October 26, 2011
Intel Classmate PC: You've Come a Long Way, Baby!
Wayan Vota,
Once Laptop Per Child News, October 26, 2011.
Long a critic of Intel's 'Classmate' computer, Wayan Vota comes out very much in favour of the newest releases. Best line of the article: "Intel realized that on their current power profile, they'd run out of global electrical capacity before the company saturated the potential PC market." This is in reference to the new Atom low-power processor replacing the Pentium chips in the computers. According to Vota, the machine is also rugged and well-designed.
The Best Idea for Higher Ed That I’ve Seen in Ages
Cathy Davidson,
Now You See It, October 26, 2011.
It's a good idea, to be sure, but it tends to be privatized and turned into glossy magazines - that's how Seed was founded out of my own organization. Founder Adam Bly was the NRC's poster child for a while ten years ago. That was then. Now, it's just web-only glossy sales-pich journalism published in New York. Still, if they can sustain it rather than sell it, Australia's The Conversation may be a lively, interesting and non-glossy way to enjoy science and academic research. "A team of professional editors, quite renowned in their collective experience, curates and selects the best research... They turn specialized scholarly research designed for peers into accessible, interesting, urgent, and sometimes even delightful fun and creative information for the public at large." Like I say, it's a good idea - but if they commercialize it, they destroy it, and they'll have to start over. Let's hope they remember that.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Accessibility, Books, Research, Experience, Australia, Wikipedia, Academia]
Read #MobiMOOC team's best #paper award for #mLearning research
Inge de Waard,
Ignatia Webs, October 25, 2011.
I'll probably never win a 'best paper' award for anything, but it's nice to be associated, however loosely, with something that did win. "So we are now seven members in the MobiMOOC research them (alphabetical order): Sean C. Abajian, Michael Sean Gallagher, Rebecca Hogue, Nilgün Özdamar Keskin, Apostolos Koutropoulos, Osvaldo Rodriguez and myself Inge de Waard. Writing the paper was a very dynamic process. After various iterations, where all of our combined ideas were put into the paper, we came to a consensus and ... the work and friendly, inspiring collaboration payed off. The team got 'Best Paper Award at the academically prestigious mLearn conference in Beijing. We all feel this is a true honor, as the paper came out of a thorough peer review process."
A Quick Follow-Up on the OpenClass Post
Michael Feldstein,
e-Literate, October 25, 2011.
The always worth-while Michael Feldstein has posted once on Pearson's OpenClass and in this short item he offers a follow-up to clarify. He writes:
- I think Pearson is trying to create a platform in the way that Google and Facebook are platforms.
- a platform approach entails a very different relationship with the vendor than simply licensing a hosted LMS
- Pearson’s marketing efforts have been finely tuned to emphasize free and easy
All of which sounds reasonable to me. Pearson's effort could be worthwhile, if they can get past the 'big publishing monopoly' phase, and focus on the 'what can we do for you' phase.
DIY U at Educause
Anya Kamenetz,
DIY-U, October 25, 2011.
Anya Kamenetz says some good things at the Educause conference along the lines of "the word 'open' does not mean what you seem to think it means." As she notes, "Pearson is launching something called OpenClass... Blackboard announced that it’s becoming Open-Educational-Resource-friendly... Cable Green from Creative Commons asked what I thought about this in the Q&A, and I brought up David Wiley’s concept of 'openwashing.'" Yes, good points. If she keeps up like that, though, the publishers will never let her publish another book.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Open Content, Books, Blackboard Inc., EDUCAUSE]
Are we asking the wrong question about e-books?
Doug Johnson,
The Blue Skunk Blog, October 25, 2011.
I think the poster above pretty much sums it up.
The Ubiquity of Informal Learning: Beyond the 70/20/10 Model
Ben Betts,
Stoatly Different, October 25, 2011.
So is there any merit to the "oft-quoted model from which we derive that the majority of learning happens from on the job experience, as opposed to learning from peers or in a formal learning environment?" This post looks at the question. This figure (or the closely related 80-20 figure) is widely cited. "Many articles which put forth the 70/20/10 model cite Kevin Dobbs’ article “Simple Moments of Learning” which appeared in Training Magazine, January, 2000." But this is just a passing reference. And there doesn't seem to be any reviewed literature supporting the claim. But there should be ways to test the theory - if not by measuring how much informal learning we do, then measuring how much formal learning we do.
Math Doodling
Dan Coleman,
Open Culture, October 18, 2011.
I draw complex maps of urban landscapes when I doodle, but this is good too: "Doodling — it’s usually a sign of boredom, an escape from tedium. Vi Hart turns it all upside down, and shows how doodling can be an engaging form of pedagogy. On her web site, you will find other math doodling videos called Stars, Snakes + Graphs, Binary Trees, Sick Number Games and Squiggle Inception. The video above is called Infinity Elephants." I'm wondering what doodling will look like in an all-electronic world (or whether it will become a lost art).
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