I never thought I’d see a screencast in a screencast, but that is just what I got watching this fabulous presentation about using screencasts, podcasts, blogs, etc. in support of education. Any time you come away with brand new ideas about how to be a better teacher, more efficiently, you have to share…
Monthly Archive for October, 2005
Great quote from a short piece called Innovative User Interfaces:
Whether building the killer app or defining a new market, the message should be clear: innovate only where necessary, avoid being overly creative, and be aware of the technical limitations facing your product. Corporations that successfully balance innovation with standard, usable feature-sets will set themselves apart from the pack and greatly increase their survival rate.
Interesting thought from a paper mentioned in the UNESCO IIEP forum on open educational resources:
An important debate is currently taking place within universities but also among researchers, diplomats and governmental sectors all over the world. Can education be considered as a commercial service and, as a result, regulated by the World Trade Organization (WTO)? If the reply is positive, does this mean that the rules and principles of GATS (the General Agreement on Trade in Services) apply to education or should it be considered as a public service? What are the implications of the answer to this question? And if the idea of public service is retained, what are the principles that must guide the organization, content and policies for higher education in developing countries in general?
The Objectives and Institutionalism of the Global University System was written by the former Director of the Division of Higher Ed of UNESCO.
So by now you’ve heard - Blackboard is buying WebCT, and in 18 months or so there will be one uberproduct. We all saw this coming, but still - wow.
Why am I mad? Because the state of Utah just completed a bid process to license and buy support for an LMS to be used at all state schools. And after phone calls and emails with a company who will remain un-named (why do we protect the guilty?) who assured me they would put in a bid to install / configure / support Sakai for the state, today I heard that they never bothered submitting a bid. I could spit I’m so angry. I could have worked with any of a handful of companies to get this OSS solution in the competition, but I naively believed this vendor’s word that they would put in a bid. And now it’s all said and done, and Sakai wasn’t even in the mix. I actually threw something across the room today when I heard.
Our only hope now is that the whole Bb/WebCT conglomerate madness will force the state to reevaluate its position and open another bid. You can bet I’ll be following up a lot closer with the next vendor I choose to encourage to apply. (And since when do businesses need convincing that a statewide, multimillion dollar contract is a thing they should want???)
I’m seeing double.
So by now you’ve heard - Blackboard is buying WebCT, and in 18 months or so there will be one uberproduct. We all saw this coming, but still - wow.
Why am I mad? Because the state of Utah just completed a bid process to license and buy support for an LMS to be used at all state schools. And after phone calls and emails with a company who will remain un-named (why do we protect the guilty?) who assured me they would put in a bid to install / configure / support Sakai for the state, today I heard that they never bothered submitting a bid. I could spit I’m so angry. I could have worked with any of a handful of companies to get this OSS solution in the competition, but I naively believed this vendor’s word that they would put in a bid. And now it’s all said and done, and Sakai wasn’t even in the mix. I actually threw something across the room today when I heard.
Our only hope now is that the whole Bb/WebCT conglomerate madness will force the state to reevaluate its position and open another bid. You can bet I’ll be following up a lot closer with the next vendor I choose to encourage to apply. (And since when do businesses need convincing that a statewide, multimillion dollar contract is a thing they should want???)
I’m seeing double.
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