Authentic Learning

The OECD Secretary General invites Youtubers/students to tell ministers and world leaders how they think the Internet can make the world a better place.

Great post by Charlie Roy, great comment thread and links. Grades were invented to increase class size. Learning died that day.

Outstanding argument, backed by research, against using grades at all. Thanks to Bill Farren and Charlie Roy for this one.

This wiki site will serve as a launchpad to other documents and communities seeking to provide guidance in acceptable use policy development and also as an incubator for ideas related to issues, document structures, new problems and opportunities, and maintenance.

Podcast of Nora Young interview with Clay Shirky. Intellectual production going to be as profoundly affected by the production of the amateur as the MSM has already been.

A new kind of textbook that includes media and social networking, created by NBC and MIT. via David Warlick via Stephen Downes.

To design a new playground for our school that meets the needs of the school community

Simulations/Active Activities

Julian Orr wrote a book called 'Talking About Machines' where he describe the way that photocopier technicians learned their trade. It seems to me that the process as he described it was a complex of similarity heuristics, but combined in a network of other technicians who had particular areas of expertise. Orr was riffing on the work of Lave and Wenger 'Legitimate Peripheral Participation' and John Seely Brown.

In a time of economic crisis, web developers and freelancers everywhere have started chewing their fingernails. However, no matter how bad the economy worsens, there will always be work in certain booming fields of web development. As the moderator of the Freelance Switch job board, there are certain types of jobs that are constantly in demand. Here are the 10 skills that are or will be in highest demand for developers. If you are proficient in these skills, you'll be in a great position to find work and weather any economic downturn.