I’m feeling pretty comfortable in the belief that I’m the first person to put these two very differently popular people in the same sentence. Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada. Julia…
Note: The Cluetrain Manifesto celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.
Cluetrain #1 Markets are conversation.
Without conversation (oral, written, graphical, physical) there are no social…
Lots of industry predictions (like this for e-learning) coming out are linked to the recession, but perhaps the best predictions are those focused on demographics, because we know that almost all…
When higher education is viewed as being primarily about getting a job, reports of this nature understandably arise: “Today’s economic downturn has blindsided a generation of young people around…
I’ve made a commitment to improving my ability to communicate with images. As a result, I’ve been more aware of visual communication strategies. Presentation Zen offers comments (and links to a…
I’ve been collecting links and resources on early views of technology and the internet. News recordings from 1980s seem rather comical. And yet…consider what the next 25 years might bring. Here are…
In the spirit of “aggregation is content creation”, Academic Earth provides what it calls “thousands of lectures from the world’s top scholars”. Aside from being useful learning resources for…
Dave Cormier has written a great article on selecting a content management system (CMS). Dave discusses three platforms, all of which I have used - WordPress, Moodle, Drupal. All are open…
The End of Solitude is an interesting essay. It induces, in me at least, that odd mixture of “yes! that’s it!” and “no, not at all”. In periods of solitude and reflection, the world seems more…
I view technology as being imbued with ideology. Technology is not neutral. A learning management system reflects a certain view on the part of designers. Second Life does as well. Social…
At some point in the life of a discipline there is a drive toward certification. Want to be a real estate agent? It’s a quality thing, so we’re told. I was once a Certified Performance…
It is not much of a surprise that Wikipedia deals with consistent concerns about accuracy. Openness does not change humanity, but it does reveal its breadth. Those who have a penchant for…
About an hour ago I saw a tweet from All-Canadian uber-online edugeek Alec Couros saying
How to choose the right CMS - http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/01/how-to-choose-the-right-cms/
To…
Guest post by Graham McTavish Watt
Apropos of nothing other than a getting over a haggis munch yesterday at the Robbie Burn’s Evening, let me run this by your keen eyes.
The Inuit people have…
I love this conference more than any other for a variety of reasons, the conversations (instead of presentations), the level of understanding and “enlightenment” among the participants, the many…
Josh Bersin declares Informal learning becomes formal: “I am now 100% convinced that “informal learning” has become “formal.” That is, if you want to build a high-impact, cost-effective, modern…
Congratulations to Stephen Downes and NRC! In yesterday’s OLDaily, Stephen mentions approval for what looks like a large project on personal learning environments (PLEs). I couldn’t find a…
Britannica has announced the rather inevitable inclusion of reader suggestions under the banner of “more participation, collaboration from experts and readers“. Disruptions and innovations…
From the just released 2009 Horizon Report:
Information technologies are having a significant impact on how people work, play, gain information, and collaborate. Increasingly, those who use…
I get a lot of unsolicited e-mail asking me to review a new product or service, a small portion that actually gets my attention. A recent e-mail said how much the writer liked my post on inverting…
Grassroots Community Building through Social Networks is the topic that John Gunn (Moncton ITA) and I will be discussing at PodCamp Halifax on Sunday. Lisa Rousseau can’t make it, so we’re…
Location-aware devices hold promise for learning (simple things like walking past an old building and being able to see - on your phone - images of the building as it was being constructed, notable…
I have been blessed with an astonishing inability to draw or create visuals. Periodically, I will use Gliffy or Fireworks and create a graphic.The resulting image will reveal the severity of my…
Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom could be sub-titled everything you wanted to know about social media but didn’t have the time ask. The book is definitely comprehensive and is complete with…
Generational distinctions are usually flawed. It’s comical to take an entire group and define them by select attributes. To some degree, an era can be defined by a vague feel/spirit (the 1960’s,…
Playing around with Prezi.com here but also trying to capture what I think is an interesting shift in the way we learn about, gather and share news these days. Comments on form and content both…
Scott Leslie is hosting a three-week SCoPE discussion on open educational resources. No charge to participate.
Scott’s discussion will go much deeper than the short presentation I delivered…
I’m really, really, really happy to report that my hourlong interview with Howard Rheingold from a couple of weeks ago has FINALLY appeared in the Ustream archive. I had a great time getting the…
So there’s lots congealing in this post, which, btw, is one reason I’m sure is going to exhibit some of the thin thinking that I described earlier. For one, we’re seriously looking at options for…
Last month I wrote that it’s time to invert the pyramid and integrate learning into all that we do. Part of the research that led me to that conclusion was the notion of complexity and Dave…
I’ve whined before about how web 2.0 was/is a threat to open source software. Open source is an ideology (although watered down from Stallman’s initial version) about openness, democracy, and…
Pew Internet’s recent report - Adults and Social Network Sites (.pdf) - doesn’t offer anything dramatically new for those who have been active in online social networking sites. Of greatest…
Aside from winning the most awkward new term - courseocentricism (why not just course-centricism?) - this article makes a compelling case for the limitations of current views of courses. The…
I was asked to develop a list of important resources, especially the blogs that I find most valuable in my work. Since my work is focused on the intersection of learning, work and technology and…
Heard while driving home from Tess’s basketball game earlier.
“But Dad, I’m the only one in my class who doesn’t have a cell phone.”
“I know Sweetie, but that’s not a great reason for getting…
The season of predictions is upon us. I’ve never been fully convinced of the value of predictions (if someone says 2009 is the year of the mobile phone, what does that mean to me? What should I do…
It’s encouraging to see universities adopting different approaches to teaching. While research on the so-called learning sciences is not fully settled, enough is understood about learning to…
Bill Fitzgerald has written a comprehensive technical guide for the Drupal open source content management system with a focus on its use in formal education. Drupal for Education…
Conferences are terrific opportunities for meeting colleagues, encountering new ideas, and getting as sense of what’s happening “over there”. For dissemination of knowledge (information, really, but…
In my 2009 predictions for eLearn Magazine I said that “There will be an increased interest in open source software as well as tools and methods that enable online collaboration.” Ryan Cameron…
INATT makes sense because most of us realise that people make things happen, not technology. It’s not about the technology is a rallying cry amongst many in education or in fields that are being…
eLearn Magazine offers predictions for 2009 and Editor Lisa Neal Gualtieri says that the people polled “unanimously agree the global economic downturn is the overwhelming factor…
PodCampHalifax2009 seems like a great mid-Winter activity. Time to get away from my computer screen and meet some folks. This year’s event is the Aldernay Gate Public Library on 25…
Clay Shirky in the Columbia Journalism Review:
I’m just so impatient with the argument that the world should be slowed down to help people who aren’t smart enough to understand what’s going on….
Blogs have 3 primary characteristics that make them different from other media. 1) Blogs have a permanent resource identifier that does not change over time, 2) Blogs publish an RSS/Atom feed to…
