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by Stephen Downes
September 29, 2008

New Course On Education2.0 or eLearning 2.0
Well it took that long for us to see another open online course on social networking and learning. This one is sponsored by Work Literacy and the eLearning Guild and runs from September 29 through November 7. A big difference between this course and the CCK course is that this one is built on Ning - and that's it. Nobody else I know of is ready to try distributing a course over half the internet yet, Inge de Waard, Ignatia, September 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Networks, E-Learning 2.0] [Comment]

Study: College Students Prefer Classes with Online Learning
A survey consisting entirely of students from only one university is valid only for that university, so while I admit the headline "students want..." is tempting, we must take it with a grain of salt, knowing that, thus far, we only know about students in Madison, Wisconsin. Via Design of Knowledge. Press Release, University of Wisconsin System, September 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

CCK08 Week Three: Eight Important Questions About Learning and Connection
Forget the other seven questions. The key question posed against Connectivism is (as it was against associationism and connectionism in earlier years) this: " If learning is, as the instructors of this course contend, nothing more or less than 'making connections' (neural, conceptual, and social), how do we learn to learn the things in the chart above and the other things we need to learn to be self-sufficient, useful members of communities -- to be who we were intended to be?"

There's no short answer to the question. Part of it requires an account of how successive and repeated experiences produce patterns of connectivity, and how these patterns are what we experience when we say that we 'know'. And another part of it requires an account of how we are misled by language, about how we don't actually 'know' much of what we claim to know, including knowledge of universals, spiritual entities such as 'Gaia', and a host of other linguistic phenomena. Dave Pollard, How To Save The World, September 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Experience] [Comment]

If You Wrote a Book Bashing DRM, Would You Be Cool With Kindle Store Sales?
I was brought around to revisit open educational resources as a cponsequence of my talk on the west coast last week, and it reminded me of this problem. here we have Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, licensed through Creative Commons, being sold on Kindle. And, "Kindle books are of course not reusable or adaptable in any way that the Creative Commons license allows for." The problem is, there's nothing in the Creative Commons licenses that prohibits this. That's how you can make a free work - such as Lessig's book - available only for a price, if you can control the distribution market (as Amazon does with Kindle, as Apple does with iPhone and iTines, etc.). Paul Glazowski, Mashable, September 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Digital Rights Management (DRM), Apple Inc., Books, Lawrence Lessig] [Comment]

Wal-Mart Tells DRM-Infected Music Downloaders to Burn It or Be Gone!
Another installment in the same sad story. People who bought DRM-encumbered media from WalMart, trusting that the retail giant would be around forever to grant access, have been burned. WalMart is telling they will have to somehow create backup copies as the DRM versions will no longer function as of October 9. "but I think this is precisely why people don't smile and think happy when the subject of DRM and all the nastiness it entails enters and re-enters and re-re-enters the public conversation." More form Mark Oehlert. Paul Glazowski, Mashable, September 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Digital Rights Management (DRM), Books] [Comment]

EU Makes It Official: You Can'T Randomly Ban People From the Internet
The headline basically tells the story - in some places, internet access is well on the way to becoming a right that can be denied only through a court process. "In other words, you cannot ban someone from the Internet unless you have a damn good reason - and file sharing is not a good enough reason." Stan Schroeder, Mashable, September 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: File Sharing] [Comment]

100+ (E-)Learning Professionals to Follow On Twitter
You will never follow all of these people on Twitter, but it's nonetheless interesting to see the list. I'm on it, but I don't recommend that you follow me, as my twittering - by means of a connection from my Facebook status updates - is uninspired to say the least. Of course, if you wanted to follow them all, you'd probably want to use Tony Hirst's edu-Twitter Yahoo Pipes. Jane Hart, Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day, September 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Twitter, Books] [Comment]

Dragon Profile

Fascinating image created with PeopleSketch Shirley Pickford, Shirley's Journal, September 29, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

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