25 most recent entries:
The Blogging Personality (Aug 19 2008 20:01 GMT)
A little fun read and a fun test. My scores were nearly the same as the author's - very high in Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience, average on the rest. I scored a '3' in 'friendliness' - guess there's a lesson there, hm? GrrlScientist, Living the Scientific Life, August 19, 2008 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]
Big Debt On Campus: Credit Offers Flood the Quad (Aug 19 2008 16:38 GMT)
This can't have any negative outcome... can it? "More college students are turning to credit cards to pay not only for their textbooks, meals and transportation but also for tuition... A recent survey by U.S.
RSP Blog Directory (Aug 19 2008 16:21 GMT)
This is a list of open access and repository blogs associated in some way with JISC, including quite a number of project blogs and personal blogs. I only subscribe to a subset of these, so if you're interested in repositories you should look to subscribing to them yourself. helpfully, there is an OPML file so you can easily upload the list into an RSS aggregator and begin reading with a minumum of fuss. Unattributed, JISC, August 19, 2008 [Tags: RSS, Learning Object Repositories, Project Based Learning, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Open Access, OPML, Web Logs] [Link] [Comment]
Aug. 19, 1839: Photography Goes Open Source (Aug 19 2008 16:12 GMT)
People ask me all the time how people who create can be compensated for their work. How about this story, describing how the secret of photography was given to the world (one wonders what would have happened had it remained a closed, patented process): "Arago used the buzz to lobby the French Parliament to grant pensions to Daguerre and Isidore Niepce, so they could make all the steps of the new process public and France would 'then nobly give to the whole world this discovery which could contribute so much to the progress of art and science.'" Randy Alfred, Wired, August 19, 2008 [Tags: Patents, Copyrights, Patents] [Link] [Comment]
Free Digital Texts Begin to Challenge Costly College Textbooks in California (Aug 19 2008 15:40 GMT)
Expect to see more of this. Not only the writing and releasing of free textbooks. But also the attempts by publishers to lure their authors back into the commercial fold. They'll have to change their price points, though. As Tom Hoffman says, "he point is that there are lots of actors other than publishers who can pay a professor to write a text and release it under a free license, and $100,000 is not a lot of money to a state, country, large university or foundation.
Research Proves Power Corrupts (Aug 19 2008 15:30 GMT)
I tried to post it there but the Disqus comment system entered an endless cycle instead. So I'll say it here, then, no problem. Vicki Davis looks at research showing that people in positions of power abuse their power, and asks "How can we empower effective leaders?" and "how can they retain the skills of leadership that got them there in the first place." My response is:
Student Voice As a Good Thing (Aug 18 2008 19:39 GMT)
Student voice is a good thing. But let us not delude ourself that the oft-substituted "carefully selected model students as scrutinized abd vetted by teachers student voices" is a good thing. The first questions we should ask are: who gets to speak, and what are they allowed to say? If the answers aren't "anyone" and "anything" then we're getting tecaher (or administrator) voices, not student voices.
Why Open Curriculum Wikis Won'T Work (Aug 18 2008 19:34 GMT)
Here's the argument: "Curriculum is a statement of opinion - it reflects the author's beliefs about the nature of teaching and learning... Unfortunately, beliefs and philosophy don't make good subjects for open wikis... Without a guiding hand and point of view, anything added to a curriculum wiki will have no anchor in a common belief about the nature of teaching and learning." Strictly speaking, this is a circular argument.
REST Questions (Aug 18 2008 19:28 GMT)
The discussion over how web sites should talk to each other continues. Tim Bray launches a set of counter-arguments, generally of the form: "Just because UDDI never took off, you can't conclude that service registries are dumb." But I would take each of his points and inverse them: UDDI never took off because service registries are dumb.
Two Kinds of Freedom (Aug 18 2008 19:23 GMT)
I think there's a point here, though I have to say I've been finding a lot to question in Haskin these days. His point is that "Only one kind successfully gives us experiences of being free. The other kind is like an attractive bait that tempts us with the promise of freedom which is never delivered" where "Authentic freedom is found within situations" (including constraints and limitations) while "Pseudo freedom is sought after by escaping from situations' such as "acts of defiance, rebellion, or retaliation." I would rather say it this way (probably changing Haskins's meaning): freedom is proactive, pseudo-freedom is reactive.
IMS Learning Information Services: The Motivating Pain (Aug 18 2008 19:08 GMT)
Michael Feldstein starts a series of posts on the "IMS Learning Information Services (LIS) specification that the SAIP [Student Administration Integration Pack, newly released by Oracle] implements." This post described the needschools had for a way to integrate their learning management system information with their student information system information. "In most places, after a teacher spends an entire semester working in their LMS grade book-the online, electronic gradebook with grades that are stored in a modern, electronic database - the teacher has to print out a copy of the students' final grades, log onto the SIS, go to the grade roster page for the class, and manually re-enter all the grades." It's this sort of thing - and I can think of a certain piece of time recording software that is the same way - that makes people hate technology. Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, August 18, 2008 [Tags:
Lame and Lamer: 10 Dumbest Viral Marketing Campaigns (Aug 18 2008 09:52 GMT)
I just finished reading William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. Recommended; Gibson's most accessible novel in years. Among other gems, this: "You 'know' in your limbic brain.
Game Development Tools (Aug 15 2008 18:35 GMT)
I think you'll appreciate the 'impossible dream' cloud in the game development chart offered here by Clark Quinn. You can create games with simple tools, but they then tend to be simple (branching) games. If you want to present something more interesting, like a model-driven (sim or database) game, you need more complex tools - anything from Flash to modern programming languages. Quinn says, "The impossible dream is that tool that everyone wants that makes it easy to develop model-driven interactions. Sorry, I'm convinced it can't exist, because to be flexible enough to cover all the different models that we'd want to represent, it's got to be so general as to be essentially just a programming language.
