More than 1,000 middle and high school students in Oklahoma take online learning classes, with some earning their diplomas solely through virtual schoolwork.The students' options include online high schools offered by a charter school, a local company, a public school district and a university.

Exploring Canada is easy with the click of a mouse. As the country prepares to celebrates its 141st birthday Tuesday, the Dominion Institute says learning about history online engages young people. Students like to feel they're interacting with history when they're on the Internet, said Jeremy Diamond, the institute's director of programs. "History lends itself to telling a story," he said. "The

As mainstream collaboration modes evolve, the way schools are tackling online information sharing is changing, and it's changing fast. Wikis and blogs may be the darlings of the Web 2.0 movement, but the eLearning they promote is asynchronous; it does not happen in real time. Not surprisingly, this has left many institutions and eLearning professionals hungry for the substantial funds needed to

Not sure why I posted a question on a Google Earth Community without posting on my own blog? Love to have some ideas on this question... I'm trying to understand how I might put together a group activity that allows students to build a collaborative List - without having to do lots and lots of downloading and editing of individual... michelle

Like so much on the Internet, Web classes stumbled after being hailed as the next big thing in the late 1990s. The first movers, like the London School of Economics' Fathom or NYU Online, failed--losing hundreds of millions of dollars-- because students in the West prefer to attend class (and parties) on a real campus. But online or "distance" learning is now an established and rapidly growing

In a constantly changing business climate, with globalisation appearing to shrink the world on a monthly basis, it's not surprising that distance and online learning is booming. And nowhere is this more so than in the MBA market, where every year tens of thousands of students enrol on programmes at institutions hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles from their home.

Airmen interested in earning a master’s degrees from the Air Force Institute of Technology can receive the degree through long-distance learning. AFIT began offering its first distance learning degree program just over a year ago. This month, AFIT conferred master’s degrees in systems engineering to four students who completed all their AFIT courses while stationed at Sandia National Labs in New

Our American colleague, Barry Dahl, has disappeared for the weekend, as today is Independence Day in the USA. That leaves two Canadians in charge, which can be dangerous. The big news that Stephen Downes missed last month was the debate over the loss of our "Hockey Night in Canada" theme on television, with a suggestion that "the Hockey Song", by Stompin' Tom Connors could be a suitable replacement. As a gift to the Americans celebrating their national holiday, we introduce them to Stompin' Tom, with such classics as "The Hockey Song", "Bud the Spud", and the "Ketchup Song". Enjoy with French fries, eh. - GW Lee-Anne Goodman, The Canadian Press, July 4, 2008 [Tags: United States, Video, Canada] [Link] [Comment]

This excellent slide show makes the case for the growing importance of micro-blogging. It makes a case for "social objects" rather than social networking, and then lays out 5 principles for building services around them. Engestrom argues that "sites that fail are just 'social networks'," whereas sites that have succeeded have organized around social objects such as music, photos, favorite websites, and books. He contends that microblogging with such applications as Twitter are disruptive because they are simpler, cheaper, and only need a mobile device to work, making them also more convenient. -GW Jyri Engestrom, MobiMundi, July 4, 2008 [Tags: Twitter, Networks] [Link] [Comment]

My negative comments on Second Life in my July 2nd post inspired several replies which rightly chastised me for being too one sided. Given that readers of the e-mail version of this newsletter don't automatically get the comments, I am reproducing them here. -GW


Re: Proving the Potential of Virtual Worlds
Alan Levine, July 2, 2008

The experiences you describe of "boring" replication are not a function of the potential of Second Life, but what people so far have used it for, much the same way people can blame powerpoint software for bad presentations. Its like blaming the technology of the circuitry in my television for the crappy shows on the screen.

Its easy to take potshots at Second Life -- the post by Matt Rose is based on a lot of data? supposition like "I think..."

Our organization has run 4 conferences in Second Life (ones people paid to attend) where the sessions were most certainly not sitting and screen watching, but where we had role play, active learning, content creation, 3D demonstrations, even out of control mashup dancing.

People are behind it all.


Re: Proving the Potential of Virtual Worlds
Anymouse, July 3, 2008

I completely agree with Alan and you can reference the conversation on the SLED list re "horseless carriage syndrome" too. SL is a platform for creativity in education, including giving students the lead if you so choose. If you want to recreate page-turning, well, that's possible too.

And, dear me, we're supposed to get excited about RocketOn in closed alpha. What about weblins, ExitReality, YooWalk, etc? My excitement quota is running low already. Sheesh.


Re: Proving the Potential of Virtual Worlds
Anymouse, July 3, 2008

So, let me see - you attend a panel where they choose to replicate something from real life and that constitutes a fault with the platform?

