OLDaily
Godfrey Parkin seeks to poke some holes in recent educational theory: "Engagement is intense mental absorption; interactivity is often just busyness or sugar-coating." Well, sure, intently reading a book or a technical manual is of more pedagogical value than idle chit-chat or time-filling ice-breaking activities. But that merely makes the observation that not all interaction is equal. From a communications-theoretic standpoint you can measure this by measuring the amount of information transmitted; from a network perspective you can gauge the impact on one's interpretation of patterns of events. In this commentary, Albert Ip offers a set of useful suggestions to engender meaningful interaction. [Tags:
Books and eBooks,
Networks,
Interaction] [
Comment]
I am in b road sympathy with this post, though I would probably have worded it very differently. The language is inflammatory, the points telling. For example: "With Secondary schooling we have a system which, in my view, is increasingly difficult to justify. It is a form of what might be called organised child abuse which repeats itself over and over again, year in, year out. The only beneficiaries of this system are a handful of private schools in each capital city." Via
James Farmer. [Tags:
Online Learning,
Web Logs,
Schools,
Children and Child Learning,
Private Schools] [
Comment]
What is the relation between authority and findability? This question - central to the role of librarians - kicks off this interview on the subject of indexing and folsonomies with Peter Morville, author of the book Ambient Findability. The future is multi-algorithmic, says Morville. "Last week I went to the shopping mall for the first (and last) time this year. It was a horrible experience. I had to physically drag my body from store to store in search of a specific product. I desperately wanted to Google the Mall." [Tags:
Books and eBooks,
Experience,
Google] [
Comment]
Familiar work for those who have followed the study of networks, this gallery of images and descriptions is nonetheless a valuable reference to the types of networks and how we represent them. [Tags:
Networks] [
Comment]
The 20 millionth blog indexed by Technorati turns out to be a school blog from an elementary school in Reims, France. [Tags:
Web Logs,
Schools] [
Comment]
For institutions considering the installation of a multi-user blogging system, James Farmer provides this set of capsule reviews and 5-star ratings. The results accord roughly with my own experience, though I would probably have rated Drupal slightly higher and WordPress slightly lower. [Tags:
Web Logs,
Experience] [
Comment]
Summary of the Alt-C conference a few weeks ago in Manchester with outlines of the keynote addresses and an overview of lessons learned. For example: "Perhaps we need to start looking for alternative, innovative methods and techniques rather than adopting one solution. Staff need time for reflection and to beable to apply new technology in appropriate ways – this seems to have been forgotten in many institutional plans." [Tags: None] [
Comment]
I've mentioned some of the questions being raised about Skype before and now the other shoe has dropped as the French government has told all universities they must stop installing Skype. The order cites security concerns, magnified by Skype's proprietary protocol, but some are suggesting that the order has more to do with lost telecom revenues than with fears about security (after all, we haven't seen a similar order regarding Windows). In French. Via BNA's Internet Law News. [Tags:
Microsoft,
Security Issues] [
Comment]
Projects & Collaborations
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Research
Browse through the thousands of links in my knowledge base
sorted according to topic category, author and
publication.
About Me
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Calendar
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Photos
A collection of my photographs. Suitable
for downloading as desktop wallpaper.
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Stephen Downes
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National Research Council Canada
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