One Standard For All: Why We Don't Want It, Why We Don't Need It
Comments: From a Power Point presentation...great resource. Some slides of note: " We want to be able to describe learning objects, and to allow them to communicate with each other. In order to do this, we need a language. But for this language to be useful, we need a language that is extensible, that depends as much on context as it does meaning.(slide 25)"
"If we attempt to restrict the vocabulary used to describe learning objects, then because of pragmatics we are almost guaranteeing that the words in our vocabulary will lose their fixed meaning. This will make it impossible for machines - as well as humans - to understand what is being said." (slide 47)
"Objects are best described using multiple vocabularies. There is no way to determine which vocabulary will be relevant to either an author or a user of a given objects. Trying to stipulate a canonical vocabulary a priori needlessly reduces the effectiveness of a system of communication." (slide 77)
Posted by gsiemens at January 20, 2003 7:52 PM