The Face-down Publishing Paradigm
Joseph Esposito, The Scholarly Kitchen, November 10, 2010.

We had the lean-forward (as in working on a computer) and lean-back (as in watching a video) paradigms. Now we have the face-down and face-up paradigms. Face-down is the use of a mobile device, typically carried in the hands at one's chest - hence, face-down. "While some processing takes place on the device in the user's hand, the heavy lifting takes place elsewhere, at a huge, impersonal data center... Publishing for a face-down audience means thinking about how best to use that data center."

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Evaluating My Blog
Doug Peterson, doug – off the record, November 10, 2010.

So anyhow, I said in a post last week, "For the record, the things she says are not blogging, are blogging." Which leads Doug Peterson to wonder, "So, where does one start? I go back to my A&E resource who indicated once that 'there need to be clearly defined targets' that students can aim for." That's what happens, isn't it? You take something that is creative and open-ended - quests, videos, blog posts, play - and because it needs to be measured, participants are given common and clearly defined 'objectives' to aim for. And steadily and surely the fun and creativity are squeezed out of it.

Peterson says, "I don't think that it's going too far out on a limb that all of the above want to push bloggers towards #8 in the list above." Oh, it's all very nice to want "extended analysis and synthesis..." - but what if the blog is just the note-taking device? Or the personal journal? Do you have to do "extended analysis and synthesis" in everything you do? On my Flickr blog, all I do it post photos. Surely that's fine.

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The Soul of Web 2.0
Mark Pesce, the human network, November 10, 2010.

Really good article looking at the web from the long view and identifying key elements at the 'soul' of web 2.0:
- sharing - "This idea of sharing is foundational to everything we do on the Web today. It becomes painfully obvious when it's been overlooked."
- connecting - "The Web today is all about connecting. That's its single most important feature, the one which is serving as an organizing principle for nearly all activity on it."
- iteration - "Nothing is ever complete, nor ever perfect. The perfect is the enemy of the good, so if you wait for perfection, you will never release."
- openness - "Have you created space for your work to be re-used, to be incorporated, to be pieced apart and put back together again? Or is it opaque, seamless, and closed?"
Is it really any coincidence that these are exactly the principles we advocate for online learning? We are working in the greatest lab ever invented, and drawing on the lessons of a billion contributors to forge the fundamentals of e-learning. No, it's no coincidence at all.

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More thoughts on OERs and Open Content
John Fontaine, Fountains of Fontaine, November 10, 2010.

Michael Feldstein is concerned about the sustainability of OERs. But that might be the least of our problems. "What happens when the front groups and big PR budgets figure out how much influence they could gain with the right kind of free textbook? Economics 101 written by a front group for (opposite side of your political spectrum)."

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