By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Debating the "Brain Glitch" Theory
The interminable phonics debate (how did this get so politicized?) continues in ASCD's Educational leadership and carries over into this item in the ASCD Blog. The debate begins with neurologist Judy Willis criticizing claims that "neuroscience proves the necessity of intensive phonics instruction for students who struggle with reading." In particular, she points to the limits of neuroimaging technologies. And she questions whether the children being studied were actually rerading of whether they were merely reciting. The response suggests that Willis ognores decades of research showing that "to read, a child has to develop the insight that spoken words can be pulled apart into the elemental particles of speech." I'm more inclined to the view that learning to read is complex, including both elements of phonics and language structure or syntax. More...
Blackboard Inter Partes Determination Published
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Blackboard Inter Partes Determination Published
The nice clear version: "The USPTO found 13 of Desire2Learn's 14 claims to raise substantial new questions of patentability." (Aside: it is interesting to note that the use of a tag, in this case 'edupatents', imposes a requirement on the part of the writer - hence Feldstein's note in this post. This is why I use regular expressions rather than tags - a regular expression captures the words that would notmally be used in a post, rather than requiring that the author use a word that doesn't even exist. The Blackboard patent page uses a regular expression, which is why I don't even need to think about it). More...
Open Educational Resources Taking Off
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Educational Resources Taking Off
Useful post on issues related to open educational resources (OERs) that also points the reader to the Open Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) project that "aims at building an online information and observation centre for promoting the concept, production and usage of OER, in particular, open digital educational content (ODEC) in Europe". More...
MED Online for Free
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MED Online for Free
This is the sort of thing that makes the internet great (and which really rekindles my belief in free and open online resources). The entire Old English dictionary (with all the references, etc) has been made available for free online by the University of Michigan. More...
Second Life&Voice - It Will Happen!
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Second Life&Voice - It Will Happen!
They can't handle more than 38,000 people at a time, forcing them to kick 'non-paying' customers off the service at peak loads, but they're going to have voice chat integrated by June, 2007? You know, what this reminds me of is AOL's original strategy - advertising like crazy, offering a service that they couldn't sustain, then turning around and using the hype money to buy a real business, which in their case turned out to be Time-Warner. More...
Les jeunes diplômés des grandes écoles voient l’emploi en rose
La 25ème enquête insertion professionnelle de la CGE dresse un panorama très positif de l’entrée sur le marché du travail des jeunes diplômés. Plus...
Steve Wozniak, cofondateur d’Apple, lance sa propre université
Woz U propose une formation en ligne pour apprendre la programmation informatique. Le cofondateur d’Apple prévoit l’ouverture de 30 campus aux États-Unis et dans le monde. Plus...
Les grandes écoles françaises les plus appréciées des recruteurs internationaux
Les écoles françaises placent trois écoles parmi les trente meilleures mondiales en termes d’attractivité pour les employeurs. L’école Polytechnique fait un spectaculaire bond en avant. Plus...
Ingénieur architecte : un double cursus avec des débouchés
Les études pour devenir ingénieur architecte se développent. Mais pour l’instant, ce bicursus en sept ans, deux de plus que les études d’ingénieur, reste méconnu, et a encore besoin de trouver sa place. Plus...
Comment intégrer une école d’ingénieur en admission parallèle
Les écoles d’ingénieurs comme Polytechnique et Centrale acceptent des étudiants sur dossier issus de DUT ou de licence. Certains sont même passés par une classe préparatoire avant. Plus...