Posted 7:34 AM by George Siemens
RealNetworks
Quote: "Real's own new product, called the Universal Server, will allow one server to stream Real's technology, Microsoft files, Apple Computer's QuickTime, and others. Most other competing products do not support competitors' technology." Go directly to RealNetworks for more info.

Media on Menu
Quote: "That’s where the Culinary Institute of America’s media department comes in. The renowned cooking school established a media division in the late ’70s to provide visuals to reinforce what students learn in classes. Much like students in a typical university who must attend a “language lab” to learn foreign tongues, CIA students are required to view certain videos. Until recently, they had to visit the school’s library to view them. Last year, however, the institute decided to move to the next level: streamed instructional video on demand to students in their dorms across the Hyde Park campus in New York’s Hudson Valley."

Comment: Very cool. This is what I imagine more and more elearning initiatives will look like (wireless, on-demand video). The web was initially about text - now most sites have added multiple media resources. Elearning is currently mainly about text...eventually (hopefully), streaming media will play an important role. As I've mentioned before, we ran a pilot on streaming video earlier this year, in order to evaluate the impact of video lectures on student satisfaction. Results were positive. As a department, we also have an increasing amount of video...unfortunately the video is not available on demand.

The Return of Artificial Intelligence
Quote: "Artificial intelligence (AI) has come in and out of vogue more times than Madonna in the past 20 years: it has been hyped and then, having failed to live up to the hype, been discredited until being revived again. In the late 1990s, an observer at a World Wide Web technology conference reported that most of the proposals there had been floated, several years earlier, under the AI moniker and were now being recycled—good technology solutions looking for real business problems to solve...Nonetheless, the AI-development community has generated techniques that are beginning to show promise for real business applications."

Comment: Business focused article. AI may have huge implications for education (just saw a new tutorial on Groove that uses an interactive agent called a "bot" (or Autonomous Execution Agent). Like streaming video - this can help to expand the horizon of effective learning online...drawback - expense, expertise and adoption (socially - instructors/students may find AI intimidating).