New Models for a New Year
Paul Stacey, Musings on the ed tech frontier, December 30, 2013
"Most people struggle to understand what open is and its implications," writes Paul Stacey. Understanding comes only in stages - he describes seven, ranging from awareness to trying it out to adopting it as a cornerstone of practic. More...
The Truth About Being A Great Manager
Kyle James, .eduGuru, January 31, 2013
Useful lesson of the day: "to manage is to serve." I don't have much more to say about this that that. If they get that, everything else follows. More...
Designing eLearning For iPads
Amit Garg, Upside Learning Blog, January 31, 2013
Very good slide deck with a lot of relevant data on the importance of understanding learning on tablets and some of the design elements that prove to be important (including my fave, 'fat fingers'). Tablets aren't just big mobile phones (or small computers) - they will be used, for example, more often to read or study, but also, used this way in more mobile environments (and often outside the range of connectivity, such as in airplanes or on older city buses or trains). More...
Rules are Rules. Sort of.
Chris Betcher, Betchablog, January 31, 2013
Maybe it's because I'm Canadian, maybe it's because I understand perfectly the logic behind posting speed limits with the expectation that people will drive 20 or so km faster (depending on he place, the road conditions, the time of day, the risk of moose on the road, etc.) but most of all, I think it's because I understand that when you say "rules are rules" you misunderstand the logic of both rules and the regulation of behaviour. If you are a rules literalist, then you encourage people to follow the letter of the law, often contrary to the spirit of the law. More...
Is “Why every researcher should sign up for their ORCID ID” Grammatically Incorrect?
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, January 31, 2013
The use of the singular with a universal quantifier is problematic in a world with two genders. the use of either gender alone has political implications, the use of both (a la "his/her") is awkward, and the use of the plural is grammatically wrong. There's where the options end for most people. But there is a way out: drop the universal generalization, and use your noun to indicate scope. Instead of saying "Every researcher should use their..." say instead "Researchers should use their..." Of course, you may think you've lost your punch. But now that you've changed your noun, world of possibilities opens up, as in "All researchers should use their..." or "Mindful researchers should use their..." or even "Gender-neutral researchers should use their..." In general, when you want to make a point that applies to more than one researcher (or anything else), don't use the singular form of the noun. More...
Examining the true meaning of Davos
Don Tapscott, Globe, and , Mail, January 30, 2013
Don Tapscott writes in the Globe and Mail about how people misunderstand Davos (if you've tripped the paywall after reading the Globe's defense of the one percent, I'm sorry, though you can always read the paper they lifted the content from directly(cite)) and that they shouldn't comment from afar ("much like someone describing what is happening on the surface of Mars when they’re not there"). More...
University of Illinois at Chicago: Virtual Reality’s CAVE Pioneer
Brad Grimes, Ed Tech, January 30, 2013
Wow, this feels like a black from the past, reading about the CAVE - the first CAVE was launched in 1992. The idea was to create a fully enclosed virtual environment (similar to what we would today call the holodeck). This article talks about CAVE2, launched last October. More...
Hotspots and have-nots
John C. Abell, Reuters, January 30, 2013
Interesting perspective on the One Laptop Per Child project. As summarized by Alexander Russo, "the main problem Negroponte faced was that the problem he proposed solving -- getting computers into peoples' hands -- was about to be solved on its own through cheap smartphones and netbooks. The main problem he didn't solve -- Internet access -- remained a massive obstacle. The solution? According to this columnist, it's a massive universal Internet access initiative." It's hard to imagine how good internet access for all would not change things for the better. More...
EEF / Toolkit
Education Endowment Foundation, January 30, 2013
Seb Schmoller points to a really interesting site that summarizes a couple dozen popular educational interventions and assesses their effectiveness in promoting positive educational outcomes. The presentation is a bit unintuitive - the interventions are scored in terms of cost (that's clear enough), stars (representing the number of studies supporting the assessment), and effectiveness (confusingly represented in terms of months - so, for example, the 'average impact' of peer tutoring is '+6 additional months', whatever that means). More...
Both MOOCs and Textbooks Will End Up Courseware
Mike Caulfield, Hapgood, January 30, 2013
Where are MOOCs headed? Not toward massive classes, writes Mike Caulfield. "It’s broadly used courseware — software that provides much of the skeleton of standard classes the way publisher texts do today." That's my call as well. More...
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