By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teaching Kids About Their Own Brains
I've read Hawkins's 'On Intelligence'; I thought it was pretty good. But this post reminds us how much knowledge is a matter of perspective. Long writes, "He believes that 'prediction is the fundamental component of intelligence.' Prediction? Prediction? Prediction?" Well, OK. That's not too far out there. From my perspective, pattern matching is the fundamental component of intelligence, reasoning that proceeds by means of similarity. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reject the Finish in 4 Fad
I took five years to finish my undergrad. That's because I switched majors in my second year (from Physics to Philosophy) and spent most of my first four years in the student newspaper office (where I got my real education). Yes, going straight through and finishing in four may be "efficient". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. LETSI - The Proposed New International Steward for SCORM
There's a meeting coming up shortly in London for LETSI - that's 'Learning, Education&Training Systems Interoperability'. This is the body that is supposed to replace ADL as the custodians of SCORM, and to bring peace and harmony to the world of e-learning standards besides. According to the prospectus, membership is proposed to be limited to institutions who pay, say, $10K a pop. So you won't be seeing me there. What I wonder is why ADl couldn't vest the stewardship of SCORM with an existing organization. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning in Immersive Worlds: a Review of Game Based Learning
Substantial (73 page PDF) report on the use of games to support learning, including a section on Second Life. The report is well written and well documented but I am still uneasy with it, as it seems to me to take the perspective of the use of games by learning (eg., see the diagrams on page 36, and the conclusions on page 7 (eg. "Use of both leisure (commercial-off-the-shelf) games and proprietary games need to be embedded in practice effectively and in accordance with sound pedagogic principles and design."), which really seem to be in no way supported by the literature). Rather than using games in learning, I still think educators should be looking at how to use learning in games. Related: a greate example from GamaSutra of a game design document. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. And Now, the Animated E-Framework
Animation of the e-Framework (a set of coordinated tools to support e-learning). After clicking through a bunch of links (including a link-loop for the unwary) you get a 23 megabyte Quicktime that won't play on Linux. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stanford President's $$$, Conflicts of Interest
I think this item is worth noting, given how often we are shown Stanford as a model of practice in the new public-private partnership entrepreneurial world. "The Wall Street Journal reports what the local media should have done long ago: Stanford President John Hennessy's myriad financial deals with Silicon Valley companies, including some fairly obvious conflicts of interest (which officials say aren't serious or have been dealt with). More...