Feature Article
The Downes Prize: Top Posts of 2010
Stephen Downes, December 31, 2010.

The finalists...

Don't tell teachers how to act on Facebook, says union, the Guardian, September 16, 2010. I am in agreement with Nasuwt, which "is mightily fed up with an attempt to tell teachers how to behave themselves on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites."

In Defense of Lecture, Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Blog, July 27, 2010. "Using 'active learning' with professionals at a formal conference is insulting to your audience. You are assuming that they can't learn on their own, without your scaffolding."

Hate Saying Goodbye, Jennifer Wagner, Thoughts by Jen, December 17, 2010. The blogosphere has been driven into paroxysms following the suggestion from Yahoo! that popular bookmarking site del.icio.us is being shut down.

It's every bastard for himself, the last century hasn't ended yet, Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, July 2, 2010. "I marvel at how quickly the narrative of change in higher education is sucked into the seemingly irrefutable and naturalized logic of business innovation."

QOTD: a new Alexandria, Lorcan Dempsey, Weblog, March 15, 2010. "The relevance of the scholarly record to the wider world and to future generations, and the influence of researchers, is diminished by this lack of access."

News Consumption, RSS Readers, and New Business Models, Rob Reynolds, the Xplanation, September 15, 2010. "I think George Siemens is correct when he says that "The cohesion or sociality that hold an online group together are far less explicit than I recall even a decade ago."

Global Education Conference, Various Authors, Website, November 15, 2010. "We currently have 397 sessions from 62 countries scheduled, as well as 63 keynote speakers--an amazing lineup"

Shareski on Sharing - Exploring the Share-iness Factor, Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner, October 13, 2010. "Sharing is the threat. Not just a threat. It is the whole of the thing."

And the winner... the Downes Prize for 2010 goes to:

Effective Assessment in a Digital Age, Various Authors, JISC, September 17, 2010. There's a lot of good stuff here, including for example an articulation of four major perspectives on assessment: associative, constructivist, social constructivist, and situative.

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Follow Ontario Edu-Bloggers, Part II
Doug Peterson, doug - off the record, December 31, 2010.

I really like what Doug Peterson is doing to promote Ontario edubloggers. He created a paper.li site for them (since deleted - don't know why). Then we had an Ontario bloggers montage site, which has full articles (but awkward tiny scroll boxes - it's hard to hit a happy medium). And now an Ontario edubloggers LiveBinders site. It makes me think I should do something to represent the edubogosphere as a whole - I have what may be the most complete list of edubloggers, maybe I can make something of that. Something to think about.

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Should the Door be Closed or Open: Thoughts on the Social Learning and Reflection Continuum
Donald Clark, Big Dog, Little Dog, December 31, 2010.

Some thoughts on the dichotomies inherent in learning - that between activity and reflection, that between social learning and self reflection, etc. Not deep, but I like the approach. It makes me think of the sliders Jay Cross proposed a few years ago. I was quite critical of them, for which I today feel a little bit guilty, because there was merit in the suggestion. Maybe there should be a slider for the scale between 'getting it right' and 'finding a compromise'. On the other hand, as I observed in the column, if you sacrifice a little bit of what's right, you essentially move the goalposts, and set yourself off down a slippery slope.

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