December 8, 2006
OLDaily
[link: 4 Hits]
Seymour Papert with the children. Quebec City, 2003. Stephen Downes photo.
Seymour Papert has been gravely injured in an accident in Vietnam. The thoughts and prayers of a world are with him tonight. [Tags: Children and Child Learning] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
Seymour Papert with the children. Quebec City, 2003. Stephen Downes photo.
Seymour Papert has been gravely injured in an accident in Vietnam. The thoughts and prayers of a world are with him tonight. [Tags: Children and Child Learning] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
Dave Shields[Edit][Delete]:
The Blackboard Jungle,
The Wayward Word Press [Edit][Delete]
December 8, 2006
[link: Hits] Coverage of discussions - including a face-to-face between Blackboard lawyer Matthew Small and the Software Freedom LawCenter's Eben Mogen - of the Blackboard patent at the Sixth Sakai Conference. taking place in Atlanta. Some great back and forth. More coverage, including The Patent Jungle, Attention Must be Paid and Eban Moglen on Life in the Jungle. [Tags: Blackboard, Copyright and Patent Issues] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
Associated Press[Edit][Delete]:
Report: More Students Getting Free Breakfast,
Cnn [Edit][Delete]CNN [Edit][Delete]
December 8, 2006
[link: 1 Hits] It's not nearly enough - only two in five who need it get fed - but it's headed in the right direction. There will be some who say that giving out free breakfasts won't guarantee improvements in test scores. Of course not - but you won't get improvements in test scores unless your students are properly fed. More on this, with links, from NSBA. [Tags: ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
Kathy Sierra[Edit][Delete]:
The Asymptotic Twitter Curve,
Creating Passionate Users [Edit][Delete]
December 8, 2006
[link: Hits] I liked this article, but I liked it better near the beginning when I thought Kathy Sierra was making a different point. She begins by looking at Twitter - "A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?" - and draws the 'Twitter Curve', mapping the adoption of various technologies with the frequency of interruption. So far so good, but this then wanders into a hackneyed discussion of how interruptions make it hard to get into the flow of things, which we've read a million times before. Where I thought she might go, and where it would get interesting, would have been a mapping of 'frequency of message' versus 'density of connection'.
The two variables are, of course, related. But as messages get less and less useful (and because we pay less and less attention to them) as the frequency increases, there is therefore - at a certain point - an inverse relationship between density of connection and usefulness of communications technology. This graph is much more interesting - it looks like a bell curve. Being completely disconnected is, of course, useless. But so is being (directly) connected with every other person on earth. What is the midpoint? What does the graph look like when you map not direct connections byt rather two-hop connections? At how many hopes is complete connectivity maximally useful? This tells you what your network should look like (hint: it's not a hub and spoke model, it's much more decentralized than that). [Tags: Networks] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
The two variables are, of course, related. But as messages get less and less useful (and because we pay less and less attention to them) as the frequency increases, there is therefore - at a certain point - an inverse relationship between density of connection and usefulness of communications technology. This graph is much more interesting - it looks like a bell curve. Being completely disconnected is, of course, useless. But so is being (directly) connected with every other person on earth. What is the midpoint? What does the graph look like when you map not direct connections byt rather two-hop connections? At how many hopes is complete connectivity maximally useful? This tells you what your network should look like (hint: it's not a hub and spoke model, it's much more decentralized than that). [Tags: Networks] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
Tom Haskins[Edit][Delete]:
How Changes Come About,
growing changing learning creating [Edit][Delete]
December 8, 2006
[link: Hits] Nice list (and for every one of them I could imagine the outline of a plot for a Star Trek episode). Though I suppose Tom Haskins's examples are better. I wonder whether he deliberately created the double meaning in his title - to 'come about' as in 'to occur', and to 'come about' as in sailing, meaning to change directions when tacking against the wind. [Tags: ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
Michael Arrington[Edit][Delete]:
Swivel Aims To Become The Internet Archive For Data,
Techcrunch [Edit][Delete]
December 8, 2006
[link: Hits] "Academic types are going to go nuts over this," writes the author. Here's why: "We use farms of powerful computers and algorithms at the Swivel data centers to transform a lonely grid of numbers and letters into hundreds - sometimes thousands - of graphs that can be explored and compared with any other public data in Swivel." This could open some very interesting possibilities - but we have to keep in mind, people aren't lining up to view data sets the way they're lining up to view videos. [Tags: ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
Dave Warlick[Edit][Delete]:
Evaluating Blogs,
2 cents Worth [Edit][Delete]2 Cents Worth [Edit][Delete]
December 8, 2006
[link: 1 Hits] Dave Warlick offers some thoughts on evaluating websites. Of course readers may recall my observations on the subject last year in Principles for Evaluating Websites. [Tags: ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
[link: 1 Hits] Oddly named new portal for online learning. Craig Graham writes, "The site features blog aggregation, product ratings and reviews, a discussion forum , and a social networking component - targeted to e-learning professionals." While I applaud the effort, I have to ask whether we need another e-learning portal. Which, of course, raises the question, what do we need? [Tags: Online Learning, Web Logs, Discussion Lists, Portals, Networks] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
Various authors[Edit][Delete]:
Defending the Collegiate Press,
Harvard Crimson [Edit][Delete]
December 8, 2006
[link: Hits] As a former student newspaper editor, one twice elected by the newspaper staff, I am certain to echo the opinion expressed by the editors of 20 student newspapers across the United States protesting the refusal of the administration at the University of Southern California to accept the election of Zach Fox to the post of editor in chief of the Daily Trojan. "A meddling administration undermines the educational value of student journalism. Interventions like this assault the core values of student newspapersâx"objectivity and comprehensive coverage. They compromise journalistic integrity and tarnish the development of the next generation of journalists." Hear hear. Via Student Press Law Centre, via Academic Impressions newsletter. [Tags: Online Learning, Newsletters, United States] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
[link: 1 Hits] The EduBlog Award nominations hve been posted. Not surprisingly, the Techlearn-K12 crowd dominate the categories with numerous nominations. Canada has been effectively shut out of the nominations this year despite a dominating presence in previous years. The demographics have shifted, I guess. You have one week to vote for your favorites. [Tags: Canada, Ontologies] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]
