April 30, 2013
Discovery Loved, Cause Hated
Andrew B. Watt,
Andrew B. Watt's Blog,
April 30, 2013
This is a great story - kids, trying to track down why their 3D printer is making errors, figuring out things like x-axis and number lines and the rest. "they can see the X-Axis, the Y-Axis, and the Z-axis. How many of those plastic pixels wide is your coffee cup? How many deep? How thick are the walls? The handle? And Can that handle be supported by its own weight as the printer builds it?" As always, immersing yourself in the thing makes for much better learning than simply being told the abstract principles of the thing.
Prix Minerva 500.000 $: La #educación tendrá pronto su premio Nobel... L’éducation aura bientôt son prix Nobel...
April 30, 2013
Translation: "The # education will soon have a Nobel prize ... " See the NY Times article. If they were really interested in innovative teaching, they would not limit eligible recipients of the prize to university professors. That is all.
CloudHQ To the Rescue - Abandoning Evernote for Dropbox
Miguel Guhlin,
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org,
April 30, 2013
Still in the context of the Evernote RSS fiasco, but this paragraph alone makes the story worth the read: "Kudos to CloudHQ for making it easy to move content from one service to another! You can also sync content back-n-forth between a variety of services, which makes it a pretty neat deal at $9.90 per month (if you need that level of redundancy). Since this is a one-way trip for me, I probably won't be using it much...but CloudHQ is tempting as an easy way to move from GoogleDrive to Dropbox or vice versa!"
Every Post is a “Selfie”: The Desire for Social Approval
Eric Olsen,
Higher Ed Live,
April 30, 2013
It's always interesting to observe people thinking that "there must be some reason" for doing things online, because they cannot comprehend that the thing in itself is worth doing. I have binders full of original writings from the pre-internet days that prove that I would be doing this even if there weren't an audience to see it. For me, it's easier and more convenient to do it online. But I don't need some other reason (even if there is some other reason, the point here is that I don't need it). I'm sure some people do it for the money, to it for the fame, do it for the social approval, etc. But there are some people who, in the words of mark Pilgrim, "can't not write." I'm one of those - and I fear the people who say "there must be some reason" (economists, all of them) will never get me.
Does the Khan Academy Pass the MOOC “Duck Test”?
Anuli Akanegbu,
EdTech,
April 30, 2013
There has been much criticiasm of the Chronicle's recent elevation of Khan Academy to 'MOOC status'. My own thinking is that either (a) they needed four companies to make a nice need diagram, and cMOOC is not a company, or (b) someone paid them. But I really don't know. In this post, Anuli Akanegbu asks when Khan passes the "duck test" - as in, "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..." So, does it? "By all appearances, the Khan Academy passes the MOOC “Duck Test.” But even though it may look like a MOOC and sound like a MOOC, founder Salman Khan maintains that the Khan Academy is not a MOOC." There is video.
Digital Literacy: Find Free (and Legal) Images for Your Classroom
Jennifer Carey,
Powerful Learning Practice,
April 30, 2013
OK, I think it's good to give people advice on where to find free and open images online. But I bristle when these are characterized as 'legal' images. It is true that you can't just use copyright images willy-nilly. But there are ample provisions under fair use (or fair dealing) for the use of images - goodness, just go look at Google's image search and you will see that Google, at least, can use smaller copies of them in appropriate contexts and for non-infringing purposes. The definition of 'legal' is not the same as 'presventing anyone from sending cease and desist orders' because (putative) image owners extend their 'rights' far beyond what the law allows. A kid using a Google Images copy of salami on a class blog? That really sounds like fair use to me, and to my mind, large commercial corporations should just leave these kids alone. And online pundits should not cater to this - these corporations are wrong when they are harassing kids about copyright, and should not be treated as though they are right.
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