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This study is getting some circulation (though the press coverage basically echoes the press release). According to this study, "The ESRC study reveals that many teachers fear that computers would interfere with ‘genuine’ or book-based learning, particularly in the humanities and creative subjects and use ICT only for administration and routine tasks." In a sense, this is understandable - if a teacher's only use of a computer is in a classroom as a teaching tool, it's hard to learn what computers can do for you. [
Comment]
The headline tells the story. According to the article, online learning has gained credibility and "will grow 38 percent over 2004, reaching revenues of more than $5 billion." And while for-profit institutions have lept ahead, the article predicts that non-profits will more more strongly into the sector in the coming years. Via Distance-educator.com. [
Comment]
The author writes, "Many people know that I regularly search the Web for examples of good instructional materials. Because folks often ask me for a list of the good ones that I find, I've decided to keep a web page with these good instructional examples. Please note that every example isn't necessarily wonderful in all respects... but each shows good use of certain types of instructional strategies and interactions." useful list. But the use of the word 'folks' is to me like scratching fingernails on a blackboard. Via
Darren Cannell. P.S., check out
Darren Cannell's artwork. Nice. [
Comment]
In the last couple months or so I have taken to tilting my chair back (still waiting for that couch, Rod), closing my eyes, and listening to podcasts for about an hour after lunch (which I work though, so I figure I'm due). This 20 minute interview with Bill Dittoe filled some of that space wonderfully as he wandered through the environmental factors that influence learning and applies them to the design of informal learning environments online. A great listen - but, let me say (to the interviewer): 'level-set' is not a verb. Oh, and for the other half hour today I listed to some old-time radio (I'll pass on the link later; it's on my office computer, and I'm writing from home). [
Comment]
Ubuweb is hurting artists, say the lawyers and businesspeople who want to shut the file-sharing site down. "One complaint read 'Kenneth Anger is penniless and living in a shack, yet you are making his films available for free and taking money away from him?' To which we reply: if the current system of avant-garde film distribution was working so well, why would the great artist Kenneth Anger be living in a shack and not a mansion? Is this really a system to hold on to?" meanwhile, Tech BC is no more, and Ubuweb has resurfaced with a fantastic array of (presumably legal) content. [
Comment]
This is not entirely new, but the scale and the formalization make it worth noting. Concerned about declining levels of education in the United States, IBM has declared that it will start funding "employees who want to leave the company to become math and science teachers." Of course, this may also just be a creative way of reducing its American workforce - and making room for those Chinese and Indian students it says it is concerned about. If IBM were really concerned, it seems to me, it would keep the employees on the payroll and have them teach anyways. Of course, that's just me. [
Comment]
Jay Rosen's open letter could apply as well to professors as to journalists (though the former may be harder to convince). He writes, "I've been listening to journalists say it for fifteen years: the public doesn't understand how we work, we have to explain ourselves more. Public Eye, if it works, is going to reveal when there are no good explanations - or none that make sense beyond newsroom culture. Transparency, you see, does not automatically increase trust. It could raise the curtain on an explanatory show that flops. It's not enough to be open. You also have to have something insightful to say." [
Comment]
Citizens' media - that is, media created by citizens, rather than by professional journalists or media specialists - is moving beyond text-based blog posts to include increasingly sophisticated audio and visual content. This article looks at three online news publications that are "blazing new trails in user-generated content: Bluffton Today in South Carolina, NowPublic.com and New West in Missoula, Montana." Related: Will Richardson on
students producing real content for real audiences. [
Comment]
Projects & Collaborations
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Stephen Downes
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National Research Council Canada
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