Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
October 28, 2008

gRSShopper
Short 10 minute presentation to the NRC Innovation forum. I unfortunately mishandled the audio, so I only have slides. In the talk I provided an overview of gRSShopper. Presentation by Stephen Downes, Innovation Forum, Saint John, New Brunswick, [Link]

Good News and Depressing News

Just to keep things in perspective. Mark Federman, What's The Next Message?, October 28, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Getting a Mainstream Publisher to Acknowledge Its Sources
Giving credit and stealing credit are themes in today's newsletter. On the one hand - as I'll state several times below - it doesn't matter who gets credit. On the other hand, as we see in this post, traditional media has a reputation for systematically denying credit. We see the same thing in academic media, where authors will only refer to 'the literature' (ie., each other), depriving the people who really did the work any standing or recognition. It's a hard thing to overlook. For my own part, I totally don't want to descend to self-promotion. That way lies the madness of McLuhan. At the same time, I resolutely will not grant to academia or traditional media credit for ideas I know were created in the trenches, sometimes by me, sometimes by very deserving colleagues. The pat-on-the-back crowd gets a lot of press. But it would be wise to keep in mind the equation, that the people seeking the press, have thereby wasted the time it would have taken to achieve any genuine innovation or insight. Seb Schmoller, Fortnightly Mailing, October 28, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Newsletters, Academia] [Comment]

Welcome to Twitter High
Um, OK. I see the point of comparing all the Twitter types to high schooltypes. But in my books, "it's just like high school" is not a compliment. Jennifer Wagner, Tech Thoughts By Jen, October 28, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Twitter] [Comment]

Access Is A Scarce Good
OK, so it's one thing to sell access to Wonkette (the blogger personality also known as Anne Marie Cox). She's offering a scale-based election coverage package, including "Over $500: Phone call from McCain headquarters on election night, detailing hilarious antics sure to ensue [and] Over $1000: One-on-one post-election dinner debrief." Which made me wonder whether I could get $1000 for a 'post-election dinner debrief'. Or for any sort of coverage of, well, anything. Access may be a scarce good, but this is relevant only if there are people who want access. Mike Masnick, TechDirt, October 28, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Personalization, Web Logs] [Comment]

BCcampus OER Site - Free Learning
I refer to this below, but I want to give this announcement from Scott Leslie full billing: "my experience travelling around my own province for the last few years is that OER is still not a widely publicized phenomenom, and that faculty and ed tech support staff are still living with "scarcity mentalities" when it comes to the availability of free and open educational resources. So as one small step to address this, we built this new site, Free Learning. There are many other good OER portals out there. If faculty and students were already using these, then we wouldn't have a problem. But, in my experience, they are not... so we built this one, also to give more play to locally developed resources that are Fully Open." Meanwhile, Tony Bates offers another listing of OER websites. Scott Leslie, edtechpost, October 28, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Portals, Online Learning, Open Educational Resources, Experience] [Comment]

What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor
So what happens if you just share your invntion with the world? If you're Johnny Chung Lee and you've shared your Poor Man's Steadycam or your Wii-based interactive whiteboard, as the New York Times reports, you get job offers, interviews, press, product sales, and worldwide acclaim. Compared to the obscurity some guy scrubbing for that extra hundred dollars earns, what's not to like? (As usual, the best part of this article is the comments). Mike Masnick, TechDirt, October 28, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Wii, RSS] [Comment]

It Doesn'T Matter Who Gets the Credit
Daveid Wiley quite rightly commends Scott Leslie for getting it right: "It doesn't matter who gets the credit." He writes, "If everyone involved in the OER world had this opinion, we'd be much further down the path. Does this run counter to the popular thinking that each OER project should establish, promote, and protect its OER brand? Yes. Does that make it wrong? Absolutely not. You go, Scott. Spread the selflessness!!" David Wiley, iterating toward openness, October 28, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, Open Educational Resources, Project Based Learning] [Comment]

New Report From Apple and the Economist On the Future of Higher Education and How Technology Will Reshape It
I mentioned recent reports on the future of learning in my talk today. This is one of those report. Of course, it being the Economist, part of the report is analysis, while a good part of the report (this part: "Corporate-academic partnerships will form an increasing part of the university experience") is expression of a partisan point of view. Curtis J. Bonk, Travelin' Ed Man, October 28, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Apple Inc., Experience, Academia] [Comment]

Rhizome Project, or, What Have They Done with Dave Cormier?
Some grumbling about the creation of an educational 'rhizome project' without any reference to Dave Cormier's popularization of the concept. Another post saying the same thing. It's the same old thing about credit. People who know this field know Dave Cormier's considerable contribution to it. We don't need to build a genealogy of every person's contribution to every concept. People who jump in and try to take credit for work others have done - well, we know them by their contributions too. Let's stay with the program and not worry about the scorecard (we have to, or we'll go insane). George Siemens, elearnspace, October 28, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Project Based Learning] [Comment]

Education Revolution: Australia Talks
warrick reports, "Radio National's Australia Talks program had an interesting discussion on the 'education revolution', national curriculum and assorted responses to educational issues including the crowded curriculum. The thing I liked was the refreshing lack of politics to the discussion, the good sense and, from a couple of speakers, the emphasis on hearing student voices in the debate." Here's the link to the audio. warrick, teaching and learning, October 28, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Audio, Paradigm Shift, Australia] [Comment]

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