Presentation
The PLENK, The PLE and We
Stephen Downes, December 1, 2010, Service New Brunswick Regional managers Meeting, Fredericton, New Brunswick

In this presentation I outline the work done presenting connectivist style courses over the last two years, demonstrate the course screen, demonstrate the use of the gRSShopper backend to create a newsletter, and talk about the theory of distributed learning underlying the design. SNB's Stephen Dixon introduces the session and also, after the talk, described how such a system could be used to support communication and learning in government applications. The audio also include a Skype conversation with Jay Nath - http://www.jaynath.com/ - Director of Innovation from the City of San Francisco.

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55 Interesting Social Media Infographics
Yanuar Prisantoso, Homgkiat.com, December 3, 2010.

A never ending supply, it seems, of useful social media graphics for your presentations or newsletters. ;) The China image is from the Fast Company Flickr page.

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Building a Strong Higher Education System: China's Ambition
Kai Jiang, Inside Higher Ed, December 3, 2010.

"China does need to develop higher education more broadly," writes, Kai Jiang. "However, there are two aspects of the challenge that must be clarified." First, China "does not only need world-class universities but also outstanding provincial (local) universities and more well-run, effective tertiary vocational colleges." And second, "if China wishes to realize the goal of a strong postsecondary system, it will be necessary to invest more than the current level of expenditure." Fair enough, but a commenter asks, reasonably, "What is it about the academic environment of Chinese universities that 'badly needs improvement'?"

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Do not Let the courseware deprive students the right to thought and imagination
Unknown, AV Concept of Educational Technology, December 3, 2010.

Original in Chinese. Exploring the Chinese edublogosphere (if anyone can find an RSS feed for this site, please let me know). Some of the same concerns we see at home: "Students thinking and imagination is inseparable from the text language contact, understanding, perception and absorb. Students in the reading process is a complex psychological process that requires the students through reading and thinking, to absorb the language into their own language literacy. Our teachers often like to use the visual image of the screen display to replace the students thinking, perception and imagination in the process. This is tantamount to pre-empt the students, deprived of the rights of the students thought and imagination." Via Harvey He.

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How the world misunderstood the Chinese Top Level Courses Project
Stian Håklev, Random Stuff That Matters, December 3, 2010.

"How could the international community so thoroughly misunderstand what was going on in China for over 7 years?" asks Stian Håklev. I think it's pretty easy to misunderstand because it's not always easy to get information about China (and if anyone can point me to Chinese resources on ed tech and related topics, I'd be interested). Anyhow, Håklev uses this post to trace the myth that China's Top Level Courses Project (TLCP) was created by the China Open Resources for Education (CORE) consortium. "This information was not readily available. The Ministry of Education has webpages with information in English about the higher education system in China, but none of these mention the Top Level Courses Project. No official publication has ever been put out that introduces the Top Level Courses Project in English. In fact, it does not even have an official English translation, which has led to a multitude of different translations (China Quality OpenCourseWare, NPWDEC, Top-Quality Courses, etc). Although more than 3,000 academic papers have been published about aspects of this project in Chinese academic journals, until recently no significant paper had been published in English."

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All My Faves
Various Authors, Website, December 3, 2010.

This is the portal page to end all portal pages. I like the look, the layout is interesting, and you can customize it. You'll find yourself exploring, in spite of yourself. As a content provider, I'm a bit less excited, because it's not at all straightforward to get listed on the site. So users will tend to find the high profile commercial sites and not less noticable resources like OLDaily.

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Industry standard video editor Lightworks is now on the way to being open sourced for Windows
Leon Cych, Open Source Schools, December 3, 2010.

You may be curious about Lightworks, a new (potentially) open source video editing application for Windows. I tried it today and the verdict so far is: don't bother. You have to register to download, which I did. Then download and install the codecs first, then install Lightworks, then right-click and run as administrator. So far so good. But then nothing works. It wouldn't import .mov files at all, even with the codecs. It then complained about the frame rate for .avi files, and when I fixed that, failed with an unknown error. Attempts to record from the webcam were similarly futile.

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Creative Commons: What every Educator needs to know
Rodd Lucier, Slideshare, December 3, 2010.

It's Creative Commons. With bunnies.
Creative Commons: What every Educator needs to know

View more webinars from Rodd Lucier. Via David Hopkins, who writes, "I know there are clearly issues with students knowing and understanding what is legal and what is not when you use and re-use content or images you find on the Internet."

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