via OLDaily
Scott Wilson's powerpoint slides contrasted the controlled, closed environment of a LMS with an free, open Personal Learning Environment (PLE).
I like to add another environment into the mix - a virtual rehearsal/practice space.
At a more personal level, at critical events, we rehearse. (Think wedding rehearsal...) We also do that for speeches, presentation, etc.
For complex political environment, students can learn through political role play simulation.
The key agenda of "Advancing ADL through Global Collaboration Forum" I have been attending in the last few days is to find out a way to take up the stewardship of that thing we generally call "SCORM". In preparation of the discussion, Neil Mclean and Robby Robson have put forward two discussion papers, linked respectively to the authors' names.
It is clear in the discussion that it is NOT the intention of the US Department of Defence funded ADL Initiative to give up SCORM and its related technologies. Rather, it is a way forward to further advance the vision of creating a global interoperable infrastructure for advanced distributed learning.
Three meanings to the term "ADL" need to be clear to understand the "Melbourne Declaration". ADL may refer to the US Department of Defence funded ADL initiative. The term may also mean the vision and/or infrastructure of advanced distributed learning. Yet another meaning may refer to the community which supported, adopted and have given input to the vision. At this point in time, it was agreed that the what as in "Stewardship of What" referred to in Robby's paper should be deferred. Instead, the discussion was focussed on creating a sustainable global stewardship.
The final and official declaration is not available yet. Here is what I have taken down as the discussion progresses:
The US Department of Defence sponsored the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative in 1997 with the goal of enabling of the highest quality education and training, delivered any time and anywhere (ADL processes). The ADL models are now widely adopted in many different contexts and sectors for the implementing technology-based learning on a global scale.
In celebrating the achievement, the Melbourne forum, Advancing ADL Through Global Collaboration, endorses the following points as a means of creating and maintaining the momentum for the further international advancement, development and deployment of advanced learning technology initiatives:
- Scalable sustainable and global infrastructure is of critical importance in fulfilling the many visions for teaching, learning, education, training and performance support.
- Global interoperability, based on open standards, is key to achieving the vision.
- An international collaborative approach will optimise the advancement, development and maintenance of this infrastructure
- Current ADL community has provided some of foundation stones for building this infrastructure.
- The continuing involvement of the ADL Initiative will be critical to any collaborative venture.
- The forming of a global stewardship is an effective means to achieve the above.
Actions
- An international stewardship organisation shall be established and become fully functional within a three year period.
- The ADL Initiative in collaboration with international community will convene, as soon as possible, an interim working group to develop a planning framework and timetable for the creation and commissioning of the proposed international stewardship organisation.
In 1999, Ip et el wrote a paper "Metasearching or Megasearching: Toward a Data Model for Distributed Resource Discovery" looking at searches based on free-text and web crawling, and depth searches using metadata harvesting across multiple repositories. These are alternate/complementary ways of information discovery. Different methods fit different purposes. In 2001, the group followed up with another "Resource Synergy" paper which looked at the value proposition of specialised collection of resources, called subject gateway at that time.
Subject gateways exist to meet the resource needs of their communities of interest. They tend to place a higher value on returning quality resources than general search engines - however we may interpret 'quality'. The value of any SG is in finding more efficient and effective ways to build, index and facilitate retrieval from special interest collections sifted or culled from the massive underlying search space. This sifting and culling depends on the domain knowledge of the SG owners. Such domain expertise is hard to find and replicate in general purpose search services.
(Content Object Repository Discovery and Registration/Resolution Architecture): An open, standards-based model for how to design and implement software systems for the purposes of discovery, sharing and reuse of learning content through the establishment of interoperable federations of learning content repositories.
At the "Advancing ADL through Global Collaboration", the first day of presentations seemed to focus on information and information management. We have demos of re-purposing S1000D (which is an international standard for technical publication utilising a common source database) data into SCORM training material and Cordra - a software which supports federated search.
