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Penn State Cuts off P2P File-Traders
The crackdown continues as Penn State pulls the plug on 220 student accounts acused of being used for file sharing. There is no word in this story about how it was determined that the contents were in fact copyrighted materials or whether any sort of due process, such as a hearing, was followed before the penalty was exacted. More...

Low-End Media for User Empowerment
I don't really like the title of this article, since the main point is that simple media (rather than low-end media) is better for readers. Of course the two are often the same. But when it's simple, high-end media often accomplished the same result: for example, though I am not a fan of streaming media, I have been listening to hockey games on NHL.Com rather than reading the text-based play-by-play. More...

Blackboard, Students and Publishing on the Web
The best bit in this article is near the bottom where the author quotes from the PR flim-flammery intended to be a student manual in the Blackboard system. As with so many corporate websites, this general rule applies: keep the public relations people (and their useless adjectives) as far away from the actual product as possible. More...

Schools Look to Wireless to Boost Learning
Wireless connectivity has the potential to improve educational activities while lowering costs. But it will require an adjustment on the part of teachers. More...

A Model of Democracy
Think about this: "have increasingly become more democratized. One of the big reasons for that is the so-called knowledge revolution. The individual practitioners who have specialized knowledge or talents have taken on a much larger degree of the organizational power." I have long held that a society cannot consider itself to be a democracy unless its institutions are democratic: its schools and universities, its businesses and corporations, its charities and foundations. More...

Defense Agency Pulls OpenBSD Funding
Hard to explain this one as DARPA pulls the remaining funding from the OpenBSD project. Much of the money went to improve the system's security, but a week-long 'Hackathon' scheduled to be held in Canada next week may be in jeopardy. More...

Weblog Trackbacks to Provide Context for Learning Objects
Interesting discussion and development of trackbacks - a mechanism to follow the paths of other users - to give context to learning objects. More...

Why do Colleges Build Dormitories? And Teach Half-time?
Philip Greenspun asks this reasonable question and notes, "A university will spend hundreds of $millions on dormitories, i.e., places for students to drink beer and sleep together. More...

Current Edu-Bloggers
As George Siemens comments, "This has been the busiest week I've seen in the field of edu-tech bloggers." Or as Jay Cross says, "It feels like this train is finally leaving the station. Bravo!" I second that; I cannot even keep track of the dizzying pace. More...

Blurbs: Writing Previews of Web Pages
Via elearningpost comes this interesting link describing how to write 'blurbs' - like the thing you're realing right now - for weblogs and web pages. More...