By Stephen Downes
July 22, 2004
Show Me Your Context, Baby: My Love Affair
with Blogs
"To call blogs literature would be to
turn them into an elitist, edited, and vetted art, one
which is contrary to their very nature. The complexity of
what blogs and their reactionary, perfectly contemporary,
accessible prose could mean to the future of sustainable
storytelling, to truth in journalism and to the survival of
democracy, is too great to call literature." We are not
given democracy; we must take it. Freedom belongs only to
those who would live free. By Kate Baggott, trAce Online,
June 25, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Who Killed Literary Reading?
There
is a point here. On more than one occasion I've stood at
the news stand in an airport or a bus terminal looking at
the selection of books; nothing better than a good read
while travelling. And yet I am faced with nothing but pap -
Danielle Steele occupies half the shelf, the magazine
section is dominated by fashion and entertainment fluff,
and the news consists of the seven second sound-bite called
USA Today. Science? Nope, filled with astrology and fad
diet books. To heck with it; I'll play Civ III on the
computer (which has the odd distinction of being more
historically accurate than the historical novels on the
shelves (much less the Disneyfied version of things)). By
Carlin Romano, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 23, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
"Emergent Learning" Is an
Oxymoron
This point is fundamentally correct
(and should be closely read by people talking about social
learning): "Almost by definition, if you have the kind of
self- and group-awareness that is usually entailed when we
use the word 'learning', you can’t have emergence. You can
say that a colony of ants 'learns' what the best foraging
strategy is, but it is the colony as a whole that 'learns,'
not the individuals." And I like his take on the intuitive
difficulty behind emergence. "The idea of a system
exhibiting judgment when its components are dumb just
seems...weird." Good stuff; have a look at the e-Literate blog as a whole, especially
the post on informational cascades. I will have more on all
of this in the future. By Michael Feldstein, e-Literate,
July 22, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Leicester E-Learning
Conference
Kind of a neat analogy: "Terraforming
the environment for sustainable e-learning life." We can
talk about what counts as good e-learning by talking about
what counts as good terraforming. If your newly terraformed
planet requires that its new colonists grow gills, it will
not count as successfully terraformed. The planet must
correspond to the actual living and breathing needs of the
colonists. Now the online world, of course, is always
terraformed. Yet given this, it's suirprising how many
sites expect that students can breather underwater - or at
the very least, ought to learn. View the link to the slides
at the bottom of the article. By Derek Morrison, Auricle,
July 22, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Mark Pesce: Open Source Television: Liberte!
Facilite!! Egalite!!!
Disinformation is an
interesting website and well worth a visit no matter what -
I generally pop by once every few weeks. This item, a link
from Robin Good, is worth considering in its own right. Now
we are well short of prime time for internet video on
demand - we are just at the leading edge of audio on
demand. But yes, it is coming - you can see plenty of signs
of it already (for example, in the last few months many
online dating sites have started allowing their members to
post short videos). By Mark Pesce, Disinformation, July 14,
2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Japanese Carrier Unveils Mobile-phone
Wallet
Not what the headline suggests. The
device is essentially a way to conduct wireless
transactions - wave your phone at the scanner and the sale
it deducted (accurately, one hopes) from your account.
Fine. But what I wanted is what the headline suggests - a
phone I can carry in my back pocket and that will hold by
cash and cards. I am forever losing my phone (it is, in
fact, currently lost) because there's no convenient way to
carry it. Now if my debit card can be built right into my
phone-wallet, that's fine too. Via NewsScan Daily. By Yuri
Kageyama, USA Today, July 22, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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