1 octobre 2018

Theory in Chaos
I've seen a number of articles like this over the last year or so celebrating the demise of postmodernism and associated trends (in this case, Marxism in critical theory). I won't pretend to understand postmodernism (who does?) but that which is touted to be replacing it, the embracing of "the possibility of objective knowledge" and faith in "truth, unity, and progress" seems equally misguided. More...

Despite Winning Higher Fees, Universities Still Can't Escape Economics
Britain has joined the worldwide trend toward higher tuition fees as Tony Blair prevailed in a close vote that more than doubled the maximums universities may charge. Academic leaders are cheering, but they shouldn't be. More...

Rip-off 101: How The Current Practices Of The Textbook Industry Drive Up The Cost Of Collge Textbooks
Clark sent me this item documenting the rising cost of textbooks and calling fthe 'unbundling' of texts with expensive add-ons such as CD-ROMs. Some good research statistics and analsis of publishing costs and purchaser preference. More...

How Many Social Nets Are Too Many?
Several people have linked to this short article and lengthy list of more than fifty social networking services. Having finally received my invitation to Orkut, I can report that it's pretty much like the rest, though authored with Google's usual style and clarity. But it doesn't matter. Systems like Orkut and Friendster (which I have also tried) are not the future, not because (as Cory Doctorow says) "There are only so many hours in the day," but because they are incorrectly designed. More...

A Prescriptive Study of Early Trends in Implementing E-learning in the UK Higher Education Sector
The best parts of this paper are the beginning and the end, as the author analyses the management theories behind the implementation of e-learning at universities in Britain. Most institutions are to more or less a degree moving to what may be called 'post-Fordism', that is, a post-industrial mode of management style. More...

Science, Technology and Innovation for the 21st Century
A declaration from ministerial representatives from 34 nations to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) supporting "open access to and wide use of research data" and calling for a study into a principle for access to research data from public funding. More...

Predictions for 2004
elearn Magazine still hasn't learned to give its articles permanent URLs, so this link will be a piece of junk in a few weeks (Earth to eLearn: get with the program). But I wanted to forward this list of predictions for the coming year, a little late, but including a snippet from me. More...

Findory
The future of personalization is in approaches like this site, which adapts to your choices and presents you news you are interested in. Brought to you by the same people who brought you Memigo (which I linked to yesterday). More...

Economist Intelligence Unit Releases Global e-Learning Rankings
I have no idea why a company would issue a press release describing a new report without providing a link to the report, but that's what IBM does with this item. The IBM elearning site has a number of iteresting papers (no RSS feed for them though), but not this one. More...

E-learning Bodies in Historic Talks
Looks like the corporate e-learning community in Britain is getting together. This is similar to what happened in Canada with CELEA. I would reserve the word "historic" for meetings between heads of state, though. More...