IU Technology Architecture Lodge
Random and not so random thoughts from Raymond Yee, primarily on the scholarly and educational use of the Web, libraries, educational technology, and information management
2002/03/15: Fixing up this site
Fixing up my site  I'm trying to make this site easier to navigate -- or at least do some minimal touch-up work for now. For example, how to get the commentIt plugin working? I need to come back to Jon Udell's site I've been very excited that Jon Udell has been such an active participant in all the activity around Radio lately. He is writing about his experiences with the latest release of Mozilla (0.9.9) which supports MathML and a HTML writing environment that can be hooked up to blogs via the blogger API. Another step towards a universal canvas? At the back of my mind, I've been mulling over my friend Tom Phelps' Multivalent Browser I see that he's just released developer release 4. I think of the Browser as another candidate for a "universal canvas". Hubert Dreyfus on distance education David Carter-Tod (I apologize for mispelling David's name all this time with two ds.) points to the CHE article on Hubert Dreyfus, esteemed philospher at Berkeley. Dreyfus From the article: "In On the Internet, (Routledge, 2001) he argues that the Internet's promise of extending and improving human interaction through the digital medium isn't everything it's cracked up to be. He specifically criticizes distance education -- which offers the possibility of learning without the physical presence of a building, instructor, or other students -- as an overhyped, misunderstood trend that could backfire and result in worse education, not better." From reading Dreyfus' webpage (which states "Professor in the Graduate School"), I gather that Prof. Dreyfus is semi-retired. Will he be speaking on campus about his new book? Lynn, help! Lynn wrote last week: "Librarian has conniption when reading ...." about how people like Catherine and I start to look things up on amazon instead of resorting to our magnificent libraries. I was thinking of her comment when I was playing around with Endnote's Z39.50 connectivity which allows me to connect to melvyl and the Library of Congress and any library that has a Z39.50 interface (which I believe means any significant research library). I was impressed with the amazing amount of information locked away in the these great libraries (well, duh....) And being able to download the bibliographical into Endnote was so great. (That's something I can't do from amazon, for instance.) But I did run into one problem that I need some help with. How can I point to a specific book in the Library of Congress and in gladis. That is, how do I make a URL that lets someone else on the Web jump right to that resource?. If I can point to the LOC catalog entry for a book, then I'm very much tempted to point to that instead of to amazon (or in addition to amazon) since the LOC is a common, non-proprietary resource, wherea amazon is...well you know, a store trying to sell books. (Now, I still like the customer reviews of amazon books...I wish the libraries could associate books and articles that cite a given book in the library and let users jump to that book or article -- now that would get me away from amazon!!) Back to my query: let's say I want to direct people to Ronald Gross' Independent Scholar's Handbook -- one of my favorite books as a teenager. I drop the term Ronald Gross independent scholar into google -- and it leads me right to the amazon catalog entry for Gross' book. Not bad for the lazy man in me. Now let's go to the Library of Congress catalog. I find the book, I copy the URL of my search -- but the URL is totally useless to anyone else. (The URL is associated with the session of my search and not to the search record. How do I get a URL for the search result at the LOC.) I have the same problem with PathFinder/gladis. I know that it is possible to get a persistent URL for a catalog entry; witness the URL for the Patrick Breen diary (which picked up from the Sample MOA2 view of the Breen diary.) However, a URL that I get for doing a search on Ronald Gross' ISH doesn't lead me back to the book. How do I get URLs that point to specific books that I can share with others from the Library of Congress and gladis catalogs? Teachers and slashdot Stephen Downes points out the thread Any Teachers on Slashdot? Mathematicians and IMS metadata Amazing what google reveals: A Mathematician's Guide to IMS Metadata. The article seems to be part of a whole site on Mathematics Metadata. Sun and LMS I just got back from a lunch hosted by Sun about its learning management system solution: Sun LearnTone I had no idea before yesterday that Sun even had a LMS. It turns out that in July, Sun bought Isopia, a LMS company from Canada. The talk focused mostly on the Sun solution -- which sounds like a lot of consulting plus a highly extensible architecture (based on J2EE (no surprise there, of course)). Because the architecture is extensible and flexible, however, and because there was a lot of talk about integrating with other vendors, it wasn't totally clear what came with LearnTone and what had to be integrated in. Furthermore, because we didn't get to see any demo of the user-interface, we couldn't even start to judge the practical usability of LearnTone. LearnTone is supposed to support SCORM and AICC and IMS, the big ed. tech standards. (But is Sun a member of IMS? The current members' list doesn't show Sun....) Regardless, LearnTone is something for the campus to look deeper into, especially because its J2EE architecture makes it compatible with the adopted core campus technical architecture. I don't have the sense that Sun LearnTone has much adoption in the educational market so far, a market dominated by BlackBoard and WebCT. It'll be interesting to see what other universities are out there using it or even considering it. One interesting note: we learned about Avaltus and its product Jupiter Suite. I wonder how good Jupiter Suite is for marking up campus learning materials and transforming them in IMS compliant packages.... Chris, what's blogger like you doing here? You're supposed to be enjoying the sun and the sky and the wind. But I'm glad that you showed up with a response to my braindump yesterday. Question about the IMS specification I'm getting back into my work on interoperability between MOA2/METS and IMS, specifically figuring out a crosswalk between MOA2/METS and IMS. I posted the following question on the internal IMS site (Anyone out there know the answer?): Section 4.3.1 of IMS Content Packaging Best Practice Guide 1.1.2 Final Specifications (http://www.imsproject.org/content/packaging/cpv1p1p2/imscp_bestv1p1p2.html#1153630) states: "Some Content Packages will have their associated meta-data captured in a separate file. When this is the case, manifests may include an in-line reference to the external meta-data file. " I can't figure out how to actually make such an in-line reference. Can someone post an example to demonstrate the appropriate syntax? (The metadata tag has no attribute or sub-element for such a reference -- what am I missing?) Your Comments Yep, it works. Why am I online looking at weblogs when I am surrounded by quiet, trees, and sky? All to leave a comment on your weblog.
Yesterday Raymond wrote:
"...technology... was supposed to utterly transform teaching and learning: the overhead projector, radio, tv, multimedia stations, and now the Web. It's easy for me (as a fervent user/worker/believer in the Web) to think, 'boy, they were silly to think that TV was going to change things. It's obvious that it couldn't be as transformative as everyone thought. But the Web is different...'"
The overhead, being a non-commetcial technology, did transform education, like the blackboard; it made talking and lecturing more visual, more interactive. But the overhead works for the old classroom paradigm: desks in a row, all looking in one direction.
Fortunately, much of, most of, the web is still non-commerical. The tools aren't cheap- computers, handhelds, network access- but it's getting cheaper. And the ability for any person to be an author of some kind is becoming more real. It is the next step from paper, pencil, and bulletin boards in the classroom. It can transform education.
But it's up to people to take on these tools to implement the transformation. That's what's more difficult, I think. In the current climate of accountability and testing that gets riskier and riskier. Regarding K-12, in the next few short years I expect we'll see that conservative tide turn, as this administration cruises along in industrial war mode. I do think it will turn.
I also think the role of education will be tied to the definition of learners and education. As the population of who is a learner and for how long broadens, then I think technology will continue to only be more important.
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Last update: Friday, March 15, 2002 at 6:36:02 PM.
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