In our last episode, we beat up a bit on the notion of “learning object repositories” (LORs), wondering whether the well-meaning assemblage of modular bits and pieces of educational materials was actually a frustration of coherent teaching. Educational practices, after all, are still grounded in settings and customs that predate … Continue reading
The pendulum has certainly swung far away from the early days of digital learning happytalk, which was all objects all the time. In them dotgone days, “strategic futurists” such as Wayne Hodgins proclaimed that “the ability to learn and apply the right stuff faster is the only sustainable competitive advantage … Continue reading
Participatory is the lodestare for those trying to steer the social networking juggernaut towards actual improvement of education. As described in Henry Jenkins’s Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (a white paper on the MacArthur Digital Media Learning site), participatory culture is our technologically-delivered … Continue reading
I was on the verge of crafting a blog entry expressing fears and reservations about Second Life when it occurred to me that skepticism has gotten too much play here of late. I’m really not so grumpy. To try to prove that, I’ll slap down here a few paragraphs from … Continue reading
If you agree that Wikipedia presents more thorns than roses to academic experts, you have good company: one of Wikipedia’s two founders. The split between Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger has a certain Old Testament character: Wales (the Web 2.0 brother) reigns over the miraculous worldwide flourishing of the anonymously … Continue reading
Yo, can I borrow your notes? Harkening back to the salad days of college, I seem to remember a free-floating faith in the power of someone else’s notes to fill in cracks of attendance & attention. I doubt that much significant learning took place in power-cramming sessions entirely reliant on … Continue reading
You’ve wrangled that paper to a plausible conclusion — a bit of sleep is just around the corner — but hold on, not so fast, you’re Sisyphus after all. Citation formatting is a special curse, the inane labor at the end of hard work that holds all your effort hostage. … Continue reading
“Vices” may be “glaring as the noon-day sun,” but poems can go mighty dark. Hidden since 1811, Poetical Essay by a young Percy Bysshe Shelley appears in 2006. Millions to fight compell’d, to fight or die In mangled heaps on War’s red altar lie . . . When legal murders … Continue reading
Reading Roy Rosenzweig’s thoughtful appraisal of Wikipedia in the current Journal of American History (“Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past”), I was particularly struck by this passage: If Wikipedia is becoming the family encyclopedia for the twenty-first century, historians probably have a professional obligation … Continue reading
Please don’t take this the wrong way. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s just that I was so excited to meet you — I had so many preconceptions, I had heard so much about you. And then when I actually met you, you seemed kind of standoff-ish and, I admit, … Continue reading