OLDaily
Peeple have been discontented with academic software before. But when someone launches a lawsuit because your software of choice is hurting their grades, you need to pay attention (and if you manufacture tghe software, you really need to pay attention). Anyhow, the student said of the software, WebCT, "It was just a navigational nightmare. It made it impossible for me to study." Ouch. More from the
FLOSSE Posse. [
Comment]
Some new reviews are out from
eLearning Reviews The review of Stahl's chapter alone makes this book sound worth while. CSCL stands for computer-supported collaborative learning and the book as a whole is a collection of articles on the subject. Off topic: I have considered doing book reviews here in OLDaily - but I'd be limited, I guess, to the books I buy at Chapters (which, as I've mentioned before, is offering a smaller and smaller selection). So this week's review would have been Norman Cantor's 'The last Knight', about the twilight of the Middle Ages; the one before would have been Che Guevera's 'Motorcycle Dairies'. Hm, maybe I'll do it anyway. (Why don't I buy online, you ask? Because if I'm going to shell out twenty or thirty dollars for a book, I'm going to read a few chapters first and make sure I like it.) [
Comment]
This review of Gilly Salmon's book is unfortunately terse but has the bonus of linking to her
e-tivities website, which alone is worth a visit. People who don't read the book can still learn about her five stage model; people who don't read the review can read this: "Stage 1 – Access & Motivation. Stage 2 – Socialisation. Stage 3 – Information Exchange. Stage 4 – Knowledge Construction. Stage 5 – Development." [
Comment]
D'Arcy Norman takes a nice (and well-deserved) swipe at the music industry. "Even though they have to spend roughly $0 to market music via the iTMS, and spend exactly $0 to sell music through it. And they spent exactly $0 to design, manufacture, market and distribute the iPod. But, they need a cut of the pie." Meanwhile, the resistance to
textbook price-gouging continues apace over on
b.cognosco. You know, some entrepreneurs would consider all this consumer foment to be a business opportunity. [
Comment]
I mentioned this link last week - podcasts of old radio shows. Westerns, detective shows, big band, science fiction - it's all here. Radio never brought be the entertainment that this podcast does. The network is hosted on
Libsyn, a commercial site that supports podcasting. [
Comment]
Unlike the author, I've had numerous dealings with university presidents (mostly of an adversarial nature). But like him, I've had occasion to ponder the qualities that characterize management, especially upper level management. And I've concluded recently that the primary advancement trait is (are you ready for it?): compliance. People who advance in management are those who demonstrate - through dress, behaviour, language and actions - that they will comply with the order established by upper management. And such managers demand compliance in turn - it's a self-perpetuating cycle. But because innovation requires individuality and creativity, compliance-based cultures eventually stagnate. Organizations and businesses that break the cycle of compliance will ultimately succeed, because they can innovate. So far, though, examples are extremely rare. [
Comment]
The authors compare Learning Design and Moodle, asking what it would take for the two systems to interoperate. Of especial interest is the section on bricolage, " the ease with which course materials can be developed and refined in an iterative fashion." Tools developed to support Learning Design thus far, such as CopperCore, present materials to instructors "in a fixed form, unalterable while instruction is in process." Moodle, by contrast, supports development "on the fly". This article and the next two from the recent Journal of Interactive Media in Education special issue on
Advances in Learning Design. [
Comment]
Interesting approach to learning design with is perhaps a little more subversive than is apparent at first glance. Seeking to develop an adaptive learning system, the authors "move from 'manifest-centred' schema, which forces static adaptivity, to a 'server-centred' approach. This can be done by removing the adaptive logic from the manifest and using a LD player as a client (or agent) that communicates to the server what the learner has done. The server, then, will send back to the client the ID of the most appropriate next activity to follow." What this amounts to is a change in the flow of information, from 'system to student' to 'student to system', a change I warmly endorse. [
Comment]
Most interesting to me was the section on the 'knowledge refinery'. The author contrasts "school sectors, the open and distance learning sector, as well as the commercial and military training sectors" where learning "follow mostly an industrial-style delivery model which almost exclusively passes on tertiary knowledge in a predefined way" with the university sector, where learning "requires a review and refinement process by the knowledge creators in order to prepare complex ideas for transfer in an intelligible format" - a 'refinery', in other words, where "the underlying transmission concept is based around defending an idea rather than acquisition and replicating knowledge." [
Comment]
Projects & Collaborations
Browse through the thousands of links in my knowledge base
sorted according to topic category, author and
publication.
Research
Browse through the thousands of links in my knowledge base
sorted according to topic category, author and
publication.
About Me
Bio, photos, and assorted odds and ends.
Publications
You know, the ones that appear in refereed journals of Outstanding Rank.
Presentations
Lectures, seminars, and keynotes in a wide variety of
formats - everything from streaming video to rough notes.
Articles
All my articles, somewhere around 400 items dating from 1995.
Audio
Audio recordings of my talks recorded in MP3 format. A podcast feed is also available.
Calendar
What I'm doing, where I'm doing it, and when.
Photos
A collection of my photographs. Suitable
for downloading as desktop wallpaper.
Stephen's Web
Since 1995
About this Site
Why this site exists, what it does, and how it works.
OLDaily
Edu_RSS
FOAF
OLDaily Audio
OPML
About the Author
Stephen Downes
Copyright © 2004 Stephen Downes
National Research Council Canada
Contact: stephen@downes.ca
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License
.