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OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
January 31, 2008

Saskatchewan in Winter
I'll keep today's newsletter short, with a promise to catch up tomorrow. I very much enjoyed the Saskatchewan pown offered by Cyril Kesten. And I'd like to offer my counterpoem to this poem.

Saskatchewan in Winter

Cold!
Cold cold cold
Bloody cold!
Cold.

Cyril Kesten, The Teaching Life January 31, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Newsletters] [Comment]

Schools Should Be Small!
I don't know about this. I went to a small school and hated it. Everybody knew everybody - as Belshaw says - which meant that there was no social mobility. I was at the bottom of a very fixed pecking order; I couldn't just find another social group to hang out with, because there wasn't one (I eventually left home and completed high school at a large high school in Ottawa, Nepean High School - I was living in Hull, Quebec, at the time, but gave them fake address information in order to be admitted). What should be created? Something that gives people choice and mobility. A system with large schools and small schools, online schools and local schools, with specialized schools, experience progarms and general schools. The idea that there is one model for schools that serves everyone is absurd, and should be abandoned. Doug Belshaw, Weblog January 31, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Online Learning, Experience] [Comment]

The Income Statement Isn't
Jay Cross is exactly right. "It never ceases to amaze me how many people assess the cost and benefit of projects with accounting approaches developed in Venice in the five hundred years ago." And, of course, such metrics are useless. "Organizations that make decisions based solely on things that are sufficiently tangible to be counted might as well consult a Ouija board to set their goals." Jay Cross, Informal Learning Blog January 31, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Project Based Learning] [Comment]

In Defense of... This!
James Farmer defends The Edublogs Magazine from its critics. "Who exactly handed the responsibility to us to serve a global conversation? Oh, hang on, nobody." Graham Wegner also defends the magazine. James Farmer, The Edublogs Magazine January 31, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Operating Systems] [Comment]

Two More Blogs to Read
Michael Feldstein finds some blogs. "Michael Staton, one of the principals behind the Facebook Courses app, has a couple of blogs that are worth reading. The first, Edumorphology, is probably the most immediately relevant for e-Literate readers. But the second one, College Readiness for the 21st Century, is also worth reading." Feldstein may be trying to prompt Staton to post, as updates to these two blogs appear to be very infrequent. The RSS feed to the second also appears to be broken. Michael Feldstein, e-Literate January 31, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Books, Web Logs] [Comment]

Interview: Chris Messina On OpenID
Some good responses from OpenID advocate Chris Messina. "penID has to become a first class login citizen... it can't be relegated off to some "geeky no man's land". Of course this demands that we fix the user experience, but by putting it front and center, perhaps there'll be more motivation to take care of the unsightly and inconsistent mess that is OpenID consumption today." Christian Heilmann, Yahoo! Developer Network January 31, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Experience] [Comment]

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