∞SOCRATES: But there is something yet to be said of propriety and impropriety of writing.
... The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality." -- Plato's Phaedrus
The present state of educational publishing
∞How are teaching and learning materials published?
"Blackboard∞ today announced∞ that the US Patent Office had awarded it a patent "for technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods." Things covered by this patent include client-server online courses in which users are defined as either students or instructors, the use of online drop boxes in an instructional setting, online grade books, online assessments, and many other common systems and methods that folks in higher education had utilized for years before the June 30, 2000 filing date of Blackboard's patent request."
∞The effect is a virtual monopoly∞
∞Usability∞? Learning enhancement?
Public accessibility?
How are learning resources shared?
Closed, proprietary approaches require intense standards∞. Once we struggled to achieve federated search∞, linking online collections∞. Now, if the site is public and indexed, it is easy to create a custom search engine.∞ You can place this search interface anywhere you want.∞
∞The crisis∞ in scholarly publishing. Some stats∞.
The rise of open education.
∞OpenCourseWare∞ - wildly successful∞ in some respects, but not especially easy to adapt for local custom use... (Other examples∞.)
∞Size of English Wikipedia∞ - August 2007
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