November 29, 2006

OLDaily

Steve Hargadon[Edit][Delete]: Thinking about Thinking and about Educational Commerce, EdTechLive [Edit][Delete] November 29, 2006
[link: Hits] More audio goodness as an interview I gave to Steve Hargadon is now online. He writes, "Granted, folks in Canada are probably more used to government-run solutions than we in the States, but it sorrows me to think--if Stephen is representative--that we have determined that the form and function of for-profit businesses forces them to make decisions which are not in the interests of anyone but themselves." Access the interview on the EdTechLive Wiki or as MP3 Audio. [Tags: , ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Unattributed[Edit][Delete]: Rote Learning Improves Memory In Seniors, Science Daily [Edit][Delete] November 29, 2006
[link: 1 Hits] Fascinating."Researchers found that seniors who engaged in an intensive period of rote learning followed by an equally long rest period exhibited improved memory and verbal recall." Perhaps, based on this, we should give students their final exams after the summer break has ended. Practice and reflection, right? [Tags: , ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Jody Clark and Chris Dede[Edit][Delete]: Robust Designs for Scalability, The River City Project [Edit][Delete] November 29, 2006
[link: Hits] Chris Dede has been working on MUVEs (Multi User Virtual Environments) recently and though he has been, with various partners, writing a lot, he's hard to track because he unfortunately has not yet discovered RSS. Still, you'll want to have a look at this paper, in part because it addresses what is in my mind a critical issue for MUVEs, scalability (I contend that as long as they depend critically on human instructors, they don't scale; Dede focuses mostly on the technology and how to get (mostly unwilling) instructors into the environment in the first place), but also in part because of the mathematical renderinsg of the "effect size" and the "'ccalability Index' that estimates the relative sensitivity of innovations to attenuation in various dimensions that represent their conditions for success." I like MUVEs, I grew up in MUVEs, but I never tried to create a pseudo-science around them, and neither should Dede. Via Technology, Education, and The Future. [Tags: , ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Wayne Hodgins[Edit][Delete]: The Future of Metadata, Off Course - On Target [Edit][Delete] November 29, 2006
[link: 1 Hits] Wayne Hodgins, who started blogging in October, offers this glimpse at his vision of the future of metadata. Note the effective embedding of a slide show in the blog post using SlideShare. As for the vision, well, it's good to see people talking about attention metadata (what I have called second-party metadata) and more on automatically generated metadata. But I question the emphasis on competencies that characterizes his recent work and I certainly question the value of the federated 'GLOBE' network. [Tags: , , ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

Press Release[Edit][Delete]: New Copyright Laws Risk Criminalising Everyday Australians, Internet Industry Association [Edit][Delete] November 29, 2006
[link: Hits] Opposition to the proposed new copyright legislation in Australia continues to mount. "A family who holds a birthday picnic in a place of public entertainment (for example, the grounds of a zoo) and sings 'Happy Birthday' in a manner that can be heard by others, risks an infringement notice carrying a fine of up to $1320." Via TALO, a lengthy list of submissions to the government (so at least they can't say "we had no way of knowing") and a series of risk assessments from the Internet Industry Association and a podcast interview by Brian Fitzgerald of Peter Coroneos. [Tags: , , ] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]

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I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumberance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle.

Where they are able to form networks of meaningful and rewarding relationships with their peers, with people who share the same interests or hobbies, the same political or religious affiliations - or different interests or affiliations, as the case may be.

This to me is a society where knowledge and learning are public goods, freely created and shared, not hoarded or withheld in order to extract wealth or influence.

This is what I aspire toward, this is what I work toward. - Stephen Downes