By Stephen Downes
March 26, 2004
A People, Once Liberated...
I
hesitate to pass this along, because it expresses more
emotion than content. In DEOS, Steve Eskow has been on a
month long rail against the detrimental effects of what he
calls the commercialization of learning - which, it seems
to me, he believes includes any use of technology or
non-traditional pedagogy. In response to this post, in which he stresses "the need
to protect from destruction and disappearance those aspects
of the present order that were valuable" (i.e., traditional
classroom based teacher-led learning), I express not only
my feelings but also some anger at the expression of a view
which dismisses, in my view, the legitimate aspirations of
those seeking access to higher education.
My view, which I express with some force in this article,
is that this type of clinging to the traditional model will
have exactly the wrong effect; it will accelerate the
increasing inaccessibility we see today. Classroom
teaching, even if supported with technology, will not
scale. If we are to provide access to all, we must
abandon the idea that education is something that is done
for us and support the idea that it is something we
can do for ourselves. That's why we need technology
in learning.
New technology, used to support new approaches to learning,
is akin to the replacement of scriptoriums by literacy.
Just as we no longer need people to read and write for us,
we will, in the future, no longer require people to teach
for us. The technology should - and will, because people
demand it - allow us to teach ourselves. But clinging to
the traditional model - in which writing is still done in
scriptoriums (albeit, with ballpoint pens and laser
printers) is to show a casual disregard for the
needs and aspirations of people who not only benefit from
writing, but are liberated by it.
In the process of mostly misunderstanding my argument (for
which I shoulder the responsibility) as a class-based
personal attack, Eskow nonetheless calls it a "remarkable
document" in his reply. Yet when he talks about the
"scholars who provide the instruction" that we must all
(even in the internet age) depend on, and when asks, "what
do we do to protect the unwary or the unscrupulous and
their employers from the seductions of the instant
'universities'," he shows that he still hasn't seen the
other side. Who cares whether there are fake universities
or commercial education models in an era when we no longer
need universities? It's like asking how we will protect the
easily fooled from bad handwriting or commercial printing
after the monopoly of the scriptorium has ended. By Stephen
Downes, Stephen's Web, March 25, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
U.S. Online Gambling Policy Violates Law,
W.T.O. Rules
American legislation banning
overseas online casinos is illegal, the World Trade
Organization has ruled. As this article notes, the ruling
"has ignited a political, cultural and legal tinderbox"
that will have repercussions well beyond the field of
online gambling. For example, what would the WTO make of
legislation (including accreditation legislation) that
favours a certain country's online or offline universities?
By Matt Richtel, New York Times, March 26, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Shareable State Persistence
IMS
Global Learning Consortium, Inc. has released the IMS
Shareable State Persistence v1.0 Public Draft
Specification. The idea here is that if you have state
information in a content object - for example, the number
of the last page a reader was looking at - and you need to
store it somewhere, then you need a mechanism for knowing
where you've stored it. This is important when multiple
systems work together. A flight simulator, for example, may
record the current location of an aircraft. If this
information were discoverable, then a second flight
simulator could find information stored by the first flight
simulator and add this information into its own display.
The way it works is that when a content object connects
with a learning management system, it is given a "bucket"
in which to store this information. The specification deals
with identifying buckets and how to store information in
them. The documentation is very clear; the Best Practices
document, for example, gives you no context whatsoever.
Begin with the fourth document (IMS Shareable State
Persistence SCORM Application Profile) before trying to
decode the remaining three. IMS is open for comments on this until May 26. By Various
Authors, IMS, Maych 26, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Nanniebots: Hoax, Fraud, or
Delusion?
A few days ago I ran coverage of a
story, first covered in New Scientist, about ChatNannies,
conversational robots designed to counter pedophiles in
chat rooms. It was fun to speculate for a bit, but now this
article (and various others) suggest that the software is
an elaborate hoax. This discussion is more fun than most,
not only for the wide ranging accusations of holocaust
denial and gunplay scattered amidst the discussions of AI
syntax parsing, but because the program's author, Jim
Wightman, appears in mid-discussion and begins shooting
back at his critics. And you thought user interface design
was boring! By Andrew Baio, Waxy.Org, March 23, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic
Maps!
Good article that takes the time to
clearly explain concepts like taxonomies and ontologies
before going on to a more extended discussion of topic maps
and their relation to metadata. The examples are clearly
laid out, however, the author should use examples from a
different domain of discussion than the paper itself,
because it becomes too easy to confuse the current
discussion with the example. By Lars Marius Garshol,
Ontopia, March, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Knowledge Communities in Japan: A Case
Study
Via elearningpost comes this case study of
the building of knowledge communities in Japan. The major
finding seems to be that the building of nickname based
informal communication systems can exist side-by-side with
more formal face-to-face communities. "Use of multiple
identities such as handle-name on internet had been
considered incompatible with Japanese traditional culture
for a long time. However, it is being gradually accepted in
business community that the use of a nickname enables
employees to exchange knowledge more easily, irrespective
of organizational hierarchy. Interestingly, use of nickname
revived altruism, another Japanese tradition of
collectivism, in the new form." By Hideo Yamazaki,
Knowledge Board, March 10, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The Human Factor
It would be easy
to miss the message in this article, which is not merely
that 'simple is better' - but even if it is true that
everything good is simple (which isn't really the case) it
by no means follows that everything that is simple is good.
It's not merely about finding the application, or
interface, or design, that is simple, but also one that
addresses the genuine needs of the user. Via elearningpost.
By Q, Optimize, March, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Collection of National Copyright Laws Now
Online
Like the website says, "Full texts of
national copyright and related rights legislation of UNESCO
Member States can now be accessed on the website of
UNESCO's Culture Sector. The collection currently comprises
about 100 laws and is constantly being updated and
completed." By Various Authors, UNESCO, March 25, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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