Month: May 2007

by Clint Lalonde on Desire2Learn

Desire2Learn gets a tad social in 8.2

Just got some release notes for the new version of D2L (8.2) on the way this summer and it looks like they are beefing up some of the student collaborative tools, and improving on the (albeit basic) social features of the LMS.

One of the features that looks interesting is the ability for students to rate the value of a message posted in the discussion forums. In this respect, students can begin to grade conversations between students as to whether they are relevant or useful.

In addition, there will be a peer review option on discussion posts. Details are a bit sketchy on this feature and at first glance I’m wondering if this feature might be a bit redundant as discussions themselves can serve the function of peer review. I’ll have to wait and see the actual implementation of this feature to wrap my head around how it is significantly different than functionality already available by default with discussion boards.

Group Lockers and Group Dropboxes will make it easier for students to collaborate on group projects and shared files within the environment.

To aggregate group functions, D2L has created a central place for students to view their groups, contact group members, and access shared locker areas, dropbox folders, and discussion topics.

These new collaborative tools should make it easier for students to interact with each other and work on group projects while giving instructors a bit more flexibility when it comes to group assignments and projects.

One thing on my wishlist for future releases is more RSS feeds from the various tools to allow students to put the content where the like. The discussion boards seems like an obvious place for RSS feeds, but it would also be nice if this new central aggregated area would have an RSS notification system that would show when group lockers or dropboxes were updated.

 
by Clint Lalonde on All the rest

BBC to put one million hours online

The BBC is working on an ambitious plan to put nearly 1 million hours of it’s audio and video archives online and there is some fascinating stuff here.

Some of the highlights include an interview with Martin Luther King Jr. that aired on the day he was assassinated in April 1968. In the interview King says: ‘The important thing isn’t how long you live, but how well you live.’

As a music buff, I’m also interested in the John Lennon/Yoko Ono interview that was broadcast in January 1981 and never heard again.

Technically, archiving the material is not a problem. However, the Beeb is running into hurdles negotiating copyright clearance for some of the archives. Despite owning the copyright and having rights to originally broadcast the show, it looks like they do not have the right to repeat many of them. So the time consuming process of negotiating with actors, agents, composers and presenters is throwing up some hurdles.

The educational value of this material is immense. Unfortunately for those of us outside the U.K., it looks like the archives will only be available to licence-fee payers free of charge. No word on whether there will be a fee charged for those users outside of the licence-fee area.

 
by Clint Lalonde on All the rest

A Fair(y) Use Tale

This is a short film put together by some folks at Stanford that I thought you might appreciate. It’s about 10 minutes long, but it is fantastically well done.

Basically, to illustrate copyright laws in the US, these filmmakers have edited a whack of animated Disney movies together to create a new work – a documentary about copyright.

Even if you don’t have any interest in copyright law, the editing alone is wonderful.

Hmm, wonder what Disney is going to say about this? How far will fair use and satire carry these guys against Mickey?