July 2008
71 posts
Curtis Bonk Interview →
For those who may want to catch the archive, here is my interview yesterday with Indiana University professor Curtis Bonk as we chatted for about an hour about a variety of…
We have the pieces... →
We have lots of pieces. Content. Information. Knowledge. Social connections. Technology. These pieces are impacting education in a hit-and-miss manner. We read of implementations of SecondLife, or…
Are we getting dumber? →
Predictions of the damaging nature of progress have been frequent since Plato has Socrates challenge the value of writing in contrast with verbal dialogue. Each generation has its voices that…
Are we using Google? Or is Google using us? →
Like much of the online world, I’m in an ongoing state of conflict with my reliance on Google. I don’t want my entire digital life tied into one tool…and yet the tools Google makes generally…
On literacy →
Jay Cross and Clark Quinn hosted a session this week on The Future of the Book:
The net has changed everything. Young people read screens, not paper. Plus, we’re all potential…
Dealing With the “Skills Slowdown” →
New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks writes about the pretty dire state of education in this country in his piece “The Biggest Issue” which ran yesterday, and it cites some interesting…
New University Model →
I don’t know if I’ve ever had a conversation with someone who feels universities are doing exactly what they need to be doing. We have an almost universal consensus that something is wrong and…
The World is Flat for Education–Curtis Bonk... →
Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 2 pm EST I’ll be continuing my thread of interviews with authors with Curtis Bonk, professor of e-learning at Indiana University. Curtis has just finished a comprehensive…
Rumour has it, the web is big →
Google acknowledges that the web is big. Really big. The article provides a one sentence summary that translates well as advice to people interested in forming personal learning networks: “We…
Metcalfe's Law is Wrong →
We eagerly fall over ourselves trying to advocate for networks. The internet. The web. Personal learning networks. Some have even suggested connectivism. Networks, as a concept, is so easy to…
Cloud Computing →
I’ve been playing with MobileMe - Apple’s service for people to distribute data across multiple tools, similar to Microsoft’s Live Mesh - over the last few days. While the service is classified as…
In Search of a Beautiful Mind →
Seymour Papert is a living legend, having exerted tremendous influence in numerous fields, including artificial intelligence and education. In 2006 he was struck by a motorcycle and sustained a…
WeGottaStopThis.org →
Just an observation here, but three times in the last week I have been speaking to different educators who in passing have made the point that we do a good job of teaching kids that .org sites are…
Kids Prefer Reading Online… →
So the unending debate over whether or not reading on the Internet is “really” reading gets played out once again in this New York Times piece titled “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really…
Controlled Connectedness →
Been taking a bit of break in these parts of late, still reading and watching a lot, writing a fair share of offline stuff, and plowing through a lot of trashy beach novels which, I’ve decided, are…
SocialLearn →
Yesterday, I attended Martin Weller’s presentation on SocialLearn, hosted by George Siemens, with the recording now available online. SocialLearn is a project of The Open University and…
Rhizomatic Education course - Technical Lessons →
This is number two in an at least three part reflection on my Educational Technology and the Adult Learner course that I completed last week. I’m saving the ‘what i learned as a teacher’ post for…
iPhoneblog →
Just testing you can guess what… Sure wish I had smaller thumbs!
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SocialLearn: →
The recording of Martin Weller’s presentation today on SocialLearn: learning about new ways of learning is now available. Martin addressed a range of issues that educators/trainers need to…
History and the future →
I suspect most readers will be astonished by this statement: it appears that educational technology has a past, a history! It didn’t come into existence in 2000 with the rise of blogs, wikis, and…
New work, new attitude →
Nine Shift has a couple of posts on the changing nature of work and how the idea of responsibility usurped morals during the industrial age (See Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3).
