Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
March 12, 2009

An O'hare Kind of Day

I'm in Austin for SXSW, the conference for the hip and trendy, which I am definitely not. The photo is from Chicago's O'Hare airport, where I spent a good part of my day. Various Authors, Website, March 12, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Flickr] [Comment]

School Internet Policies: Protecting Students or the Organisation??
"While States like Queensland are rolling out a new Managed Operating Environment across its state schools, the draconian policies of blocking almost all Websites and virtually all the available Web 2.0 tools, means that student learning experiences are much poorer than those they can experience outside of school." Scot Aldred , e-learning , March 12, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Online Learning, Queensland, Web 2.0, Experience] [Comment]

10 Social Skills for Community Designers (Things We Learned From the Drupal.Org Project)
Surprise, surprise - designed communities need to be, um, designed. "You need to take responsibility for the way that your community behaves: it's not in any way productive to associate the way that a community is responding to you by blaming the community or even the individuals in it." Reasoning to the converse, I will take personal credit for the awesome coolness that is the community that surrounds this site and all the work they do worldwide. Leisa Reichelt, disambiguity, March 12, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Content Management Systems, Drupal, Cool] [Comment]

Project-Based Learning Too Hard for Teachers?
I dont see why project based learning should be so hard. I did a lot of projects during the course of my own education, and they were a lot harder for me as a student than they ever were for the teachers (who learned pretty quickly that all they had to do was to steer me in the right direction and set me free) - did I mention that much of my education was all that progressive nonsense with electives and projects and the rest (except for grade 12 English, which was a disaster). Peggy Healy Stearns, ASCD, March 12, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Project Based Learning] [Comment]

The Future in Edmonton
Dave Warlick was around my old stomping grounds, mentions in passing an interesting application called Knitter, and passes on the students' message for change. It's interesting to compare his approach with my own - his system has a message to the effect that "you must indicate your willingness to observe basic principles of information ethics. To sign in is to pledge..." and a list of principles follows. My conference chat (cchat) system allows anonymous comments and has no rules. I'll be using my system here in Austin at SXSW and adding some twists to it. David Warlick, 2 Cents Worth, March 12, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Chatrooms] [Comment]

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