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by Stephen Downes
April 5, 2010

Personal Knowledge: Transmission or Induction?

Harold Jarche continues with his wring on personal knowledge management, and it spurs me to more thinking on the topic. In this post, I try to draw out the different between transmission models of knowledge and learning as contrasted with what might be called 'induction' models. This is not to say I think Jarche promotes one of the other; rather, I am using his column as a means to introduce my own point. Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, April 5, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Knowledge Management] [Comment] [Tweet]

21st Century Education in New Brunswick, Canada
The New Brunswick Department of Education has released a promotional video on 21st century education. It's a lot like the "did you know?" videos, but factually accurate and professionally produced. From where I sit, it's a sign of hope that education in this province may be moving in the right direction. New Brunswick Department of Education, YouTube, April 5, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Video, Canada] [Comment] [Tweet]

Shirky's myth of complexity
David Weinberger points to Clay Shirky's popularization of Joseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies. The idea is that societies increase wealth-production by increasing complexity. They solve problems, for example, by adding new rules, not dropping old rules. But at a certain point, complexity becomes a burden. But at that point, even though adding complexity only makes matters worse, there is no mechanism that allows the system to become less complex, because each part is inextricably connected with the rest. "The whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change."

There are shades of Kuhnian paradigm shifts here. For people enmeshed in the complex system, it becomes simply impossible to envision the less complex alternative. For example, "we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don't know how to do that." And we see this in education, as well. There is a system for producing and delivering educational content, and it seems impossible for those enmeshed in this system to see that it could be done in any other way.

P.S. How this becomes Shirky's myth is interesting (cf. the discussions about credit we've been having off and on - notice Shirky won't take credit but Weinberger gives it to him, and vice versa, that's how it works)). David Weinberger, Joho The blog, April 5, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Paradigm Shift, Web Logs] [Comment] [Tweet]

iPad vs. a 5-Year-Old
Despite my post We Learn, I continue to hear that that people cannot learn without teacher support. What, then, shall we make of the iPad and the five year old? "Could the tablet be so user friendly that a five-year-old could work it with practically no instruction? Let's see... So, yeah. He pretty much figured it out in five minutes flat." Maybe it's time the critics started presenting some empirical evidence showing that people don't use technology, can't figure it out, and can't learn for themselves. Because all the data I have points pretty conclusively to the conclusion that they can (unless being prevented by their schools). Tyler Gray, Fast Company, April 5, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Schools] [Comment] [Tweet]

How to Access 30,000 FREE eBooks for the iPad
For those of you who bought an iPad, here's a guide to accessing Gutenberg's 30,000 free ebooks. "The iPad natively supports various eBook formats, among those is the ePub format which is used by Project Gutenberg. Books range from classics like Iliad to more recent books by Mark Twain." For tbhose of you who can't afford an iPad, you may be surprised to know that these books also work on a computer. Gil, GilsMethod, April 5, 2010 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment] [Tweet]

Failure of Creative Commons Licenses
The precise meaning of the 'Non-Commercial' clause matters only to those who want to violate it. This is my view, at least, and I would add that people looking for precise definitions are looking for loopholes. It's like the definition of 'expensive'. If you have to ask, you probably won't like the answer. Tony karrer, though, argues for precise definitions. "Bottom line is that Creative Commons is failing to really help us. If you have to go and contact each license holder to find out, you are basically in the same boat as with copyright" (Karrer also doesn't need definite articles). But you don't need to go asking to find out. Because, if you're asking about this, you already know the answer. Right? Tony Karrer, eLearning Technology, April 5, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Copyrights, Patents] [Comment] [Tweet]

Philosophy on Late Night TV
Imagine what the world would be like if we saw more philosophers - and fewer philanderers - on TV. In this particular ten-minute segment, Craig Ferguson interviews philosophy professor Jonathan Dancy, famous (in his own circles) not for being the father-in-law of actress Claire Danes, but rather a leading moral philosopher and exponent of a thesis of moral particularism. Dan Colman, Open Culture, April 5, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Video] [Comment] [Tweet]

High School 2.0
So they spent all this money on technology, then spent the next year trying to stop students from using it. Sounds like a management problem, not a technology problem. A failure of standardized, centralized curriculum. From the article:
"As soon as we had to fit within the system, we lost everything innovative," he said. "All over the country, urban districts are failing with the traditional curriculum. There's a 45 percent dropout rate. These students don't need that. They need something very different. Successful people learned by tinkering, by doing, they did not learn by sitting in a classroom in front of a board." There's also an associated podcast. Via Joanne Jacobs. Dale Mezzacappa, Education Next, April 5, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Online Learning, Podcasting] [Comment] [Tweet]

High School 2.0
So they spent all this money on technology, then spent the next year trying to stop students from using it. Sounds like a management problem, not a technology problem. A failure of standardized, centralized curriculum. From the article:
"As soon as we had to fit within the system, we lost everything innovative," he said. "All over the country, urban districts are failing with the traditional curriculum. There's a 45 percent dropout rate. These students don't need that. They need something very different. Successful people learned by tinkering, by doing, they did not learn by sitting in a classroom in front of a board." There's also an associated podcast. Via Joanne Jacobs. Dale Mezzacappa, Education Next, April 5, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Online Learning, Podcasting] [Comment] [Tweet]

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