August 16, 2012
Free Speech vs. Hate Speech: Where Should the University of California Draw the Line?
Emily Richmond,
The Educated Reporter , August 13, 2012.
The question of free speech is an issue both in online discussions and in edcuational institutions. And with the fluid state of governance worldwide - from Russia to Egypt to Singapore - the question of what sort of speech ought to be allowed, and what sort prohibvited, occupies all nations. Few supposes that all speech ought to be allowed; even those radical supporters of unrestrained expression (mostly south of the border here) bristle when you challenge their core beliefs. To my mind, the line is a simple one, though in prasctice not always easy to discern: the only speech that should be prohibited is a speech act, and the only act that should be prohibited is one which deliberately causes harm to another.
Coursera Hits 1 Million Students, With Udacity Close Behind
Jeffrey R. Young,
Chronicle of Higher Education, August 13, 2012.
Not that we're keeping track of this sort of thing. But before people get excited by these numbers, let me point out that having huge centralized providers is a weakness, not a strength. It's easy to build a platform and market it to people; companies have been doing that since the early days of the internet. It's hard to put a learning and networking tool into the hands of the people. This is such a challenging idea that my employers (not to mention most of the rest of the world) cannot even grasp it. When I think 'MOOC' I am thinking "individual people nwith their own piece of a learning network", not signups on a web form. But hey, signups are easy to count; that's hpow you get the millions of dollars of seed funding.
A Sign of How MOOCs Will Impact Colleges
Jim Shimabukuro,
educational rechnology & change, August 13, 2012.
Classic MOOC discourse. "My intention when signing up for this type of free, online learning was to support my own professional development and expose myself to new learning concepts." Jim Shimabukuro writes, "There it is. So simple. So easy to miss. A teacher who is open to possibilities, who is looking at what is and what can be rather than what was." Yeah. That kind of an education.
on commercial silo-ification of online discourse
D'Arcy Norman,
D'Arcy Norman dot net, August 13, 2012.
I've spent a lot of time on gRSShopper, and in the main I think this has been time well spent. But it may well be worth my time to look at what can be done in the way of an alternative to Facebook and Twitter and the rest that doesn't sell personal information and open your networks to anyone and everyone. As a personal project, of course; I'm sure my employer isn't interested.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Twitter, Books, Project Based Learning, Networks, RSS, Privacy Issues]
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