Is books making us stupid? behind the curtain of #rhizo14
Dave Cormier, Dave's Educational Blog, February 6, 2014
This post actually provides a good overview of the first few weeks of the Rhizomatic Learning course, exploring as it does a set of "challenges" posed by Dave Cormier:
I can certainly be frustrated by some of this sort of discussion - when people express concerns. More...
The medium is the message?
Jaap Bosman, Hit the balloon, comment, February 6, 2014
"Language needs a medium," said Jaap Bosman. By contrast, to me, language is a medium. "Learning depends on language, the medium (books, blogs) of the language restricts or benefits the learning," he writes. More...
ALT Strategy, February 2014 to January 2017
Maren Deepwell, ALT Online Newsletter, February 7, 2014
Britain's Association for Learning Technology (ALT) has released a new strategy. The short PDF descibes the organization's objective as "to advance education through increasing, exploring and disseminating knowledge in the field of Learning Technology for the benefit of the general public." Interestingly, if you read the four sentences of the 'context' section you encounter the word 'change' three times. More...
Suffering Massive MOOC Creep
Tom Woodward, Bionic Teaching, February 7, 2014
My thoughts exactly (and I quote):
Time to Retire The Simplicity of Nature vs. Nurture
Luci Gutiérrez, Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2014
In a nutshell, if you read betweeen the lines, the verdict is in: nurture wins. Here's the redefined version of the problem: "culture is a biological phenomenon. It's a set of abilities and practices that allow members of one generation to learn and change and to pass the results of that learning on to the next generation." Except that - 'culture' is the wrong word. More...
Going Back To Basics Is Still Going Backwards
Chris Betcher, Betchablog, February 2, 2014
Our local newspaper gives us the 'back to basics' lecture in its editorial every so often. But I'm inclined to agree with Chris Betcher's criticisms of proponents of 'back to basics':
Data-driven policy and commerce requires algorithmic transparency
Alex Howard, Tech Republic, February 3, 2014
Just for the record: the next phase of VC-backed MOOCs is going to meet the same comeuppance as the first phase. See where they say here and here where 'big data' will save education. More...
A New Pedagogy is Emerging... and Online Learning is a Key Contributing Factor
Unattributed, Contact North, February 5, 2014
This is an updated version (first posted here last year) of one of Contact North's most popular articles. It describes a 'new pedagogy' that is emerging as a result of internet-enabled education. It mostly resembles connectivism, but without the theoretical underpinnings, and with elements of traditional learning, such as blended learning and collaboration. More...
Moralities of Everyday Life
Paul Bloom, Coursera, February 2, 2014
I'm looking at the Moralities of Everyday Life course being offered of Yale (it's a bit too strong to say I'm taking it). Mostly the course is readings and videos with some quizzes (there are 'office hours' but that's really a ridiculous concept for a course with 60,000 people). Anyhow, it links to an essay from Steven Pinker called The Moral Instinct. Now I find the idea that we have innate moral principles ridiculous, but there's room for a moral sentiment. More...
Charles Oppenheim on who owns the rights to scholarly articles
Charles Oppenheim, Open, Shut, February 4, 2014
Richard Poynder writes, " the Scholarly Communications Officer at Duke University in the US, Kevin Smith, published a blog post challenging a widely held assumption amongst OA advocates that when scholars transfer copyright in their papers they transfer only the final version of the article." More...
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