September 30, 2011
The digital scholar - which way to go?
Steven Verjans,
Stievie's adventures in e-Learning, September 30, 2011.
A big part of the challenge of Martin Weller's presentation this week in the change MOOC was around the question of whether people can become digital scholars just yet. Specifically, as Steven Verjans summarizes,
- Is it enough to use social bookmarking or to share your conference presentations, or is that a start that will inevitably lead to more?
- Are you only a 'real' digital scholar if you refuse to publish in closed journals and only opt for open access journals? How to deal with publishing your publically-funded research results?
- Do I need to be a rebel within my institution, and how does it effect my own career? Or can I act as an evangelist and try to convince people that the end of the world as we know it is near?
Now I can say that in my own case, I've just done what I felt was right, and success (such as it is) followed. Not everyone is so fortunate, which means they must play to a specific audience. And I guess I have to say, "If the only way people will pay you is if you do X, then do X." But the other piece of advice is, "On hand for the ship, one hand for yourself." Don't let go of the vision of where you want to go, even while you're doing X.
The Virtuous Middle Way
David Wiley,
iterating toward openness, September 30, 2011.
David Wiley states his case (and takes a swipe at MOOCs en passant. "People can learn under situations whose structure is completely self-determined," he writes, "however, the purpose of the machinery of education is to improve the efficiency of the learning process... You can’t – with intellectual honestly – claim to oppose structure and disdain learning objectives on the one hand and then aggregate dozens of resources and technologies for students that will help them learn more about a certain topic (including tutorials on how to use them effectively!)." I would just love to see how he cashes out "efficiency" in this context - is it "most learning in least time?" or "biggest bang for smallest buck?" Or what? Moreover, how is it that selecting a bunch of resources presupposes a given learning objective. What's the formula for deducting a learning object from a set of materials? The best sets support many objectives. And that's the point - you can help people find their way around a city, or you can tell them where to go - and if you don't appreciate the difference between those, then you won't appreciate the difference between what we're doing and what Wiley wants us to think we're doing.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Patents, Learning Objects, Online Learning]
Screencast-o-matic
Various Authors,
Website, September 30, 2011.
Jeff Lebow mentioned this application during the recent #change11 COOLCast. It's a way, he says, of getting a higher-quality recording of online interactions (that, say, take place over Skype, Google or Livestream).
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Interaction, Audio Chat and Conferencing, Google, Quality]
George Siemens Open Online Courses: PLN Environments and Networks at CMC11
George Siemens,
YouTube, September 30, 2011.
George Siemens looks at open online courses from the perspective of personal learning environments. Some interesting commentary about 'information foraging', the way we seek out information the same way we seek food. This leads to an extended discussion of the nature of data and the question of who owns data. What we are trying to do is preserve a person's ability to manage their own data, so we obtain the benefits of scalability, without losing the value of autonomy. Week 3 blog post.
Democracy and Education
John Dewey,
Institute for Learning Technologies, September 30, 2011.
John Dewey's 1916 Democracy and Education is available in full at the Institute for Learning Technologies website. It's part of their Digital Text Projects. It's interesting to note that if you wanted to see how I would treat the same subject area, you'd read Democracy and Education backwards, starting with the moral philosophy and epistemology, determining the nature of the discipline, and then moving to the democratic conception of education and education as a necessity in life. Of course my treatment of the subject would be closer to a 2016 look than 1916.
Writing & Common Core: Deeper Learning for All
Bud Hunt,
P2PU, September 30, 2011.
Bud Hunt writes, on Google+: "Psst. Free PD. Come and learn with me and teach me about how to write in and for the disciplines in the world of Common Core State Standards. Click on 'Participate' to sign up for the class. Tell your friends. P2PU (beta) | Writing & Common Core: Deeper Learning for All. Writing & Common Core: Deeper Learning for All: The Common Core State Standards suggest that writing must live across all disciplines. Let's explore that idea."
What's in a tweet
Unattributed,
The Economist, September 30, 2011.
Increasingly, it's what's happening behind the scenes that's important on the internet. The simple Twitter tweet is a case in point. The reader sees only your 140 character message. The computer program accessing the Twitter API sees a host of related data, more than enough to construct a sophisticated graph. This article from the Economist offers a compelling look at the anatomy of a tweet. Related: Facebook keeps a history of everyone who ever poked you, along with a lot of other data. See also Doug Peterson from last May.
Ed Radio Show Notes, September 30, 2011
- Open Culture, What Earth Will Look Like 100 Million Years from Now
- George Siemens, Open Online Courses: PLN Environments and Networks at CMC11
- Wolfgang's Vault, 20 Minute loop, The Bone is the Orbital Planet
- Jeff Lebow, COOLCast - September 28, 2011
- You Ain't No Picasso, Portugal the Man bring So American to Conan
- Adele, Adele - Someone Like You
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