Posted 1:18 PM by George Siemens
Five Choices: Or, Why I Won't Give Dave Pell Twelve Dollars
Stephen's at it again. He has issues with paying for content online. I agree with importance of content being free...and that it is difficult to make a career out of content creation when so many people do it for free (think web sites and newsletters). Stephen offers five suggestions for making a living creating content:

• Lower your production costs
  
• Increase your volume
  
• Get a million subscribers
  
• Create higher value content
  
• Get another job
  

However, I don't completely agree with his vision. Organizations will make money from content. Thomson Learning, WebCT, Blackboard, and corporate education services will see to it. How? Closed systems (i.e. - you create content but it never sees the light of day because no one will carry it), legislation, and just the right amount of arm-bending at administrative levels in organizations. Good ideas are not the ones that get adopted - marketed and networked ideas do - regardless of quality...and educators do not have the time to create the vision that Stephen describes...

Posted 11:07 AM by George Siemens
Site fights 'stupid linking'
Quote: "Sorkin, associate professor of law at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Ill., is the man behind Don't Link to Us, a Web site that exists merely to flout what it terms "stupid linking policies."
Sorkin's site was launched in reaction to recent legal decisions in which courts upheld Web site terms and conditions that prohibited or restricted links."

Posted 7:35 AM by George Siemens
Great quote: "If someone brings a lot of new technology into your school district, and doesn't provide staff development, the only thing that will change is your electric bill." Ms. LeBeau's HomePage

Posted 7:25 AM by George Siemens
The Age of Information Architecture
Quote: "For the most part, information architects are communicators and strategists."
Comment: Article is focused on web design...but as elearning advances, the development teams and roles will increasingly duplicate web design processes.

Evaluating the usability of Web-based learning tools via Online Learning Update
Quote: "Web-based learning tools provide integrated environments of various technologies to support diverse educators’ and learners’ needs via the Internet. This paper reports the results from a study to experimentally compare two commercially available learning tools in a university course. We discuss the findings from this study in relation to basic usability issues that must be attended to when designing user interfaces for web-based learning tools."
Comment: Compares Blackboard and WebCT. It is important (critical?) for tools for be easy to use...or they will restrict elearning's growth. As one student voiced in the study "I found that I spent most of my time learning WebCT and not course material. A “learning” tool should not be making life more difficult for me."