Updates
While it's been a fairly quiet summer around these parts, that doesn't necessarily mean I've been slacking off. Let's run down the list. Read more...
mezzoblue, Today, 12:20am
Notes: Vannevar Bush: As We May Think
Bush, V. (1945). As We May Think. The Atlantic Magazine. (12) on overload: There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to [...] Read more...
D'Arcy Norman dot net, Yesterday, 12:06pm
Unlimited Magazine: The Wild World of Massively Open Online Courses
Unlimited Magazine just ran an article by Emily Senger on the massively open online course experience. It’s a good overview of open online learning, and is definitely worth reading – if only for the 6 paragraphs featuring yours truly… They also spent some of the article talking with people that actually taught the course. George [...] Read more...
D'Arcy Norman dot net, Sep 1, 3:55pm
William Gibson – Google’s Earth
From William Gibson’s Op-Ed Contributor article – Google’s Earth – NYTimes.com: Google is not ours. Which feels confusing, because we are its unpaid content-providers, in one way or another. We generate product for Google, our every search a minuscule contribution. Google is made of us, a sort of coral reef of human minds and their [...] Read more...
D'Arcy Norman dot net, Sep 1, 2:59pm
The IMS Learning & Educational Technology Product Directory
Rob Abel writes, by email, "Implementations of Common Cartridge and Basic Learning Tools Interoperability are growing rapidly." The chart on this page is proof of that. Various Authors, IMS Global, September 1, 2010 [Link] [Comment] Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Sep 1, 2:11pm
Can MOOCs make learning scale?
Robert Cosgrave questions whether the MOOC course model can succeed. "A core part of the concept of a MOOC is peer to peer learning, through dialogue. But it's a dialogue between 2000 people who all know a little bit about the topic, with the course leaders piping in from time to time. It's as likely to confuse as enlighten." But this objection misses the same point every time someone states it - it assumes that the only clarity that can come in a course comes from course instructors. Which is (frankly) rubbish. Ever spend any time in a science or mathematics course lab? You know who is doing the teaching? Not the professor, who is nowhere to be found, or even the tutor, who when you can get to him or her is uncertain and... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Sep 1, 1:42pm
Intute Reflections at the End of an Era
It's the end of the line for Intute, a service I welcomed with great praise and fanfare when it launched. So what went wrong? The short answer is that its funding was cut late last year. This article looks at the long answer. "Our unique selling point of human selection and generation of descriptions of Web sites was a costly model, and seemed somewhat at odds with the current trend for Web 2.0 technologies and free contribution on the Internet.... Technological developments, changing user expectations and diminishing budgets mean that services such... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Sep 1, 1:15pm
Bruce Schneier on privacy, security, control, and google
Bruce Schneier speaks at the 2010 EWI Cybersecurity Summit. Granular explicit control over privacy is unnatural… Electronic commerce produces data. Everything we do produces data. (in ways traditional cash-based commerce did not) Businesses and governments are forcibly changing social norms. Who gets to make the rules? We are not Google’s customer. We are actually Google’s [...] Read more...
D'Arcy Norman dot net, Sep 1, 12:22am
Video: Sticky Concepts (introduction to) eLearning
I just found this introduction to eLearning and blended learning video, produced by the United Nations University Vice Rectorate in Europe (UNU-ViE). It’s very basic, but that’s the point of the video. Could come in handy in talking with faculty members – sometimes they have interesting concepts of what eLearning is (and isn’t)… Sticky Concepts [...] Read more...
D'Arcy Norman dot net, Aug 31, 11:40pm
Online, Bigger Classes May Be Better Classes
The Chronicle covers the open course phenomenon, talking eo myself, George Siemens, Alec Couros, David Wiley, Wendy Drexler and others. It's reasonable coverage, examining both the motivations and the outcomes. The headline is a bit odd, though. The courses aren't better because they're bigger, they're better because they're open. There is the requisite Chronicle contrarian, in this case Gary W. Matkin, dean of continuing education at UC Irvine, who comments despite not having any experience with the distributed delievry model we have been using. Instructors have to control the context of education, he says, and to keep the dummies from crowding out the paying customers. Of course, we've dealt with all that and more. Mark... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 31, 11:02am
Illustrator to HTML5's Canvas
I've spent a bit of time playing around with HTML5's canvas element lately. It's a fun new toy and has a lot of potential to be useful. But the biggest headache I'm finding so far is the lack of authoring tools. Read more...
