By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. No More Pencils, No Print Books, No More Analog Backward Looks
I linked to this one just to be able to run the headline. Lauding mobile learning, Judy Breck writes, "If you are more the tempest type, you can join Todd Richmond in saying: the educational sector will be dragged into the future kicking and screaming by the next perfect storm." Or as Howard Rheingold says, "The tools for cultural production and distribution are now in the pockets of 14 year olds". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Principal Quiets Young Orator
I have in the past touted Mississauga as an example but I may have to rethink that following this report. "One of the prominent things we teach is respect for authority figures," says Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board spokesperson Bruce Campbell as he defends the censoring of a student's speech on being bored in class. This hits close to home, as I participated in public speaking myself, once speaking on how to create a dictatorship (I was also very successful, winning five times in eight years). Vicki Davis quite rightly says, "This is not a place we censure students for having opinions unlike ours! This is a place where we encourage opinions and free speech." Peel District high school teacher Elona Hartjes, who found the article, responds, "it's not my responsibility to entertain students." Maybe not. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Net Heads
Interesting discussion of 'small worlds' networks as they operate in the human brain. "Fractal, small-world brain networks reverberate in an electrical limbo state that almost, but not quite, comes unglued... Especially at higher frequencies, these networks operate "on the edge of chaos," the researchers say. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Pipes and HyperCard: Interactive Vs Connected Media
Scott Wilson nails it (and in passing reminds us of Derrick de Kerckhove's book 'Connected Intelligence'). "We have entered an era of connected media. Connected media does not contain interaction; instead content items are nodes in a network of connections that are the focus of interaction. The content is inside-out. The hot content today is not interactive - Flickr/Photobucket, YouTube, iTunes, RSS feeds all feature non-interactive content, yet the content is highly connected via layers of interlinked metadata (del.icio.us, technorati, recommendations, hyperlinks, comments...)." Right. And - crucially - it's exactly the same with learning. Connected media does not contain 'learning'. More...