By Stephen Downes
February 9, 2004
Content Delivery in the
'Blogosphere'
George Siemens comments of this
item, "Short exploration of blogging as a content delivery
tool in education: Content Delivery in the 'Blogosphere'.
Personally, I think the article misses the point...blogging
is less about content delivery, and more about expression,
self-exploration (and in some cases, dialogue)." I agree
with this assessment. Blogging isn't about content
delivery, it's also about interaction and engagement. Like
that fitness link I posted last Friday,
blogging is a repeated act of self disclosure - even if
utterly nobody responds, you engage with the
possibility that someone may be reading. As such, it
is as much about assessment, filtering, critiquing, and
wrestling with content as it is about delivering content.
It's too bad the authors didn't look very deeply into the
subject (their reading list is shallow and idiosyncratic)
and too bad the editors of T.H.E. Jorunal didn't demand
more. By Richard E. Ferdig, Ph.D., and Kaye D. Trammell,
T.H.E. Journal, February 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
We Learning: Social Software and E-Learning,
Part II
The second part of this look at social
software in e-learning (the first part is here) looks at the mechanics of it:
wikis, social network analysis tools, proximity tools and
virtual worlds. It's a good discussion, but my recent
experiences with Orkut have left me feeling empty - just as
content is pointless without conversation, conversation is
pointless without context. If the social network gives you
nothing to do, then it's about as educationally
useful as a wine and cheese party. That should not detract
from your enjoyment of this paper, which is as good a
survey as your'll get in two thousand words or so. It's
just to say that social software needs to become something
more. Via Maish. By Eva Kaplan-Leiserson, Learning
Circuits, February, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
What Do Instructional Designers
Design?
I haven't read this - it's a .pdf
powerpoint note format in a zip file and I just don't have
the patience which such a user-hostile format - but it is
being quoted all over the blogsphere. So I'll just borrow
George Siemen's description, which in turn borrows from
Maish: "Good resource (except for the .pdf powerpoint note
format) What do Instructional Designers Design? ...love
this quote: "What do you get when you cross and
Instructional Designer with a Mafioso? Someone who makes
you an offer you can't understand." Maish offers some
comments: "He touches many aspects of ID, like sequencing,
that rarely get analyzed. Here's an anecdote from the
article that I will be using often: Back in the 60s, French
director, Jon-Luc Goddard was sitting on a panel of film
luminaries at some or other film festival. A film critic on
the panel felt obliged to defend traditional film narrative
in the face of an onslaught by the French Nouvelle Vague,
'Surely, Mr. Goddard', opined the critic, 'A film needs a
beginning, a middle and an end.'" By Don Morrision,
February, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Who Forgot the Learner?
As Charles
Churchman pointed out already decades ago, note the authors: "To conceive of knowledge as a
collection of information seems to rob the concept of all
of its life... Knowledge resides in the user and not in the
collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of
information that matters." This forms the basis for this
paper's sustained and intelligent criticism of the learning
object paradigm as defined by SCOs and SCORM. Social
interaction and learning context, they argue, are essential
and should not be overlooked. While I would be the last to
say that individual atoms of learning content in themselves
constitute learning, I caution against supposing that the
human element cannot exist unless it is defined. These can
be, as I have argued elsewhere, emergent properties arising
from the organization of learning materials and learner
contributions, and need not be explicitly expressed in
order to exist. Via Seb Schmoller, who also recommends the
authors' Digital Learning
Materials Do Not Possess Knowledge. Both papers are MS
Word format. By Tomi Jaakkola and Lassi Nirhamo, University
of Turku, January, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Towards a Unified e-learning
Strategy
Seb Schmoller links to three responses to
the British government's discussion paper on a unified
e-learning strategy (from the Learning and Skills Development Agency
(LSDA), Association of Colleges (AoC), and
Association for Learning Technology (ALT), and Joint Information Systems Committee
(JISC), which comments, "JISC believes that the e-learning
agenda must be led by student needs, not technological
invention, and should be used to enhance the student
experience." The responses are generally favorable, with
authors expressing more caution about the impact and
certainty of e-learning. Two of the papers noted that the
development of e-learning technologies still involves risk,
and that funding attangement ought to reflect that. A
couple of documents also noted that the government proposal
should place more emphasis on outreach and accessibility.
Credit transfer and similar arrangements was touched on by
the LSDA while the ALT took care to note - and encourage -
the increasing use of open source software and open content
in learning. The British process should be studied with
care by Canadians as we, also, are embarking on a process
of defining a national vision for e-learning. By Various
Authors, Department for Education and Skills, January 30,
2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Of Human Accomplishment
Making
the case that there are objective standards of human
greatness requires answering the question, "What defines
greatness in human achievement in the sciences or the
arts?" The answer? Meaning. Charles Murray: "The sources of
energy for accomplishment are a sense of (1) purpose and
(2) personal autonomy. The sources for what he calls the
content of accomplishment are (3) organizing structure and
(4) transcendental goods." Via ArtsJournal. By Dennis
Dutton, The New Criterion, February, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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