Why the Social Sciences are Irreducible
Tobias Hansson Wahlberg, 2018/03/19
This is a very common position in the social sciences (including education): "“We can hold that any particular social entity at a given time and its causal powers are token identical with the sum of individuals composing it.” Or "it might well be true that each instance of a social kind - for example, a state structure - is identical with an ensemble of individual actors having certain properties." This paper examines, in detail, some of the arguments for and against this position. More...

Students Use Self-Directed Learning to Serve Their Community, One Foot at a Time
Savanna Barksdale, Home Room, 2018/03/19
The foot in question is a duck's foot and what the students are doing is creating prosthetic duck feet using 3D printing to serve as feet for real ducks. More...

16 Years of Web Hosting Changes with WordPress and Other Web Platforms: The Lessons Continue
Wesley Fryer, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, 2018/03/19
Because I host my own website (as well as a half a dozen MOOCs and some other stuff) I'm always attentive to discussion of issues around web hosting. I've had good service providers and bad. More...

Reflections and Directions After PKP’s First Two Decades
Public Knowledge Project, 2018/03/19
In my email this afternoon: "The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is pleased to share our reflections on a community consultation process that saw us receive feedback from a wide range of stakeholders, including scholarly communications experts and past, present, and potential users of PKP software and services." This is the organization that creates and offers Open Journal Systems, Open Conference System, Open Havesting, and more. More...

Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence
Written by an author who along with Lou Rossetto, Howard Rheingold, and others, co-founded Wired.com, and later helped launch C/NET, this paper is a foundational document in the history of cyberspace. Yet it is not (to my perception) widely known, hence, its inclusion today. More...

News On the Go
Is a mobile tide fast approaching online media? It's already happening in Europe and Japan and while North Americans aren't yet quick to pull out their handheld for directions to a good Indian restaurant, previous experience with cellphones suggests that the transformation will occur almost overnight. More...

Trillian
Following up on my post on instant messaging a few days ago, a reader wrote in to mention Trillian, a service that allows you to access your ICQ, AOL-IM, MSN-Messenger and Yahoo! instant messaging service all through the same interface. More...

E-learning, At a Snail's Pace
Sobering survey results in the U.K. show that e-learning has made its way into only a small percentage of training programs. "The CIPD survey canvasses training managers from 502 UK organisations with more than 25 employees. Only 30.5% - 153 respondents - say they used e-learning for any group of employees within their establishments." The results echo a similar survey conducted by ASTD in the U.S. More...

Microsoft Explores New Game-based Learning Environment
On the one hand this is pretty cool: Microsoft, working in partnership with institutions such as MIT, is developing games designed to facilitate learning. " As in popular computer games, students can use different 'virtual' tools, like a crane, to help complete their quest. More...

Collaborative Software
The navigation is a bit difficult but the information is useful to anyone looking at online collaboration tools. This website summarizes a variety of survey and evaluation reults to help distance educators and their students to select appropriate methods of course development and delivery. More...