Stephen Downes OL daily

Derek Halpern, Social Triggers, February 7, 2012. What's worthwhile about this post is that it's at least honest about the technique, widely used (but seldom admitted) to drive readership. Called 'drafting', the idea is that you in some way associate your work with that of the famous and get drawn along in their wake. It's not just for SEO specialists like this one. It's for everyday bloggers - just list (or even better, link to) famous people (like from Noam Chomsky and Sir Ken Robinson, Mitch Resnick, Jaron Lanier, Conrad Wolfram, Ellen McArthur, Charles Leadbeater, Keri Facer, Stephen Heppell and Ray Kurzweil) and wait for the search hits to come in, or even better, for them to read your stuff and link to it. Or as Derek Halpern says, find your competitors, find the journalists who covered the story, and offer them a follow-up on the same story. Same concept. Or write things that praise the people who are already influential, and follow along in their wake. Same principle. [Link] [Comment]

Ross Dawson, Trends in the Living Networks, February 7, 2012. I should make a 'keynote speaker' video. I could record myself staring into space and mumbling incoherently. Every once in a while I'd shout "Yes! Fish!" [Link] [Comment]

Steve Wheeler, Learning With 'e's, February 7, 2012. Normally I wouldn't report on a conference set-up but these activity domes created by Graham Brown-Martin at Learning without Frontiers at Olympia in London caught my imagination. The presentations at the conference look decidedly ordinary, but as Steve Wheeler writes, "it was around and inside the domes that much of the conversations, connections and creativity took place. [Link] [Comment]

Diana G. Oblinger, EDUCAUSE Review, February 7, 2012. The current issue of EDUCAUSE Review focuses on leadership in the higher education information technology community. Diana G. Oblinger writes a brief overview of what constitutes leadership without missing a cliché:
- "Leaders catalyze change, not for the sake of change itself but for the sake of preserving fundamental values."
- "Values, experience, and analysis morph into leadership when combined through discipline"
Et cetera. My own view toward such 'leadership writing' is not kind. It seems to me that a lot of such writing is designed to play to the sympathies of people who are in leadership positions (much the way astrology columns stroke the egos of their readers) rather than raising more important questions, like (say) whether it's a good idea to have someone going around touting "fundamental values". [Link] [Comment]

David Wiley, Cable Green and Louis Soares, American Progress, February 7, 2012. David Wiley, Cable Green and Louis Soares seek to inject the concept of the open educational resource (OER) into popular perception in this article. The brief, intended for policymakers (and people who influence policymakers), urges "federal, state, and local governments and educational institutions to adopt a simple public policy: 'All publicly funded resources are openly licensed resources.'" Related: this backgrounder and coverage in the Chronicle (not that the Chronicle can really get behind any of this; alother article describes OERs as homemade digital alternatives. [Link] [Comment]

Audrey Watters, Hack Education, February 7, 2012. We may invent these things in Canada, but its people at places like Stanford who really know how to draw out that investment dollar. Hence we see another pair of Stanford professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, starting a massive open online course enterprise. Their startup, Coursera, looks a lot like Sebastian Thrun's Udacity. "We see a future where world-leading educators are at the center of the education conversation," says Coursera, "and their reach is limitless, bounded only by the curiosity of those who seek their knowledge; where universities such as Stanford, Harvard, and Yale serve millions instead of thousands." See also the Chronicle's Jeffrey R. Young's interview with MITx's L. Rafael Reif and Anant Agarwal. [Link] [Comment]

Mitch Smith, Inside Higher Ed, February 7, 2012. Long known for its Connexions service for building open educational reosurces (OERs), Rice University is now moving into the open online etxtbook business. "A free online physics book, peer-reviewed and designed to compete with major publishers’ offerings, will debut next month through the non-profit publisher OpenStax College." [Link] [Comment]

