OLDaily

John Pederson[Edit][Delete]: Hard Rain, pedersondesigns [Edit][Delete] January 6, 2006

[link: Hits] John Pederson writes about the "week of reinvention," quoting mostly from Bob Dylan.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Someone sent me this link this week, and I have been thinking about this link (do read the related items) and other things like it. And I wrote back, in part:

"But - again - you can't change government merely by changing the government. Doing this do decision-making leaves the door wide open to the subversion of media, or the educational system, or the workplace, as instruments of political pressure and sway. Any place where there is a center of power. So these, too, need to be decentralized and distributed.

"That's what I wrote (without saying as much) in 'Connective Knowledge'. That's the thing I'm trying to wrap my mind around.

"Thing is - all this affects me personally as well (affects anyone personally, I guess). We don't just float around like flotsam in this environment; it gets into us, changes our thoughts and beliefs. These days I am not even sure what's real and what isn't. Life as a hologram."

[Tags: Online Learning] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Rob Reynolds[Edit][Delete]: Parables on Learning -- The Basic Principles, XplanaZine [Edit][Delete]XPlanaZine [Edit][Delete]Xplanazine [Edit][Delete] January 6, 2006

[link: 6 Hits] Well I think it's a bit sappy but I think people will like it (I've been wrong - and sappy - before). "These ten basic Principles of Learning are really a series of actions that successful people people can take in their daily lives. In fact, since learning is such an integral part of living, these rules might more appropriately be called the basic principles of a good life." Maybe I ought to take pen in hand to write about what I think the good life is - maybe that would help me figure it out. [Tags: Online Learning] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Christian Long[Edit][Delete]: Reviewing the top-10 Ed-Tech Stories of 2005, think:lab [Edit][Delete] January 6, 2006

[link: 2 Hits] Christian Long summarizes, in a much more accessible form, the list of top 10 stories from last year, as seen by eSchool News. Their point of view is rather different from my own - they highlight, in my view, events rather than trends, appearances rather than underlying reality. Sure, Katrina was a big story (so was the tsunami recovery, but it didn't make the list), but it would have been more approriate to talk about the changing environment and its impact on schools generally. Or "globalization drives U.S. school reform efforts." Globaization isn't a unidimensional thing: sure, it's the weaving of the global information matrix (the red pill) but it's also the increasing corporatization of governance and finance (the blue pill). These are driving school reform in opposite directions. [Tags: Accessibility, Schools] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

A.J. Hirst[Edit][Delete]: Synching Social Bookmarking Systems, OUseful Info [Edit][Delete] January 6, 2006

[link: Hits] I think this will prove pretty popular. "Once I've set up a synch-link, it would be handy if I could set up a daily top-up, for example, whereby the service I'm synching into subscribes to my personal RSS feed at the service I'm synching from and grabs all the latest additions and changes." The next big change to Edu_RSS will do that - you will be able to synch your own feeds, stream in feeds from other sources, add to it and mess around with it, and present the results. [Tags: ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Dave Warlick[Edit][Delete]: Hack the System, 2 cents Worth [Edit][Delete]2 Cents Worth [Edit][Delete] January 6, 2006

[link: 1 Hits] With a title like that, I had to run this item. Dave Warlick copmpares the "Industrial Model" of learning with the "Knowledge-Age Model," looking at conditions, goals, what we teach, how we teach, and assessment. You might want to contribute your ideas to his hack the system wiki. I like the comparison, so far as it goes, but I would like to see some of the more structural underpinnings examined. It's not just about information, job niches and a changing environment; that's kind of like saying 'the internet will be like television with more channels'. There's more going on here than people think. [Tags: Assessment] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Matt Pasiewicz[Edit][Delete]: An Interview with the National Research Council of Canada's Glen Newton, Educause [Edit][Delete]EDUCAUSE [Edit][Delete] January 6, 2006

[link: 1 Hits] From the abstract: "In this 16 minute recording, we'll hear from acting group leader of the National Research Council of Canada's CISTI Research. Let's listen in as Glen Newton compares and contrasts the superstructures supporting research in the US and Canada, shares thoughts about Canada's National Consultation on Access to Scientific Research Data, and offers some commentary on the open source, open content and open access." Looking at the document cited (which I don't recall being circulated within NRC, but my memory may be flawed) I feel a bit better about the potential for open access in the Canadian government. "The NCASRD has concluded that open access to scientific research data will, amongst many other benefits... result in a myriad of economic, environmental, ecological and social benefits in all domains of science, many of which will be unexpected owing to new interrelationships yet to be recognized." (p. 34) [Tags: Canada, Research, Open Source, Open Content] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Bill Kaczor[Edit][Delete]: State Supreme Court Rules Vouchers Unconstitutional, Pensacola News Journal [Edit][Delete] January 6, 2006

[link: Hits] The judge taps into one of the major arguments against the system, saying that the program "diverts public dollars into separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools." [Tags: Schools] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Leigh Blackall[Edit][Delete]: RSSCalendar, Teach and Learn Online [Edit][Delete] January 6, 2006

[link: 14 Hits] This link is mostly for me, as I want to look at this more closely, but you may find it interesting too. [Tags: ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Lanny Arvan[Edit][Delete]: On Elegance in Content Design and Learning Objects, Lanny on Learning Technology [Edit][Delete] January 6, 2006

[link: Hits] Interesting question: "I want to ask here whether the notion of elegance in content design aligns with the concept of modularity that we associate with learning objects." [Tags: Learning Objects] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Teemu Leinonen[Edit][Delete]: Libre Educational Resources and Libre Universities �x" Should We Redefine What is An University?, FLOSSE Posse [Edit][Delete] January 6, 2006

[link: Hits] Some interesting commentary on the recent UNESCO discussion on open educational resources (OER) ("I was surprised how UNESCO was able to find only North American moderators under the title 'provider perspective'. The 'user perspective' was provided from Egypt, China, African virtual university and a portal of Latin American universities) and on the distinction between OER and Libre Education Resources (LER). "Basically, it (LER) would mean that the content is free to be used for whatever: to changed it and to redistribute it. In practice this would mean releasing the resources under public domain or e.g. under GNU Free Documentation License. This is not the case with OERs, that are promoted by several North American Universities." [Tags: United States, Portals, UNESCO, China] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]