mezzoblue, Aug 30, 12:20pm
Starting with @font-face
I've been using Cufón off and on since writing about font embedding back in May. It's a great hack, but browser progress since that time has been making me feel that the native CSS @font-face rule is becoming increasingly viable. Or, at least enough so that it seems like it's time to start dabbling. Read more...
mezzoblue, Aug 30, 12:20pm
IE8 Still Failing PNG Alpha
You thought our long nightmare of PNG alpha transparency support was finally over as of IE7, didn't you? Yeah, me too. Read more...
mezzoblue, Aug 30, 12:20am
on expensive canadian cell phone plans
I recently signed up for a cell phone plan. The cheapest deal I could manage was $50/month, plus taxes and fees, and involved a 3 year contract commitment. That’s $1800 over the term of the contract. And I got to pay a substantial chunk of the price of the phone, as well. If I let [...] Read more...
D'Arcy Norman dot net, Aug 29, 3:56pm
Openness and Corporate Paywalls
George posted a quick note about how an interview he gave for an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education was published. Behind a paywall. The Chronicle took an interview, freely given by everyone (except, I assume, for the paid interviewer and editor?), on the topic of openness in education, and decided to lock it [...] Read more...
D'Arcy Norman dot net, Aug 29, 2:15pm
Older Than...
For no particular reason, I present to you a list of things that were true on August 27, 2001: Read more...
mezzoblue, Aug 29, 12:40am
And just suppose you had no grade…
A physicist and a biochemist have a conversation about grades, decide that grades are dumb. We were talking (and surprisingly agreeing) that grades were dumb. What would happen if we stopped grading? Wouldn’t that be awesome? So, what would happen if there were no grades? Here are some thoughts. Read the post for some of [...] Read more...
D'Arcy Norman dot net, Aug 27, 1:22pm
Social Networks for Lifelong Learners
Jeff Cobb recommends 20 social networks for lifelong learners. Kristina Schneider highlights five of them, writing, "the following I find are well geared towards workplace learning: LearnCentral ... an open environment that is half social network and half learning community; Udemy ... encourages members to teach and learn online using the site's many free tools and applications; Academici... members can post articles, share resources, and much more; Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 10:18pm
Chicago Public Schools Launches iPad Trials
Apple has always known the value of introducing its technology in schools, and so it's not at all surprising to see iPads being tested with first and second graders in Chicago. One school's grant proposal "says while second graders study forest communities, classes can take pictures of artifacts from nature, inspect them on the tablet, record observations and incorporate those images into multimedia presentations about the forest." The idea of course is to learn about the forest. The focus will no doubt be on the technology. But to me, the big thing is that students will be learning about forests in forests. Via Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 10:07pm
New and Improved - or Not?
Barbara Fister runs Amy Fry's review of JSTOR and agrees with her conclusion that it is "a fundamental shift from journal archive to 'discovery platform.'" And she adds, "I don't know how your users will respond, but I predict mine will be confused and unhappy – at least until they get the hang of manually selecting "content I can access" every time they search." If this report is accurate, users are in for a long, hard year - there's nothing more frustrating than finding results to your search that you cannot access because you don't have the right account. And I think such an approach is intended to - and does - reinforce the difference... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 10:01pm
DiigoNotes - Apple Seeking to Patent Spyware
You know what would be nice? It would be if Apple succeeded in patenting spyware and then launched lawsuits to prevent anyone else from using spyware. Then all we would have to do to avoid spyware would be to avoid using Apple. That would be great. Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner, August 26, 2010 [Link] [Comment] Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 9:49pm
The Evolving Social Organization
Harold Jarche traces the path leading to enterprise social learning - not the easiest thing to do successfully. You need to resist the urge to manage, and allow staff to adapt - it's the only way to address complexity. "Organizations need to understand complexity, instead of simply increasing complication." Good article with a number of examples of social learning in the enterprise. "As our work environments become more complex due to the speed of information transmission via ubiquitous networks, we need to adopt more flexible and less mechanistic processes to get work done." Harold Jarche, Life in Perpetual Beta, August 26, 2010 [Link] [ Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 9:45pm
Ewan McIntosh – Creative Thinking Approaches with Digital Media
Ewan McIntosh is in the land down under regaling them with his own brand of social learning. I like this bit: "Ewan's Challenge: What passion can you discover and explore in 100 hours? It is one hour every day for 3 months – becoming an expert in that time." Me? I plan to become an expert in Philip Marlowe. Graham Wegner, openeducator, August 26, 2010 [Link] [Comment] Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 9:40pm
Networking Set to Get a Whole Lot Faster
When we're thinking broadband in the future, we should be thinking fibre. "Recently Intel announced a new technology that is capable of data speeds of 50Gbps using light." Gary Woodill, Workplace Learning Today, August 26, 2010 [Link] [Comment] Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 9:36pm
Should we be paying invisible education professors?
