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

by Stephen Downes
July 1, 2008

What to Do with a Visually Noisy Blog
Reading a screen is fundamentally different than reading a book. Christine Martell has a two part posting on how the eye moves in reading a blog - generally in an F shaped pattern. This has significant implications for blog design. Christine has produced a very useful tutorial that will help blog designers everywhere. Part two, on how to simplify your blog is also very useful. -GW Christine Martell, VisualsSpeak Blog, July 1, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Web Logs] [Comment]

Michael Wesch and the Future of Education
Michael Wesch is probably known to most readers for the viral videos that he has produced with his students. This summer he is on a speaking tour and was recently at the University of Manitoba where he spoke about the Future of Education. It is all about media literacy and the how he engages his students at Kansas State University. This 66 minute video is well worth the time in order to get a glimpse of how he tries to make students knowledge-able (able to create and critique knowledge) rather than knowledgeable (mind dump education). A few highlights: (1 @ 8:00 mark) The Crisis of Significance (making education significant in the lives of students), (2 @ 9:00) eleven minutes on "if these classrooms walls could talk, what would they say" - and how does the WWW blow these assumptions away, (3 @ 45:45) What he does in the classroom to get students to go "beyond the grade," (4 @ 57:00) a five-minute video in a video showing how the students go through 600 years of world history in one 75-minute class period using Netvibes, wikis, Twitter, Jott, etc. - but where the technology is secondary to the F2F collaboration. (Disclaimer: we're related, but I thought this stuff was amazing even before we realized that we're second cousins, or something like that) -BD Michael Wesch, University of Manitoba, July 1, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Twitter, Video] [Comment]

Is the Ability to Create Visuals an Important Work Literacy?
Given the amount of real estate that the brain devotes to visual processing, the ability to create compelling visuals is indeed an important skill. As well, visuals are one form of artifact that can be created to build collective knowledge within a group, or for society in general. Michele Martin's post on the topic has sparked lots of good comments and discussion. -GW Michele Martin, Work Literacy, July 1, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Work Competency, Literacy and Mastery
Brett Miller adds to the conversation about workplace literacy by suggesting necessary competencies for a "knowledge worker" and three levels of work literacy: competent, literate, and mastery. The levels remind me of the work on situated cognition first discussed in Lave and Wenger's 1992 book Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. That is, when we become part of a group we usually start at the edges, and then move to a core position in the center of the group as we increase our competence in whatever the group is about. -GW Brett Miller, No Straight Lines, July 1, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Books] [Comment]

Education for a Digital World
Education for a Digital World - Advice, Guidelines, and Effective Practice from Around the Globe, is available as a book or a free 13 MB PDF from COL and BCcampus. "Education for a Digital World contains a comprehensive collection of proven strategies and tools for effective online teaching, based on the principles of learning as a social process." It's obvious that I don't work much in this academic field as I only recognized one of the dozens of authors. However, I noticed many references to George Siemens, Jay Cross and Stephen Downes. There seems to be a wealth of information and it's worth the download. I found the "Learning Objectives" at the beginning of each Chapter a bit condescending though. The abstracts are much more informative. -HJ Commonwealth of Learning and BCcampus, Commonwealth of Learning, July 1, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Teaching Online, Books, Academia] [Comment]

How Social Media Is Like High School
Via Joan Vinall Cox is this fun collection of high school metaphors for various social media. Reddit is the audio visual club while Facebook is for Jocks and Prom Queens. Lots more. -HJ Jenn Lowther and Nadia Nascimento, MemeLabs, July 1, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Audio, Books] [Comment]

Groundswell Insights - WhyTrainers Often Say, "It Does Not Work"
Ray Jimenez reviews the book "Groundswell" and notices parallels with training and education. One problem is that trainers have a tendency to lump all learners in the same group, " ... not all learners may wish or are ready to make comments or participate in discussions, and yet may be willing to do something else. The biggest downside is that, trainers basing on this early experience, tend to conclude that "social learning and networking" does not really work because learners seem not too excited in making comments." Ray breaks learners down into Audience, Actor or Creator and provides advice on techniques for training. This may be a bit simplistic but could be a helpful tool to focus planning. More commentary on this from Christine Martell and Michele Martin. -HJ Ray Jimenez, Vignettes for Training, July 1, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Books, Networks, Experience, Project Based Learning] [Comment]

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