Online Education on the Horizon

Online learning is one of my main concerns today. I'm actively working in understanding what online instructional models are the good ones for different kinds of students: university, residents at hospitals, professionals improving their knowledge, etc.
I've been looking at different (and innovative) e-libraries, e-books, e-book readers, online databases and other content containers but a single one made me completely happy. 
I'm also following in Twitter different specialists and people interested, like me, in e-learning and the future of education. It seems to me that all of us are disappointed by the lack of real innovation in this field.
Most of the key opinion leaders expressing their ideas on the net seem to end in the same concept: The Future Doesn't Fit in the Containers of the Past (Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO Denuo).
We have an inmense opportunity to innovate and try to find the correct models for e-learning. 

Update on the Wolfram|Alpha project

There's been great anticipation around Stephen Wolfram's ambitious project to create a comprehensive "computational knowledge engine." The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University will host a sneak preview of the Wolfram|Alpha system, and a discussion of its underlying technology and implications. Participants will include Wolfram|Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram and Professor of Law Jonathan Zittrain.


Stephen Wolfram discusses Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine...here's the video:

Followers......

See full article at WebStrategist.

Just a brief of the stats published which reveal the power of the net.

Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

MySpace

Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

YouTube

Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993

Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain

Twitter

Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers

Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

Take your own conclusions.

Google Books is paying

Google would pay $125 million to settle two copyright lawsuits where his book-scanning efforts were compromised by the Association of American Publishers.

The new agreement will allow Google to show a 20% of each scanned bookto the users without paying anything. The full text could also be available for a certain price. This could be a good measure but thinking on technical or scientific books I wonder if this 20% is a big big mistake.

The NYT explains that Google plans to take 37 percent of the revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors.

Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

The shiny new internet browser from Google is here. Google Chrome is available for download from here. What are the implications for the two other main browsers, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

I've read some blogs where people are announcing the end of the story for them, and others who are just expecting the final version of this new browser to say their final word.

But, for sure, this presentation takes the Google-Microsoft rivalry to a whole new level and it will also affect the whole internet.

One of the most interesting things in Chrome is the address bar. People in Google resolved one of the most common mistakes in browsing the web: to write a search in this bar instead of the search box. Google has unified the address bar and the seach box creating a new concept now called the Omnibox.

Personal ambitions

I have read in a Spanish newspaper that Spanish teenagers would like to be civil employees or employees at a big department store.

This article does not seem to be important except by the fact that we consider those jobs tedious, monotonous and easy. Those occupations drive people to just comply with their assignments and work in automatic mode.

If this is so (of course there can be exceptions), it makes me think that this generation has a limited ambition or, worse, does not have any at all. It seems to me that values are changing.

To see that this is happening not only in the professional but in the personnel field also makes me feel sad. Many years ago I was coordinating, with some colleagues and friends, a university sports club. We used to have more than 1300 associates. Every year, we made competitions between faculties or within our own faculty and the participation was surpassed year after year. Months ago I was again in my beloved Faculty of Law and the club of sports had disappeared. Competitions do not exist anymore and the last census of associates shows twenty people.

If in the professional field we do not want to ambition too much, I can understand that (certainly, thats not me). But from the personal perspective, people without ambitions and motivations that help and drive them to improve their lives, I simply cannot understand. Unfortunately, this is happening with teenagers in Spain.