October 10, 2011
A Conversation on Innovation
Stephen Downes,
Half an Hour, October 10, 2011.
Relatively free-form summary of the 'expert discussion' at the IMO event I am attending in Aachen. It's interesting to note how much the recent events of the Arab Sprint and the Occupy Wall Street movements have impacted on discussions of the organization of work and the nature of innovation. As, of course, they should.
The Teacher’s Guide To Using Posterous Spaces
Unattributed,
Edudemic, October 10, 2011.
Nice quick guide to the use of Posterous Spaces (to put into context, in the #change11 MOOC, after Blogger and WordPress, which numbered one and two, the next most popular participant contributions were on Posterous and Tumblr, a trend that seems to be accelerating; Posterous is a lot like Google+, but without all the constraints and limitations). "It’s simple to use and provides an elegant way to present information in a blog-like way with minimal effort." See also Trent Kays, Rebelling Against Blackboard with Posterous and TinyChat via Laura Gibbs on G+.
The Inevitability of Open Access
David W.Lewis,
C&RL Preprints, October 10, 2011.
Argument underlining the inevitability of open access publishing. "Using the 2000 to 2009 data, it is likely that Gold OA journals will publish half of all scholarly articles by 2017 and will publish 90% of the articles by 2020.... Even the more conservative estimate suggests a radical shift in the nature of scholarly journal publishing in the next decade." More preprints.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Books, Open Access, Academic Publications]
The future of education will be open and distributed
David Truss,
Connected Principals, October 10, 2011.
David Truss takes the red pill - sort of. "Previously I’ve said, Let’s take a ‘T.R.I.P. into the Future’ ... Greater Transparency, greater Responsibility, greater Individualization and greater Permanence... Now I’ll add to that ‘Open and Distributed’… but what I’m ultimately talking about is greater Individualization with greater Responsibility on both schools and students." Just remember - 'open and distributed' means authority figures lose the ability to tell people what and how they should learn, which means recasting what is understood by 'individualization' and 'responsibility'. Open and distributed means far more than this: "any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control..."
Digital City project Prezi
Marc Canter,
Digital City Mechanics, October 9, 2011.
Prezi of a development project being developed by Marc Canter. It's a model of urban economic development, but as the slide above makes clear, it's also a model of educational development. Such a model, however, requires stable income support, so that people at all levels have the free time necessary to contribute, and a spirit of cooperation, so that people will be inclined to help each other rather than to compete with them to the end. I try to tell people here in New Brunswick, economic development depends on the sense that "we're all in this together."
Open Source DART
John Concilus,
Website, October 9, 2011.
John Concilus writes, by email, "We have released a new version of our Open Source DART student information system. It has a number of feedback features at the course and the standard level, and students and parents can log in to view feedback at any time. It also, of course, produces transcripts and report cards, and attendance and discipline logs. There is a demo server set up, and instructions on logging or downloading the package here, as well as links to many tutorials on the wiki: wiki and here: git.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Project Based Learning, Student Record Systems]
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