I recently received an email from Hal Abelson (you never know who’s reading your blog, I guess) in response to my post about MIT and CC’s differing interpretations of the NC clause. He reiterated that the Proposed Best Practice Guidelines To Clarify The Meaning Of “Noncommercialâ€? are only a draft and do not represent CC’s interpretation of the NC clause, and assured me that MIT and CC do not take different stances on the interpretation. Hal can speak from a position of authority since he is both the Founding Director of Creative Commons and a member of the MIT faculty and the MIT OCW advisory board. ...

Preface: You will please notice that this is neither a “the NC clause is evil” post nor an “MIT OCW is evil” post. If you were hoping for either of those, then ‘these aren’t the droids you’re looking for - you can go about your business; move along.’ In doing some research for a book chapter I’m writing, I came across the following oddity: CC and MIT OCW have diametrically opposed interpretations of the meaning of the NC clause of CC’s own licenses. ...

A new report out from IMS called Learning Technology Satisfaction & Trends presents data from a survey of US higher education institutions. According to the report, “31% of the respondents were executive administrators. 7% were deans or academic program or department leaders. 50% were information technology or instructional support staff. 11% were faculty.” Several interesting things in this report: First, the two top-rated sources of digital content, including all commercial and other sources, were Google Search and Wikipedia. MIT OCW places fourth. McGraw Hill and all the other proprietary content publishers are “clustered in another tier below the leaders” in terms of user satisfaction (p. 40). As a content management platform, Wikipedia beats out WebCT, Blackboard, and DSpace by an average of almost a full point (on a five point scale). “The strong usage and showing of Wikis indicates that the Web 2.0 phenomenon – use of more collaboration and collaborative authoring – is blazing a path in higher education” (p. 38). On the course management side, Moodle beats out WebCT and Blackboard by a full half point with a third place finish. Apparently eCollege and Angel users are extremely loyal. Sakai isn’t even on the map. From the Top Findings section (p. 8): “Google Search, Apple iPod, and Wikipedia placed in the top ten list for satisfaction, indicating that non-education specific technologies are being perceived, by those ithat incorporate them, as adding value to the educational experience.” That is, their satisfaction scores were so high as to be in the top ten of all products reviewed across all categories. Overall an interesting skim…

A new report out from IMS called Learning Technology Satisfaction & Trends presents data from a survey of US higher education institutions. According to the report, “31% of the respondents were executive administrators. 7% were deans or academic program or department leaders. 50% were information technology or instructional support staff. 11% were faculty.” Several interesting things in this report: First, the two top-rated sources of digital content, including all commercial and other sources, were Google Search and Wikipedia. MIT OCW places fourth. McGraw Hill and all the other proprietary content publishers are “clustered in another tier below the leaders” in terms of user satisfaction (p. 40). As a content management platform, Wikipedia beats out WebCT, Blackboard, and DSpace by an average of almost a full point (on a five point scale). “The strong usage and showing of Wikis indicates that the Web 2.0 phenomenon – use of more collaboration and collaborative authoring – is blazing a path in higher education” (p. 38). On the course management side, Moodle beats out WebCT and Blackboard by a full half point with a third place finish. Apparently eCollege and Angel users are extremely loyal. Sakai isn’t even on the map. From the Top Findings section (p. 8): “Google Search, Apple iPod, and Wikipedia placed in the top ten list for satisfaction, indicating that non-education specific technologies are being perceived, by those ithat incorporate them, as adding value to the educational experience.” That is, their satisfaction scores were so high as to be in the top ten of all products reviewed across all categories. Overall an interesting skim…

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Our Microlibrary project got a nice write-up in the Salt Lake Tribune today. Obviously there are other projects using similar technology, but I love our focus on elementary school-age kids. Our “Bound to Read” program takes the Microlibrary out to rural schools to teach kids about the history of writing and printing, to teach them how books are made and bound, and gives each child a book of their choosing. We’ve given away over 100 books since October, and have a goal to give away 5000 books to 4th and 5th graders in rural schools in Northern Utah next year. ...

Steve Jobs gets it right in his recent thoughts on music. In a nutshell: DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. So why bother will all the expense, pain, and interoperability nightmares? (C.f. Engadget’s related post in which they point out that “The only way for DRM to be successful is if it’s painless and seamless, and we get tons of emails from consumers complaining about how hard it is to get Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music Unlimited, etc. tracks on to their players, or, god forbid, Macs.”) DRM SIMPLY DOESN’T WORK. ...

In the most recent issue of Innovate, Stephen reviews the OCWC website. He is generally unimpressed, making a variety of comments about the lack of interactivity offered by the site: “contrary to expectations, there is no discussion or community component,” “if there is a community - and one presumes there is - it is well hidden,” and “it is unfortunate that the main access point to the OpenCourseWare Consortium is an impenetrable barrier.” ...