By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Dog's Breakfast: Roles and Responsibilities for Managers in the Cyber Era
This is the wiki version of the transcript from my talk last September at Sunshine Coast, Australia. In this talk I take my Nine Rules for Good Technology and apply them to managers. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. BlogMatrix Sparks
I downloaded and installed this piece of podcasting technology, and while it's not yet everything it could be, it's definitely worth passing along. The idea of Sparks is that it allows users to subscribe to both blogs and podcasts - the application will list all new podcasts for easy listening. But it also allows users to create and upload their own podcasts - I created my own podcast (a review of this software) very easily this afternoon. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines
PDF. James Paul Gee asks, "How do good game designers manage to get new players to learn long, complex, and difficult games?" Here's how (quoted from the text):
- Learners feel like active agents (producers) not just passive recipients (consumers).
- Different styles of learning work better for different people.
- People take on a new identity they value and in which they become heavily invested.
- They can manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways that extend their area of effectiveness.
- Early problems are designed to lead players to form good guesses about how to proceed when they face harder problems later on.
- Challenges feel hard, but doable. Learners feel - and get evidence - that their effort is paying off.
- Repeated cycles of learners practicing skills until they are nearly automatic, then having those skills fail in ways that cause the learners to have to think again and learn anew.
- Give verbal information just in time and on demand
- Create simplified systems, stressing a few key variables and their interactions.
- Risks and dangers greatly mitigated (one of the worst problems with school: it's too risky and punishing).
- See the skills first and foremost as a strategy for accomplishing a goal and only secondarily as a set of discrete skills.
- People learn skills, strategies, and ideas best when they see how they fit into an overall larger system to which they give meaning.
- Make the meanings of words and concepts clear through experiences the player has and activities the player carries out. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Can "Blended Learning" Be Redeemed?
After an extended discussion arguing that the term 'blended learning' is hollow, the authors argue that, rather than being abandoned, the term can be "redeemed" by interpreting it from the perspective of variation theory, "the idea that for learning to occur, variation must be experienced by the learner." Thus, "Blends of e-learning with other media may make it easier to help students experience the variation in the critical aspects of the topic being learnt." I am certainly in favour of diversity of experience. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. From Student Work to Exemplary Educational Resources
Following a link on the EdResources mailing list I find the contents of the current issue of E-Learning - access, I guess, is normally restricted but appears to be open for a time at least (they should consider opening it permanently - the content is good and it seems a shame to lock it away from potential readers). More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. F For Assessment
Blunt criticism of the standardized tests currently applied in U.S. schools: "in most instances these evaluations are inaccurate. That's because the standardized tests employed are flat-out wrong." Some of the tests, argue the author, are designed to elicit responses based on social profile rather than learning. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Billion Essays
Technorati this week passed the one billion link mark, a number that causes databases to groan and commentators to stare in awe. Will Richardson: "One. Billion. Pieces of Writing. You can't deny the power of that." 8,586 of those are mine - the total number of OLDaily posts. Edu_RSS, meanwhile, has just passed the 90,000 link mark. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Case for Creative Commons Textbooks
This is a crime, isn't it? "University of California students now spend 40 percent more on textbooks than they did six years ago." This tells us what to expect from commercial publishers of educational content. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Duke Puts Restrictions on Free iPod Program
Results are in from the Duke iPod experiment and while the devices will be used again next year, things will be different. This year the university handed out the devices to all students; next year they will be handed out only to students enrolled in courses that will use them. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Podcasting and Vodcasting
A definitive white paper, this essay begins with definitions of podcasting and vodcasting, explains how it works, outlines the skill sets required, and lists a number of potential applications. There's enough information in here to enable most people to learn how to podcast, and yet the writing is clear enough to allow non-technical people to follow the description. More...
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