For their research, the scientists obtained information from USC’s Infant Neuromotor Control Laboratory. This information included data about the motor movements of infants obtained from sensors strapped to the infants’ ankles. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ulises Mejias[Edit][Delete]: Video Games, Authority, and Problem-based Thinking, i d e a n t [Edit][Delete] September 1, 2006

Ulises Mejias is talking about online games, but his critique of rationalism is delicious: "The thing with rationalism is that it inverts the problem-solution relation in such a way that only problems that have solutions it can handle are made relevant. Problems, in other words, are subordinated to solutions." Quite right. Now consider this observation in the light of the current testing and outcomes phenomenon. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Miguel Guhlin[Edit][Delete]: TCEA 2006: Podcast Roundup, Mousing Around [Edit][Delete] February 11, 2006

Tired of listening to the local radio station? Here's a full day of podcasts from the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) conference. Here is full coverage of the conference. Just a sample: "Out of step with a society racing towards technological nirvana, K-12 education struggles to keep up, clamoring for everything from more funding to an Office of Educational Technology Director. Some dismiss the conversations about educational reform on the Web as just so much sound and fury". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jeremy Price[Edit][Delete]: Technology As Trickster, Smelly Knowledge [Edit][Delete] February 11, 2006

I'm pretty firmly in what is described here as the 'Canadian camp': "technology brings with it powerful but subtle biases.... If technology is not a tool to be chosen for use, then, what is it?... Perhaps one suggestion might be an ecological or environmental metaphor (as in, for example, the common phrase online environments). Perhaps technology is like the water we drink and the air we breathe. Water and air are not tools. We cannot choose to breathe the air or drink the water.... Technology is not a tool which we can choose to use or not; whether wisely or not. Technology exists. Such an ecological/environmental metaphor allows us to examine different approaches to its use and its potential impact." So what of the 'American' idea of technology and progress. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: RSS Writr, January 17, 2006
So anyhow, I heard this odd whining noise in my computer bag just before leaving for Edmonton... yup, it was another Dell computer giving up the ghost (it wasn't even turned on!)... so anyhow, I'm in Alberta now, writing from a hotel cafeteria on a backup computer with no ethernet (wireless works fine though, go figure). It's going to be a tough week for access, so don't be surprised if I miss a few issues of OLDaily this week.
What I'm linking to here is pretty unfinished, but I won't get back to it for at least a week (maybe longer, depending on Dell). But it is functional, and you can mess with it a bit to make it more so. Basically, RSS Writr (and before you complain, I'm really sorry about the name) is the first instance of my vision of the core of the personal learning environment. Select an aggregator (you can use Edu_RSS 0.2 or MyGlu as an aggregator) from the dropdown (if you don't like those links, edit the HTML and define your own MyGlu or some other aggregator), read the posts, drag and drop the links and text (and images, and whatever) into the authoring window, make something of your own out of them, then post to your Blogger account.
What you should picture, as you imagine how this would be used, is both teachers and students using it in the same way... the teacher aggregates learning resources from services such as DLORN or their colleagues, and mashes up lessons for the day or whatever, while the students aggregate from their teacher(s), their friends, Google, wikipedia, or whatever (you can put whatever you want into the dropdown) or whatever, and then they use this content to create somehting cool of their own (which, of course, is aggregated by the teacher, other students, people around the world, whatever, and the cycle begins anew).
Anyhow, sorry it's not done, but I just don't have the computer or the access or the time to do more at the moment, and I really wanted to somehow put in concrete form and to communicate the vision of learning that I have. Thanks, everybody, for your understanding and patience. [Tags: Wireless, Linking and Deep Linking, Cool, Google] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Terry Anderson[Edit][Delete]: PLEs Versus LMS: Are PLEs Ready for Prime Time?, Virtual Canuck [Edit][Delete] January 9, 2006

Terry Anderson cautions, "Although there is something quite compelling about the vision of a lifelong learning environment that is centered upon and perpetually belongs to the learner, I think we are some distance from being able to operationalize that vision." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mark Feldstein[Edit][Delete]: Why Mashups Make the LMOS, E-Literate [Edit][Delete] January 30, 2006

[link: 6 Hits] I have been sort of sympathetic to the concept of the learningmanagement operating system (LMOS) because, after all, the concept includes things that I favour: distributed resources, user access to the underlying system. But I began to falter when Mark Feldstein said "We don't just want to offer many different affordances. we want to orchestrate them." And following his link to Bernie Durfee has sketched out a first use case implementation sent me over the edge. I'll say it bluntly, and apologize later: this is the most ridiculous thing I've seen. Durfee is describing what the rest of understand as 'upload a file and base a discussion thread on it'. Something I did right here in about 10 seconds today". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. David Wiley[Edit][Delete]: On The Inanimate Nature of Learning Objects, Iterating Toward Openness [Edit][Delete]Iterating toward openness [Edit][Delete] February 1, 2006

[link: 2 Hits] You can't blame readers, really, for thinking that a post titled "RIP-ping on Learning Objects" might have had something to do with burying them, but David Wiley advises that people should read the text after the title, which I suppose is only reasonable. "Learning objects are neither alive nor dead," he writes. "I'm as firm a believer in the value of reusable educational resources as I ever have been". More...