We Need Teachers, Not Facilitators!
Gary Stager, Stager-to-Go, December 31, 2012.

Gary Stager reports, "I have been stunned to observe the complete and utter return to whole class instruction in nearly every school I visit (public, private, rich, poor, urban, suburban and rural) everywhere in the world. New teachers have little or no experience with classroom centers, independent work, student projects and the sorts of agency that allow children to enjoy the 'flow' experiences that build upon their obsessions and lead to understanding." If true (and I have no reason to doubt it) that would be sad. More...

What’s Our Vision for the Future of Learning?
David Price, MindShift, December 28, 2013
The premise is this: "Once the possibility exists for students to study informally, at online (and offline) schools, compiling their own learning playlist, putting together units of study that appeal to their passions, the one-size-fits-all model of high school will appear alarmingly anachronistic." Hard to argue. More...

Rules are Rules. Sort of.
Chris Betcher, Betchablog, January 31, 2013
Maybe it's because I'm Canadian, maybe it's because I understand perfectly the logic behind posting speed limits with the expectation that people will drive 20 or so km faster (depending on he place, the road conditions, the time of day, the risk of moose on the road, etc.) but most of all, I think it's because I understand that when you say "rules are rules" you misunderstand the logic of both rules and the regulation of behaviour. If you are a rules literalist, then you encourage people to follow the letter of the law, often contrary to the spirit of the law. More...

Examining the true meaning of Davos
Don Tapscott, Globe, and , Mail, January 30, 2013

Don Tapscott writes in the Globe and Mail about how people misunderstand Davos (if you've tripped the paywall after reading the Globe's defense of the one percent, I'm sorry, though you can always read the paper they lifted the content from directly(cite)) and that they shouldn't comment from afar ("much like someone describing what is happening on the surface of Mars when they’re not there"). More...

Hotspots and have-nots
John C. Abell, Reuters, January 30, 2013

Interesting perspective on the One Laptop Per Child project. As summarized by Alexander Russo, "the main problem Negroponte faced was that the problem he proposed solving -- getting computers into peoples' hands -- was about to be solved on its own through cheap smartphones and netbooks. The main problem he didn't solve -- Internet access -- remained a massive obstacle.  The solution? According to this columnist, it's a massive universal Internet access initiative." It's hard to imagine how good internet access for all would not change things for the better. More...

Imaginative Education
Den Groom, YouTube, January 29, 2013

Dean Groom shared the following message with TALO: "A video I've made (short) about a project I'm working on via http://www.ierg.net. Should start 2014 in public. Right now working on an 'app' for want of better term, which is about peer-feedback using game-like methods. The actual IE programme is already in play, I'm trying to create a technological-connection between students and teachers to provide a feedback loop anonymously. Think Suga Mitra meets 4 Square. Anyone into this sort of stuff?" Even if you don't have time to watch videos (I rarely have time, though Groom's 40-second video wasn't too much for me) do check out the Imaginative Education Research Group website s it contains much more than just a few videos. More...

Can Virtual Classrooms Recreate a Traditional College Experience?
Kate Freeman, Mashable, January 25, 2013

My first thought on reading the headline of this Mashable article was, "why would they want to do that?" Personally, I think it has been pretty well established that online learning has captured the essentials of traditional education - access to learning materials, interaction, educational outcomes - without may of the distractions, such as commuting. More...

Guerrilla Connectivism: 10 Tips for Taking Control of your Education
Kevin Stranack, January 24, 2013
I have long been  a fan of guerilla tactics to take control of your own learning and education, so I'm totally sympathetic with Kevin Stranack's post. Stranack writes, "We, as students, don’t need to wait for our instructors to do this for us, and instead, we can take control of our own education by following a few connectivist-inspired tips" and then proceeds to list a number of  them. More...

A Reference Model for Learning Analytics
Mohamed Amine Chatti, Mohamed Amine Chatti's ongoing research on Knowledge, and , Learning, January 22, 2013

This is a good overview of learning analytics, beginning with the concept of the recommender system as it developed in the 2000s through to more contemporary work. More...

“The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind”
Abject, January 21, 2013

One of the questions I ask myself on a regular basis is whetehr I should abandon low-level scripting in languages like Perl and managing my own server in favour as, as Boris Mann calls it, the new hack stack. The old hack stack is and was called LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl (or PHP). But these days servers are constructed in environments like Ruby on Rails or Django and services are often plug-in, hosted elsewhere and accessed via APIs, like MailChimp for mailing lists or Amazon Web Service for data hosting. More...