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Another Tool For Open Content

Posted March 12th, 2008 by Bill

I just came across this tool for Mediawiki: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Send2Wiki

This extends the possibilities for using mediawiki as a remixing engine for open content repositories that are otherwise closed. I particularly like the pdf to wiki functionality.

Thoughts on Sharing Lessons

Posted December 17th, 2007 by Bill

I'm writing these ideas out quickly -- there are sure to be holes in this, and gaps in this reasoning -- please point them out in the comments.

For some context on this post, see these two threads on Dan Meyer's blog.

Users working with online lessons will generally fall into at least one of the following categories:

  1. People searching for lesson ideas (probably the majority)
  2. People already creating content on their own blogs (a growing number of folks, but still a very small percentage, compared to people in category 1, or even teacher-bloggers)

Yeah. Schools Really Need To Ban Cell Phones

Posted December 8th, 2007 by Bill

In an article from the Sydney Morning Herald (which I found via, of all places, Techcrunch), "half of Japan's top-10 selling works of fiction in the first six months of the year were composed ... on the tiny handset of a mobile phone."

Yes, you read that correctly. Novels written on cell phones.

As noted in the article, the cell phone tales often lack complex scene and character development.

Students 2.0

Posted December 7th, 2007 by Bill

Coming soon to a tube near you:

I'm looking forward to seeing what develops on this blog. From their site:

Administered, designed, edited, and written by a global mix of students of varying ages, interests, voices, and points of view, Students 2.0 will feature content written by both staff writers and guest contributors. From Hawaii and Washington, from St. Louis and Chicago, from Vermont, New York, Scotland, Korea, and other points on the globe, these writings will be united in one central aspect: quality student writing, full-voiced and engaging, about education.

imbee.com

Posted September 4th, 2007 by Bill

On a listserv in which I participate, a member recently asked about safe blogging tools for students. I was surprised to see several people recommend imbee.com, a social networking service targeted at kids. This was my response to the list:

imbee's terms of service rule it out as a tool I would recommend to anyone.

From http://www.imbee.com/discover/terms

"You understand and agree that you have no ownership rights in your imbee.com account. imbee may cancel your account and delete all content associated with your account at any time, and without notice, if we deem that you have violated the terms of this agreement, or for any other reason."

This Would Be Easier If You Were Joking

Posted August 17th, 2007 by Bill

I'll admit it at the outset: I'm in a bad mood today.

But when I see things like this, and this, and this, all talking about running courses in Facebook, I can't help myself

(Okay, really I can. But in this case, I don't want to).

Read Facebook's terms of service.

The "User Content Posted on the Site" section is particularly relevant here:

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

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