No hope and no hype: fear, loathing and learned helplessness at LT2014
suzanneo, LINE Consulting, February 20, 2014
The learning and development guru community was on full display during January’s Learning Technologies Exhibition and Conference at Olympia, according to LINE Consulting's 'suzanneo' (please put your name on your blog post, suzanneo!). They were led off by Brian Solis and Marc Presnky, both of whom had the same message, and often, the same slides. The same, ahem, wrong message. More...

Let's Unbundle
Josh Wymore, Inside Higher Ed, February 18, 2014
Someone should get the writers at Inside Higher Ed outside the bubble. The 'unbundling' of the educator's function has been talked about for years, maybe decades. It's not necessarily (or even mostly) a consequence or precursor to corporatism. More...

Sorting Isn’t Always Simple
Alfred Thompson, Computer Science Teacher, February 18, 2014
Nice little lesson in sorting in computing science taken from the Olympic games, namely, that for any data set, there is any number of ways to sort. For my own part, I have always maintained that the really had thing is counting (this, btw, is why most quantitative analysis is fiction). Take Olympic medals, for example. More...

Lecture Capture – Sometimes it’s better to be heard…and not seen
Rob Weale, East Midlands Learning Technologists, February 17, 2014

According to Rob Weale, unless there is a pedagogical imperative to presenting video of yourself, online lectures might be better were they presented as audio and supported by slides. More...

Ammon Road
Stephen Downes, Let's Make Some Art Dammit, February 17, 2014
Speaking of 'no pedagogical imperative' (see below) I've revived my 'photo a day' habit and added a new twist. I'm using only a compact camera I always carry with me (saving my DSL for special occasions, like travel). I'm uploading to Flickr, with a short autobiographical note, so it's as much a photo journal as a photo. More...

Nye v. Ham: What Is ‘Science’?
Harry Keller, educational technology & change, February 10, 2014
You can probably guess where I stand on the question of creation versus evolution, so I won't go there with this post. Rather, I have one observation based on an exchange that happens a bit later on in the debate. It's this: if you have a belief in anything that nothing could or would cause you to change, then your belief is based on faith, not science. More...

‘Scaffold’ map reveals brain’s weak spots
Suzanne Wu, Futurity, February 11, 2014
The good thing about this post is that it makes it clear that cognition depends on connections. And I can go along with the idea that some connections are more important than others, at least with respect to specific functions. I would hesitate to take this line of reasoning too far, as it's based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). More...

Books making us stupid – too soon?
Dave Cormier, Dave's Educational Blog, February 11, 2014
Dave Cormier, reviewing the progress of the "Is books making us stupid" week of his Rhizomatic MOOC, suggests that he is "frustrated with myself for not getting my point across" and "the book thing has not gone as planned." I am sympathetic; I know the feelinbg of a MOOC getting away from me. More...

Thinking about the Pipeline
Athene Donald, Athene Donald's Blog, February 16, 2014
This diagram should give anyone thinking a PhD leads to a career as a professor some cause for doubt. It does lead to such a carrer - being a necessary condition for employment - but only for about one person in 200. The rest go on to careers in government, in industry, or in another field altogether. More...

Do you know networks? on leaving the Garden of Eden
Bonnie Stewart, The theoryblog, February 10, 2014
It reads a lot like a TED talk (complete with a "here's the thing" expression near the end, pointing to a conclusion which isn't the main point of the post at all (but would make the people in the audience all feel comfortable ("Maybe it was the best we could do"))) but it has a good point right in the middle. More...