By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Lanny Arvan[Edit][Delete]: They're Changing Guard (with apologies to A. A. Milne), Lanny on Learning Technology [Edit][Delete] January 31, 2006

[link: Hits] There's a lot of blog coverage today of the current ELI conference, most of it by the new guard Lanny Arvan writes of, but it is interesting to look at it in the light of his reflections. "Presnky (and others at this conference) seemingly argue that there needs to be immediate response that progress is being made and that must come from external sources (moving from one level to a higher one in a video game). This I think is wrong and pernicious and will actually be quite limiting for the generation if it becomes the norm in behavior". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Harold Jarche[Edit][Delete]: Controlling Chaos?, Jarche Consulting [Edit][Delete] January 31, 2006

[link: 8 Hits] This has been sitting in my 'maybe' tray for more than a week (oh yes, I actually do have a system for selecting links). This comment deserves to be echoed: "I'm not an expert on ontologies, the semantic web, metadata or controlled vocabularies, but I've had enough conversations with enough experts to know that more control will not address our information management needs... trying to control chaos is a losing game". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ulises Ali Mejias[Edit][Delete]: The Blog as Dissertation Literature Review?, Ideant [Edit][Delete] January 31, 2006

[link: Hits] I thought this was a pretty good paper. The premise is straightfoward: Ulises Ali Mejias argues that the posts in his blog, over the long run, constitute a literature review, as defined by Boote et al. in Scholars Before Researchers: On the Centrality of the Dissertation Literature Review in Research Preparation. I think he succeeds uiin showing that blogging satisfies the criteria, but I have to ask, is the resulting literature review a good literature review? My response? No. Consider: he includes Barabâasi but not Watt. Turkle but neither Rushkoff nor Rheingold. Habermas but not Foucault. Maybe the list would be rounded out over time, but he doesn't show that. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unknown[Edit][Delete]: CEO Speak: Brainvisa&Hurix Systems, The Learned Man! [Edit][Delete] January 31, 2006

[link: Hits] Discussion of the state of e-learning in India. "The Indian companies are as competitive, creative, innovative and focused as their foreign counterparts. Right now India is shining and would continue to shine, as more and more work would flow in." Some discussion about the difficulties serving the domestic Indian market. "The traditional learning method is not an option, as we do not have that kind of infrastructure, e-learning will democraticize education in India". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Michael Feldstein[Edit][Delete]: OK, So Stephen Downes Doesn't Like the LMOS, E-Literate [Edit][Delete] January 31, 2006

[link: Hits] Michael Feldstein wasn't too happy with my post from yesterday. He writes, "I think language like 'ridiculous' and 'absurd' is unnecessarily hyperbolic... It's also not terribly collegial or respectful. And finally, it doesn't reflect a grasp of the problems we are trying to solve." The problem they are trying to solve is this: "SUNY has 64 campuses with 414,000 students... Somebody has to provision all of those courses from a server, make sure it all scales, and support all of those applications." But if you try to build one system that will automate everything for that many people, you get (in my view) an unsustainable (and very expensive) mess. I would never try to serve so many people from a great big server with a predefined architecture; indeed, I have argued at length over the years that this is exactly what shouldn't be done. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mark Feldstein[Edit][Delete]: Why Mashups Make the LMOS, E-Literate [Edit][Delete] January 30, 2006

[link: 6 Hits] I have been sort of sympathetic to the concept of the learningmanagement operating system (LMOS) because, after all, the concept includes things that I favour: distributed resources, user access to the underlying system. But I began to falter when Mark Feldstein said "We don't just want to offer many different affordances. we want to orchestrate them." And following his link to Bernie Durfee has sketched out a first use case implementation sent me over the edge. I'll say it bluntly, and apologize later: this is the most ridiculous thing I've seen. Durfee is describing what the rest of understand as 'upload a file and base a discussion thread on it'. Something I did right here in about 10 seconds today". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Henry E. Schaffer[Edit][Delete]: Online Material Decreases Class Attendance?, EDUCAUSE Blogs [Edit][Delete] January 30, 2006

[link: 4 Hits] As usual, poor and incomplete research results in contradictory reports about the impact of technology in the classroom; one study says the use of iPods caused no change, while another (consisting apparently of a reporter asking some friends) draws the opposite conclusion. If we look at the reporter's 'data', though, what we find is a communications professor who, even with no resources posted online, could only attract 60 to 70 percent of his students (yes, apparently 30 percent of his students decided that seeing nothing was better than sitting through one of his lectures). So I have only one response when I see a statement like this: "the result, Allen said, was that only about one-third of her 154 students showed up for most lectures". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Fran Lewitter[Edit][Delete]: Welcome to PLoS Computational Biology Education, PLoS Computational Biology [Edit][Delete] January 30, 2006

[link: Hits] The Public Library of Science journal Computational Biology announces a new column on education. They write, "Tutorials and reviews are only the beginning. Over time, we will explore ways to present educational information in this digital age that can take advantage of technological innovation. In addition to text-based information, we are considering multimedia presentations and other media to enhance the written word". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Leigh Blackall[Edit][Delete]: North Korea and South Australia Agree on Censorship: Web 2 Banned, Teach and Learn Online [Edit][Delete] January 30, 2006

[link: 9 Hits] The only consolation - if there is any - is that North Korea and South Australia are by no means alone in their dislike for new web technologies. Still. Leigh Blackall comments, "Some might say, 'take it to the media Bill, blow the lid off it' - but from what I've seen and heard on the mainstream media toilet papers, teleblindness and radio monotony, they're buying into the fear frenzy and are not interested in representing a range of views on Internet censorship in schools." Perhaps if we set a better example, we wouldn't be so worried. Related: Judy Breck ,a href="http://goldenswamp.com/2006/01/30/teaching-information-literacy-skills-or-censoring-kids/">comments, "What scares me is there is not the least hesitation in the article to assume educators must approve what students study". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tim Stahmer[Edit][Delete]: Public Schools Win! (Maybe), Assorted Stuff [Edit][Delete] January 30, 2006

As Tim Stahmer cites, "A large-scale government-financed study has concluded that when it comes to math, students in regular public schools do as well as or significantly better than comparable students in private schools." As Tim Stahmer comments, "But itâx^TMs certainly not enough to force the death of NCLB and declare victory over the charter/voucher concept". More...