By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: Salisbury, NB, June 26, 2006
Here's your mail! Fresh after an invigorating bicycle ride in the country yesterday (click the picture to see the photos), I am catching up a bit with today's newsletter. So it's a bit longer than usual and contains extra resources on e-portfolios and social networking, two topics that have taken the education technology community by storm lately. [Tags: E-Portfolios, Online Learning, Newsletters, Networks, Flickr] [Comment]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Andy Carvin[Edit][Delete]: Angus King: A Brief History of Maine's Laptop Program, June 23, 2006
We could have done without the Canadian joke, but I enjoyed this frank retrospective of the Main laptop project. "A reporter then asked a question we hadn't thought of - will the kids or the schools own the laptops? I had no idea. I could have said I don't know, but I blurted out, 'the kids.' Wrong answer. Huge political mistake. People hated the idea that the govt would give these tools to kids. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Andrew Donoghue[Edit][Delete]: Is $100 Laptop Project Flawed?, CNet News.Com [Edit][Delete]CNET News.com [Edit][Delete]CNet News.com [Edit][Delete]CNet news.Com [Edit][Delete] June 23, 2006
Some reaction (which feels like it was massaged by the author to create conflict) to the $100 lptop project on the part of Tony Roberts, chief executive and founder of U.K. charity Computer Aid International. According to the story, he says the $100 laptop program is "based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the history of the IT industry." Says Roberts, "They are looking to introduce a nonstandard, untested platform...which they will only sell to governments." The real story, in my view, is that MIT's relentless publicity has overshadowed other initiatives. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Cory Bergman[Edit][Delete]: MySpace Tightens Security Measures, Lost Remote [Edit][Delete] June 23, 2006
More MySpace news - I'm sure you're all breathless. The big news is that MySpace users who are over 18 will now have to know the email or first and last name of any 14- to 15-year-old member they're trying to contact. It's actually a pretty good strategy if the danger to minors comes from strangers. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Computer-Based Assessment in E-Learning, Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment [Edit][Delete] June 23, 2006
From the abstract: "This paper introduces a taxonomy or categorization of 28 innovative item types that may be useful in computer-based assessment... that fall somewhere between fully constrained responses... and fully constructed responses." I don't have a whole lot of use for taxonomies, but a lot of people like them. Me, I think of the discussion today, that could be paraphrased as, "We dealt with diversity by creating a common vocabulary. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: Communities of Practice and Wrap-Up, Half an Hour [Edit][Delete] June 23, 2006
My blog notes from Day 2 of the Canadian Council on Learning conference. This second day was mostly a day of discussions, with the participants breaking into four groups (which in our case in turn broke into small groups). I've never been a fan of this group-and-report format, since it can be a way of filtering the views of the participants through a lens provided by the organizers - the 'reports back' never seem to carry the same sort of edge contained in the participants' actual views. Just my perspective.
Anyhow, what emerged for me as the major theme of the day was the generally anti-technology nature of the participants. My computer was one of two open during the conference. Still, several groups recommended the provision of tools (I mentioned JISC but that didn't make it to the plenary floor). I also felt many practitioners see themselves as offering services and bringing activism to the people, though some delegates did emphasize the need for people to manage their own learning and to organize themselves. So there's a bit of a generational change happening in the field, I think.
That said, I think the CCL has a challenge before it. There seems to be a disconnect between its approach and methodology - which is focused on, shall we say, measurable results and return on investment, and that of the practitioners, which is focused on, shall we say, social justice. And in the middle somewhere, with a technological edge, comes personal empowerment and informal learning. The fact of multiple agendas (and multiple methodologies) is inescapable - but is CCL ready to acccept that? [Tags: Canada, Web Logs, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)] [Comment]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Michael Feldstein[Edit][Delete]: Conversations About Learning Design, E-Literate [Edit][Delete] June 22, 2006
The Sakai pedagogy discussion list tends to be, as Michael Feldstein reports, "technologist-heavy and teacher-light." So he posed some questions from the Sakai discussion list on when (and if) learning design is appropriate to the LAMS discussion list. Worth a read, especially for the longish responses from James Dalziel. And where can we read the Sakai discussion. Alas, we can't. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Roger Hiemstra and Ralph G. Brockett[Edit][Delete]: From behaviorism to humanism: Incorporating Self-Direction in Learning Concepts Into the Instructional Design Process, New Ideas About Self-directed Learning [Edit][Delete] June 22, 2006
Cited this week in DEOS by Gail Taylor, this paper from 1994 discussing self-directed learning and its origins in humanist philosophy is well worth a review. The humanist tradition, characterized in contrast to positivist and empirical approaches to learning, is based in rationalist and Platonic thought, characterized by reference to phenomenonogy and self-actualization, and is found in thinkers such as Piaget and Gagne. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Lois Romano[Edit][Delete]: More Students Pursue Degrees Online, Washington Post [Edit][Delete] June 22, 2006
From the article: "Online enrollment jumped from 1.98 million in 2003 to 2.35 million the following year, accounting for 7 percent of postsecondary education, according to Eduventures, a Boston firm that studies trends in education." I love the openly biased journalism in the second half of the story as the author cites unnamed "critics" to slam online learning, says obliquely that recently closed e-universities "did not offer what some students wanted" and then (blatantly falsely) asserts that "most elite schools have looked down their noses at online degrees." Amazing. More...