Some Observations on PLE Diagrams
Scott Leslie, Ed Tech Post, December 19, 2012.

Scott Leslie has revamped his collection of PLE images, moving them from an ujnwieldly wiki page to a much more manageable collection. He also takes the time to reflect on the images, some of which are now six or seven years old. In particular, he highlights "the absence in the diagrams of methods or tools to set goals and identify learning paths," saying "as a whole we are still grappling with how to reconcile the network age of seemingly infinite content, people, connections and activities, with our limited lifespans, limited abilities to pay attention, and limited energies to expend on any one thing."

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Rebuilding the Web We Lost
Anil Dash, Weblog, December 19, 2012.

Anil Dash follows up his "The Web We Lost" post with one on how to rebuild it. It's a set of good suggestions, aimed mostly at builders. Som e of them resonate quite a bit with me. This, for example: "The people involved in creating these platforms are hired from a narrow band of privileged graduates from a small number of top-tier schools, overwhelmingly male and focused narrowly on the traditional Silicon Valley geography." He adds, "Flickr was born in Canada!" I can think of a few other Canadian innovations swllowed and made corporate by that same narrow band of privileged graduates. And then there's this: "Right now, all of the places we can assemble on the web in any kind of numbers are privately owned. And privately-owned public spaces aren't real public spaces. They don't allow for the play and the chaos and the creativity and brilliance that only arise in spaces that don't exist purely to generate profit. And they're susceptible to being gradually gaslighted by the companies that own them." What we are trying to build with (our version of) MOOCs is a public space for education. Has there been push-back against that concept? oh yes.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Schools, Flickr, Silicon Valley, Canada]

Igloo Offers Comprehensive Platform for Social Business
Bill Ives, Portals and KM, December 19, 2012.

There's a lot of overlap between where e-learning systemns are heading and project management softare, especially as e-learning tends to become more communicative and collaborative. I've worked in a number of project management environments. This configuration is typical: "It combines the file sharing capabilities of traditional intranets with the collaboration capabilities of a social business platform. There are activity streams, blogs, communities, events, wikis, polls, project workspaces, and discussion forums." What I want to see is all of this, but not stored in a sinngle central location.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Project Based Learning, Web Logs, Discussion Lists, File Sharing, Online Learning]

Three lessons for the industrial Internet
Mac Slocum, O'Reilly Radar, December 19, 2012.

There are some really good concepts in this post outlining three major design principles informing (and leading to) the success of the internet, drawn from a presentation buy Tim O'Reilly:

• Simplicity: “Standardize as little as possible, but as much as is needed so the system is able to evolve,” O’Reilly said.
• Generativity “Create an architecture of participation that leads to unexpected innovations and discoveries, and builds a new ecosystem of companies that add value to the network,”
• Robustness: Build “the ability to tolerate failure and degrade gracefully rather than catastrophically,” O’Reilly said.

See also the Industrial Internet slides.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Networks]

The coffee is better in space
Brian Jackson, ITBusiness.ca, December 19, 2012.

We were all pretty happy in Canada this morning to see that Chris Hadfield take off in a Russian Soyuz rocket en route to the International Space Station. He will be the first Canadian to command the Intenational Space Station. There's a Canadian Space Agency page about the mission, and no douybt thousands of Canadian schoolchildren are following it online, day by day. "Along with the Barenaked Ladies' Ed Robertson, he will also co-write the official song for Music Monday 2013 to celebrate music education. This initiative is part of a new partnership between CBC Music, the Coalition for Music Education and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA)." Bravo, well done.

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