Stephen's Web

OLDaily

OLDaily is currently being produced by Barry Dahl (BD), Harold Jarche (HJ), and Gary Woodill (GW).

by Stephen Downes
June 25, 2008

Instruction, eLearning 2.0 and Quality
Tony Karrer counters those who worry about "quality" in the content of educational wikis and other elearning 2.0 technologies. The language that the skeptics use are along the lines of "Is it instructionally sound? What about the user experience? Above all, what are the learning outcomes? At what point do lowered standards become the standard?". This language reveals someone who is a purveyor of what Thomas Kuhn (of "paradigm shift" fame) called "dead knowledge" - expertise that is taught year after year and passed on to successive generations even though the knowledge and thinking is very out of date. Standards, objectives and measurement are all tools to maintain the status quo, and are based on 1950's thinking that desperately needs to be updated. The real issue is whether or not you can accomplish what you need to do. -GW Tony Karrer, eLearning Technology, June 25, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, Experience, E-Learning 2.0, Paradigm Shift] [Comment]

Nokia to Buy and Open Source Symbian
Big news in the mobile world where Nokia is acquiring the Symbian mobile operating system and is declaring it "open source". But, in this case the open source licence being used allows for proprietary extensions that make this deal seem to be for the optics and not to open the technology to the world of developers. It is also a move to counter Google's Android mobile operating system, and make sure that Google doesn't have a monopoly. Open source seems to be like the words "organic" or "heart friendly". You still need to read the fine print to see what they really mean. -GW Nat Torkington, O'Reilly Radar, June 25, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Operating Systems, Google, Open Source] [Comment]

Employers Turning To Games For Training
Mike Fahey points to a new study released by the Entertainment Software Association finds that seventy percent of major employers in the U.S. utilize some form of gaming technology in their training programs. "From simple quizzes to complex tool manipulation, more and more employers are integrating interactive entertainment into their education regiment, with 78% of organizations not currently employing such methods stating they plan to offer it within the next five years." While the growth of "serious games" is obviously increasing, I found this statistic surprisingly high. It looks like the tipping point on learning games has been reached in the corporate world. -GW Mike Fahey, Kotaku, June 25, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Gaming] [Comment]

Opensim/Drupal Integration for Education
Dave Cormier has done some very bleeding-edge work in educational technology using the Drupal open source community management system as well as OpenSim (an open source version of Second Life). "Opensim is an opensource Multi User Virtual Environment. It allows you to have much of the functionality from something like Second Life, and you can host it on any server you like, or, if you like, on a desktop in your classroom." He is currently looking for help, so if you have any experience with OpenSim, contact Dave. - HJ Dave Cormier, Dave's Educational Blog, June 25, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Second Life, Content Management Systems, Experience, Open Source, Drupal] [Comment]

Speaking to Ascilite, ACODE and Desire2Learn
"If you can accept my argument that social constructivism can not be used in behaviorist methodologies, then with it I would argue that social media cannot be used inside behaviorist media - such as the prescribed media presently used (LMS, system email, content repositories etc)." That's from Leigh Blackall's notes on a presentation he gave to NZ educators at the Desire2Learn roundtable. The theme of this post is whether social media should be integrated into enterprise learning systems or vice versa. Since formal education is such a small part of our learning, it would make more sense to make the LMS/LCMS subservient to the social media surround. Janet Clarey adds her thoughts to Leigh's post. -HJ Leigh Blackall, Learn Online, June 25, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Desire2Learn, Online Learning, Content Management Systems, Learning Object Repositories, Constructivism] [Comment]

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