I have been working on “Out of the Box”, the Flexible Learning @ Heriot-Watt website in the last two days. The online booking forms for the Flexible Learning programme 2007-08 are now open.
The Lunchtime Seminars programme is waiting to be confirmed for two dates and I will add further information on Forums and Short Courses content ASAP.
If you are at Heriot-Watt, why don’t you come over and take a look at the website. I am looking forward to seeing you at one of the events.
Boxcast #5 – RSS News Feeds in the Blackboard VLE
This Box-cast talks about the possibilities of using RSS feeds in VLE modules
Links for creating RSS feeds in your Blackboard module:
Erik J. Heels, a U.S. lawyer, explains copyright law to a child.
Erik explains copyright law in a drawing
This is a rather nifty, very concise, albeit (obviously) simplified explanation. Sometimes, the simplified things can be the most useful ones.
(drawing copyright Erik Heels)
The alert came from Boing Boing via Cory Doctorow:
The Internet Archive has launched a demo of the Open Library, a project that seeks to gather all the information about all the world’s books and make it publicly available as a giant books wiki.
While many books are making their way online for free access, most still are restricted or cost money to touch. The Open Library combines links to open resources with information on in-copyright works and enables you and me to review, annotate, correct and convene.
Go and take a look at the article and the Demo of the Open Library. This is an utterly fascinating project, especially for education.
Have you ever wondered what your students might know about digital film making? Or using YouTube? Or groupwork and directing? Wonder no longer, take a look instead:
Is it really such a big step from this to a group project for their studies?
Filed under: Uncategorized
Boxcast #4 – Slideshare – a presentation community and web-tool
Slideshare not only allows users to upload their PowerPoint presentations for free, thus converting them into web enabled applets, but it is also a most useful networking community, valuable for research.
This brilliant presentation was adapted from the video by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod. While it is Americacentric, it should make anyone think in Education.
Filed under: Podcast
Boxcast #3 – Open University: Open Learn – Study Skills
This episode describes the new Study Skills materials that are available under the creative commons license on the Open University’s Open Learn website and which might be useful for your students.
During a workshop that I ran at the Heriot-Watt Flexible Learning conference in May, one of the articipants, a 4th year student, asked if other participants thought using Wikipedia as reference was these days acceptable. A big outcry voiced itself immediately, which simulatenously made us chuckle because of its homogeneity. The participant then explained that when he used Wikipedia as a reference in one of his assignments, early in his studies, he got told off that this was not acceptable.
Everyone agreed, coming forth with explanations of the why and wherefore. Agreeing, too, that with the way Wikipedia has been developing, it was indeed a good starting point, but no more than that, offering usually an acceptable overview and somewhere to go from and start researching in more depth, but that indeed, as a reference in an academic paper it was unacceptable. In fact, I heard from a subject specialist that Wikipedia was abysmal when it came to their subject.
Personally, I have found it quite useful for providing starting points but would never in a million years rely on the information, certainly not anything subject specific, and would always demand a back-up reference if Wikipedia was used. Of course, as (originally) a Philologist I am used to trusting nothing but primary sources, anyway.
What do others think?
Interestingly enough, I just found a Wiki entry on Wikipedia itself, about the worth of the Wiki. Read for yourselves:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
Under Academic Evaluation:
In June 2007, former president of the American Library Association Michael Gorman condemned Wikipedia, along with Google, for contributing to the creation of a generation of “intellectual sluggards”.[37] He also stated that academics who endorse the use of wikipedia are “the intellectual equivalent of a dietitian who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything,” He also stated that “a generation of intellectual sluggards incapable of moving beyond the internet” was being produced at universities. He complains that the web-based sources are discouraging students from learning from the more rare texts which are either found only on paper or are on subscription-only web sites. In the same article Jenny Fry (a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute) commented on the academics who cite Wikipedia that:
“You cannot say children are intellectually lazy because they are using the internet when academics are using search engines in their research,” she said. “The difference is that they have more experience of being critical about what is retrieved and whether it is authoritative. Children need to be told how to use the internet in a critical and appropriate way.”[38]
