July 4, 2011
Don’t show, don’t tell?
Emily Finn,
MIT News, July 4, 2011.
Sure, you can get facts into people's head quite quickly using direct instruction. But if you want them to learn - and keep on learning - you have to try something else. So shows this MIT study, at least. "Explicit instruction makes children less likely to engage in spontaneous exploration and discovery... The danger is leading children to believe that they’ve learned all there is to know, thereby discouraging independent discovery. 'If I teach you this one thing and then I stop, then you may say, ‘Well that’s probably all there is,’' Schulz says." This link is particularly relevant given the recent argument between David Wiley and myself (and Wiley's reply).
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient
Doug Johnson,
The Blue Skunk Blog, July 4, 2011.
A little off topic, but this observation is bang-on: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." I can think of no end of examples of this. Doug Johnson notes that some others have found a list as well: " Miguel Guhlin and Jennifer LaGarde both list topics they're tired of debating: copyright, education reform via staff development, e-books, social media in education, 21st century skills, etc."
Peter Suber: Leader of a Leaderless Revolution
Richard Poynder,
Open and Shut? , July 4, 2011.
Excerpt of an interview (full version here) by Richard Poynder of one of the leaders of the open access movement, Peter Suber (not the leader because I would say Stevan Harnad is equally important). "The growing number of conversions from TA to OA suggests to me that small and medium-sized publishers are starting to see OA less as a threat and more as a survival strategy. The big deals are soaking up library budgets."
Investment Bankers and Blackboard’s Future, Part One: If …
Jim Farmer,
e-literate, July 4, 2011.
Today's first ongoing story - the Blackboard sale:
- Jim Farmer's analysis, part one - the acquisition could provoke a change of management
- Ted Curran - What does it mean for schools?
- Elliott Masie - watch for 2 or 3 more major deals in the coming months
- e_shool News - coverage
- Chronicle - coverage
- Inside Higher Ed - yet more coverage
- Alfred Essa - summary of coverage
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Schools, Blackboard Inc., Online Learning]
Google, plus or minus
Rob Cottingham,
Noise to Signal, July 4, 2011.
Today's second (and bigger) ongoing story: Google+
- Noise to Signal - cartoon (right)
- Ryan Sholin - mixed feelings about how much I want public and how much I want private
- Mashable - The pros and cons, Scam invites, iOS app awaiting approval, what MySpace's Tom Anderson thinks
- Nick O'Neill - Facebook should fear the time spent on Google+
- Graham Attwell - thumbs up
- About Foursquare did Google just squeak a 4Square competitor under our noses?
- Doug Peterson - Google+ for education
- Nico Baird - has facebook met its match?
- Dave Cormier - Google+ makes the same three mistakes
- The Daily Riff - Networking grows up
- Richard Ackerman - Google+ is social signals for search
- Steve Yelvington - 'check your hair' works better if you have some
- Mike Loukides - Google has a winner
- Jennifer Wagner - I don't like to be overwhelmed
- Alex Chitu - how Google+ transformed Picasa
- Andy Hertzfeld - my role on Google+
- Joan Vinall-Cox - playing with Google+
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Books, Project Based Learning, Voice Over IP, Google, Networks, MySpace, Skype]
Awesome talk by Eben Moglen: The alternate net we need, and how we can build it ourselves
Derek Keats,
Dkeats.com, July 4, 2011.
Derek Keats posts this nice link to a talk by Egan Moglen bemoaning the loss of anonymity and personal freedom on the net. "Without anonymity the human race will not be human any more... Every morning I see people wearing dog collars, reporting their location ever 70 seconds to Steven K Jobs." He describes a thing called the 'freedom box', a server stack you can have in your home, that will provide you with the services and networking you need if net services are shut down. Played it on Ed Radio during a Google Plus hangout. I also played this video by Moglen, 'How I discovered Free Software and met RMS'.
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