President's Message
by Erik Palmore, President
One of the things that all of us ETL folks
have come to value is communication, and in particular technology's
ability to enhance the ability to communicate in different ways, times,
places, manners and more. Think about it... how many of your classmates
do you "know" without ever having seen their face or hearing their
voice. The complex task of learning, and doing so from and with each
other can happen without leaving a paper trail (I know, I know, some of
us print stuff still, how old fashioned).
I point out this obvious fact for a couple of reasons. First, I have
noticed a trend in technology-enhanced communications tools being
discussed by ETLSOers lately, and is a bit of a theme for this
newsletter. Second, I think we should all be commended for how well we
all seem to operate in this modality. For every e-mail I read at work
that makes me want to reach through my monitor to the writers and
strangle them, I get at least one polite, succinct and productive note
from something related to my ETL responsibilities.
So if you too are like me and find yourself one of the select few that seem
to be able to communicate well without calling a meeting or picking up
the telephone, enjoy the time you spend communicating with your
classmates. If you have interesting success stories in this broad but
important subject area, please share them with fellow ETLSO members,
particularly as we continue to explore new ways to collaborate and share
outside of Blackboard.
I would like to extend an invitation to each
of you to join us for our first ETLSO
public virtual meeting chat
this Wednesday, November 29, 2006, at 9:00pm EST. Please read more about
it here and make plans to
attend.
Erik
epalmore@gwu.edu
by
Char Corbett, Website Administrator
What is open source? Open source software
means that the programming code is freely available to anybody who
wishes to peer under the hood and see how it works. More importantly, it
allows people to compile – using an application to convert the human
readable source code into machine readable instructions – and freely use
the software. People, particularly in business, tend to sneer at open
source programs saying that they are unreliable, there is no company to
maintain them, and they are not owned by anybody. That is not exactly
true. Open source software packages often have a community of
programmers that spend time maintaining the software, pushing it to its
limits, freely (and in a timely manner) fixing problems and building
enhancements to the program.
READ FULL ARTICLE.
I Wiki, You Wiki, We All Wiki
by Hedy Lowenheim, Facilitator of Technical
Topics
The ETLSO will be experimenting with Wiki’s
in the coming months. The Wiki [WEE-+ke] name was taken from the
Hawaiian language meaning "super fast." The Wiki technology is known for
its fast speed in creating and updating content, making them extremely
advantageous to use for collectively authoring documents on the web.
Here is one definition I came accross describing what a Wiki is, “The
simplest online database that could possibly work.” Wikis encourage
non-technical users to edit content on the web since “open editing” is
expected.
A Wiki will allow ETLSO members to actively participate in on-line
discussions. Topics in technology and the education world will be the
main focus of the Wikis. The versatility of Wikis will give us a great
deal of flexibility. READ FULL ARTICLE.
