By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Terry Freedman[Edit][Delete]: Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts? What if We're All Wrong?, Information and Communication Technology in Education [Edit][Delete] March 5, 2006
So here we have another case of 'simply not getting it'. In a nutshell, it's this: "In effect, John Clare has set our members a challenge which, expressed crudely, is: put up or shut up! Show us evidence of transformed teaching and learning -- not anecdotal stuff, but measurable gains and, I would add, examples which are both scaleable and replicable, and which stand the test of time (ie short-term gains are sustained in the long-term)." Sheesh. Why should we respond to a challenge on these terms? Why should we let someone like John Clare set the agenda, set the terms of success? If he wants "measurable gain" he should go out there and produce them himself, not sit there and carp at us for not doing it. While he's at it, why doesn't he calculate the "measurable gain" from friendship, loyalty and trust? What blogging brings for us - and for our readers and students - is all of this, and more, and measuring it is as ridiculous as counting the number of friends you have. Having a personal, self-defined identity and being able to express one's thoughts and feelings might not alter a math test score one iota, but honestly, who cares? Education isn't about improving test results, education is about helping people enjoy richer and happier lives (not 'more productive' lives - that's a measure of value we should discard as empty and worthless). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. roseg[Edit][Delete]: Endangered Species, randomselections [Edit][Delete] March 5, 2006
I am a scientist; it says so in my job description (and my Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists membership). Yet I do not even remotely resemble the stereotypical picture of a scientist (except, maybe, for the hair). I don't even write and think like a stereotypical scientist. I am by no means alone. So I am prompted by this item to wonder where such stereotypical images originate. Not how they're broadcast, the usual mass media suspects are easily implicated there, but how the original (inaccurate) idea is developed and popularized. There are so many such misconceptions about in our popular imagery, and it is difficult to draw them out and analyze them, but I have to wonder about the implications of a picture that is not real of ourselves and our culture. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jim McGee[Edit][Delete]: A Reading List for Aspiring Knowledge Workers, March 3, 2006
OK, this is probably a pretty good list, but I would approach a reading list for knowledge workers very differently. For example, knowledge workers should be familiar with Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, Wittgenstein's On Certainty and Polanyi's Personal Knowledge. Throw in some Feyerabend and Lakatos to taste. Add Minsky's Society of Mind. Ronald Giere's Understanding Scientific Reasoning. Blend with Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and Patrick Watson's Struggle for Democracy. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sebastian Fiedler[Edit][Delete]: What Constitutes Personal Learning Environments?, Seblogging [Edit][Delete] March 3, 2006
Seb Fiedler summarizes some of the recent discussion around personal leaning environments. Good, recent, set of links. He writes, "I treat personal learning environments more as a psychological perspective. What forms my 'personal learning environment' at a given point in time, and for a particular purpose or goal (that drives a learning project), is largely determined by the range of resources that I am able to perceive, locate, link to, access, manage, and so forth". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Erick Schonfeld[Edit][Delete]: The Next Net 25, Cnn [Edit][Delete]CNN [Edit][Delete] March 3, 2006
Many of these 'next 25' companies will be familiar to OLDaily readers. There is certainly a trend happening, which this story captures. "The Next Net is deeply collaborative: People from across the planet can work together on the same task, and products or tools can be rapidly tweaked and improved by the collective wisdom of the entire online world. The new era is also creating a realm of endless mix and match: Anyone with a browser can access vast stores of information, mash it up, and serve it in new ways, to a few people or a few hundred million." What this article misses, though, is that the Next Net (as CNN calls Web 2.0) won't be driven so much by these companies as it will by open content, open access, and open source. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. James Farmer[Edit][Delete]: The Blackboard Beyond Initiative, Incorporated Subversion [Edit][Delete]Incorporated subversion [Edit][Delete] March 3, 2006
James Farmer (and he's not alone) is less than impressed with this week's endorsement of e-learning 2.0 by Blackboard. OK, I agree, the corporate track record is not good. And maybe the 2.0 thing is buzzword bingo. On the other hand, though, maybe the right push at this point of time will see the words result in product. And that would be a good thing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jay Cross[Edit][Delete]: Business Performance and Webwork, Internet Time [Edit][Delete] March 3, 2006
Jay Cross points to this useful paper by E&Y's Rod Boothby, The Next Wave in Productivity Tools - Web Office. It correctly points to the idea that "The only way out of an overload of push email and information overload is to turn to pull technologies you access when and how you choose. Don't get pushed around!" Well there's that push versus pull thing again. More...