Google’s Philosopher
Robert Herritt, Pacific Stamndard, 2015/01/02
This argument from "Google's philosopher" (actually Oxford ethics professor Luciano Floridi) has been flagged as "novel", but they're actually in line with a lot of contemporary thinking. According to Floridi, 'you are your information, which comprises everything from data about the relations between particles in your body, to your life story, to your memories, beliefs, and genetic code." This reminds me immediately of McLuhan's argument that our tools and devices are extensions of ourselves, and George Siemens's suggestion that our thoughts and ideas are contained in the network beyond our physical brain. More...

How to learn efficiently
Daniel Lemire, Weblog, 2015/01/02
What's interesting about this post is the suggestion that efficient learning is the opposite of what we might think it is. Lemire first outlines three reasonable principles (quoted):

• Seek the most difficult problems
• Reflect on what you have supposedly learned
• Avoid learning from a single source

This is in fact exactly what I have done most of my life (even in public school, where I frequently went well beyond the curriculum to create 'projects' devoted to any of a variety of topics). More...

Are rich media better than single media in online learning?
Tony Bates, online learning and distance education resources, 2015/01/02
Tony Bates suggests, "In general, it is usually a useful guideline always to look for the simplest medium first then only opt for a more complex or richer medium if the simple medium can’t deliver the learning goals as adequately." One reason for this is "there may be too many distractions in a rich medium for students to grasp the essential point of the teaching." But if what Daniel Lemire says below is true, then this is fals. More...

Harmonizing Learning and Education
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2015/01/02
Definitely read this long post from Michael Feldstein in response to Dave Cormier's recent set of articles about engagement (I find it fascinating that the truly heady thinking takes place in blog posts, not Twitter, and not academic journals). More...

When it comes to Education and Technology, “Efficiency” is not the point
Steve Krause, stevendkrause.com, 2015/01/02
From The Hechinger Report, which Steve Krause states"'is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based at Teachers College, Columbia University' that apparently generates a lot of articles about education that get poured right into a lot of mainstream publications," we read that "the assumed purpose of technology (e.g., computer stuff, basically) in this article is efficiency, and some version of that word/theme appears at least a dozen times in this 1,000 or word so piece." This, he writes, misrepresents the purpose of technology in education. More...