I don't think there is anyone in the Forum who would say that "information" IS "learning". So, why is the skewed emphasis of information management. Afterall, ADL stands for "advanced distributed learning", so shouldn't we be talking more about learning, or distributed learning? We are implicitly equating information, or information delivery as learning?
OK, here are people interesting in "learning technology", or should it be "learning-enabling technologies"? If it is the latter, I would argue that the technology to support managing information is a key technology in supporting learning.
It is very important for learning technologists, me included, to remind ourselves continuously that we should not think we can teach because we have been taught. Airplane passengers can't fly an airplane, so people who has been students should not assume that we can teach, or help others to learn.
According to the website:
Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for people to build and run social applications. Social "apps" are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.
Social apps are web apps made up of code and content that enable people to match, transact, and communicate with one another. Social apps can include listings, reviews, ratings, recommendations, discussion boards, photo sharing, social bookmarking, wishlists, events, people matching, maps, as well as many other features.
I am at Advancing ADL through Global Collaboration Forum today and next two days.
I saw a very interesting demonstration of "hard SCORM" and "pocket SCORM" by a PhD candidate from Taiwan, Mr Te-Hau Wang.
Hard SCORM refers to SCORM content printed on dead tree. What was interesting is the integration of book-based content with web-based content. By using a hand-held OCR reader (called Hyper Pen), a learner will scan the printed pages when she turns a page, she also scan on printed symbols on the paper to activate media which is delivered to the computer screen. Hey, who likes to read off long articles from computer screens? That's an interesting solution.
I remembered about 10 years ago, there was a "live book" project where bar-codes were printed at different places on a dead-tree book. User scans the bar-code to retrieve sound files from the computer, or indicates selection of answers.
Pocket SCORM is delivering SCORM content to small screen devices such as pda, mobile etc. In order to avoid scrolling both horizontally AND vertically, the content needs to strip of most graphics and re-flow in order to allow a single scroll direction. Nice!
Yes, he also presented "Video SCORM". The idea was to use television (digital televison) as the delivery platform. Learners can move between screens using a remote control. Is that edutainment?
After putting down the project for a long time, I finally got around and updated the SCORM courseplayer.
Courseplayer will deliver SCORM-compliant courses on CD or DVD, or static web sites. Basically, I have implemented a light-weight SCORM compliant LMS using Javascript. The script will open the imsmanifest.xml files found in the SCORMcourse directory, read the manifest file and create a default table of content.
This pre-release version is totally compatible with SCORM version 1.2 (OK, I know it is an old spec, but it is the most highly adapted, right?). I have not implemented any sequencing engine and hence will not work with version 1.3. However, it does support the new APIs.
The pre-release version also supports the professional license (although the online license generator still needs some more work). With a license (put in the setting directory), the courseplayer will ask for a student ID at launch and proceed to capture any cmi data generated. The student should activate the [send data] before the end of the session and email the encrypted interaction data to the tutor via the email address in the license.
I believe this feature will be useful for supporting e-Learning in remote area where high-speed internet connection is still unavailable generally.
According to the website, rollyo allows you to create a search to sites which you already know and trust. Basically, rollyo enables a user to pick the sites that the user wants to search.
I have created a rollyo search here in this blog. On the right column, there is a text area just under "Search my blogs". If you type in a search term and click [go], rollyo will produce a result based on seaching my blogs only.
This can be very useful for creating customised "resources" in education sites for the minors. At the moment, rollyo limits the number of sites to be searched to 25. This is probably not enough.
Leigh Blackall quoted a Google Chinese to English translation of the blog by Yoa Zhou. Let me try a human translation.
The blog title consists of two phrases: Freedom and being oneself.
Hi, lucky to meet you here. What a chance!,
An educational movement using Podcast.
A crash of civilisaton is being acted out in Iraq, what a human tragedy! East and West requires more exchange, so is North and South. Let podcast and RSS lead us towards freedom.
