March 2007 Archives

Today's eSchool News Online features this story: "Open-content learning portal debuts 8,000-plus digital learning resources available to teachers and learners at no cost," by Laura Devaney.

It seems that a"new online content resource center, formally launched March 9 by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), will make more than 8,000 classroom materials available to teachers, faculty, and learners worldwide, at no cost." Apparently the resources are available in the OER (Open Educational Resources) Commons. [FYI, getting into these two websites before timing-out has been intermittent this morning.]

Something I find interesting in the report, as well as most appropriate, is making these teaching and learning materials available by "using web 2.0 social networking features, such as tagging, ratings, comments, and reviews." At this point, any new DARM tool ought to be incorporating the community-building features inherent in Web 2.0 design. Check it out and share what you think. Hopefully it will be something useful.

I took a few vacation days this week to go along with Louise to New Orleans while she was attending the Innovations 2007 conference. While looking through some of the materials that she picked up in the exhibits or were included with her registration materials was one that I think you will also find interesting.

There is a Coalition for Free Broadband Now and it is "promoting a public dialogue ... to ensure that all Americans have access to broadband service that is free, fast and family-friendly." You can read more about the idea and how it could take shape on the Coalition's website. In addition there is a webinar scheduled for April 5th that you can sign up for that is sponsored by M2Z networks.

I think you'll agree that this is an important issue. I was watching a movie called Did You Know? and one of its points is that the US ranks 20th in the world, behind Luxembourg, in broadband Internet penetration. This is a very good video, BTW, and if you've not seen it I highly recommend watching it.