Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Ten Ways Online Education Matches, or Surpasses, Face-to-Face Learning Ten Ways Online Education Matches, or Surpasses, Face-to-Face Learning:"How good is online education? Debate about the relative quality of Internet-based courses has raged almost since the advent of this new teaching and learning medium. In my opinion, the answers are being settled rather conclusively at my school and 18 other community colleges sharing courses in the New Jersey Virtual Community College Consortium (NJVCCC). I have taught more than 50 online sections of sociology to more than 1,200 students at Bergen Community College and Thomas Edison State College. As the distance learning coordinator at Bergen Community College and as chair of the NJVCCC, I have worked closely with faculty members and administrators throughout New Jersey and other states to create, deliver, and assess online courses." 5:22:11 PM    comment []  trackback []

Benefits of Learning Online. Faculty I consult with often want to know how the learner benefits from online instruction. I respond by saying that web-based education has the potential to change the way students learn. Sociology professor Mark Kassop, does a good job of outlining 10 ways in which he believes online learning excels. Reference: Mark Kassop "Ten Ways Online Education Matches, or Surpasses,... [IDEAS: Instructional Design for Elearning ApproacheS] 1:47:21 PM    comment []  trackback []

Using open source tools to build interoperable Web services. XML and Web services have been touted for years as the new lingua franca for application development, destined to transform the way companies conduct business and communicate. Lingua franca, or "bastardized French," was a pidgin or trade language used a couple of hundred years ago by various language communities around the Mediterranean to communicate with others whose language they didn't speak. [NewsForge] 1:41:44 PM    comment []  trackback []

Plans 6.0. Plans is a powerful and flexible Web calendar. Its features include recurring events, merged calendars, event icons, custom themes and templates, MS Outlook export, SQL or flat-file data storage, and browser-based management. [freshmeat.net] 11:42:16 AM    comment []  trackback []

Papyrus 1.3.9. Papyrus is a XML-based reporting langauge for PostgreSQL and MySQL. It allows you to generate well-formatted reports in LaTeX, PDF, PostScript, HTML, ANSI, and XML. The XML is expressed in a formatting-oriented style to allow you to develop a wide range of reports. SQL is then embedded into the report to give you the desired data. Papyrus is commandline-driven, and data arguments can be passed into the report. Equations and expressions can also be carried out on data. [freshmeat.net] 11:39:24 AM    comment []  trackback []

Microsoft Creates Static With New Webcast Feature Microsoft Creates Static With New Webcast Feature Posted by michael on Tuesday September 07, @06:32PM from the genuine-bolex-watches dept. An anonymous reader writes "Radio stations are upset because Microsoft is cloning their playlists -- creating sounds-alike internet radio stations without the commercials." [Slashdot:] 11:32:21 AM    comment []  trackback []

Apple Patches 15 Mac OS X Flaws (Ziff Davis). Ziff Davis - Apple claims most users are protected from the worst dangers of the flaws, many of which originate in the OS' open-source components. [Yahoo! News - Technology] 11:21:38 AM    comment []  trackback []

Microsoft: All XP Users to Get SP2 by April 2005. Microsoft has allowed XP users who were leery of taking delivery of Windows XP Service Pack 2 to postpone the patch by using automatic-patch-blocking tools. Microsoft is now giving XP customers using Windows Update/Automatic Update a deadline (April 12, 2005) by which they need to finish preparing for SP2 before Microsoft pushes SP2 out to them. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley] 11:15:19 AM    comment []  trackback []