By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Associated Press: Handhelds Go to School, Wired News December 12, 2005
Breathless story about the use of wireless mobile in schools. And (unlike the old Wired, which focused on content and community) this article misses the point: "I don't know if it's that they feel cool or they're just jazzed about the technology," Ross said. "But having some of those bells and whistles make the kind of information they really need to learn exciting." Sigh. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. James Farmer: Education & Blogs @ Les Blogs, Incorporated Subversion December 12, 2005
Ewan McIntosh, who launched edu.blogs.com last July, represented the edublogger community at the recent Les Blogs conference in Paris, his meanderings causing James Farmer to comment, "the total [and] blanket ignorance of what I might describe as the edublogosphere and of the broad and innovative uses of blogs in education over the last 5 years in these kind of forums does worry me." What has been happening is, of course, as Peter Ford describes it, "Educational blogging consultants seem to be springing up all over the place, some aiming for the guru-status of being paid for hot-air production about blogs and related technology that they never have used at the chalkface." Nothing against McIntosh, who was simply taking advantage of an opportunity (though his response to Farmer was, to my reading, unduly hostile). More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Vincent Tinto: Student Success and the Building of Involving Educational Communities, MCLI iForum December 9, 2005
"Successful education, not retention, is the secret of successful retention programs." Thus argues Vincent Tinto. "Institutions of higher education are like other human communities". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Lisa Young and Donna Rebadow: Reusable Learning Objects: RLO The Movie, MCLI iForum December 9, 2005
Link to video from the presentation, presented during a conference session called 'Stop Reinventing the Wheel and Share Your Best Instructional Resources: Reusable Learning Objects,' in which Maricopa staff described their efforts to help staff understand, find, and use learning objects. Also a link to the interesting Ocotillo Learning Objects blog. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ira Fuchs: Needed: an 'Educore' to Aid Collaboration, Eduforge December 9, 2005
"The single biggest obstacle facing colleges and universities that want to use open source," argues Ira Fuchs, "appears to be the uncertainty about future support for and improvements in the software. Many administrators and trustees simply cannot accept the idea of relying for maintenance and support on people with whom they have no contractual relationship". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jeremy Price: Object-Centered Sociality, or the Act of Being Kicked, Smelly Knowledge December 9, 2005
Good point about online communities I think needs highlighting and clarifying. "The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people. They're not; social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object... it's like the idea of an attractor in a dynamic system." (If you want a fun read, look up 'strange attractors' in Google - that's the sort of thing he means here). More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Terry Anderson: Online End of Class Party, Virtual Canuck December 9, 2005
I enjoyed this description of the sorts of things taken into account in the design of a successful end-of-year party. I especially liked the descriptions of what (in previous years) did not work, such as: "asynchronous parties do not work!". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Anita Kumar: 'Revolution' in education learning a hard reality, St. Petersburg Times December 8, 2005
Good update on the running of schools by private companies, and especially on the shifting fortunes of Edison Schools, which now manages 61,000 students at about 136 public schools - down from almost 70,000 students at 157 schools a year ago. Interestingly, "the gains in student achievement recorded so far have been largely indistinguishable from improvements seen elsewhere". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Eileen Gifford Fenton and Roger C. Schonfeld: The Shift Away From Print, Inside Higher Ed December 8, 2005
An examination of the implications of the shift from paper to electronic publishing for libraries and publishers, one that inexplicably completely overlooks the rise of open access publishing and that only briefly mentions blogs and repositories (and then, only as a negative). The most important implication for libraries (other than those just mentioned), it seems to me, is this: "The widespread migration from print to electronic seems likely to eliminate library ownership of new accessions, with licensing taking the place of purchase". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Preston McAfee: Introduction to Economic Analysis December 8, 2005
I'll just quote Mike Linksvayer, who in turn quotes Preston McAfee, which I'll append with a hearty "hear! hear!": "Caltech economics professor Preston McAfee appears to be mad as hell about high journal and textbook prices, and he's doing something about it. He's published a complete Introduction to Economic Analysis textbook under a Creative Commons license. See his page about the license and high textbook prices: 'Why open source? Academics do an enormous amount of work editing journals and writing articles and now publishers have broken an implicit contract with academics, in which we gave our time and they weren't too greedy". More...
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