Posted 9:58 PM by George Siemens
Building a Better Browser
Quote: "THE INTERNET'S SERVERCENTRIC model is demonstrating itself too slow and too static for the medium to advance beyond a document warehouse."
Comment: Article acknowledges that the server-centric model of the internet is having difficulty handling the demands and visions of Internet users...but then resumes discussion on how to make the relationship more efficient (more client-side processing for rich Internet applications)...in a way, that's like saying: "This is a problem...but we don't want to deal with the problem, so instead, we'll just make it more manageable". This is an area that Ray Ozzie frequently comments on...of course, in the process, promoting Groove...a peer-to-peer (P2P) platform. None the less...the role of the browser will continue to change - putting pressure on client/server formulations...which will be of particular importance - especially in sharing learning objects. As an example, POOL is an example of P2P...which in theory works much better for learning objects than server/client.

Posted 9:40 PM by George Siemens
Teaching-Research Nexus
Quote: "Although the debate is always a hot topic in Universities the ideas mooted in the Teaching-Research Nexus apply at all levels of education - from pre-school to U3A.
The central idea as expressed by Dewey almost a century ago is: "learning is based on discovery, guided by mentoring, rather than on the transmission of information."
The idea is straightforward - but it is hard to achieve it. One reason is that it is easy to turn the "transmission of information" into a product but it is hard to turn "mentored discovery" into a product."