Michael Trucano , EduTech, February 6, 2012. Interesting first-person reflection from a staffer at the World Bank on mobile learning in developing nations. "A long-anticipated new era of hype is now upon us, taking firm root in the place where the educational technology and international donor communities meet, with 'm-' replacing 'e-' at the start of discussions of the use of educational technologies." And here I thought the next big letter would be r-. Oh well. I now predict that the next big letter (after e-, i-, and m-) will be p-. He continues, "I do often feel that many of the discussions around 'm-learning' end up sounding a lot like general discussions of ICT use in education... (but) I do think there is something fundamentally different about the potential for mobile devices. My hope is that, given all of the groups now considering this an increasingly important priority area for action of some sort, in 2012 practical insights into what this mobility might mean for both educators and learners based on real life experiences."
[Link] [Comment]

Judy O'Connell, HeyJude, February 6, 2012. It's easy to describe ten 'megatrends' in such a way that most people would nod in agreement, I think, but it's hard to get them precisely right. To take example that is a bugbear of mine, consider this one: "The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative." This isn't quite right. The world isn't "increasingly collaborative" - if anything, it's less so. But what collaboration there is has gone global. But that means that in your day-to-day world you will experience less collaboration with those around you - how do you get by, then? Perhaps by dog-eat-dog competition for local resources, but more likely by cooperation - pooling (for example) purchasing or production power, but not for the same ends, but for distinct ends. And indeed, if we look at it that way, and recognize that when "teams (are) geographically diverse (and) are also culturally diverse" what we understand by collaboration changes. If you think your work group has simply gone global, as this 'megatrend' suggests, you've misinterpreted this trend in a major way. [Link] [Comment]

Hans de Zwart, Technology as a Solution…, February 6, 2012. When I was in Australia in 2001 I would from time to time (ie., frequently) find myself in the local public house. At one of these there was this novel phenomenon called "speed-dating" taking place upstairs. The idea is each prospective partner would interview others for short three-minute periods, and then at the bell move on to the next, taking note for later those who seemed the most interesting. It seemed so intriguing and I was eager to try it, but having been recently married decided it would be inappropriate. So I've never had the experience. But the technique applied to a conference event sounds more than fascinating, and Hans de Zwart has done the concept justice with this wrap-up of his speed-conference experience. It makes me wonder what an online version would look like - it would have to be better than match.com, right? [Link] [Comment]

Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, February 6, 2012. While I believe that evidence is crucial to decision-making, I am sceptical about "Evidence Based Policy Making" (or "evidence-based government" or "evidence-based education", etc.). Why, despite the apparent contradiction? Because the one is not the same as the other. In the former, you look at various claims from all sides, weigh the alternatives, take into account values and circumstances, and act on the basis of a reasoned decision. In the latter, you are led blindly by "the evidence" as presented, where (as Tony Hirst suggests) "'evidence' inherits the authority associated with the most reputable source associated with it when we wish to call on it to justify it." "Evidence-based..." is often, in other words, a mechanism used to disassociate decision-making with evidence and reason, and to instead stamp authority with the imprimatur of 'evidence'. Hirst offers a good examination here, and an equally good follow-up. [Link] [Comment]

Helge Scherlund, Elearning News, February 6, 2012. I've been think of doing something like this for MOOCs (I may well still do it, as I have a presentation scheduled in that direction in a few weeks). I think I'd want it to be a bit more practical and process-oriented that this item (the actual checklist is on page 11). [Link] [Comment]

Mark Wagner, Educational Technology and Life, February 6, 2012. This article contains seven good tips and three plugs for commercial products. If you don't mind that, then it's a good primer for getting started in social networking. [Link] [Comment]

Giulia Forsythe, gforsythe.ca, February 6, 2012. Not that it's necessary, I think, but I guess people should know I'm continuing my years-long boycott :) of services like Elsevier. The boycott, as the diagram shows, covers publishing, refereeing, and editorial work. But here's the challenge I have for academics: will you also refrain from reading and citing Elsevier journals? Ah, too hard!? [Link] [Comment]

