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by Stephen Downes
June 15, 2007

Professional Development and Corporate Training: The Webinar Weakness
I'm in an airport in Toronto waiting for my connection to Moncton. No time to dither, as they'll be calling my flight shortly. So without further ado, today's newsletter, beginning with this useful post on how to improve webinars. Susan Smith Nash, E-Learning Queen June 15, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Newsletters] [Comment]

BAM! You'Re There! NECC Feeds for Every Session: Blogs, Flickr, Slides
OK, I'm glad that the NECC conference has full feeds and all that. But I think the latest push has taken taging to a new level of abstraction. Here's a tag, for example, for one of the sessions: n07s643. This is exactly the sort of thing I predicted would happen. OK, so, what now? The way it should have been done in the first place: each event has an associated URL. Blog posts, etc., can link to (or 'refer to') that URL. In the metadata (ie., the RSS) for an event URL (which now has the same status as a blog post, right?) you can add some event data ('start','finish','location') and indicate event structure ('parent'). Of course, we have to wait for somebody down south to 'invent' it so we can have such a system; when it's just a voice from the north proposing it, the idea doesn't exist. Vicki A. Davis, Cool Cat Teacher Blog June 15, 2007 [Link] [Tags: RSS, Flickr, Web Logs, Metadata] [Comment]

New Ed.D. in Distance Education
Hm. I think if you're 'balancing' the virtual and the physical then you're understanding at least one of them incorrectly. The virtual and the physical aren't some kind of opposing realities or competing realms that need in some way to be 'balanced'. The difference between the physical and the virtual is illusory - it is a distinction that has been marketed hard by companies that want to keep sellig you paper. But the virtual is the physical - the people online are real, the computers are real, the impact of your words is real, and it all happens in the physical world to people with physical bodies. So much in our world is illusion and fiction - I really need to take the time to sort this out, so people can get on with their lives without the need for pundits. Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge June 15, 2007 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Crossing the Chasm: Reflections On the Future of Education and Participatory Culture
I always wonder about statements like this: "None of us really knows how to live in this era of media convergence, collective intelligence, and participatory culture. These changes are producing anxieties and uncertainties, even panic, as people imagine a world without gatekeepers..." Is this true? Can this be true? I saw the founder of YouTube in a restaurant a few days ago - he seems to know how to live in this era. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates - they don't seem to be struggling. For that matter, without too immodest, I seem to be hanging in there reasonably well. I'm not challenged by convergence, I'm not threatened by collective intelligence. When someone writes, ""None of us really knows..." what they realy mean is "You don't know, but I do, and let me tell you..." Don't let writers tell you that you are stupid, that you cannot cope, and the rest. If you are alive, feeding your family, staying more or less afloat, then you do know how to live in this era. Christopher D. Sessums, Weblog June 15, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Apple Inc., Video, Microsoft, YouTube] [Comment]

A Systemic Scandal
I guess I'll just say I'm not surprised. Indeed, why wouldn't we expect widespread abuses in the student loan system? Students have utterly nobody representing their interests at the corporate or political level, and have long been a ripe target for exploitation. When you wonder why students receive loans, and not grants, as financial aid, ask yourself who really benefits. Students? No. Banks? Warmer... Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed June 15, 2007 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Taipei

Greetings from Taiwan, where I am just packing for the long return flight home. My visit has been interesting and engaging - greatly aided by the super-competent volunteers who have been working here with Lucifer Chu. My email is now working, just in time for the flight. Anyhow, today I have only one photo, but I will post the rest next week. Stephen Downes, Flickr June 14, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Flickr] [Comment]

Democracy 2.0
I haven't said much about democracy and governance in these pages, not directly at least, because my attention has been directed elsewhere. But it has always struck me that attempts to implement e-democracy have been stuck in a 19th century model of governance, one that enshrines the representative function as the almost definitive of democracy. What is democracy, after all, without votes for your representatives? And yet - embodied in this epitome is the very idea of disempowerment, the idea (straight from Hobbes) that we surrender our own liberty in exchange for security and safety (and the other elements of 'good government'). The idea that we could govern ourselves is not merely rejected as wrongheaded, but as dangerous. As though we - who, after all, elect our (mostly untrustworthy) representatives, cannot be entrusted with our own governance. And so we have evolved into a system of government that is mostly about wresting power and control from each other, and not about the collective safety and security - a model that leads us chaotically lurching from Iraq to global warming to Darfur to Enron. I believe that we, as a people, could do a better job governing ourselves than could our elected representatives (especially those more interested in looting us than leading us) and that internet communication technologies make self-governance possible. It is this idea, I believe, that e-government should be exploring, and not things like better systems for public 'consultation' or 'online voting'. Doug Noon, Borderland June 14, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Security Issues] [Comment]

Setting Learning Free
The open source movement is beginning to recognize the open courseware and open educational resources movements. This article is pretty much party line (ie., "In the Beginning was MIT, and They Invented Open Content") but the more important thing is that it captures the appeal of open content and shows the beginnings of awareness that there is an entire community behind it (and not just a few well-funded institutions that get Hewlett grants). Unattributed, Linux News June 14, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Hewlett Foundation, Open Content, Open Source] [Comment]

Another Tough Gig - I Enter the Lion'S Den
I don't post conference announcements but I can't resist passing along this session description )because it captures so many of my own predispositions): "Our keynote speaker has been working closely with UBC's IT professionals for years, and has consistently vexed them with his unorthodox demands and unwillingness to specify use cases. Brian will attempt to defend his shockingly lax approach to planning as a grounded philosophy intended to foster user autonomy and innovation. He will also review some approaches to web strategy that are emerging outside of campus environments, such as open access to content and open APIs, and attempt to make a case why we need to learn from these efforts and apply them within our educational institutions." He remarks, 'I see that the organizers deleted my concluding sentence, which was: "Attendees are responsible for bringing their own projectiles.' I guess that means suitable throwables will be provided in the conference loot bag." Read the rest of this post - Brian Lamb is tapping into some important trends (like, 'what happens when you can do massive web innovation on 6.95 a month'). Brian Lamb, Abject Learning June 14, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Open Access, Project Based Learning] [Comment]

How has Information Changed?
Tom Hoffman's observations - that this post is not about the nature of information at all - are on point. But the post is illustrative of common misconceptions about the changing nature of media. Of these, forst is probably the confusion between 'information' and 'content'. By 'content' we can mean the messages sent over various media, including television, tabloid newspapers, email, radio, and the rest. But not all of this content is information - if the message is one you've already heard, or if the message is of no use to you, then it is not 'information'. To be information, the content needs to change your understanding of the world (cf. Fred Dretske). A second misconception is in the confusion between the medium and the information. If the information is 'Paris is the capital of France', the medium - be it networked, physical, overwhelming - does not change this information. Paris remains the capital of France. What changes is our understanding of the information - be cause we, being inescapably human, cannot resist bringing our prejudices and biases to the table. Dave Warlick, 2 Cents Worth June 14, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Information, Networks, Video] [Comment]

Oh Canada...10 E-Learning Memories From 9 Trips in 2 Years
Curt Bonk has some very nice things to say about Canada (and about me... *blush*) in this retrospective of 9 different trips here over the last two years. Good observations, goofy photos, and a fun sense of humour ("they made me wear the Calgary Flames shirt for my journey up to Edmonton..."). Perhaps the Conference Board of Canada (see below) should review this list before making pious pronouncements Curtis J. Bonk, TravelinEdMan June 14, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Canada] [Comment]

 

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