In the…
Knol →
With up to 30% of Google/Yahoo searches returning links to Wikipedia, Google sees an enormous non-adsensed space. The traffic of Wikipedia makes ad providers salivate. To combat this untapped…
why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it... →
Statements like this cause me some despair about how ideas that may have a remote scientific basis get projected into hype-speak in main stream media: why the Google generation isn’t as smart as…
The Machine Stops →
Hard to believe this was written in 1909 (E. M. Forster) - The Machine Stops: “the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things,…
Narrowing of Science and Scholarship →
Connectedness enables us to make sense of the world. Concepts that exist in isolation lack the opportunity to be shaped and formed through connections and interactions. But, as Beinhocker notes in
Photo sharing →
I’ve been playing a bit as a very amateur photographer and started a Flickr account when I purchased my first digital camera three years ago. I just upgraded to a Pentax Optio M50…
Plastic minds →
Our minds are readily deceived. A classic experiment - the rubber hand (short video here) - demonstrates how quickly we integrate perceptual data. A mild stretch: I think this provides an…
Blogging rhythms →
I’ve been helping out with OLDaily for the past several weeks, but Stephen is now back as editor-in-chief. The pressure of getting out a daily newsletter was much more difficult than I thought it…
Memphis: presentation slides →
This morning, I delivered a presentation to the Desire2Learn Fusion 2008 conference: Connectives and Collectives: learning alone, together. Stephen Downes provides a summary of the talk…
Visual Thinking →
I’m not a visual person. Ok, not totally true. I’m a visual person, but I lack skills to express myself visually. I love concept maps. I thoroughly enjoy level images. I even signed up with Gliffy…
Community Curriculum - eight days into the course. →
I thought I might contribute the the we are media project by making a reflection on my current teaching practice. I’ve spent most of the last two weeks working on “educational technology and the…
Cloud Computing →
You might as well start a new tag on your del.icio.us profile for cloud computing. It is the terminological heir of web 2.0. And it’s meaning is equally vague. Cloud computing means many things…
Cult of the dabbawalas →
Dabbawala’s are a 5000 person collective involved in the complex delivery of meals in India. They are renowned for extreme efficiency in their work and organization, with an error rate of only 1…
SocialLearn →
SocialLearn is an innovative project to “move beyond web-feed based interoperability and visual clustering of apps on the webtop, with SL-aware apps communicating via the API, so that the…
User Generated Context →
Harold Jarche offers important comments on User Generated Context: “Creating good content on a platform that lets users (teachers & learners) add context may be the the real killer application in…
Information Overload →
CBC explores information overload (the link is on the bottom half of the page), featuring a few representatives from the newly formed Information Overload Research Group and an author exploring…
Future of, well, all kinds of stuff →
e-Horizons is a project from Oxford “focused on critically assessing competing visions of the future of media, information and communication technologies and their societal implications.” As part…
What I Hate About Twitter →
I’ve liked Twitter since I first started playing with it last year, but there are some things that are really starting to annoy me about these 140-character “conversations” that we’re carrying on…
User Generated Context for Learning →
Umair Haque’s short paper on User Generated Context has some insights pertinent to online learning. Haque says that “context” is what most users generate and that content remains an area for…
Random Readings and Research Findings →
I’ve shifted the focus on my University of Manitoba research blog to move more toward analysis or exploration of published research findings.
This week’s presentation is now available: Random…
Clay Shirky Interview →
Well, despite some technical issues (Skype video not working behind the NYU firewall (go figure) and just a complete drop of my Internet connection about half way through) here are the 2-part…
Shirky Interview Rescheduled for Today at 11 EST →
Here.
That is all…
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“Let our Congress Tweet” →
Thanks to a tweet from Andy Carvin comes this latest example of how social tools are pushing the old traditional ways of thinking, this time in Congress:
Given the rules in place, this clash…
elearnspace blog update →
A quick FYI: I’m in the process of moving this blog/site to a new platform and server. Things might be a bit goofy for the next week or so. Comments are currently not working. RSS feeds and URLs…
The Future of Online Learning Ten Years On →
Stephen Downes delivered a presentation about The future of online learning ten years on. I’ve reviewed the slides, but haven’t had time to listen to the audio (personal whining; my laptop, ipod…
Internet Users 50+ Are Rapidly Closing the Digital... →
Not really surprising, but a bit of a push back to advocates who suggest a rigid age-based divide between generational use of the internet: Internet Users 50+ Are Rapidly Closing the Digital…
Blogging research: attribution and ownership of... →
Lilia Effimova appears to have completed her PhD research and is actively blogging. She provides a thoughtful and critical voice to online communication. In a recent post she tackles the key…
Social Media Starter Kit →
Social Media Start Kit is a useful resources intended to “build a toolkit and instructional guides about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create,…
Shifting value point of content →
I’ve been harping on this for a while - content is no longer a value point in itself. MITs OpenCourseWare and numerous other open educational projects reflect this reality in the education market….
Accepting “Predictably Mediocre” →
Chris shook my brain awake this morning with his reflections on change and Shirky and I’m still trying to sort through some of his finer points. Suffice to say, that it’s among the best posts I’ve…