(Looks like a slogan, but this will do for the time being. May change it in the future.)
via Stephen Downes' OLDaily
The methods suggested in the "A List Apart" article are not very good. I like none of them. Here is a better one from www.csscripting.com. Check out the Test Case 6 which is what the "A List Apart" article is trying to achieve.
There is no clumsy and additional mark-ups needed for the list to work. Just link the javascript and the css.
My best friends, Kin and Kit are staying with me in the last few days.
Kit was a awarding winning teachers. She won numerous teaching awards in teaching Chinese in Australia and in Hong Kong. Kin just obtained his PhD. In fact they arrived immediately after the graduation ceremony.
Both Kin and Kit have just retired. Kin and I are working on an interesting project which will be revealed later when ready. Kit is working on a book project with the other award winning teacher Betty I mentioned some weeks back.
Our dinner conversation somehow wandered into asking what makes someone successful.
I always thought that it was failure because there is Chinese saying that "failure is the mother of success". Is that only a Chinese saying, any equivalent in other languages/cultures?
Kit said in her farewell speech delivered to her students a month back that in fact success is the mother of success. Small success gives us the motivation to continue to work and work harder, which leads to more success. The trick is to create small success to begin with and build on the sucesses.
It makes a lot of sense.
Many entrepreneur texts suggest people to think "big" and be pesistent. Venture capitalist wants the entrepreneur to stay focus and works on the single project whicih the capitalist supports. This last point I think is a bit selfish. While VC spreads their investment in multiple ventures, why do they want the entrepreneur to put all his eggs in a basket?
I think both of these suggestions are against the human nature. At least they are not the way I work.
I am motivated by success. It does not matter it is small or large. Success bleeds success.
I have been and still am working on multiple projects. Yes, I am spreading myself too thinly in some cases. However, many a time, the thinking that I put in one project produces new insight in other projects. I just need to have more time and more people helping me. Up to now, the major problem I have with my projects are that they are mostly solo projects. I changed that couple of years back and things are moving on nicely. There are still some projects I am still the sole owner. I need to clear them either by finishing them or by inviting people to join me to share the load and of course the fruit of success, if any. For the following two solo projects, I am now seeking interested partners:
www.snapsurvey.com - an online data collection platform, and
www.scormplayer.com - a CD-based mechanism for delivering SCORM-compliant courses.
Contact me offline if you are interested.
by Stephen Downes and various Blog authors including Derek Morrison and Christopher D. Sessums.
I was not at ALT-C in Manchester and I have not had the fortune to hear Stephen directly. Because of some hicups, the audio was not available too. So I have to make do with Stephen's powerpoint slides and the comments made by other bloggers.
Quoting from Stephen's slide directly:
In my view, the question of collaboration is a question of governance
[sic]
Are you free to leave?
[next slide]
The Lecture…
May be the form that (counterintuitively) offers maximal freedom to the audience
And hence, may be favoured by learning professionals (at least in their own learning) because it preserves this degree of freedom
by Jay Cross via OLDaily
If you don't have time to read anything else, don't read the rest of this post. Go and read the post itself.
Here are some highlight of the main ideas I resonate well with the article.
They [ADDIE instructional design model] box the design process into steps and deal with them one at a time. There’s no unity, nothing working together here. You finish one step and go on to the next. Like behaviorist psychology, there’s no emotion. People’s feelings count for nothing. It’s as if the workers being trained are robots or zombies. And what about the impact of what’s outside of the flowchart? These models don’t map to reality.
As a landscape designer, my goal is to conceptualize a harmonious, unified, pleasing garden that makes the most of the site at hand. As an enlightened instructional designer, my goal is to create a learning environment that advances the organization’s mission by nurturing the growth of its people.