Have you visited, for example, Dante's Inferno in Second Life. I'd love to see you replicate the travel, the lakes of boiling blood, the burning sands and the like in a real life classroom. Does it work to teach the class? Absolutely, it empowers students to see the parallels between Inferno and Linden Hills in very strong terms.

I'm guessing since you've got an .ca domain you don't have a plethora of old abbeys, castles and the like, perhaps you should try visiting Tintern Abbey in SL - far cheaper for you than heading over to the real one.

If science is more your thing, perhaps a visit to Second Nature to see molecules big enough to climb on, or Drexel where you can see the molecules reforming as the reaction progresses, you can do this on a huge scale and co-operatively - things you can do IRL if you have a lot of time, money and specialist software or you can do in SL with a bit of co-operation between two professors who might never have met without Second Life to facilitate it.

If you'd rather life sciences, go visit Genome. Parts of it function rather like a museum, but the pooping llamas leave an impression, as does the giant cell, and the ability to rapidly replicate years of Mendel's work in a way that is far more engaging than any web-based simulation I've ever seen are all strong positives for the platform.

Second Life can replicate real life if you don't have the imagination to use it in other ways. It can do a million other things too, many of them things that time, money, travel, health and safety and other issues will just stop you doing in any real life classroom.
Alan Levine and anonymous others, Stephen's Web, July 4, 2008 [Tags: Newsletters, Online Learning, Second Life, Simulations, Video, Experience] [Link] [Comment]

There are many examples of technologies invented in America but perfected and exploited elsewhere. Although the US developed the Internet, it only ranks 15th out of 30 in broadband performance in developed countries, according to this report. South Korea is the world leader, and reasons why the US is in the middle of the pack include a much more spread out distribution of population compared with the leaders, and less favorable tax policies. -GW Robert Atkinson, Daniel Correa, and Julie Hedlund, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, July 4, 2008 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]

This article from Technology Review consists of 13 different visions of the future of the Web over the next 5 to 10 years. They range from the pessimistic "total end of privacy" to the optimistic "developer empowerment". The most common theme is the "mobile web" and perhaps the most unlikely is "we will all have chips in our brains". Lots of lengthy comments for this post, so it would be a good one to generate discussion. -GW Kristina Grifantini, Technology Review, July 4, 2008 [Tags: Privacy Issues] [Link] [Comment]

Playing online games can lead to injuries, including migraines, backstrains and nausea. But they also can be beneficial to health, improve fitness levels, and be use in healthcare and rehabilitation. This article from BBC News is a review of many of the good effects of physical virtual games. -GW Margaret Robertson, BBC News, July 4, 2008 [Tags: Video, BBC] [Link] [Comment]

With two national holidays in North America this week, plus the 400th anniversary of Quebec City, it's only fitting to have a post about them. Dave Ferguson even provides a short history lesson, "So, for those who missed the 15 minutes spent on Canada during high school, July 1st is the anniversary of the 1867 agreement by Upper Canada (now Ontario), Lower Canada (Quebec), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia to form what Sir John A. Macdonald and Viscount Monck wanted to call the Kingdom of Canada." Happy Independence Day to all our American readers. -HJ Dave Ferguson, Dave's Whiteboard, July 4, 2008 [Tags: United States, Schools, Canada] [Link] [Comment]

Jay Cross has been using the Web to manage his knowledge artefacts for well over a decade. All of these are available for sharing and Jay is trying to make things easier to find, "When you're getting ready to sell your boss on a new approach, you can use all the ammunition in the arsenal, and that means I need to make things easier to find. Thus, I've been darting around my blogs, wikis, and other online oddments adding labels and links." This is a good example of personal knowledge management and how it becomes more social over time. -HJ Jay Cross, Internet Time Blog, July 4, 2008 [Tags: Knowledge Management, Web Logs] [Link] [Comment]

Software provider Mohive has announced that it is the first company in Europe to offer elearning on the Apple iPhone. Mohive CEO Lars Unneberg said: "The introduction of Apples' iPhone has dramatically boosted the potential for mobile learning in the markets we operate in. Traditional barriers to effective mobile learning, like low quality video or clunky, unpredictable interfaces have been

In your editorial supporting Mount Royal College's bid for university status, you mention the 5,300 qualified Alberta students who were turned away from universities in 2006 because there was "no room for them." In fact, there is room for them at one of Alberta's four public degree-granting universities -- (online and distance education) Athabasca University, established by the province in 1970.

The Chicago Fire Department recently signed a partnership with one of the nation’s first completely online universities, Columbia Southern University. Chicago firefighters, their spouses and children will receive a 10% tuition discount and application fee waiver as a result of this partnership.