Learning Analytics & Knowledge: Draft Syllabus
George Siemens, elearnspace, December 30, 2010.

Veorge Siemens has posted the draft syllabus for his Learning Analytics course. This course starts the week of January 10. The following week we will begin offering Connectivism and Connective Knowledge - the syllabus will be posted next week, but if you want to register sight unseen the site is up here.

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A Reflection on Networked Professional Learning
Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog, December 30, 2010.

This post is an interesting look at approaches to self-directed learning and an excuse to post an absolutely beautiful photo of an unusual bird (I spend a lot of time photographing birds - I should assemble my bird photos one day - they are hard to capture even with digital cameras, and my experience is that the new equipment doesn't offer any short cuts - you still have to do f-stops and rules of thirds and all that - but allows you many more mistakes). Beth Kanter identifies two major types of learning, illustrated below:
- Product-driven learning - mindful, mostly linear, and focused.
- Process-driven learning - seeing patterns, listening and scanning, serendipity – not pure randomness, but orchestrated.

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Journal of Virtual Worlds and Education
Various Authors, Website, December 30, 2010.

Volume 1 Number 1 of the Journal of Virtual Worlds and Education is now available online. The journal appears to be free and open access; you can get the PDF version here, though it appears thar articles are only available in the one large full-issue PDF, which is inconventient for linking and reading.

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Image of the Day Gallery
Various Authors, NASA, December 30, 2010.

NASA's 'image of the day' gallery sparkles with me. And it's hard to imagine anything more beautiful and awe-inspiring than NGC 1275, the galaxy pictured above.

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Supersized!! RHSU's 2010 Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings
Frederick Hess, EducationNext, December 30, 2010.

Leaving aside how unhelpful league table rankings of scholars and pundits are in the first place, this Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings is even more worthless than most. Yes, I said worthless. First of all, the 'rankings' are only of a set of already pre-selected subjects. The selection process occurs in some back room, then the people are ranked. As a result, they're all American, all have American university affiliation, and all of the politician-pundit variety. Second, the criteria used to measure rank - Google Scholar, book sales, newspaper mentions, Congressional record mentions - are strictly old school. Not to mention biased toward politician-types who foster more heat than light.

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On breaking away from hosted silos
D'Arcy Norma, D'Arcy Norman dot net, December 30, 2010.

"If people are to manage their own content, forming their digital identities," writes D'Arcy Norman, "they need a way to host software and content that doesn't require obscure and detailed technical knowledge." This is exactly right, and the solution he offers (or, more accurately, works his way around) is exactly right as well: people should be able to host their own web servers as easily as they run their own web browsers. Opera Unite is a good, early, example. Of course, "all of this is based on the (likely false) assumption that people really give a crap about running their own stuff and owning their software and data rather than continuing to feed their activity streams into 'free' hosted services." But they will. Mark my words, they will.

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Rheingold U: Introduction to Mind Amplifiers
http://howardrheingoldsteachingnotes.posterous.com/rheingold-u-introduction-to-mind-amplifiers, Howard Rheingold's Teaching Notes, December 30, 2010.

So I'm thinking about Howard Rheingold's 'Mind Amplifiers' course (the idea that the net 'amplifies' is the new vogue right now; c.f. 'event amplification'), a little bit about whether I want to take it, but more about whether I could charge $100 a head and get 30 people to sign up for five weeks. Because, you know, that would be a good back-up plan for the day the government cuts the NRC from its budget. Though it would change the demographics of the course in a bad way. I was also wondering about the Social Media Classroom, which is just a Drupal mod, and I think gRSShopper is more purpose-built (and I promise I will release new (better, more likely to work for you) gRSShopper code the first week of 2011). But the main thing that I can't get out of my head is, I really like Rheingold and all, but why is he charging money? He's a university professor, he's already pulling it in.

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