In a knowledge economy, learning and work are one and the same. Here’s Peter Henschel again, saying “By sheer force of habit, we often substitute training for real learning. Managers often think training leads to learning or, worse, that training is learning. But people do not really learn with classroom models of training that happen episodically. These models are only part of the picture. Asking for more training is definitely not enough—it isn’t even close.”
by Lanny Arvan via XplanaZine
The idea that trained professionals in the field don’t know the fundamentals of the principles course is scary, but I’m guessing it is not that uncommon and I’m guessing it happens in disciplines other than economics. Look at me. I never took that principles course where opportunity cost is taught and I never took the intermediate course where presumably the opportunity cost idea is amplified and used extensively. And while I think my graduate education was excellent, it really helped me to think seriously about economic models, the language and technique that were used from the get go was meant for insiders in the field.
This is a conversation between a user and computer support:
[User]: Hello, computer support?
[Support]: Yup.
[User]: I have a problem with my printer. It's jamming paper.
[Support]: OK, what type of printer was that?
[User]: an HP laserjet printer.
[Support]: and the problem?
[User]: paper jam.
[Support]: Can you open the door and clear the paper path?
[User]: It's the mouse. It is stopping everything?
[Support]: {..???} Is the cursor frozen?
[User]: {...???} No, it is not related to the screen. It is the mouse.
[Support]: {@#$% ... ???} Can you move the mouse?
[User]: I dare not touch it. It seems still alive.
[Support]: {@#$% ... ???} ... and ?
[User]: it is stuck there
[Support]: mouse? are we talking about the printer?
[User]: yes, but the mouse is stuck... it won't move...can't...jammed
[Support]:what mouse?
[User]: the mouse in the printer
[Support]:I mean physically go to the printer and open it
[User]: I did
[Support]:do you see the paper?
[User]: no,... it's a laserjet .... I'm afraid to restart because I might damage the mouse
[Support]: ahhhhhh.. you should still be able to open the printer box and see the paper jammed somewhere
[Support]: no point in restarting without clearing the paper first
[User]: I don't see any paper jammed
[Support]: can you see the full path of where the paper should go?
[User]: no. I just see the mouse
What is happening here? If you have not figured that out, take a look at this photo. (ps I got this photo from a friend. If anyone knows the source, please let me know.)
Context is everything.
by Will Richardson via XplanaZine
The post started by looking at the two sides of wiki and blogs:
the other half of the equation, the consumption of blog and wiki and podcast content by students and teachers.
by Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily
In the last two days, Dave looked at two studies related to effect of violent video game on human attitude and behaviour. See Critiquing the video game violence studies and More on video game violence. In both situations, he went back to the original papers, looked at the data and noted carefully the conditions under which the data were collected. Here is his conclusion: [my emphasis]
Does Williams and Scoric’s data undermine that of Gentile et al., discussed yesterday? The two studies hardly intersect. The average age of Gentile et al.’s population was 13; Williams and Scoric’s was 27. Gentile et al. used participants’ own ratings to determine how “violent” the games they played actually were; Williams and Scoric preselected a game they had arbitrarily determined to be violent. Gentile et al.’s most significant result was a correlation of exposure to video game violence with physical fights; Williams and Scoric didn’t ask their participants about physical fights at all.
[sac]
psychologists have a hard enough time figuring out how people react to different colored squares. Understanding a complex social phenomenon like video games is not going to be a simple task, and making public policy based on that understanding will be even more difficult. Perhaps the best we can hope is for policy-makers — and the general public — (not to mention science writers) to understand that we’re dealing with a limited set of data, and to not put too much faith in any single study.
If you have installed Google Earth, you can open the placement with Google Earth. It will add 13 places in your "Temporary Places". Clicking each will open with a window with some questions in Dutch. I don't know what are the questions. :-(
This hoax has been heating up lately in the blogosphere.
