[Olpc-za] Small Companies That Try to Bring Innovative Technology to Teaching - New York Times

[Jeff]

On 22 Jun 2007, at 1:53 PM, Antoine van Gelder wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/business/smallbusiness/ 
> 21edge.html? 
> ei=5070&em=&en=30368db593d684da&ex=1182571200&pagewanted=all


Bah! 'reply all' is an archaic and almost entirely deprecated usenet  
convention. :-)

Check this out. The outline is kind of bare, but the concept is  
infinitely better than the $60bn industry alleged above (:

http://drupaled.openacademic.org/

It's kind of a cross authentication and integration platform for  
Drupal, Moodle and Wikimedia. How kewl is that?!

(http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_3/keats/index.html)

"Perhaps most important, we need to come to terms with the fact that  
we are at a tipping-point in higher education, one that will lead us  
to "education 3.0," defined in part as "social networking outside  
traditional boundaries of discipline, institution, nation," "loose  
institutional affiliations and relations; [and the] entry of new  
institutions that provide higher education services."
(http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/distance-learning- 
listening)

http://freecourseware.uwc.ac.za/index.php? 
module=blog&action=viewsingle&postid=init_1875_1176897746&userid=1

http://lawspace.law.uct.ac.za:8080/dspace/handle/2165/237 is a long  
pdf on fair use exceptions in SA. Written in 1978 it appears to make  
sufficient allowance for the copying of text books (or sections  
thereof) for educational purposes. Like, say, emulating Kenya  
digitizing their entire syllabus but (not!) distributing it via  
handheld WorldSpace receivers with school base stations providing the  
asynchronous semi-simplex bidirectional 'communication':
http://www.eduvision.or.ke/home/home.html . . .

I'm not particularly sorry if my AAADD (Age Acquired Attention  
Deficit Disorder) has you wondering if any of the above may have  
particular meaning or relevance to OLPC; as the probable answer is  
no. However, in mitigation, it's symptomatic of the schizophrenic dis- 
coordinated infancy days of Open Courseware ideology and commercially  
Enhanced Digital Learning.

Anyway, I have yet to be convinced that there is a major difference  
between classes that will be offered on XOs... and in vanilla client/ 
server environments. Ideological core dumps appreciated.

Irie blessings,

-
Jeff Brown
wildcoast.com
074-101 5170

8< --
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.


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