Sixth report from the Norvig/Thrun/Stanford/Know Labs Artificial Intelligence course
Seb Schmoller, Fortnightly Mailing, November 15, 2011.

Seb Schmoller is doing a great job reporting on the Stanford AI course week after week. This is his sixth such report. I have to admit I chuckled at this part: "Last week's attempt to run an 'office hours' session in real time did not work." Who could have predicted that! Instead, "two short videos have been published with Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun responding informally to the most voted on questions submitted by students prior to the session." Here I think they would have done better if they had opted for a distributed, rather than a democratic, design. The questions most voted on could easily be answered by students for each other, while a distributed discussion would surface those questions none of the students know the answers to - and hence, the most important ones to be addressed by the instructors. Schmoller also notes that a second university - Freiburg - is now giving credit for the course. The same sort of thing happened for us in CCK08.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Books, Video]

A Good Storm
Doug Peterson, doug – off the record, November 15, 2011.

Doug Peterson spots an interesting implication of cloud computing: "Witness the recent licensing of web-based services like Naxos, Bitstrips for Schools, and the National Film Board resources. They allow for immediate use of the application rather than waiting for the next installation cycle." That in itself makes it disruptive to school computing (not nearly as disruptive for those of us used to using the web for applications outside school). Related: the most recent of Jane Hart's list of 100 top applications.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Schools, Thomson Corporation, Online Learning]

Steve Collis must pay
Dean Groom, Design for Learning, November 15, 2011.

I'm linking to this post mostly for the graphic (above) which so clearly demonstrates the difference between the social enterprise and the hierarchical enterprise. It's "means learning to understand the chaotic, three dimensional flow of information between ‘set’s of people, ideas and groups... more than a sense of being connected or belonging, but a more human interest in movement and our ability to notice the unusual more than the familiar."

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Linking and Deep Linking]

No More Swikis: End of the Constructionist Web at Georgia Tech
Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Blog, November 15, 2011.

If the law really does prohibit any student work from being posted publicly, then I would have to wonder aloud about whomever promoted the law and why. And this, I think, is a problem: "Constructionism relies on the fact that the entity being constructed is public. The public nature influences the student’s motivation for doing it and doing it well. If it’s not public, it’s not constructionism. We can no longer have students construct public entities on the Web anymore for education at Georgia Tech. It may be that FERPA demands that no school can use the Web to post student work publicly." Update: Audrey Watters also covers this story.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Schools, Constructionism]

Discovering Olegas Truchanas During Dinner
Keith Lyons, Clyde Street, November 15, 2011.

It's interesting to read Keith Lyons discovering. I first discovered him on the side of a building as I prepared to leave Strahan, Tasmania, and documented it here: "If we can revise our attitudes towards the land under our feet, if we can accept a role of steward, and depart from the role of conqueror, if we can accept the view than man and nature are inseparable parts of the unified whole - then Tasmania can be a shining beacon in a dull, uniform, and largely artificial world." Olegas Truchanas, 1971. And I wrote, "as I stood before this building in the wind and the rain in Strahan, waiting for my bus, I realized, that we have been and are doing the same thing to ourselves as we have to the trees and the forests, and that the same thing that will save Tasmania, will save me."

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Australia]

Enterprise Learning! Events| Evolution of the LMS
b2bmediaco, YouTube, November 15, 2011.

Three corporate e-learning leaders (including the president of Saba) talk about the future of the LMS - and it sounds a lot like the personal learning environment. Not that you'd read anything like that around here...

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Online Learning]