You take a deep breath and…

I try to step back from the computer and re-enter the physical world periodically — take a breath, read a book, play with my baby boy…

In theory, it’s good for mental health, and I certainly didn’t regret taking last Friday off at the time. But opening up my RSS reader this morning and seeing 400 unread links brought home to me how fast things are moving in this field. I tend to accept that the perception of a breakneck pace of development is in part projection of my own general busyness, a troubling sense that despite my best efforts I’m not “getting it”, that the real action is happening just past my attention horizon. A personal anxiety that the answers to my every question and all the tools I need are right under my nose, if only I could sustain attention.

But I don’t think I’m simply being neurotic… things really are moving fast.

Not only did I miss a great conference call, I now face a Monday morning information processing snarl of epic proportions. Lots of great stuff bouncing around, and I’m afraid that if I don’t nail it down somehow I’m going to lose it altogether. So I’m just going to post some bare-bones links below… The formatting will be ugly, I may not be too accurate in crediting the right people who unearthed material “first”, and I can’t offer any context, but here goes:

:: From David Davies: Reusable Learning Objects RSS Autodiscovery Example. This page contains a number of reusable learning objects (RLOs). The header of this web page contains an autodiscovery RSS file link that contains the title, description and URL to every RLO used. Open this web page’s URL into an RSS reader that supports RSS autodiscovery such as NetNewsWire or the excellent Radio auto-subscribe bookmarklet and you will automatically get the list of RLOs as a subscribed channel. These RLOs can then be reused to create your own page containing RLOs.

:: From David Wiley, New Educommons Prototype. …now I’ve improved the prototype interface based on a logo and other design ideas by Corrine Ellsworth. The current prototype (designed to teach facts) functions like an automated flashcard system, presenting and quizzing on information in external content bundles. This is the key; the ECV contains no content at all, and could teach facts or lists in many different domains (reusability!). The next version of the prototype will integrate research-based rehearsal schedules to improve learning. And of course, if we ever get our NSF funding, we’ll build ECVs for other kinds of content – concepts, procedures, etc…

:: From D’Arcy Norman: Surfing the blog world with Feedster, and have come across a few more XML database links:

:: From CETIS, RELOAD releases beta of open source Metadata editor

:: From Ed Tech Dev, Wiki Weblogs.

:: From EdTechPost, RSS feeds from Learning Object Repositories – Known Examples — the actual feeds.

… and Meta Data Repositories: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going.

:: From elearnspace: An Introduction to Open Source Communities

… and RSS Readers Wiki

:: From Stephen Downes, Teaching in the Wireless Cloud. Stephen identifies a key quote: “The notion of college as a separate space removed from the world, already weakened by the internet, is further sapped by mobile access to the world beyond the ivory tower. The campus becomes a different place when a student can connect with a content expert anywhere in the world from the steps of a gym, or compare notes with a student on another continent from a classroom doorway.”

:: From Tim Bray, Path Finder is a comprehensive file browser with some darn fine features for discerning Mac OS X users everywhere.

:: From Seb’s Open Research, Results of Seb’s “weblogs and knowledge sharing” survey.

There’s more. MUCH more. But I haven’t the time… even as I type this the day-to-day tasks are piling up in my frontal lobe, pressure is building, it’s only a matter of time until… THAR SHE BLOWS!

It’s clear. I can’t take any more time off, ever. It’s too much effort. From this moment on, it’s learning objects 24/7, 365 — I’ll sleep when I’m dead.