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Tuesday, September 18
BBC: Web connects design students
An innovative programme using interactive learning techniques has allowed architecture students and professors from across the US and Latin American to share and pass on their knowledge
Computer World: E-Learning evangelists
Jackie Sullivan, a project manager at a large food manufacturer in the Chicago area, attempted to complete a bachelor's degree in IT twice before concluding that, as a single mom and working IT professional, e-learning offered her the best route to a diploma...
LOOP: Experience Models
The authors describe Sapient’s development of experience models and the collaboration that takes place among researchers, visual design communicators and information architects. Case examples illustrate the value of experience models, most importantly as tools to identify strategic business and design opportunities not previously considered by clients.
Gerry McGovern: Website content: the need to specialize
One of the most serious mistakes that people new to content make is underestimating the expense and sheer difficulty of launching a successful publication. Yes, the Internet has made everyone a publisher, and every website is indeed a publication. What is lacking, however, is an understanding of publishing. Hard lessons are only recently being learned.
NY Times: Internet Surpasses Its Original Goal
To judge by the availability of media sites, many of which were inaccessible in the hours just after the first plane hit the World Trade Center on Tuesday morning, one might assume the Internet had failed the test. But in fact, according to firms that analyze Web site traffic and performance, while some sites slowed, the overall flow of data across the Internet was not degraded by either damage to critical fiber optic lines or the clogging of those lines by Web users.
Monday, September 17
Washington Post: Taking Classes To the Masses
While the killer app that would draw people by the millions to online learning hasn't materialized, while many high-profile ventures flounder, there have been big strides at a more mundane level. Hundreds of universities of every sort have been putting some pretty basic courses up on the Web, using sometimes pedestrian software. And students seem to think they're okay. Community colleges and regional universities that have slowly, organically moved into the online arena -- doing their old job in a new way -- have succeeded where the flashy business types and big-time private schools have not... The nonprofit tortoises may have passed the dot-com hares.
Converge: The Power Of Portals: Personalizing The Web To Build Community
Good relationships are built on mutual understanding. When individuals can use a portal to get the targeted information they require, they are more likely to be in touch with an institution on a more regular basis. That kind of frequent usage promotes stronger relationships and deeper bonds between the individual and the institution.
The Chronicle: Pakistan Plans Its First Virtual University
Pakistan's Ministry of Science and Technology has announced plans to establish a virtual university here. The institution, which is to be called simply the Virtual University, will be the first of its kind in Pakistan when it opens next February.
The Chronicle: Canadian Universities Band Together in a Giant Journal-Licensing Deal
In Canada, 64 universities have banded together to spend nearly $30-million (U.S.) on nationwide site licenses for online scholarly journals. The National Site Licensing Project will provide 650 journals and numerous citation indexes to its members.
Saturday, September 15
Tehelka: Not just falling buildings
As the talking heads on American television have begun bristling with threats of armed retaliation, it is necessary to say this over and over again. The Arab people are not just terrorists, but teachers. Not just terrorists, but patient mothers. Not just terrorists, but children wanting toys. Or, to hell with cliches! They are not just terrorists, but a man worried about his second ulcer. Not just terrorists, but a woman wanting books. Not just terrorists, but a family terrified of terrorists who come in tanks.
Tehelka: Unheard voices: Afghan refugees tell their stories
In the first of a powerful four part series, Meena Nanji - a film maker from Los Angeles - speaks to a range of Afghan women on the run from the Taliban. Teachers reduced to prostitutes, doctors to beggars, Nanji brings home the true terror of the Taliban.
The Atlantic: Coming to Grips with Jihad
What are the roots of Islamic fundamentalist rage against the U.S.? How did Afghanistan become a hotbed of international terrorists? Three Atlantic articles look at the origins and consequences of jihad.
NY Times: Microsoft to Change Flight Game
Microsoft will remove depictions of the World Trade Center towers from future versions of Flight Simulator, its popular computer game that allows players to fly airplanes over New York City and other metropolitan areas.
Fast Company: Good to Great
Here are the facts of life about these and other change myths. Companies that make the change from good to great have no name for their transformation -- and absolutely no program. They neither rant nor rave about a crisis -- and they don't manufacture one where none exists. They don't "motivate" people -- their people are self-motivated. There's no evidence of a connection between money and change mastery. And fear doesn't drive change -- but it does perpetuate mediocrity. Nor can acquisitions provide a stimulus for greatness: Two mediocrities never make one great company. Technology is certainly important -- but it comes into play only after change has already begun. And as for the final myth, dramatic results do not come from dramatic process -- not if you want them to last, anyway. A serious revolution, one that feels like a revolution to those going through it, is highly unlikely to bring about a sustainable leap from being good to being great.
NY Times: Better Networks: Look to Nature
Over the ensuing decades, as the Internet turned from an academic and military tool into a mass medium, only the efficiencies of packet switching have enabled it to meet demand. Even so, as any Web user or e-mail correspondent can attest, traffic can still be congested and unpredictable. Now ideas for advances in data routing are beginning to emerge from a surprisingly simple model: the ant.