James Meikle, The Guardian, February 6, 2012. If Twitter is harder to resist than alcohol and tobacco, why do I have to force myself to remember to check to see whether anyone has written a message to @downes? (If I miss your comment, I'm sorry, I hardly use Twitter, and use it less and less as time goes by.) Related: Dave Winer on country-specific Twitter filters: "We should have tutorial sessions at every Internet policy conference that show people how easy it is to operate your own infrastructure. It's really there now, ready to teach users how to do it. But you have to make a commitment to standing up for the Internet. It will never be as easy as Twitter. However, if Twitter shuts you off, it won't effect your presence. That's worth a little more complexity." Amen. [Link] [Comment]

Jenny Mackness, Jenny Connected, February 6, 2012. Interesting article with the backstory to an IRRODL article on MOOCs referenced here last week. I love the bit about the reviewers ("We didn’t receive any guidance from the Editor as to which Reviewer to believe. So we didn’t do a major rewrite :)"). Also worth noting: "Reviewer B strongly objected to our use of blog posts as sources of information, and I have to say that we rather strongly objected to his/her objection." Mackness gives three very good reasons for her position:
- most of the conversations about connectivism and MOOCs happen in blogs
- we were worried that our paper was going to be out of date before it was even published
- neither of us works for an academic institution, nor do we live within easy access of a university library
I'm sympathetic. Most of my work has been published in blog form; from my perspective life is too short to have to deal with arbitrary reviewers and edits well past the point of diminishing returns. The result has been that the citations have frequently gone elsewhere. I understand the need for peer review - but we need a better system. Realted: MOOCs are here to stay, by Graham Attwell. [Link] [Comment]

Unattributed, Locus Online, February 6, 2012. My childhood was a world where ordinary people became heroes not though desire for fame or fortune but through force of circumstance and an unwillingness to turn away from what they knew was right. It was not a world filled with rock stars and football players, but rather, a world filled with earnest young men (and sometimes women) who became scientists, adventurers and leaders against common foes. The "Tripod Series" was typical of such a world, beginning with The White Mountains and though two other books (a fourth, which I never read, was added some 20 years later) - think of it as an earlier Ender's Game authored by an earlier and less self-important generation. The author, Samuel Youd, who wrote under the alias John Christopher, has died. He will never know how important his work was to me, but I will. [Link] [Comment]

Dave Cormier, Dave’s Educational Blog, February 3, 2012. Dave Cormier writes about Rhizomes and uncertainty. "The rhizome is uncertainty. That doesn’t mean it ‘isn’t’. It has no start and no ending. It is complex… and as such, it resists definition. As a model for learning, it resists ‘core principles’ or ‘final outcomes’. It is an ongoing process of growing, of surprise and of change." Martin Weller comments on this model in relation to the way experts are able to remember detailed aspects of their experience; "experts don't know they do this, but it's a by-product, or rather a means, of expertise." All very well, but "if it's unintentional, undirectional, informal and accidental then is there much we as educators can say about it other than 'that's interesting'?" I think that's a fallacy - I think that our inability to 'manage' something doesn't mean we have nothing useful to say about it. [Link] [Comment]

Phil Hill, e-Literate, February 3, 2012. "We are going," writes Phil Hill, "from an enterprise LMS market to a learning platform market." The difference between an LMS and a learning platform is that the latter "does not contain all the features in itself and is based on cloud computing – multi-tenant, software as a service (SaaS)." Definitely have a look at the article for a number of links to examples. "Another trend that is becoming apparent is that many of the new offerings are not attempting to fully replace the legacy LMS, at least all at once." [Link] [Comment]

Dave Ferguson, Dave's Whiteboard, February 3, 2012. A topic that really interests me is expertise. How do we become 'expert' and what does it look like? Dave Ferguson takes a look at what was arguably expert performance, Chesley Sullenberger's "successful ditching" of a passenger aircraft in the Hudson River (which maps to another topic that really interests me, flight). What's interesting is that there was no training specific to low-altitude engine loss and no time to consult the ditching checklest en route to the river. So expertise does not consist of 'training for that' but rather learning that can be applied in rtandom situatrions. Sullenberger says, "one way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education, and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal." [Link] [Comment]