Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Social and more
Educational social software. This includes formal and informal tools, like information messengers, blogs, wikis, e-portfolios, and personal learning environments (Elgg). These tools are designed to make use of the networking power of the world wide web and allow users to be “connected” online and offline, and to be able to share, create and recreate text, audio and video.
The advent of social software calls for a new approach to designing learning. George Siemens suggest that this new approach could be “connectivism”.
What is Web 2.0? What is social about software? Who better to tell you than Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of Web 1.0. Berners-Lee calls for Web 2.0 calm: But wait…he’s not talking positively. He’s not gesturing wildly about web 2.0? What gives?
Diana Oblinger has published a new book: Learning Spaces. The book contains case studies of learning space design in a variety of organizations. And check out Using wiki in education to see some practical educational applications.
Free is good, as is open learning, and E-Press has lots of free books (if you download) or if you want the hardcopy you can pay. A great example is Complex Systems for a Complex World that talks about how we must understand human reasoning through simulation to assist us in understanding the complexity of social networking.
For a bit of fun, and to hear all the modern technological babble used in one 3 minute skit see George Carlin perform his Modern man routine.
Seeking a better world? One where opportunities are endless, where physical limitations can be overcome? See this video that creates such a world using Second Life - an online society within a 3D world, where users can explore, build, socialize, and participate in their own economy..
Friday, September 08, 2006
Dave Cormier P.E.I Ed Teker
Maintaining a blog is no mean feat. Sharing in the bandwagon, clarion calling and rabble rousing against those that would hamper and those that ignore the opportunities afforded by open learning, open content is even harder. And then there's trying to keep up with all the info floating in the blogosphere. Ohh, and having a regular life and job with all the concommitant responsibilities. And I think, sometimes, that I'm doing a great job (patting myself on the back) and making great strides in my understanding and disseminating until, UNTIL, I run into those who are doing even more - and seem to be doing it without breaking a sweat.
Of course I would cite the Supersurfer of it all - Stephen Downes - who seems to be everywhere and commenting on everything at the same time (impossible? Ok,hmmm he's now "sitting on the porch at the guest house...in (Africa) Bloem, about to leave for a Free State Braii," and still sharing it all with us.).
And of course there are others - like Dave Cormier, tucked away in Canada's smallest province but contributing big time to the cause.
I'm installing and implementing a series of Elgg sessions (for teaching and for community building objectives) here at the University of Alberta, and Dave Tosh (developer of Elgg) referred me to dave Cormier.
I Skyped Dave C. and we had a great talk as he multitasked giving me advice, sending me refrences and stepping me through his world of blogging and networking - especially his Edtech talk interviews (and don't miss number 60 the one with Terry Anderson, my ex professor, fellow Edmontonian and mentor.
But there's more - what is Dave doing?
This is dave's educational blog
This is dave's movie show
This is the educational technology show that dave hosts with jeff lebow
This is the webcast academy
This is the community that dave works with worldbridges
This is the educational show that dave hosts with Jeff
This is bonnie's (dave's partner) blog, the crib chronicles.
This is the flicker account for Oscar , dave's son.
Dave - slow down, chill a bit. It just can't be that healthy being that productive. Can it??
Of course I would cite the Supersurfer of it all - Stephen Downes - who seems to be everywhere and commenting on everything at the same time (impossible? Ok,hmmm he's now "sitting on the porch at the guest house...in (Africa) Bloem, about to leave for a Free State Braii," and still sharing it all with us.).
And of course there are others - like Dave Cormier, tucked away in Canada's smallest province but contributing big time to the cause.
I'm installing and implementing a series of Elgg sessions (for teaching and for community building objectives) here at the University of Alberta, and Dave Tosh (developer of Elgg) referred me to dave Cormier.
I Skyped Dave C. and we had a great talk as he multitasked giving me advice, sending me refrences and stepping me through his world of blogging and networking - especially his Edtech talk interviews (and don't miss number 60 the one with Terry Anderson, my ex professor, fellow Edmontonian and mentor.
