Moodle doesn't encourage good course design.
Interesting post by James Clay and it gives me 2 thoughts. Should we change the way we start people off on Moodle so course design comes first and then some mechanics. The other thought is could we write a wizard (or some such thing) that leads people through the big picture design of their course and then helps them populate it with appropriate elements?
Post referencing some research on the difference between student expectations of their teachers and their experiences. Some comments includes useful formative strategies.
"Music and movie industries, you're well-known for being incredibly short-sighted, greedy and stupid. I'm not going to argue with that, because you really are."
A post explaining why piracy happens in simple terms.
"Late Friday, the federal district court in Nevada issued a declaratory judgment that makes is harder for copyright holders to file lawsuits over excerpts of material and burden online forums and their users with nuisance lawsuits."
The judgment - part of the nuisance lawsuit avalanche started by copyright troll Righthaven - found that Democratic Underground did not infringe the copyright in a Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper article when a user of the online political forum posted a five-sentence excerpt, with a link back to the newspaper's website.
"I saw a post about Collusion - a Firefox add-on that maps links between websites, both the ones you go to directly, and the ones that send media and pull tracking info."
Interesting post from the always interesting Michael Feldstein on BB shaving bits of the LMS to run as stand alone services in the cloud. The only core bits of an LMS are the gradebook and identity management...
Excellent post on fair use, its flaws and the danger of copyright accusation without trial. This is an example of remix and appropriation of an image where the author could not afford to go to court and potentially lose (multiple times $150,000) and so settled out of court at $32500.
Blog from libertarian perspective on how to manage the internet - some interesting articles - summaries of recent books etc. Check out Adam Thierer posts.
Brian Lamb with another insightful and inciting post on the poverty of critical thinking in Higher Education regarding the future of that self same education. If they don't pull their fingers out their fundaments we are all doomed is the message. And by the way, the 'they' is us.