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OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
November 6, 2009

Ways To Use Twitter Lists for Your Nonprofit Work
I think there's something to Twitter Lists. "Twitter lists lets you curate your followers and keep connected to smaller affinity groups of your choosing. This feature is similar to the functionality to lists that you can create with popular Twitter clients like Tweetdeck, but with some important and compelling differences. Your lists can be public." How can this work? Look at this use of Twitter Lists to cover the Fort Hood shootings. I think this is very powerful. Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog, November 6, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Twitter] [Comment]

Ways to think about movement
Apropos of 21st Century Skills (see below), is this a form of literacy? Is understanding this a form of critical thinking? The post describes, briefly, a taxonomy described by Anne Green Gilbert. "Anne's book, Teaching the Three R's Through Movement, focuses on dance, and in particular using movement to express a feeling about a word or concept (akin to role-play?), ownership (getting IN to the idea, living the idea), and reinforcement (spelling words with your body, hopping or doing other repetitive movement whilst calling out words that rhyme etc.)." Celine Llewellyn-Jones, Haphazard Journey by Starlight, November 6, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

2009 MILE Guide: Milestones for Improving Learning & Education
Just released, a guide to 21st century skills (PDF download). The core themes are "civic literacy, financial literacy, entrepreneurial literacy, health literacy and environmental literacy." Then there are learning and innovation skills, like creativity and Innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, and communication and collaboration. Also information literacy, media literacy and ICT skills. Finally, flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability, and leadership and responsibility. There's a lot here, but but not examined in any particular depth (it's more of a brochure than a guide) but the approach is interesting and worth some thought. Various Authors, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, November 6, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, Leadership] [Comment]

Students Find Free Online Lectures Better Than What They're Paying For
This is one of those articles that challenges the long-touted benefits of an in-person education by citing concrete examples where an online version is better than the 'real' thing (kudos to the Chronicle for running it). "The lectures are livelier than textbooks. They provide the sense of a human touch, though they lack the interactivity of a tutor. But mainly they're free and available 24 hours a day." Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 6, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Catching Up to Canada
Interesting article about what the U.S. needs to do to catch up to Canada's pace of educational outcomes. "Forty-seven percent of Canadians have a postsecondary degree of some kind, compared to 39 percent of Americans, and the numbers look worse (or better, if you're Canadian) when you look at citizens aged 25 to 34, as 55 percent of Canadians and 39 percent of Americans in that group have degrees (placing the U.S. 10th)." Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, November 6, 2009 [Link] [Tags: United States, Canada] [Comment]

A Call for Copyright Rebellion
Lawrence Lessig argues (reasonably) that academics should take a stand against proposed copyright laws. "Scholars, he said, have allowed the copyright conversation to be steered by lawyers and businesses who are not first and foremost to intellectual discovery. To them, Lessig delivered a simple message: 'Stop it.'" Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, November 6, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Patents, Academia, Lawrence Lessig, Copyrights, Patents] [Comment]

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