  We use email all the time to notify team members of new project activity.  I've notice lately that more and more spam filters are blocking our notifications even though team members want to be notified.  I'm guessing that RSS feeds might be the answer but am willing to consider other ideas...

11:25:41 AM