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Entries for January 2011
Administrator Account on January 31, 2011 08:55
Picking up on data.open.ac.uk Linked Data Now Exposing Module Information, which describes how to query the Open University linked data store for course (that is, module) information, I’ve just posted an SVG map of how all the current* OU undergraduate course relate. * if I understood @mdaquin correctly… specifically, a course is current if a [...]  
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Administrator Account on January 29, 2011 21:01
Administrator Account on January 29, 2011 09:00
Unknown,
e-Taalim, January 28, 2011.
This is a worthwhile initiative. These things empower and liberate. "Algeria launched the Maghreb Digital Library on Sunday (January 23rd) in an effort to expand access to information. The initiative was part of a joint endeavour between the Algerian Ministry of Higher Education and US-based NGO Civilian Research & Development Foundation (CRDF)." Full announcement in Arabic from Magharebia.com (which translates passably well in Google Chrome).
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Administrator Account on January 29, 2011 09:00
Joshua Debner,
OLPC News, January 28, 2011.
Excellent analytical commentary from Joshua Debner, reposting on the basis of his experience in the field deploying OLPC computers in Peru. He advocates four actions to, as he says, "stop the bleeding":
- Internet: Connect your current schools. Stop your current deployment plans and fix the ones that are already existing
- Update: Push through this new software update currently said to be done by end of January
- Teacher Network: build a network and tools for teachers to share lesson plans, or communicate with each other
- Leverage the Intern Program: leverage the model of the intern program set up by OLPC.
These points, even the fourth, would make excellent points of reference for educational computing initiatives worldwide, not just in Peru.
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Administrator Account on January 29, 2011 09:00
Unattributed,
Edudemic, January 28, 2011.
I have been using Google Chrome recently (because Firefox is quite flaky at the moment) and one extension that's always turned on is called Ghostery. Why? Because it blocks tracking cookies and the other tricks advertisers use to monitor my online activities. It's not that I'm paranoid; it's just that I find unwanted tracking applications to be, well, sleazy. Slimy. And I think that's the essence of why internet privacy is important to me. I don't trust these people, and I don't want to give them anything, because I know they'll misuse it. The same with Facebook, and yes, more and more, Google. (Which produces Chrome, I know, and I'm aware of the contradiction.) Anyhow, happy Data Privacy Day, and I hope the links in this post help you have a safe, private, and SEO-free day.
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Administrator Account on January 29, 2011 09:00
Rob Reynolds,
The Xplanation, January 28, 2011.
Good short video from the Xplanation: "This week, students told us how they used various social media, in particular Facebook, to better themselves in the classroom. They also discussed the benefits of consulting YouTube for any questions they have."
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Administrator Account on January 29, 2011 09:00
Bill Tucker,
The Quick and the Ed, January 28, 2011.
I'm generally supportive of the observations in this post of things misted the recent (and widely criticized) article in the NY Times on online learning:
- online Learning is Not Anti-Teacher
- traditional notions of class size make no more sense for online learning
- the Times article is shockingly bereft of any reference to actual research
Now of course we here are doing actual research in online learning. And it makes me want to reflect a bit more on the first point. Because while teachers play an important role in online learning (what do you thing I do?) it is nonetheless true that the traditional role of teacher is abolished. The idea of the teacher as a wage-labourer producing class after class of identical student output is dead, dead, dead. The only people who don't know this yet are (a) teachers, and (b) educational administrators and 'reformers'. See The Role of the Educator.
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Administrator Account on January 29, 2011 09:00
Brian Lamb,
Abject, January 28, 2011.
I am loving #ds106 radio, so much so that I have been spending some serious time this week (I'm on a week's vacation, after all) looking at things like Shoutcast, , Icecast and WinAmp and all the rest of it. Some of my earlier reflections are here. I'd love to have my own internet radio station; I've been envious of the people at Ed Tech Talk for years now. The other big lesson from Brian Lamb's post is: don't ask permission. The approvals process for anything like #ds106 would be a nightmare. Not because it's doing anything wrong or illegal or anything like that, but because it's so out there, so beyond the scope of anything academic institutions do today. It's all about centralized approval, official content and managing the message. That totally the opposite of what we should be working toward. See also Grant Potter's description of how Radio #ds106 was created, and Alan Levine's commentary.
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Administrator Account on January 29, 2011 09:00
Sam Ruby,
intertwingly It's just data, January 28, 2011.
The bloom is off the OpenID rose, and we are now seeing withdrawals, such as this announcement from 37 Signals that it will no longer support OpenID. "Much has been written about the usability and reliability problems facing OpenID. Some of the better ones are OpenID Is A Nightmare by Rob Conery and the What's wrong with OpenID? thread on Quora. No need to repeat all that here." Moreover, OAuth and OAuth-type services are proving an alternative, albeit a branded alternative. I still don't know why providers have not aboped a browser-based sign-in, as I advocated. Maybe now they will.
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Administrator Account on January 29, 2011 09:00
Reviewed by Anthony Everett,
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, January 28, 2011.
Some good heady conceptual stuff. "For Soames, to entertain a proposition is simply to predicate something of something else. So to entertain the proposition that o is red is simply to predicate redness of o.... Soames argues that we should take propositions to be event-types. He notes that utterances are events, suggests that we can take a sentence S to be an event-type of which utterances of S are the tokens.... But this raises a host of interesting questions. Can we predicate flying of Pegasus? And is this a different sort of event from predicating flying of Fafner?"
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