Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
November 6, 2008

Gestures As Basic Inputs
Watch for this. You'll have to relearn how to use computers (or computer devices). "The advent of the Nintendo Wii, Guitar Hero, and the iPhone/iPod Touch has introduced (or at least emphasized) a new vocabulary around expanded Basic Inputs... These change the game world, to be sure. The introduce new gameplay and interface conventions..." Clark Aldrich, Style Guide for Serious Games and Simulations, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Apple Inc., Wii, Gaming] [Comment]

Subliminal Pattern Recognition and RSS Readers
I've mentioned this video before but it's worth a reminder. Teemu Arina writes, "This is exactly why those people who use RSS readers to scan through thousands of feeds, read blog posts from various decentrally connected sources and who engage themselves into assembling multiple unrelated sources of information into one (probing connections between them) have much greater ability to sense and respond to changing conditions in increasingly complex environments than those who read only the major newspapers, watch only the major news networks and don't put themselves into a difficult situation of being hammered with a lot of stuff at once." Yup. Teemu Arina, Tarina, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Networks, Video, RSS, Web Logs] [Comment]

The Future of Search Is Already Here
These is the sorts of things that would be really useful. "SnapTell: a mobile and iPhone app that lets you photograph a book, CD or game cover and it'll recognise it..." And "Shazam, a music recognition application that will identify a piece of music that's playing out loud..." Instead of looking up birds in a bird guide, carry a little device that listens... every time a bird chirps, it would show you the name of the bird (useful for those scary nights in the forest... I can picture campers looking at the screen while in their tent... 'twig snapping'... 'white owl'... 'porcupine' ... 'grizzly bear'...). Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Gaming] [Comment]

Chasing Data - Are You Datablogging Yet?
Not sure what I would datablog - website hits, maybe? Certainly not running miles! "Want to ‘datablog' your running miles or your commute times or your grocery spending? DataDepot provides a simple way to track any type of data over time. You can add data via the web or your phone, then annotate, view, analyze, and add related content to your data." Hm... Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Don Tapscott Made Me Yell at My Radio
OK, people like Don Tapscott say things like how the net generation youth "have different brains than us old folks." This is true, but only in a certain sense, and in this sense, is to a large degree irrelevant. To begin with, most of what makes up the youth brain is not different from previous generations. Same neurons, same chemical reactions, same overall structure. What does change is the specific set of connections in the brain. This is because the youth of today have learned different things in different ways. So they have different knowledge, different ways of understanding the world - different connections. But, big deal. We all have different connections. We learn - we form connections - as a result of our experiences, and our experiences are all different. So, while it is true that the brains of the young are wired differently, it's irrelevant (far more important, for example, would be how brain chemistry and configuration changes as a result of malnutrition in childhood, and that sort of thing). Heather M. Ross, McToonish, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Experience] [Comment]

International Portal of Teacher Education
John Connell writes, "If you're looking for a single repository of international research and thinking on teacher education, you could do worse than point your browsers at the International Portal of Teacher Education, established and maintained by the MOFET Institute, based in Israel." I'm not a big fan of portals (I prefer networks) but they work for some people. John Connell, Weblog, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Portals, Networks, Research, Learning Object Repositories] [Comment]

Innovation/Graphics
take a few moments to have a look at the full diagram of the co-evolution of human systems and tools systems. I wonder what a similar diagram for e-learning (or learning technology, of just learning in general) would look like. I wonder whether there's a community drawing program out there that would let us create such a chart. Jay Cross, Internet Time, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning] [Comment]

Becta Unveils New Next Generation Learning Website
It looks to me like a site very light on content, but maybe there's more befind the (England only) registration I didn't see. Helge Scherlund writes, "The Next Generation Learning website is a key part of the national campaign that aims to encourage schools, colleges and learning providers to consider how they can use technology to support teaching... New on the Next Generation Learning website is a postcode search facility for parents to find out which schools in their area are using technology effectively." Helge Scherlund, Helge Scherlund's eLearning News Blog, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Great Britain, Online Learning] [Comment]

eLearning Learning Launched
Tony Karrer has launched 'eLearning learning'. Thus far it looks like an RSS aggregator, with topic filtering. I'd like to see the list of feeds being harvested. Colin Kromke describes the process: "I have added a widget to my sidebar (scroll down to eLearning Learning Labels on the right side of the page) that automatically searches all my posts for certain keywords/tags/labels." Tony karrer, eLearning Technology, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, RSS] [Comment]

War Of The Worlds 2.0
The archives are not user-friendly, but this is nonetheless an interesting experiment that would be a model for a great class activity. Basically, what they did was to organize a world-wide re-enactment of the War of the Worlds on Twitter. A central invasion plan was hosted on Google docs to give people a frame of reference for their tweets. You'd have to go back almost a week in the Twitter feed, but if you want, you can view all the tweets in this XML file in the archives (maybe somebody will run it though an XSLT to produce a nice version). Can you imagine entire schools, entire communities, participating in Web 2.0 re-enactments of historical events? Awesome. Peter D. Naegele, Academic Commons, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Twitter, Online Learning, Web 2.0, Google, XML] [Comment]

Concepts of Sharedness: Essays On Collective Intentionality
The concept of shared meaning, shared objectives, shared practice, etc., is known in philosophy as 'collective intentionality'. It's a concept I don't particularly agree with, because I think that assessments that there exists collective intentionality in any given situation are inferences of questionable plausibility. There is certainly nothing like a direct perception of collective intentionality. Still, the idea has caught on in many quarters, and this volume is a review of contemporary literature on the subject. The review, cited here, gives an overview of some of the issues and motivations behind collective intentionality. Reviewed by Peter Tramel, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, November 6, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Assessment] [Comment]

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