On August 19, 2005 Boing Boing put up a $250,000 (later capped at $1 Million) challenge
to pay any individual *$250,000 if they can produce empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
"The proponents of intelligent design use an ingenious ploy that works something like this," writes Tufts philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, and author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea. "First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist's work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges levelled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a "controversy" to teach."
via Contentious by Amy Gahran: Can Bloggers Be Sued Over Comments? Maybe
In a nutshell, SEO company Traffic-Power.com has filed suit against [Aaron] Wall,[who writes the SEO Book weblog,] claiming that comments posted on Wall’s blog revealed some of their “trade secrets.”
via Boing Boing: HOW TO extract video from Yahooligans
This post details how to save a stream-video so that you can play as many times and make as many copies as you like. Just beware of the IP police.
By David Stonehouse (the Age, 27 August, 2005) [my added link]
... But when he expressed frustration at not being able to revive a dilapidated industrial area, the youngster's reply astounded him: "I think you need to lower your industrial tax rates."
Reflecting on that years later, Johnson could not help but think that if his nephew had been in some urban studies class instead, he would have been nodding off. If there was a moment that helped convince him video games can enrich young minds, this was one. "He was learning in spite of himself," [Steven] Johnson says.
James Paul Gee, a pioneer in video-game research at the University of Wisconsin, says the field is still so new nobody can prove anything. "It shows that games can improve your problem solving. There is well-known research that they improve surgeons' hand-eye co-ordination and skills in surgery," he says.
Elyssebeth Leigh, a senior lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney, believes in the power of video games, too. She says they teach children how to interact with technology. And they can help children experiment with the world around them in a safe way - and learn about choices, strategy, risks and consequences without leaving the living room.
by Jamais Cascio (November 22, 2004)
SimCity is often seen as more than a game: SimCity, in all of its versions, shows up in classrooms, research papers, and (rumour has it) planning offices around the country. And that has some troubling implications.
the player operates in “God Mode,” with absolute power to build, demolish, tax, and spend. Unwieldy growth and megalomaniacal, destructive behaviour are the two poles of city operation and the player’s most likely courses of action. Thus the heart of the game is much less a universal vision of city design than it is a reflection of the most extreme tendencies of development in America, found in the few areas in which one person has total control over a large parcel of land
Simulation games like SimCity are valuable because they give a peek at the complex relationships between cause and effect in big systems such as cities. They're a chance to play at the edges of complexity, to see "what happens if I do this?" in both an iterated and replicable fashion. They can be wonderfully seductive digital sirens leading to unexpectedly staying up to 3:30 AM. But to be good educational tools, the models have to be transparent and changeable. We should be able to play with the system itself, not just the system's effects.
by Graham Attwell. See Part 1 and Part 2.
The eight challenges are (See Part 1 for details)
Challenge 1 – basing e-learning on learners own experiences
Challenge 2 – developing a rich and powerful learning environment
Challenge 3 – localizing the programme
Challenge 4 – supporting individual learners
Challenge 5 – developing sustainable and dynamic contents
Challenge 6 – recording, validating and presenting learning
Challenge 7 – developing a community of learners
Challenge 8 – developing programmes capable of flexible modes of delivery
Firstly, each student or learner will be given a blog space to record their learning experiences. The blog will also act as a portfolio for their learning (see my earlier blog posts on portfolios), The blogs will support track back and tagging as well as a personal profile.
But of course the learners will need some form of sequenced learning materials as a stimulus for self learning and communication.
That will be provided through an imaginary blog – or rather the real blog of an imaginary learner – herself following a course in self evaluation. Learners will follow the entries of the imaginary learner – Sarah Jones – and will be asked to comment on her experiences and feelings. Their commentary – added as comments on Sarah’s blog will automatically be added ion their own blog – or portfolio.
Like Tom McHale, I just read about this and in no position to comment.
Invitational Education is a theory of practice that addresses the total educational environment. It is a process for communication caring and appropriate message intended to summon forth the realization of human potential as well for identifying and changing those forces that defeat and destroy potential.
Invitational Education asserts that every person and everything in and around schools adds to, or subtracts from, the process of being a beneficial presence in the lives of students. Ideally, the factors of people, places, policies, programs and processes should be so intentionally inviting as to create an environment in which every person is cordially summoned to develop intellectually, socially, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.