Does Court Ruling Over Artistic License Conflict With Other Copyright Rulings? (Aug 15 2008 12:07 GMT)
Michael Masnick gets a lot of mileage out of a minor point that eventually turns out to be mistaken, but the column, which describes a recent court ruling that Creative Commons licenses are enforcable, demonstrates the twisting and turning that can occur in the whole debate. Why, asks Masnick, is a license like Creative Commons enforcible when something like slapping a 'Not For Resale' notice on a CD is not. Both do the same thing: "it creates a separate license on top of copyright, and then tries to use copyright's defenses against breaking that license." But there is a crucil difference:
Fact Checking Whatever It Takes (Or: The Trouble with Heroes) (Aug 15 2008 12:01 GMT)
When what you know of the world comes from movies, you get very mistaken impressions of the world (aka the Disney Effect). Like this: "This is American education's favorite past-time - find inspirational principal/teacher and tell an uplifting/touching story about how kids from tough backgrounds beat the odds. Preferably, someone easy on the eyes like Hilary Swank or Morgan Freeman plays the lead." Of course, the whole idea that the whole weight of poverty and desperation is overturned (usually in one semester) by an inspiring teacher is absurd.
A Professor's Mooning Captured On YouTube (Aug 15 2008 11:55 GMT)
More evidence of how YouTube takes an incident that would have formerly been nothing more than a local curiosity and turns it into a global phenomenon. Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 15, 2008 [Tags: Video, YouTube] [Link] [Comment]
Common Cartridge Frequently Asked Questions (Aug 14 2008 16:23 GMT)
The specification for Common Cartridge was (finally) released for public comment about two weeks ago. IMS writes, "Due to the enormous response we have received after the release for comment, we have compiled a list of Frequently Asked Questions." Unattributed, IMS, August 14, 2008 [Tags: IMS Project] [Link] [Comment]
Google Bring Scholar Richness Into Normal Search Results (Aug 14 2008 15:44 GMT)
This is good news, but with a caveat. Google frequently lists academic papers in its search results, but from a service like CiteULike where, instead of the paper, you have a link to a publisher repository that wants to charge you some ridiculous amount to read it. Like this. These results should be expunged from Google, because not only are they useless links, they waste my time leading me down a trail that ends with a subscription wall. Via Peter Suber.
Bridging the Gap Between Instructional Design and Double Loop Learning (Aug 14 2008 14:20 GMT)
One of the major criticisms of learning design (LD) is that it is static; the learner is limited to following the processes created by the designer. But in certain circumstances - a real employment environment, for example, where there is an expectation of process improvement - this is insufficient. There is a need to a 'double loop' model - one where learners do not only engage in repeated practice and performance improvement, but also one where learners reflect on those practices and - dynamically - improve the learning (and work) process itself. This paper describes an architecture that resolves the double loop requirement through the development of 'atomic actions', "small pieces of workflow that can be 'stitched' together at will, while retaining the changeability of the so constructed process.
Rice U. Acquires Rights to Popular Textbook to Offer It Free Online (Aug 14 2008 13:16 GMT)
This is interesting on a couple of levels. The first is the obvious precedent that it sets, since the textbook liberated from the publisher is now available, under a Creative Commons license, not only to Rice students, but to all readers. It would be interesting to know what the cost was for the rights (and how long it will take for people to create a wiki version). Second, the book was posted by Rice through its Connexions open content authoring tool, which represents a new use for this now familiar standby. Jeffrey R.
Research + Web = More Consensus, Less Diversity (At Least, So Far) (Aug 14 2008 12:51 GMT)
I should have known the writers at Britannica blog would seize on the ridiculous claim that Google is making us stupid, highlighted here and then in the current link. But I would expect Evans, who offers his support for the thesis, to at least get his facts right. He says, "everyone is looking at the same high-ranking, highly accessible, most easily available sites." That would be true only if Google presents the same search results to everyone. But in fact, Google tailors its search results to the individual.
Rethinking Critical Thinking (Aug 14 2008 09:37 GMT)
I will have more to say about this on day in the future, but for now let me say that my own experience teaching critical thinking says that this assertion is wrong: "Critical thinking... is not a skill like riding a bike.... Instead... you have to buckle down and learn the content of a subject-facts...
PLEs - Designing for Change (Aug 13 2008 18:44 GMT)
This seems right: "establishing a learning environment, i.e. a network of people, artefacts, and tools (consciously or unconsciously) involved in learning activities, is part of the learning outcomes, not an instructional condition." Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu, August 13, 2008 [Tags:
Do Rewards Shape Online Discussions? (Aug 13 2008 18:42 GMT)
I think the author has engaged in an interesting discussion, even if I think that the study she publishes here has some serious flaws. The proposition advanced is that feedback will improve online discussions. This proposition is considered from with the context of 'feedback theory' as found within the more general context of systems theory. "Put simply, a system has interacting parts and feedback provides information to those parts in ways that maintain the system." Well and good, but there are mechanisms - back propagation, for example - where feedback does not operate as though it were pressing on little causal levers.
Higher Education - Dangerously Close to Becoming Irrelevant (Aug 13 2008 18:30 GMT)
This post reads like a news article summarizing some of David Wiley's views and activities, so it feels a bit odd reading it on his 'Open Education' blog (it was written by someone called 'Thomas', according to the RSS feed; no attribution on the web page). Despite the oddity of the presentation, the message is worth heeding: "the Internet and wealth of developing technology provide young people outside of education with a sense of 'openness, connectedness, personalization, and participation' that is simply not found at the university level today." Thomas, Open Education, August 13, 2008 [Tags:
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