Friday, September 14
Honolulu Star: Ocean of Knowledge
A novel combination of sea-schooling and e-schooling, the Ocean Learning Academy will expose 11 students to a high school curriculum in a maritime context...The students will mix ocean learning with online learning -- all were provided with laptop computers so they can log on to the Internet to study math, social studies, language arts and technology.
Nando Times: A disconnect in online learning
Since the dawn of the Internet age, boosters have predicted the end of leafy college campuses as schools go virtual. The miracle of the Internet was supposed to let great teachers reach any student, any time, anywhere. And people all over the world would get the equivalent of a Harvard degree through a computer and a network connection... What a crock.
CIO: Thanks for the Memories
Perhaps the most insidious side of the layoff epidemic is the intellectual capital that is walking out the door. CIO's case study examines how Northrop Grumman conducted a knowledge "audit," polling nearly 5,000 employees with a 97-question survey to determine their knowledge needs, sharing practices and prejudices. The results confirmed that employees were eager to share their knowledge in an automated system, but that challenges, such as integrating the systems across lines of business, remained. Knowledge management expert Tom Davenport critiques Northrop's efforts and plans, which he says are mostly sound, and predicts that we'll see more such projects motivated by the loss of intellectual assets. But Davenport challenges the willingness of employees to participate in systems intended to minimize the impact of their own eventual layoff.
CIO: Stay Tuned for More Knowledge
Videoconferencing hasn't exactly fulfilled its promise in the corporate world, but a few universities are putting the put-upon technology to innovative uses.
Knowledge@Wharton: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Innovator
When companies look for new knowledge as a way to spark innovation, they tend to look in their immediate neighborhood – companies that may be located nearby physically or in their own industry. That local approach is too limiting. For companies that are willing to reach out to longer distances and broader contexts, the payoff could be worth it.
Thursday, September 13
Darwin: Re-Learning E-Learning
"There are times when you can—and should—unplug from the world. But most of the time, all hell is breaking loose; employees, clients and business partners are playing a game of musical chairs; and none of us can afford to walk away from the tasks at hand. Yet we still need to learn continuously in order to do the task—especially when the task changes from day to day. That's why I refer to e-learning as just-in-time learning." -- Interview with Thomas Koulopoulos.
Guardian Unlimited: Prime time for learning
Courses based on BBC1 programmes will be offered to UK undergraduates for the first time tonight. The producers of a David Attenborough programme about oceans, which starts this evening, asked the Open University to create a course for people interested in issues raised by the television series.
The Chronicle: San Diego Company Quietly Provides Online Courses to Nearly 1,000 Institutions
The company, Education to Go, offers not-for-credit courses in all 50 states and five countries. Company officials say it currently offers courses through 945 client institutions, including almost 700 community colleges and more than 200 universities and other four-year institutions. It has 135 courses in its catalog now, and has 200 more in development, with four new titles coming out each week for the next year.
Wired: Who Said the Web Fell Apart?
Dave Winer: "We, collectively, got on it very quickly once it was clear that the the news sites were choked with flow and didn't have very much info.... There's power in the new communication and development medium we're mastering. Far from being dead, the Web is just getting started."
NY Times: Web Offers Both News and Comfort
The major news Web sites were quickly overloaded. Many links to the not-so-major news Web sites stopped working. But more than news, what people all over the world craved in the wake of yesterday's terrorist attacks was connection to each other, and many of them found that most easily achieved by going online.
Wednesday, September 12
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Tuesday, September 11
eLearn Magazine: Share and Share Alike
Several years ago, Harvard law professor Arthur Miller sold videos of his lectures to an online law school called the Concord School of Law. Not at all pleased when it discovered what he had done, Harvard accused him of violating University policy. Miller retorted he had violated no such policy, and the lectures were his intellectual property. And so the two parties began a lengthy debate over who owns what, and what rights that ownership bestows.
Wired: Kids, Academics Share Internet2
Internet2 is working with state education networks to bring high performance networking and applications to K-12 schools and community colleges.
icWales: On-line learning initiative is aimed at entrepreneurs
Enterprise College Wales has received multi-million pound backing from the European Social Fund via the Objective One initiative. This heralds the start of a fresh approach to new business start-up in Wales by providing Internet-based training opportunities geared towards entrepreneurs.
The Chronicle: Should Distance Students Pay for Campus-Based Services?
Student-fee structures have always been unfair to some degree -- not every undergraduate gets sick enough to visit the student-health service, for instance, and some students may use a fee-supported campus bus service every day while classmates who have paid the same fee ride their bikes to and fro. But when online students live hundreds of miles away, paying fees for campus services can become a source of considerably greater discontent.
Business 2.0: How to Beat Corporate Alzheimer's
Large consulting firms touted half-baked KM software as a panacea for enterprise information management in the late 1990s. Early KM software required employees -- or a cadre of librarians -- to carefully organize and annotate information before it could be managed. That approach proved too labor-intensive and expensive to be worthwhile. Today, KM is making a comeback on the strength of better solutions -- namely, the humble search engine.
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