Four basic assumptions within Invitational Education
- RESPECT: People are able, valuable, and responsible and should be treated accordingly.
- TRUST: Education should be a cooperative, collaborative activity. Process is as important as product.
- OPTIMISM: People possess untapped potential in all areas of worthwhile human endeavour.
- INTENTIONALITY: Human potential can best be realized by creating and maintaining places, policies, processes and programs specifically designed to invite development, and by people who are intentionally inviting with themselves and others, personally and professionally (“The Five P’s”).
A week ago, I wrote about designing real physical space for future. As I was reading Rob Reynolds' article on The Incredible Shrinking LMS -- Or How Learning Will Travel, my thought ran off after reading his view of "home":
I grew up in Texas, spent some quality time in Latin America, went back to Texas for a time, moved to Oklahoma, and have finally started a new stint in Massachusetts. On the one hand, each of those places came to feel like "home." On the other hand, the part of each of them that is home is less about geography and more about experience and memory. While I have always had a "home base," my real concept of home has been expanding my whole life. When you get right down to it, home for me is Texas/Mexico/Argentina/Oklahoma/Massachusetts and every memory, relationship, and story tied up with those places. And because home is the collection of these things and not the physical surroundings in which I live, I always carry it with me. It may be manifested, to some extent, in my house or apartment, in the places I actually live, but it is definitely a "mobile" reality and always has been.
the understanding of home evolves naturally from house --> house + relationships and experiences -- > relationships + experiences + memories
by John Sutherland
As educator wants to leverage on game's ability to engage players, the game designers are learning to use story and movie script to advance their craft. This article, based on classic story structure put forward by McKee points out that Story is conflict. John continues to dissect a three-act classical story:
- First, there's a protagonist, a hero.
- His or her world is thrown out of order by an inciting incident. (Look at the sabotaged dope deal in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for a good example of this.)
- A gap opens up between the hero and an orderly life.
- The hero tries the normal, conservative action to overcome the gap. It fails. The world pushes back too hard.
- The hero then has to take a risk to overcome the obstacles that are pushing back.
- Then there is a reversal. Something new happens, or the hero learns something she didn't know before, and the world is out of whack again. A second gap has opened up.
- The hero has to take a greater risk to overcome the second gap.
- After overcoming the second gap, there is another reversal, opening a third gap.
- The hero has to take the greatest risk of all to overcome this gap and get to that object of desire, which is usually an orderly life.
by Clark N. Quinn.
In this article, Clark pointed out a number of elements which will lead to engaging experience.
Contextualized – the learning should be in a setting where the learners actions make sense. A story, if you will. Learners learn best when it's in a meaningful context.
Clear Goal – the learner should have an end state that they are motivated to achieve. ... Learners are better able to take action when they have an outcome they know they're trying to achieve.
Appropriate challenge – the level of difficulty has to be beyond the learner's capability, but not so far that the learner can't accomplish the task; learning happens best in the space just beyond the learner's capability where, with some effort and support, they can accomplish the task. Learners learn fastest when the challenge is significant but not impossible.
Anchored – the actions that the learner takes have to have a meaningful effect on the outcome. There can't be meaningless actions by the learner after which the story proceeds, but instead there have to be real consequences in the story line of the actions they take.
Relevant – in addition to the actions taken being meaningful to the story, the story and actions have to be meaningful to the learner. We need stories that appeal to their interests and motivations.
Exploratory – the environment has to have a wide variety of possible choices (or at least a perception of same), and the ability to try different things and explore the internal relationships. Learners learn best when they have to make choices and face the consequences of those choices.
Active manipulation – a related facet is having the learners active in exploring those relationships, and operating on the world in ways that are similar to the way you operate in the real world and that reflect the story setting. Learners learn best when there is minimal overhead between their intentions and the actions taken to achieve them.
Appropriate feedback – the feedback from the world has to come in a way that makes sense in the world. They need to know they've acted, even if they don't immediately get to know the final outcomes of their action.
