Janet Clarey revisits some of the literature arguing against the use of learning style testing. Additionally, she links to Peter Smith, who repeats the dictum that comntent should determine the method of study. "For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education describes how learning about the structure of molecules is better for most students (independent of learning styles) by building ball-and-stick models." The paper behind this recent spate of commentary is blocked behind a paywall, preventing an effective assessment of the research.

There is a detailed abstract, however, which reiterates that "any credible validation of learning-styles-based instruction requires robust documentation of a very particular type of experimental finding." It is here, of course, where the real work is being done - the experimental results are an afterthought, an unsurprising consequence of a very specific procedure intended to produced them. If your idea of education is to blast content and students and then have them repeat it back to you, then yeah, learning styles won't make much of a difference. But education and learning are rather more subtle, and we should resist demands for blunt-instrument types of validation.
Janet Clarey, Workplace Learning Today, January 21, 2010 [Tags: Assessment, Tests and Testing, Learning Styles, Research] [Link] [Comment]

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So - will it be called the Slate? That's where Chris Clark puts his money. I made my prediction twelve years ago, calling it the PAD (for 'Personal Access Device'). There's still an outside chance (it could be an iPad, maybe) that my projected name will be accurate. I will point out, in terms of specifications, I was pretty much dead on. Chris Clark, Learning Technology Lab, January 21, 2010 [Tags: Project Based Learning] [Link] [Comment]

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I like D'Arcy Norman's definition of "educational technology" a lot more than Januszewski and Molenda's. Their definition, that "educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological process and resources," defines an academic discipline, rather than the object of study, and for good measure throws in normative elements ("ethical", "appropriate") inappropriate in a definition. It is also essentialist, trying to define something in terms of inherent properties of that thing (as opposed to external factors, such as use). Norman's more colloquial definition, "educational technology is whatever stuff you need to use to support the practice of effective teaching and learning," is also more accurate. It identifies a set of entities as defined by how they are used. And it allows for unethical and inappropriate uses of stuff (still a good idea in a world of SCORM and page-turners). D'Arcy Norman, Weblog, January 21, 2010 [Tags: SCORM, Academia, Metadata] [Link] [Comment]

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These Deloitte predictions are very much in line with my own thinking.
- sales growth of e-readers will not reach expectations
- net tablets will be huge, and may revitalize newspapers and magazines
- IT departments will begin buying based on employee needs, not corporate policy
- cloud computing grows, but stalls somewhat over reliability and security Richard Nantel, Workplace Learning Today, January 20, 2010 [Tags: Security Issues, Canada] [Link] [Comment]

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The idea of "knowing where to find it" is more complex than simply saying "I don't need to know it." It's a response to the suggestion that we need to train people to learn certain things ahead of the need, a body of "core know;ledge", if you will. But it is not a suggestion that people do not need knowledge, or that they do not need to remember things. Rather, it's a two-parter: first, that different people need to remember different things, so trying to teach them what they need ahead of time will be a failure; and second, that people will remember what they need to remember if they need it frequently and if they can find it when they need (which, interestingly, is exactly how memorization works, but without the context or interest: you force yourself to need to remember something frequently, and if you forget, you look it up right away and try again). Tom Werner, Brandon Hall, January 20, 2010 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]

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Looks like today is one of those days where I take things people say and argue against them. Like this post, which asserts, in the title, "if the leaders don't get it, it doesn't happen." Which is patently false; otherwise, there would never be underground slang, certain types of drug use, streaking, counter-revolutionaries, grass-roots movements, fads and fashions, and a host of other things big and small that leaders just don't get. The 'great leader' theory of change and progress is demonstrably false; history is littered with leaders who didn't "get it" and whose institutions changed anyways. Scott McLeod, Dangerously Irrelevant, January 20, 2010 [Tags: Patents, Paradigm Shift, Copyrights, Patents] [Link] [Comment]

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