Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
January 29, 2010

2010 Horizon Report
Some videos related to the Horizon Report, one by Scott Leslie, who interviews members of the New Media Consortium about the technologies in the report, and another from acrossair on augmented reality browsers. Clint Lalonde, ClintLalonde.net, January 29, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Video] [Comment] [Tweet]

Maybe Not Massively, But Definitely Open, Faculty Seminar
Alan describes an open seminar on new media - "not everything that there is like a Massively Online Open Course, but doing the same readings, watching the same videos, and then we will have both the Baylor group and anyone else following along from afar engage in discussions in an online shared space." This week looking at such works as As We May Think, the famous 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush, published in The Atlantic. It occurs to me as I read this (and this is not a criticism of the course) that some of these seminal works would profit from a twelve-week read, not a one-week read. It's pretty easy to breeze through an essay in a week, but a longer and broader look would tease out why it's important. Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, January 29, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Books, Video, New Media] [Comment] [Tweet]

A response to Stephen Downes
Gráinne Conole responds to some of my comments on a recent post. "The aim (a naïve one now I admit) was to create a learning design guidance toolkit that would take practitioners through the process of creating learning activities. It would provide guidance and advice on pedagogical approaches, what technologies can be used when and why and a process of mapping learning outcomes, topics, activities and assessment tasks." I think change will come (as it does, slowly) when we break down this distinction between those who create learning resources and use them to teach, and those who learn. Gráinne Conole, e4innovation.com, January 29, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Assessment, Online Learning] [Comment] [Tweet]

Beware critics of Connectivism ! Or how I feel connectivism opens up content creation and access
Nice defense of connectivism. "I belief that the CCK principle also enables people from less connected power regions, to become part of the content narrative. And maybe, this fact of enabling content creation outside the fixed academic power bastions is what pisses off some of the academics that critique Connectivism." Inge de Waard, Ignatia, January 29, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Connectivism, Academia] [Comment] [Tweet]

Backchannel with Etherpad Experiences
We're beginning to see the backchannel as a stand-alone multi-function application, though I imagine it will eventually be merged with more comprehensive webcasting applications. In this post Wes Fryer introduces Etherpad as a backchannel tool. Wesley Fryer, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, January 29, 2010 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment] [Tweet]

Golden Swamp goes big picture with Handscooling.com
I am still trying to find the difference between "handschooling" and "homeschooling" and figure the former is just one of those types of rebranding we see so often in the consulting community. Judy Breck, Golden Swamp, January 29, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Branding, Online Learning, Homeschooling] [Comment] [Tweet]

Could Written Language Be Rendered Obsolete, and What Should We Demand In Return?
It starts out as just more wailing and gnashing of teeth at the death of text so characteristic of Britannica, but by the end it gets pretty interesting. "For some 6,000 years, the human mind was unable to devise a superior system for holding and transmitting data. By the middle of this century, however, software developers and engineers will have remedied that situation. So the greatest danger to the written word is not the image; it is the so-called 'Information Age' itself." Oh, but by the end, we're back to the wailing. But it was a nice ride in between. Patrick Tucker, Britannica Blog, January 29, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Information] [Comment] [Tweet]

Video
HTML 5 video test page, from W3C - I've been using it to test Safari (big fail so far). Because, if we are to have any sort of video on the iPad, it's going to have to be through HTML5. Because you cannot cram the world's video through the bottleneck that is iTunes. (p.s. The video works fine in Firefox, but Firefox is another subversive element the censors at Apple have deemed verboten). Various Authors, Website, January 29, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Apple Inc., Video] [Comment] [Tweet]

yellowBird camera
Most likely the CNN 360 degree video we saw from Haiti last week came from Yellowbird. More details here on the website. Via Kottke. Various Authors, yellowBird, January 29, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Video] [Comment] [Tweet]

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