June 8, 2011
Three-Man Weave
Chuck Klosterman,
Grantland, June 8, 2011.
I've always found it odd that the same people who dislike lectures are those people who enthusiastically endorse storytelling. Me, I see them as being much the same, but it's all in the presentation, I guess. At the same time., while I have no fondness for basketball whatsoever (too many goals, too many penalties, too much showboating) I can't resist a good story, and that's what I found here in a new blog called Grantland. Via Kottke. It's like what Vicki Davis says, learning about life on the athletic field. For me, the lessons about hard work, practice and playing through the pain all came from sports, and have given me whatever grit I have today.
Peter Suber on the 4-star openness rating
David Weinberger,
Joho the Blog, June 8, 2011.
I sometimes feel like I'm the only person in the world who defines 'open access' as non-commercial access. I honestly don't get how people think charging for a resource somehow makes it 'more free', and I'm pretty sure there's a sizeable foundation-type lobby making sure that the 'open-as-commercial' perspective holds sway. Well, I haven't drunk the commercialism Kool-Aid, and consequently, I reject the proposal coming forth from the so-called 'LOD-LAM Summit' to create a 4-star definition of openness. If you can block access to something and demand payment for it, it's not open. It is certainly not 'more open' than the non-commercial form of openness that most people actually want to use. Give the types of licensing names, not rankings. Anyhow, for the rest of the world who disagrees with me, here's the draft version of the four-star system, above is a video of MacKenzie Smith of MIT and Creative Commons discussing the system, and the LOD-LAM Blog.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011 Students Rank Lecture Capture 'Most Important' Blended Learning Resource
Helge Scherlund,
E-learning News, June 8, 2011.
Here's a dilemma for you. If you are one of those many people - legions, actually - who believe the lecture is a poor pedagogy, especially in the online learning environment, then what do you do when your end users - students - declare lecture capture to be the most important technology of the day. After all, we are supposed to be driven by end-user needs, aren't we? So should we put down our social networking and interaction tools and go out there and start coding (or acquiring, depending on whether you're Desire2Learn or Blackboard) lecture capture tools?
[Link] [Comment] [Tweet] [Tags: Accessibility, Interaction, Blackboard Inc., Networks, Desire2Learn, Online Learning]
Seven Problems a Recovery Won't Fix
Umair Haque,
Harvard Business Review, June 8, 2011.
Why is the work we're doing in education so important? Here's HBR's Umair Haque (one of the few redeeming voices in that publication) explaining what an economic recovery won't fix:
- Stagnation. Median income has stagnated for decades
- Disemployment. We're mostly creating McJobs
- Insecurity. Nearly half of Americans are financially fragile
- Toxicity. The industrial age economy's addicted to harm: in order to profit, it's more often than not got to trample on people, nature, or society
- Pointlessness. They don't care not just because the work they do feels pointless, but because, in human terms, it mostly is
- Dumbification. Educational attainment has slowed in recent years
- Dehumanization. As I've noted, GDP has long decoupled from more meaningful measures of welfare
None of these will be solved by industry and commerce; they will be addressed only as we rethink what we stand for as a society. And that takes education.
[Link] [Comment] [Tweet] [Tags: United States, Security Issues]
Through this community, with online events, interviews, and workshops, our goal is to have educators help each other become re-energized about finding and following their passions--as a part of their careers and in their contributions to the world.
Steve Hargadon,
Infinite Teaching Machine, June 8, 2011.
The old "Edubloggerworld" network is being transitioned to Teacher 2.0. Steve Hargadon introduces the new site (your old login will still work; I tested). "Through this community, with online events, interviews, and workshops, our goal is to have educators help each other become re-energized about finding and following their passions--as a part of their careers and in their contributions to the world."
Project to Set Educational Metadata Standards Launched
Ian Quillen,
Education Week, June 8, 2011.
This is interesting: "The Association of Educational Publishers and Creative Commons announced Tuesday an initiative that would create a standard coding language for all searchable educational content on the Web." Funding has been provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates and William and Flora Hewlett foundations, both of which also fund Education Week, and involves support for the common core standards in the U.S. The official announcement was posted yesterday."Adoption of the education metadata schema by the search engines and by content providers will be voluntary, but because of the implicit support of the major search vendors and the participation of both commercial and non-commercial providers, widespread acceptance of the framework is anticipated." The project is related to the schema.org initiative, an effort by major search providers to standardize search metadata.
[Link] [Comment] [Tweet] [Tags: Schemas, Project Based Learning, Semantic Web, Hewlett Foundation, Metadata, Online Learning]
George Couros
Unattributed,
Lunch Time Leaders Podcast, June 8, 2011.
Among the stuff I'm playing on Ed Radio today includes this interview with George Couros talking about connecting with students and what he learned from the restaurant business (which speaks to me, because I spent a lot of time working in restaurants), and whether he has ever let someone break the rules. The interviewers are children, unnamed unfortunately, and they do a great job pressing Couros, especially in the latter part of the interview. Also from Lunch Time Leaders I played this interview with Story Musgrave, a former NASA astronaut. Also, Lyn Carson describes Deliberative Democracy on Australian radio. Plus, Mickey McManus on Design as Literacy (see also his post on Huffington Post). Over lunch I played the Teachers Teaching Tecahers podcast on the Framework for Success in Post-secondary Writing.
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