But there's more - what is Dave doing?
This is dave's educational blog
This is dave's movie show
This is the educational technology show that dave hosts with jeff lebow
This is the webcast academy
This is the community that dave works with worldbridges
This is the educational show that dave hosts with Jeff
This is bonnie's (dave's partner) blog, the crib chronicles.
This is the flicker account for Oscar , dave's son.
Dave - slow down, chill a bit. It just can't be that healthy being that productive. Can it??
Microsoft 1/2, Open learning 1
This is the section of the US Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education report before Microsoft, as David Wiley put it "threw a hissy fit" and "demanded" an amendment:
The commission encourages the creation of incentives to promote the development of open-source and open-content projects at universities and colleges across the United States, enabling the open sharing of educational materials from a variety of institutions, disciplines, and educational perspectives. Such a portal could stimulate innovation, and serve as the leading resource for teaching and learning. New initiatives such as OpenCourseWare, the Open Learning Initiative, the Sakai Project, and the Google Book project hold out the potential of providing universal access both to general knowledge and to higher education.
And this is the revised version amended to appease Microsoft:
The commission encourages the creation of incentives to promote the development of information-technology-based collaborative tools and capabilities at universities and colleges across the United States, enabling access, interaction, and sharing of educational materials from a variety of institutions, disciplines, and educational perspectives. Both commercial development and new collaborative paradigms such as open source, open content, and open learning will be important in building the next generation learning environments for the knowledge economy.
So Microsoft succeeded in expunging most references to free and open source content and applications, BUT open source,open content and open learning are still there!Yeeeahh!
The commission encourages the creation of incentives to promote the development of open-source and open-content projects at universities and colleges across the United States, enabling the open sharing of educational materials from a variety of institutions, disciplines, and educational perspectives. Such a portal could stimulate innovation, and serve as the leading resource for teaching and learning. New initiatives such as OpenCourseWare, the Open Learning Initiative, the Sakai Project, and the Google Book project hold out the potential of providing universal access both to general knowledge and to higher education.
And this is the revised version amended to appease Microsoft:
The commission encourages the creation of incentives to promote the development of information-technology-based collaborative tools and capabilities at universities and colleges across the United States, enabling access, interaction, and sharing of educational materials from a variety of institutions, disciplines, and educational perspectives. Both commercial development and new collaborative paradigms such as open source, open content, and open learning will be important in building the next generation learning environments for the knowledge economy.
So Microsoft succeeded in expunging most references to free and open source content and applications, BUT open source,open content and open learning are still there!Yeeeahh!
Inside Higher Ed :: Momentum for Open Access Research
So who is truly against open access publishing? The scholarly societies have been opposing open access to academic content, but as this article notes, the provosts of 25 research universities came out in favor of open access.
And why not? As they cite the "current system of research publishing leads to outrageously high journal costs that are harming libraries and making it impossible for people to follow research." Making reserach free and accessible shouldn't be such an argumentative issue. Research is paid for through public dollars, why should the public have to pay again for access to the findings? Or to put a finer point on it, isn't the expectation of research to share it with as wide an audience as possible? Information wants to be free.
And why not? As they cite the "current system of research publishing leads to outrageously high journal costs that are harming libraries and making it impossible for people to follow research." Making reserach free and accessible shouldn't be such an argumentative issue. Research is paid for through public dollars, why should the public have to pay again for access to the findings? Or to put a finer point on it, isn't the expectation of research to share it with as wide an audience as possible? Information wants to be free.
Friday, September 01, 2006
No Education Patents! - Home
The education community has a wiki established to voice concern about and submit a priori info on elearning LMS development. Access the No Education Patents wiki (noedupatents.org) to see a a plain-language explanation of all 44 claims contained in the Blackboard patent and submit specific examples of prior art.
SAP patents e learning
Now SAP has decided to patent e-learning. What's going on here? This continued wall building is not good for open education. maybe Blackboard and SAP can go at each other and leave Desire2learn alone. SAP has very deep pockets, and no, they are worldwide and won't stop at European patents.
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