Tag Archives: Resources

Dr. Couros, At Last!

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I’ve successfully defended my Ph. D. dissertation, and I’m incredibly happy. It feels absolutely terrific to be done!

I have a few minor edits to do, but I thought I would share the (just about) finished dissertation.

The Open Movement: Possibilities and Implications for Education.

This dissertation reports the results of a two-year long research study focused on describing and coming to understand the perceptions and beliefs of a group of educators immersed in open source culture (OSC)

I was lucky to have the help of great participants throughout this study, many who are mentioned by name in the dissertation. Thanks to all of those who participated and for helping me get through this important stage in my own education. I hope that this document is helpful to others, and I expect to have a LOT to say about my findings in the next few months. And of course, thanks to my committee and my advisor Dr. Cyril Kesten for getting me through this.

Happy holidays everyone!

Google Will Digitize Your Academic Journal Back Runs For Free

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Peter Suber’s Open Access News reports, “Google is offering to digitize and provide OA (open access) to the back runs of scholarly journals. ”

I think that this is great news for the academic community, that is, if the offer is taken up by publishers on a significant level. Of course, there are pros and cons. Be sure to read Suber’s full post to get a better idea of the specific issues involved.

Here’s A Challenge

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Say you were teaching an undergraduate course focused on the integration of technology in the classroom, and you wanted to expose students to THE key literature in the field regarding emerging trends in the field. And, I’m not meaning a dry journal article somewhere … but something new, that motivates, that disrupts … that can demonstrate the potential of new, social technologies on education.

Allright … I admit it … I’m teaching the course in question, and I’m looking for some good ideas.

What would you have them read? What’s most important to you?

I’d love to hear from you out there.

More On Learning Management Systems (LMS) Patents

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In case you missed the big story from July, “Blackboard, a US-based LMS company that recently merged with Canadian-based WebCT to become the largest company in the market, took the academic community by surprise late last month when it announced that it had been granted a broad patent in the United States covering 44 claims related to learning management systems.”

Michael Geist has recently written an article covering the controversy, and he points to a site I had not seen before. “The No Education Patents wiki (noedupatents.org) is of particular interest since it provides a plain-language explanation of all 44 claims contained in the Blackboard patent and it invites the community to submit specific examples of prior art. The wiki is revealing as it illustrates how beneath the complexity of the language used in patents, many of the claims relate to simple functionality such as online chat rooms and exam submissions.”

Additionally, what I really like about the wiki is that it features a section covering “The History of Virtual Learning Environments“. This is a good resource for a refresher, or of course, one to contribute to if you are able to see any gaps in the history.

I’m A Mac …

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I finally got around to viewing the “I’m a Mac” series of ads from Apple. Great stuff! I’d love to see these done in light of Free/Open Source Software.

Thanks to Heather and Rick … man I’m a slow blogger.

And while I’m on the topic of Macs, if you haven’t already downloaded it, check out the latest version of GimpShop, a Photoshop-esque application for the Mac based on the popular The GIMP application.

WebQuest Links

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I’ve been asked to do a short WebQuest workshop. It’s been a while since I have done much with WebQuests, but I thought I’d use this blog as a starting point for my participants.

Relevant Links:
WebQuest Page: Where the WebQuest idea originated through the work of Bernie Dodge and Tom March.

QuestGarden: A WebQuest creation tool that makes it easier for individuals to build and host WebQuests.

iTeacherEd WebQuest Modules: A resource built by our iTeacherEd team on how to build and host WebQuests using HTML tools. Note modules 6-10 focus on WebQuests.

WebQuest Taskonomy: Useful ideas when thinking about how to shape your WebQuest.

Reading & Training Materials: Various information on the theory of WebQuests.

Searchable WebQuest DataBase: Search for various WebQuests.

SESD WebQuests: WebQuests from the Saskatchewan East School Division (likely now longer called this).

Energy Choices and Consequences: A WebQuest created back in the day by former classmate Peter Arthur which I often use as an exemplar.

WebQuests from U of R Education Students: Oldies but goodies.

Good Things & A Bad Trend

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Good things:
Heather Ross reports that SkypeOut (the ability to make phonecalls from computer to telephone/cell phone) is now free for calls made within Canada and the US.

Rob tells us that Statistics Canada is now (finally) Linux friendly.

A Bad Trend:
“Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality = Digital Dystopia?” This preprint paper from Educause begins to explain one of the biggest combined issues that educational technologists, educators and netizens are facing now and in the near future. I don’t ever want to look back at this post and think, “those were the days”. I hope the best is yet to come.

Virtual Resource Centre For First Nations Education – Study

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Lace Brogden and I wrote this report a couple of months ago, but I never got a chance to post it here. Here’s the executive summary:

This report was written at the request of the Keewatin Career Development Corporation (KCDC) and in follow up to A Comparative Assessment of Four Online Learning Programs (Bale, 2005). This document reports on the findings of the Phase 2 Feasibility Study. The foci of Phase 2 of the research were to identify (a) factorsrelevant to the development and implementation of an online, interinstitutional partnership for virtual resource centre alternatives within and between specific First Nations educational communities, and (b) how such interinstitutional partnerships might be beneficial to a
broad constituency of collaborating education agencies.

The report is divided into four main sections. First, a description of the context, including a review of literature relevant to technology and to First Nations communities, a discussion of proprietary and open cultures, and an examination of several existing learning object repositories and their characteristics. The second section describes the research methodology and presents an analysis of the research data. The third section includes recommendations for the establishment of a First Nations learning object repository. The fourth and final section proposes areas for further research.

The highlight of the report for me was working once again with Lace. I feel that we work and write very well as a team, and I have learned more about writing and research in the few hours I spent with her than through all of the other formalized venues in my experience.

I hope that this report may be of use to someone out there. I also thank the rich discussions in the blogging community for much of the information found here.