Attention-getting – the action can't be totally deterministic, there needs to be some randomness and probability. Total determinism isn't desirable. Learners learn best when their attention and curiosity is maintained.
I have been very critical about experimental studies, e.g. here and here. I don't bother to mention more which pass through my attention daily. [What the heck is the nature of my job?]
I have many huge books on the back bench in my study (which doubles as my office). Many of these I have flipped through only a few pages and never finish. What a waste and what is the use of all these effort?
A & M Publications P/L, hence, is looking for short manuscript (final published book A-5 size of about 100 page) which are intellectually interesting and readable. Due to our limitations, we will only accept proposals in learning, e-learning and related subject domain for the time being. Please contact me off-line.
By the way, we are looking for causal graphic designers and sales executives too. [No need to apply if you don't even bother to find out more about me and how to contact me. :-) ]
The July/August 2005 issue of Educause Review (Vol 40 Number 4) features Learning Space Design. The article I enjoyed most is Future of the Learning Space: Breaking Out of the Box.
With the ubiquitous availability of ICT, information gathering (traditional listening to lectures and taking notes) and information search (library visits) can be done online in quiet comfortable corners. These activities can be done alone or in small group. Today's laptop computers have limited power storage, typically several hours. Most will not last the whole day. Most are not-water proof as well. Hence it would be beneficial to incorporate lots of quiet dry spots with wireless connectivity and power points so that students with wireless notebook can conduct their information-related activities, preferably in real-time with those who prefer to sit in a lecture room/hall.
The greatest value of physical learning spaces is for face to face meetings and work that cannot be done online. Typically, these would involve group activities, experiments and interaction within real situation. The Educause Review covers this aspect very well.
An important aspect of higher education is the induction of the learner into the community of practice of the subject domain. The induction consists of both the formal part (knowledge and practices of the domain) as well as the social connectivity part (knowing who's who in the domain). The learning spaces in a higher education should have appropriate spaces to facilitate the "accidental" meeting of diverse communities, e.g. eating venues, social places and "hang-out areas".
Another interesting topic to explore in terms of the design of learning spaces is the potential and value of creating a physical space which can augment virtual space, or vice versa. 
The conclusion of this article is misleading due to the flaw design of the experiment. First the conclusion (my emphasis):
The purpose of this study was to examine how multiple columns and text justification impact online reading in terms of reading speed, comprehension, and satisfaction of a narrative passage. Results from this study showed that reading speed was significantly faster for two-column full-justified text than for one-column full-justified text. Post-hoc analyses showed that it was the fastest readers that benefited the most from this format.
I have been thinking about this a lot, really a great deal! I don't say I have any answer.
Knowledge* is all the accumulated experience I have since my birth. This is very much which define "me". Some of this knowledge may not be immediately retrievable or may have been lost (hence these will have little utility value); some may better be forgotten, which, unfortunately, I cannot. Of course, most of my knowledge will be called upon when I make any decision in my daily activity.
Information is manifestation of someone's part knowledge. Being an externalisation, information is not necessarily an accurate representation of one's knowledge, nor represents the whole of one's knowledge. However, being externalised, knowledge can be transferred from one place to another and from one time to another and stored externally.
It involves great skills to externalise one's knowledge. Hence, some are greater writer and story teller than others.
[further thinking required: Is factual information a manifestation? For example, the weather man measures and reports the air temperature of the city we live daily. Are these data points his manifestation of his knowledge, given that he does not actually do the measurement himself. He may have just read it off an instrument! There are millions of automatically collected data. Do they represent information as defined as a manifestation?]
The process of "importing" information, among many other activities which may or may not have the same effect, as being part of one's knowledge is called learning.
