It is nice to know that outrage (and some increasingly unequivocal evidence that Blackboard would find it very difficult to defend their ludicrous patent against an outraged community) and the plummeting popularity of BlackCT has had an effect on the People from the Dark Side. So we can now all breathe a collective sigh of relief and carry on developing the things that we were developing before Blackboard appeared on the scene and claimed that our ideas belonged to them. Meanwhile, BlackCT appear to be saints (unless you happen to work for a company against which they are launching a law suit, of course).
Created:Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:22:26 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5258&resid=1240
Posted: January 31, 2007, 10:22 pm

Last week I visited the wonderful creativity CETL team at the University of Sussex where they have spent vast amounts of money on creating a fantastic flexible learning space – every wall is a whiteboard and most of them move, tracks in the ceiling with multi-coloured LED lighting that can be controlled through a touch-screen interface, muslin curtains, huge numbers of projectors and plasma screens everywhere, fully and wirelessly networked, very flexible furniture, brilliant sound system, video cameras throughout, and everything linked and interconnected.

It would be tempting to think of this as the learning environment of the future, but it comes at a very high cost: the biggest issue is not the infrastructure but that it takes a small team to run it and facilitate sessions. This is not a space for the quick and dirty or low-threshold approach. While learning within the space may be very conversational, dynamic, inspiring and flexible, it all has to be carefully orchestrated and, in an odd way, controlled.

I want such spaces to be thrown together on the fly, with flexibility and virtual space embedded effortlessly. Exactly how we do this in the kinds of buildings we usually find at our institutions remains a bit of a challenge. One starting point is to give every student a laptop (something decent, with a built-in video camera, a nice display and good battery life) and to create the wireless infrastructure to support them. Next is to fill teaching spaces with flexible furniture that can quickly and easily be reconfigured. I love the idea of being able to write on all the walls and to move those walls around as and when we need them. Decent, ubiquitous flexible wireless video displays, perhaps interactive, would also help, together with great sound systems.I have been experimenting with a battery-powered LED data projector that might provide this and can foresee a day in the near future when such technologies may be built into laptops.  Above all, it should be possible for someone to enter this space with little or no training and just use it. 

Not too much to ask, not too expensive to achieve.

Original: https://community.brighton.ac.uk/pg/blog/jd29/read/72059/flexible-learning-spaces
By: Jon Dron
Posted: January 31, 2007, 5:51 am

Last week I visited the wonderful creativity CETL team at the University of Sussex where they have spent vast amounts of money on creating a fantastic flexible learning space – every wall is a whiteboard and most of them move, tracks in the ceiling with multi-coloured LED lighting that can be controlled through a touch-screen interface, muslin curtains, huge numbers of projectors and plasma screens everywhere, fully and wirelessly networked, very flexible furniture, brilliant sound system, video cameras throughout, and everything linked and interconnected.

It would be tempting to think of this as the learning environment of the future, but it comes at a very high cost: the biggest issue is not the infrastructure but that it takes a small team to run it and facilitate sessions. This is not a space for the quick and dirty or low-threshold approach. While learning within the space may be very conversational, dynamic, inspiring and flexible, it all has to be carefully orchestrated and, in an odd way, controlled.

I want such spaces to be thrown together on the fly, with flexibility and virtual space embedded effortlessly. Exactly how we do this in the kinds of buildings we usually find at our institutions remains a bit of a challenge. One starting point is to give every student a laptop (something decent, with a built-in video camera, a nice display and good battery life) and to create the wireless infrastructure to support them. Next is to fill teaching spaces with flexible furniture that can quickly and easily be reconfigured. I love the idea of being able to write on all the walls and to move those walls around as and when we need them. Decent, ubiquitous flexible wireless video displays, perhaps interactive, would also help, together with great sound systems.I have been experimenting with a battery-powered LED data projector that might provide this and can foresee a day in the near future when such technologies may be built into laptops.  Above all, it should be possible for someone to enter this space with little or no training and just use it. 

Not too much to ask, not too expensive to achieve.

Original: https://community.brighton.ac.uk/pg/blog/jd29/read/72059/flexible-learning-spaces
By: Jon Dron
Posted: January 31, 2007, 5:51 am

It seems that Middlebury College is banning citation of Wikipedia articles college-wide.It seems strange that they feel the need to make this point, as any use of encyclopaedia articles as a primary source of references is, to say the least, suspect, unless the subject is encyclopaedia articles in general. However, the fact that it has become such a ubiquitous phenomenon is worthy of inspection, suggesting that today’s learners are becoming more autonomous, finding knowledge independently of teachers and institutions. Ignoring the odd inaccuracy here and there, this has to be a good thing! We should not demonise the wikipediafication of learning but, instead, start to pay more attention to improving the abilities of learners to use such tools critically, reflectively and effectively.
Created:Mon, 29 Jan 2007 02:33:14 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5303&resid=1238
Posted: January 28, 2007, 7:33 pm

Very neat cross-platform system which visualises your Internet use, creating a personal landscape reflecting the locations, the IP addresses, the protocols and so on that you use to create an explorable landscape. This would be a lot more fun if it were social software (like Crossley et al’s Knowledge Garden of a few years back) but I guess the privacy issues might be messy.
Created:Sat, 20 Jan 2007 15:00:45 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5303&resid=1233
Posted: January 20, 2007, 8:00 am

Ilorin is a Nigerian HE institution that has sporadically published a paper journal for many years, now available online. Not the highest quality of research in the world, but some very interesting and sometimes quite unusual perspectives on a very diverse range of topics.
Created:Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:57:02 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5260&resid=1232
Posted: January 18, 2007, 8:57 am

Nice mindmap using tags and active links to attempt to make sense of Web 2.0
Created:Tue, 16 Jan 2007 15:25:16 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1231
Posted: January 16, 2007, 8:25 am

The International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (ISSN 1812-9129) provides a forum for higher education faculty, staff, administrators, researchers, and students who are interested in improving post-secondary instruction. The IJTLHE provides broad coverage of higher education pedagogy and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) across diverse content areas, educational institutions, and levels of instructional expertise. The specific emphasis of IJTLHE is the dissemination of knowledge for improving higher education pedagogy. Electronic distribution of IJTLHE maximizes global availability.
Created:Thu, 11 Jan 2007 15:53:19 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5260&resid=1230
Posted: January 11, 2007, 8:53 am

Very cool idea- a project to amalgamate Moodle and Second Life, with 3D visualisations of Moodle objects, and Moodle-isations of Second Life chat logs etc.
Created:Sat, 06 Jan 2007 01:50:29 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5258&resid=1220
Posted: January 5, 2007, 6:50 pm

Article from Epic discussing benefits of open source and Moodle’s rise and rise: suggests a greater market penetration than BlackCT
Created:Tue, 02 Jan 2007 01:17:39 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5258&resid=1212
Posted: January 1, 2007, 6:17 pm