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by Stephen Downes
July 22, 2010

Just Say Yes to Publishing! Exposing The Man Behind the Curtain If He's Still Saying No.
Good discussion of the whole argument around publishing student work. "At some point we have to get over our fear of letting students publish!" says Alan November. And he is, of course, right. "The best learning happens when you are creating as part of a communities, and it is important to help students cultivate creative communities. Educators and learners need to realize that copying is not cheating (when credited). It's an honor to take someone's work and extend it (as I've done with this piece of writing). Schools need to move from helping students being passive users of technology to becoming active shapers. It's not just about trying what others have done, it's about making your own." L. Nielsen, The Innovative Educato, July 22, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Books, Cheating] [Comment] [Tweet]

Campaign 2010: Tea Party / RNC Asleep At Wheel On Common Core
Good set of recent links to commentary on Common Core via Alexander Russo.
National Standards Delusion - Neal McCluskey, Cato Institute
Slipping Standards - The Boston Herald
Sound School Standards - The Boston Globe
Common Standards Helpful - Richard Kahlenberg, NYT
Understandable, But Wrong - Bruce Fuller, The New York Times
Uniformity Is Not Equality - Alfie Kohn, The New York Times
Alexander Russo, This Week in Education, July 22, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Online Learning, RSS] [Comment] [Tweet]

Psychologists are from Kansas City, and Education Researchers are from Rio de Janeiro
"Psychology is a real science, They can measure things." So says Mark Guzdial in this post, more than a little tongue-in-cheek, as he tries to draw out the distinction between psychology and education. The post is full of (acknowledged) over-generalizations, but if you all those to be used for effect (which I do here) then I think there's a good, if subtle, point being made. "We're all working on the same problem, but from different directions. Maybe we'll meet somewhere in between. Bring your fMRI data, and I'll grab my course evaluations, and we'll have lunch in Acapulco." But don't try to drive - there's a thing called the Darien Gap. Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Blog, July 22, 2010 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment] [Tweet]

Help build a history of OCW
Steve Carson asks for help building a history of Open CourseWare. Fair enough, but it raises in me the question - is Open CourseWare a proper noun that refers only to MIT's project and the consortium that followed, or does it refer to the concept generally? I wonder, because I made open learning courseware available online well before MIT's 2000 start date, and I'm sure many other people did too. And in all fairness, I don't think people should get the idea that the concept of open courseware began with MIT, because that's simply not what happened. And so the 10-year anniversary should refer properly to MIT's OCW project, and not simply 'OCW'. Steve Carson, OpenCourseware Consortium, July 22, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Project Based Learning, OpenCourseWare] [Comment] [Tweet]

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