By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wesley Fryer[Edit][Delete]: Flow, Curiosity, and Engaging Education, Moving at the Speed of Creativity [Edit][Delete] November 24, 2006
Good choice of reading material: "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Good discussion, too. Some thoughts. First, 'flow' is what Papert and others today call "hard fun". Also, a lot depends on the width of the 'flow' channel. Third, the edges of the flow channel are fuzzy and variable depending on time of day, hunger, sleepiness, and more. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Konrad Glogowski[Edit][Delete]: Students Reflect on Group Work, Blog of Proximal Development [Edit][Delete] November 23, 2006
His comments on group work, he says, "follow him around." I'm not surprised. Questioning group work is like questioning the Pope. Glogowski reports on some parent and student reactions to group work, including a memo from the principal to all staff pointing out "some students feel that they are 'left out,' 'stuck with,' or 'looked past' during group work. Many of these kids have other social stresses to deal with. Can we all please make every effort to alleviate this stress during class time?" People continue to say group work sometimes benefits students. I don't deny that. But I will argue that its use cannot be justified unless it can be known that it does not produce harm. But there is, sadly, no "do no harm" principle in education. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mary Burgan[Edit][Delete]: In Defense of Lecturing, Change [Edit][Delete] November 21, 2006
In TALO, John Gregory wrote, "Will Richardson says we don't need college. Daniel Pink says high school's out too. How low can we go? Can a fourth grader replace every positive aspect of traditional schools with an online education? A second grader?"
I responded, "Why do people always represent this sort of thing as though the student would be doing it completely on his or her own? Nobody expects a fourth grader to 'replace every positive aspect of traditional schools.' Sheesh, they're kids, not government employees". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Graham Wegner[Edit][Delete]: A Terrible Decision, Teaching Generation Z [Edit][Delete] November 20, 2006
Some very upset reactions in South Australia this week as the government closes the Technology School Of the Future. "There was an 'outcry' over plans to replace the school at Hindmarsh with online services and video conferencing." Graham Wegner writes, "The South Australian education community deserves better than this". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Derek Wenmoth[Edit][Delete]: The End of Education, November 17, 2006
This is right: "The real changes that the computer is bringing about - changes in the way we see reality - remain invisible." And it reminds me of this (and I think it's a crime we can't get full-text James Baldwin online): "The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Alan Levine[Edit][Delete]: [NMC Regional] The Br[yI]an Double Header, Cogdogblog [Edit][Delete]CogDogBlog [Edit][Delete] November 17, 2006
Coverage of the NMC conference complete with a link to a 105 slide deck on storytelling (and a lot more) from Bryan Alexander and some video mashups from Brian Lamb. By the time you read this, one of them or the other will have audio on their website. As I read through this and looked at the photos of Brian Lamb, with the computers and the headphones and the tech, I realized, we are living the science fiction I read about when I read it as a kid. My reading of science fiction (a lot of science fiction, thousands of books) shaped my ambitions, and while I thought I went off track with philosophy and distance education and all that, here I am. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wesley Fryer[Edit][Delete]: IP, the Information Age and YouTube, Moving at the Speed of Creativity [Edit][Delete] November 15, 2006
This gets it exactly right: "We live in an era where people can publish at will. Relevance is and will increasingly be a function of digital accessibility. You want to be relevant? Give away your ideas. Want to become irrelevant? Create a walled garden that keeps out more people than it lets in. You'll be sure to limit your audience, and therefore reduce your relevance and potential impact on the world. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. George Siemens[Edit][Delete]: Connectivism: Learning Theory or Past Time for the Self-Amused?, Elearnspace [Edit][Delete]ELearnSpace [Edit][Delete] November 15, 2006
Asked to review George Siemens's paper on Conectivism, Bijdrage van Plon Verhagen from the University of Twente treats readers to a detailed criticism of the paper. The review prompted Siemens to write a (self-admitted) meandering reply. As Siemens (accurately) summarizes, "Verhagen's criticisms are broadly centered on three areas: 1. Is connectivism a learning theory or a pedagogy? 2. The principles advocated by connectivism are present in other learning theories as well. 3. Can learning reside in non-human appliances?"
Taking as his cue the third criticism, Siemens launches on a long discourse on epistemology. I wish he had taken more time and written a shorter paper (yeah - like I'm one to complain about this!) to more sharply identify just how it's a new theory about learning and not merely a new pedagogy. Still, it's a fun, if somewhat loosely organized, romp through the theory of knowledge. More...