« Que ton aliment soit ta seule médecine », disait Hippocrate ! Traiter le lien entre l’alimentation et la santé est donc une nécessité dont la Région des Pays de la Loire a choisi de faire une priorité à travers un plan dédié voté à l’occasion de la dernière session régionale. Plus...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teachers Discovering the Musician Within: GarageBand Is Key
OK, I didn't think much of the music samples offered in this post, but I'm not really into funk. What I will say is that, like Clay Burell, I was amazed to discover what GarageBand can do, and I think it's an absolutely fantastic tool to use to teach people music. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dr. Alfred Crockus and Crosley Shelvador, M.D.
Oy. I think that the lecturing career of Dan Hodgins - an "internationally known presenter" - is about to come to a screeching halt. This stems from a teacher who reported that "Red flags went up for me when, very early in his presentation, he showed a drawing of the brain and claimed that, 'Girls see the details of experiences... Boys see the whole but not the details.'" A detailed examination of Hodgins's claim found no evidence of the difference - nor of the brain region he describes, the 'Crockus' ("the detailed section of the brain, a part of the frontal lope"), nor of the supposed discoverer of the Crockus, Dr. Alfred Crockus, nor the Boston Medical University Hospital, where Crockus is supposed to have worked. The name, indeed, bears more resemblance to slang than to any living human (or human brain area). Crockus is about to come into existence, however, as a new award, the Dr. Alfred Crockus Award for the misuse of neuroscience. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bornstein, Kawasaki, Changing the World
You can change the world, but I think the world has to want to change. How many leaders, I wonder, looked to see where things were going, leapt out in front, and then got lucky as events bore out their original vision? That's how businesses operate - they keep trying, until something sticks. CEOs are just as often lucky as they are good. You can't do that in the non-profit sector. you can't just say, "Well Cambodia isn't selling, I think I'll try Gabon." And you can't just go 'out of business' and start over from scratch. More...
Le premier courant « populiste », bien oublié aujourd’hui, est celui du narodnichestvo russe, qui renvoie aux premières générations révolutionnaires des années 1860. Ce mouvement cherche une voie nouvelle vers la transformation sociale. Elle se veut sans doute différente de celle qu’a suivie l’Occident, mais son fonds commun est constitué par une mentalité tout à la fois démophile et démocrate, qui fait de la rencontre entre l’intelligentsia et le « peuple » la condition nécessaire et suffisante de la régénération de la Russie. Plus...D’une certaine façon, tout commence par la cuisine. Les premiers recueils de recettes en langue vernaculaire apparaissent à la fin du Moyen Âge et transcrivent une cuisine de cour, comme dans le fameux Viandier, dont nous avons plusieurs manuscrits (XIVe et XVe siècles), et qui devient, après maintes évolutions, le premier livre de cuisine français, publié vers 1486. On l’attribue à Guillaume Tirel, dit Taillevent, un chef réputé qui travailla pour les rois Charles V et Charles VI. Les recettes présentées montrent une cuisine sophistiquée et un art culinaire déjà bien développé. Parmi les recueils médiévaux, Le Mesnagier de Paris, rédigé vers 1393 par un riche parisien pour sa jeune épouse, propose une cuisine plutôt bourgeoise, avec une série de menus de grands repas qui attestent le faste de l’époque. Dès le XVIe siècle, des étrangers louent la cuisine du royaume, et « pour une épaule de mouton rôtie avec de petits oignons comme on l’accommode dans toute la France, on laisserait volontiers la chère la plus délicate », témoigne l’Italien Antonio de Beatis. Plus...By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. YouTube 101 - Yes, It'S a Real Class
Nice bit of journalism from Andy Carvin as he examines the depths of a university course on YouTube. "The idea behind it is to engage a group of students around the culture of YouTube, while requiring them to use YouTube as one of the primary mechanisms for communicating during the semester." I don't think that the idea is as flaky as some of the commentators - communicating using only video, and especially within the constraints of YouTube video - is hard. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. One Laptop Per Child - Where in the World Is That Cool Green and White Laptop?
What's interesting about this post is not so much that it's about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO computer, but that it's blogged by Nortel Chief Technology Officer John Roese. And maybe it's pushing things at Nortel in the right direction - "this initiative has been a great tool to get some of our R&D professionals to 'think differently' about the changing world of Hyperconnectivity". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Great E-Book Debate
Another attempt to revive e-books. Nielsen writes, " Xplana Learning has assumed a leadership role in the development of e-books and online learning platforms, and has indeed redefined e-books in order to maximize usability and engagement." Well fine. But here's the thing. If you look at, say, Project Gutenberg, you'll see that we've pretty much solved the problem of putting books online. We can use plain ASCII, we don't need a special player, and it all works pretty well. The thing with e-books, is that they promise to deliver what publishers want, and not so much what readers want. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Is Left?
I sent this to a discussion list today. It's not exactly on the topic of online learning, but it's about as concise a statement of the foundations of my political philosophy as you're going to find. Readers familiar with my work will find a lot that they've seen before in this paper, but placed in the context of governance and society. Stephen Downes, Half an Hour September 18, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, Discussion Lists]. More...
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