April 29, 2013
The unsung local heroes who are really changing Africa
eLearning Africa News Portal,
April 29, 2013
This is really intersting; I wish there were more sources of inffermation about what's actually happening in East Africa (I have to depend on the blogs and reports writtern by the World Bank and other such agencies, exactly the opposite of what's being presented here). "experts have recently identified far more radical, hidden changes occurring across the Continent. New technologies, when adopted, are adapted to local needs: a sort of under-the-radar innovation which is now pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Mark Kaigwa, Kenyan ICT guru, digital strategist and keynote speaker at eLearning Africa, explains the situation in his own country: 'it’s the organic stuff, initiated by the community and on the fringes… this is what’s really going to transform our country and the rest of the East African region, if not the whole Continent.'"
Rage at the Dying of the Light! Restore RSS for .@Evernote Notebooks
Miguel Guhlin,
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org,
April 29, 2013
People ask me sometimes what the difference is between the sort of system I advocate and cloud-based note-taking services such as Evernote. Here it is, in a nutshell: I advocate that people own their own software, so features they rely on don't disappear because the service provider decides they're too much trouble. "For educators, this is an essential service. Students and teachers posting to a single notebook can immediately re-share content with the world via RSS...
Unfortunately, all this is now impossible." Read more here.
Outsourcing Blogger Comments to Google+
Alex Chitu,
Google Operating System,
April 29, 2013
I think Blogger is probably on the way out. The evidence for this (beyond the demise of other Google products people actually like) is the development of Blogger's new comment system, which is essentially Google+ comment system (with all the weaknesses that entails). As Alex Chitu writes, "you can no longer manage comments from the Blogger dashboard and the new comments aren't included when you export your blog." To my observation, there is a remarkable similarity between Google+ comments and a garbage can. Except people actually want garbage cans. See also: add Google+ comments to web pages.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Similarity, Web Logs, Google, Blogger]
Connected leadership
Harold Jarche,
April 29, 2013
Connectivism (at least my version of it) applied neatly to organizational learning: "Leadership in networks does not come from above, as there is no top. To know the culture of the workplace, one must be the culture. Marinate in it and understand it. This cannot be done while trying to control the culture. Organizational resilience is strengthened when those in leadership roles let go of control."
Major Players in the MOOC Universe
Nigel Hawtin, Xarissa Holdaway,
The Chronicle of Higher Education,
April 29, 2013
There's some interesting on the Twitter about how the Chronicle has "jettisoned" any reference to the original MOOC authors (and somehow promoted Khan Academy to MOOC status. But as Lissie says, "I don't want to be famous / if I have to be shameless / if you don't know what my name is / so what so what."
MOOCs, History and Context
Arthur Levine,
Inside Higher Ed,
April 29, 2013
This is a bit of an odd article, describing as it does the history of post-secondary education in an America-centric and sonetimes inconsistent manner. The term "Democracy's College", for example, is a parochialism that misrepresents both college and democracy. The article, as one commenter notes, depicts several centuries of history where institutions adapted to change, but then argues (on the basis of nothing) that change will come from outside the institution. There's a weird social Darwinism vide through out. MOOCs will be forgotten in history, but when we look back, "like Western Governors University, Coursera, and Udacity leap to mind." And causation is often reversed: for example, the author writes "These institutions will operate globally, not locally, which will dictate a digital format," when in fact, it is the "digital format" that enables universities to operate globally.
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