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The theorists selected may be controversial, as is the very definition of "deeper learning" but throughout learning theory, the same evidence continues to emerge on conditions and responses to the practice of learning. In regard to meaning of deeper learning, and for our narrow purposes, we like to use DiSessa's (2000) assertion that deeper learning occurs when students can “learn much more, learn it earlier and more easily, and fundamentally, learn it with a pleasure and commitment that only a privileged few now feel toward school learning."

Friday, January 27, 2006 My students are blogging! Today I brought my intermediate students to the computer lab to get them set up on our class blog. They were confused at first, but I think they are starting to get the hang of it. After showing them around, I had them each post something just for the experience of posting. Then I had them comment on each others' posts. There was a lot of laughter and excitement as they were reading the comments. I am asking the to use the blog for some very specific purposes: to post daily logs, to post summaries of our reading, and to answer specific questions that I ask. I haven't decided yet if I will require comments. I hope they will pick up on it on their own, but I can easily build that in to my plan if they don't. I realized today just how technologically inexperienced they are. They can do email and, since last semester, use PowerPoint, but there is so much they can't do, but it is only because they have never tried to do it. I hope that this class blog will give them some skills and experience that will be transferable to other uses of technology. posted by Nancy McKeand at 10:41 AM

Administrators, learning designers, and teachers are facing a new kind of learner - someone who has control over the learning tools and processes. When educators fail to provide for the needs of learners (i.e. design learning in an LMS only), learners are able to "go underground" to have their learning needs met.

Some 70 per cent of India’s citizens live in villages or small towns but only 2 per cent have access to fixed-line or cellular phones.

Extraordinary edublogger Barbara Sawhill at Oberlin University's language lab in Ohio brings students of Arabic to talk with native speakers in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia using Skype. This triumph over distance only works because Skype's sound quality keeps the high and low tones of sound; telephones and other VoIP software/hardware clip out those parts of speech.