I tend not to cite Scott McLeod because he's a relentless self-promoter (and admits as much in this post) but I think he raises a good point - and, implicitly, a good question. The good point is this: should we continue to pay education professors who continue to do their work in secret, publishing only in closed academic journals, hiding their work from any sort of real public scrutiny? The good question is this: McLeod says, "I don't know how many Educational Leadership faculty members are really trying to be thought leaders. I know that I am (which is why I vigorously use social media tools)...," which makes me wonder, should it be the use of social media tools that makes someone a thought leader, or should it he the having... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 9:33pm
The End of Management
I wonder whether we haven't reached some kind of turning point when the Wall Street Journal proclaims "the end of management." Of course, they have to add, "managers should act like venture capitalists," which undoes the effectiveness of the previous message. Because venture capitalists are like sharks, and what they don't eat they seek to control, like managers. We need quite different behaviour in a post-management world. Of course, we're so deeply entrenched in a world of business and enterprise based on power and control it's a long way to there from here. David T. Jones also comments. Alan Murray, Wall Street... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 9:28pm
Learning as a free spirit
Tom Haskins reviews Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success. "I got to wondering if all the difficulties we experience when we're free to learn as we please, comes from preliminary experiences with too much... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 9:24pm
50 Best Websites 2010
Sigh - overlooked again. Still, one has to wonder at the selection of Chegg - a textbook rental company - and LiveMocha - a commercial language learning site - in the top 5 educational sites. Old media roots run deep. So I wouldn't gloat. Various Authors, Time, August 26, 2010 [ Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 9:19pm
In response to Amy Kinsel
Amy Kinsel responds to David Wiley's case for open education. "I know first-hand that education does not consist primarily of the transfer of information from books or professors to students," she writes. "Access to information alone does not equal education." That's why the teacher plays such an important role. "If I were responsible not for 25-30 students per online class but 60 or even 100 students, I would need to change how I teach. I could not assign analytical papers that I'd have to read and comment on, I could not field student questions, I could not read or reply individually to student posts, and I could... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 9:13pm
Tell Sally Your Stories: Monthly, For a Year
Sally Fincher wants you to share your education stories with her. "In her keynote as the ACM SIGCSE 2010 Outstanding Contributions to CS Education awardee, Sally Fincher talked about the "useless truths" that education researchers publish. While they're true, the published lessons are often too hard to take from their abstract, general form into the concrete, daily practice of the teaching practitioner." At her website http://www.sharingpractice.ac.uk/ she is collecting and documenting these stories. Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Blog,... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 8:59pm
How Do You Measure the Effectiveness of Professional Development?
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach's account is basically rehashing of Bloom's, but I want to draw readers' attention to the embedded diagram depicting action learning. And the good point he make is that the effectiveness (if you want to call it that) of a learning event isn't measurable at the time of the event - you have to wait for the cycles to complete. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Powerful Learning Practice, August 26, 2010 [Link] [Comment] Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 8:50pm
How This Plays Out
Because he's probably right, I'll just quote the whole post: "Based on the Gates-funded Common Core Curriculum Maps, and the general reaction to them thus far, at the high school level these standards won't be taken much more seriously than any other set of high school standards at first.