Social linguists argue that it is the language (natural or symbolic) which forms the building blocks of our mental model (knowledge). Because language is developed (and acquired) socially, we have a common understanding of the language, albeit there may be shades of diferences. Both instructivitic and constructivitic approaches to teaching and learning can produce learning results. Different learning theories deal with different aspects, and with varying degree of emphasis, of the organisation and presentation of information itself (typically the focus of instructional designs) or conditions under which the information "enters" the learner.
Connectivitism deals with an information network and treats both human and databases of information as nodes. Learning is part of a network building process. While this network view of the interconnectedness of information may also be the underlying operative description of our mental process, does an interconnected organisation represent a higher intelligence in which human is the equivalent of a brain cell? Sure, human has been extending our abilities by external means for as long as history can tell. We have been extending our physical strength by external power machinery. Data bank can supplement the potential fuzziness of our memory. By knowing where to get the information to help solve a problem, instead of accessing that information from within, external information network will help us solve more problems better and faster. It does represent a change of the kind of knowledge we would like to be accessible in our operative part. Does that represent a "bigger" or "better" knowledge?
That is my current thinking and I am open to be convinced otherwise.
*I am using the term knowledge very boardly here. At this stage, I am making no attempt to distinguish the more subtle difference between just knowing and wisdom, inspiration or value systems.
via Couros Blog
Don’tClickIt.com provides the interesting experience of a click-less interface.
More information is now available for the conference to be held in Melbourne November this year. This is the conference mini website direct link.
This year's theme is Playing and Learning in Virtual Environments. Presenters should challenge participants to take a fresh look at the questions that arise when people meet in virtual territories to play, to learn, and to share. Participation is purposely limited and there will be no concurrent sessions. Instead, participants are encouraged to attend each presentation and integrate their own perspectives and expertise into the conversation.
I met an old friend (not that she is old, we just have a long acquantance dating back over 20 years) who is teaching mathematics in Melbourne here. She won several teaching awards over the year.
One of the most impressive thing I found is her insight expressed in the following equation:
S=et
where S is success, e is effort and t is time.
In plain English, success is the effort in the power time.
Very inspiring.
Here is a list of the post I have written recently that were posted to my other blogs:
Personal Memory Assistant in Learning for 2020
Education is about preparing future citizens. If this is one probable scenario, the big question to me, educationally, is how can we prepare ourselves and our kids for such a world. Estimated time of arrival of this scenario, I would say 2020.
Trebla: Brother, remember that businesses are greedy. That won't satisfy they appetite! Then businesses will ask for charging content on per-use basis. Every time the PMA captures any content, the user has to pay for it. Every time the PMA replays the content, the user has to pay for it.
Albert: WHAT! Don't you think that kind of law can be passed?
Trebla: 100%. Big businesses have money. Money get people elected. The law will be made in the interest of the these businesses.
Albert: Trebla, you are so negative! There are a huge movement against digital right, e.g. Electronic Frontier Foundation and open source movement. If we don't want to see the scenario you describe, I need to act now to stop IP limitations on content today.
If we see invention as a business, we need to understand that out of a thousand ideas, only a couple are useful and ever fewer which can become a great product. The patenting process is expensive, very expensive indeed. The upfront cost of patenting has to be balanced against the potential additional revenue which can be generated by the patent. We also need to consider the alternative to NOT to patent. Instead of spending your effort and resources in patent process, what is the additional revenue that you can generate using the effort and resources that you intent to put into the patent process.
If people is so important, spending time to choose the right people to fill a managerial role is linked to the success of the corporate. Providing learning and development for people to build the kind of attributes which can energize people is where learning can focus on.
Following the "should not", here is the "should way" of using blogs in education by James Farmer. I echo strongly with James words:
Blogs are by no means the answer to everything, they are very strong alternative communication tools but if you want to build quizzes, run polls, have near-synchronous conversation, do listserv-y kind of discussion or strictly manage just about anything then you’ll probably want to look at another tool.
One of the worst things you can do is mandate posting on particular topics with particularly rigid frequency… you’ll over-assess & kill off exactly what blogs are good for: personal expression & exploration.
