Just got an email invite to a conference call on Friday, with “Mr. Learning Objects” - David Wiley. Should be an interesting session. How on earth would anyone live with a reputation like that?
From the invitation:
Featuring David Wiley, “Mr. Learning Objects” himself. To get ready for the discussion, take a look at the reading entitled “Learning objects: Difficulties and Opportunities” that is posted on David’s blog at http://www.reusability.org/blogs/david/.
Mike just got back from Vancouver, and was talking about an XML database he saw there: Bluestream XStreamDB
They claim to support XQuery via JDBC somehow. It’s a java-based solution (i.e., portable - that’s a Good Thing). I’m downloading it now to see what it does. Looks VERY promising.
Details available here.
UPDATE: Wow! It worked right off the bat! First XML DB to do THAT for me… And it comes with a whiz-bang management app, too! So far, much more impressed with XStreamDB than anything else I’ve tried… Oh, and it’s not just portable, it’s EMBEDDABLE. We could conceivably embed the jars for XStreamDB INSIDE CAREO for the repository in a box. It doesn’t come easier than that!
Read MoreJust came across this handy MovableType plugin: MT-RSSFEED.
It can take any RSS feed (static file, or URL), and parse it for display within a MovableType weblog. I’ve changed over the RSS subscriptions to CAREO on the right sidebar to use this plugin, and it works pretty well.
There are lots more great MT plugins at the MT-Plugins Directory.
UPDATE: I’ve also put the “other” way of subscribing to RSS feeds in a page here, since it’s valuable in contexts outside of MovableType (like, say, Blackboard, or WebCT, or whatever…)
Read MoreWhen CAREO is launched, it does some stuff to modify its connection to a database, in order to allow me to point it to different databases at runtime without touching code or recompiling. In UCApplication.java, I modify the connection dictionary for the EOModel’s EOAdaptor, feeding it URLs for databases, usernames, passwords, etc…
This has worked like a charm on MacOSX and MacOSX Server (of course), but now, on Solaris, when I set the connection dictionary, and do a test connection to make sure it worked, I get this weird, cryptic SQLException error via WebObjects’ JDBCAdaptor class:
Read MoreThis is actually pretty cool. Another great link from Dale Pike!
Technorati.com checks a boatload of weblogs, and maps the links between them. Feed it a URL, and it tells you who else links to it.
What a cool way to find people who are linking to (and, one would therefore assume interested in) the contents of a weblog.
Something like this would be a slick addition to CAREO - map which people are subscribed to a learning object, and perhaps which other objects they’ve subscribed to, generating some form of dynamic relationship between objects. Something like the Amazon.com “You might like…” feature…
Read MoreJust came across this presentation by Dale Pike. It’s a great summary of the reasons why weblogs may be valuable, and how they might be used in a community setting.
Read MoreI’ve been asked to put together a “non marketing” feature list for CAREO. What can it do? What sort of functions does it have?
Anyway, my first, 10-minute stab at it is located here. I’ll also leave a link to it in the left sidebar of this site, so it’s handy. I’ll tweak it when I get a chance, but most of the important (or at least visible) features are in there. There will be some more additions in a few days, but mostly for behind-the-scenes kinda stuff.
Read MoreSciQ just went live. It’s a K-12 theme for CAREO that is being used to push learning objects into the classroom in Alberta. Could be very cool, especially when teachers and students start using it in the trenches. This is a product of a whole bunch of educational stakeholders in the province, from content production to curriculum to technology.
It’s cool, from my perspective, since it’s a completely different look and feel for CAREO. A real test of the theming engine. Actually, SciQ was one of the major reasons that the theming engine is as flexible as it is now.
Read MoreKen Bereskin is Apple’s MacOSX Marketing Director. He recently returned from Safari in Uganda and Kenya, and posted some of his 3000 photographs online.
In a word: WOW! Those are some amazing photos. Powerful, beautiful, and completely amazing. Thanks to Ken for sharing his photos. Many of these would make great learning objects…
Read MoreThanks to David Carter-Tod at Wytheville Community College, I’ve added a subscription to the CAREO Newest Objects RSS Feed to this weblog’s main index page.
Not sure if I’ll leave it there, but it’s kinda cool to see external content. I actually intend to use the RSS-HTML utility that David graciously provided to demonstrate integration of Learning Objects and RSS into online learning - a WebCT or Blackboard course could include live external resources, without having to manually hunt for them. That’s a Good Thing.
Read MoreI just ran a cool little utility called Comstats. It sniffs through my Mail.app mailboxes, and runs some stats on the contents. It generated this cool and somewhat scary graph of number of emails received per day, over the past 2 years:
It’s a little scary to extrapolate what appears to be something loosely resembling an exponential curve out another couple of years. Yikes.
Read MoreJust tried both the Solaris and Linux versions of X-Hive, and MacOSX puked on the binary files for both (binary file not executable). Doh. Frederik at X-Hive suggested there might be MacOSX support by the end of the year. Guess I will have to wait until then.
In the meantime, we’ll have to scare up a Windows or Linux box to test on. Rob’s always got a RedHat box laying around, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Sure hope the Linux build of X-Hive likes RedHat…
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