What's going to come down the pipe shortly thereafter, however, will be a generation of very consistent, narrowly-focused and predictable high school tests, end of course tests, formative assessments, etc., which are exactly aligned to the standards as written, as I'm reading them here. They will also be fairly hard.
So, while schools that aren't really worried about passing... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 8:39pm
Teachers and Students in Control - 4 Media Creating Sites
According to Lauren Grossberg, "These 4 sites will provide you with a quick variety of some of those great resources. Combining technology with learning is just another way of preparing students for the future while having fun." The sites are write.fm, "an easy way to both create and share documents," Sharendipity, "with ready-made templates available if you don't want to start from scratch," Wordia Schoola, "record your own video for a definition and share it with the world," and SimpleDiagrams, "combine clip art, pictures, text... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 8:37pm
In For a Penny, In For a Pound… My Promotion Case for Support
Tony Hirst, after calling for input a few weeks ago, posts his promotion case online. "Throughout my career," he writes, "I have explored new methods of digital scholarship and ways of using technology to transform research, dissemination and knowledge construction, developing an international reputation as an advocate of emerging web technologies through community engagement." Absolutely the hardest kind of writing to do is writing that promotes yourself (and does so in an honest non-blatant way) and it is consequently the most difficult to post online. Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, August 26, 2010 [Link] [ Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 8:30pm
Free ePub solutions for Your Nook
eBook vendors might be in for some most unexpected competition - free eBooks. "There are a ton of ebook sources online in a rich variety of formats, all for free (avoid that price-fixing!). And, of course, you can load PDFs on your eReader (Kindle or Nook)." See also this ABCs of eBook conversion. Chris Clark argues Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 8:23pm
Facebook Alternative Diaspora Launches September 15
The people at Diaspora have released their first update in a while, announcing a release of their alternative to Facebook September 15. "What will Diaspora look like? According to the team, it's focusing on 'on building clear, contextual sharing.' One of the open source social network's features will be making it easy and intuitive for users to decide what content gets added and shared to their social circles." Yes, I was one of the many people who donated to the Diaspora project. Ben Parr, Mashable, August 26, 2010 [Link] [ Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 8:03pm
Internet Archive and OTR
I just love those old time radio episodes of the Falcon and the Shadow and the rest, and enjoy listening to them, especially late at night, when there's just the audio and me. But while I've been listening to them streaming over Shoutcast, I've been missing them while camping out of range of a proper internet connection. What to do? I searched around for MP3s, without much luck - here we have another case where people are simply taking free content and charging money for it, forcing the free access to the sidelines. Ah! But then this article, and the link to somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 OTR programs in MP3 format available for listening or download. Where? Where else, but the Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 7:58pm
Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars
Granted, the metadata in Google Scholar isn't close to perfect. But what Geoffrey Nunberg fails to show - after numerous paragraphs detailing the flaws - is why Google owes it to academic researchers to "at a minimum, licens(e) the catalogs of the Library of Congress and OCLC Online Computer Library Center and incorporat(e) them into the search engine so that users can get accurate results when they search on various combinations of dates, keywords, subject headings, and the like." He argues, simply, "every great public good implies a great public trust." There may be many more cost-effective ways of producing reliable metadata - such as, say, harvesting the efforts of the very scholars who are taking advantage of this free... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 6:57pm
An emerging model for open courses
Why offer open courses at all? What's the motivation? This is the question Dave Cormier tried to address at a recent talk, only to be met with "a sea of faces who didn't really get what I was trying to explain." It can be tough. Cormier argues that the reasons include (a) "the value that comes from opening your discussion to the world marketplace," (b) "broad participation and new people to interact with your membership group," and (c) "a chance to have an open debate on important issues in the field." For me, when asked a similar question, I responded that it comes down to access. Traditional university courses simply help people who already have an advantage increase their lead. They help the rich get richer, as they are... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 12:59pm
Taking Stock of Lifelong Learning in Canada (2005-2010): Progress or Complacency?
In what has all the appearances of a wrap-up, the Canadian Council on Learning's 'Taking Stock' report is intended "to consolidate our key findings, insights and recommendations, and report back to Canadians on where progress has been made and which areas are still in need of improvement." The CCL continues to urge changes to Canada's education system. "As we stand still," writes CCL president Paul Cappon, "we are losing ground. We insisted bluntly that Canada put its house in order. We described the consequences of failing to recognize the urgency to act." It's a difficult point to make, as Canada is demonstrating strength and improvement across the board - a fact that CCL reconciles by calling it a "paradox" that... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 12:28pm
Journal29
Set of slides and photos from the Centro Cultural Canada festival in Cordoba, Argentina, that I attended in May. I had a great time in Cordoba, and by all accounts the festival was a great success. Various Authors, Slideshare, August 26, 2010 [Link] [Comment] Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 12:06pm
#Reinventate 2.0
luzpearson tweets, "@Downes @gsiemens We are launching openonlinecourse #reinv2010, you2 are our inspiration. Thanks! About reinventing us." The course is in Spanish. "La transformación puede tener varias explicaciones (muchas de las cuáles se relacionan con el impacto de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación) y una sola emergencia: reinventarse o morir." If you are launching an open course this fall, send me a note, and I'll pass your link along. Various Authors, Open Course, August 26, 2010 [Link] [Comment] Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 12:04pm
What are Learning Analytics?
"Learning analytics," writes George Siemens, "is the use of intelligent data, learner-produced data, and analysis models to discover information and social connections, and to predict and advise on learning. EDUCAUSE's Next Generation learning initiative offers a slightly different definition 'the use of data and models to predict student progress and performance, and the ability to act on that information'." My own interest in learning analytics is pretty minimal (let's get AI right before... Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 12:00pm
Free Tool Tracks Student and Class Benchmark Progress
According to this article, "Benchmark Grading has launched a free online tool for student grading and progress analysis toward state and core benchmarks. The Web service provides a teacher gradebook with extended features including comments and reports to keep parents informed." I'd be more interested in a standard way of representing benchmarks (something like a Benchmark XML), a tool that would let you create Bemchmark sets, and a tool that would allow you to select a Benchmark set and use this to map out your online learning. Evan Tassistro, T.H.E. Journal, August 26, 2010 [ Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 26, 11:52am
Jasper
We drove up to Jasper National Park for a few days of relaxation in the mountains. I played around with shooting video on the iPhone, and wound up with this (shot on the iPhone, and edited in Mobile iMovie): and a few photos: Read more...
D'Arcy Norman dot net, Aug 26, 9:11am
Dear Adobe
In the spirit of Dear Adobe, I submit the following two minute Photoshop gripe: Read more...
mezzoblue, Aug 24, 12:20pm
flight patterns
A fascinating short experimental film, showing the flight patterns of insects through long exposure photography. An interesting way to visualize activity. Read more...
D'Arcy Norman dot net, Aug 23, 12:07pm
J. Biebz - U Smile 800% Slower
This is the most amazing thing - Justin Bieber slowed down 800 times creates the most fantastic music. Also worth a look - the Soundcloud application where this is being shared. Nick Pittsinger, Soundcloud, August 23, 2010 [Link] [Comment] Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 23, 11:01am
Ning's New Deadline for Pay-Only: Aug. 30
I'm wondering whether Ning isn't beginning to regret the move to pay-only sites. All the Nings with which I am associated have decided to move to other platforms; not one has opted to pay. That may not be surprising. But now I read that Ning is extending its 'select an option' period before shuttering non-compliant sites. And reading between the lines they seem to be drawing a lot of criticism on the Ning Creators Ning, leading to threads like Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 23, 10:56am
How Many Lines of Computer Code are Required to Simulate the Human Brain?
I think that the human brain could be modelled with relatively few lines of computer code (certainly far fewer than a million) but that the resulting program would have to be run in a stimulating environment in order to learn as humans do. Richard Nantel links to the goods: "Dr. Kurzweil's original post is here. Dr. Myer's response is here. Dr. Kurzweil's reply to Dr. Myer's response is Read more...
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily, Aug 23, 10:47am