CTLT and Friends

A great blog recapitulating a presentation on innovation. The picture provided by Alan Kay (inventor of the mouse) is important to Rain King.

Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class -- via Twitter and in the comments from one student...I am one of Cole's "experimental lab rats," and I must say that Cole and his colleague changed the way that I view teaching and learning. That course disrupted my notions of participation, identity, and community, and the changes are for the better. The course was so intellectually stimulating that when the course ended, I experienced a tremendous loss. The loss was so great that I felt myself trying to create Twitter communities in my future classes because I missed that engagement. If you are curious about our course, visit my course blog. https://blogs.psu.edu/mt4/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=655&tag=CI597C&limit=20 From there, you can access other students' blogs and see some of the other conversations that ensued.

Joel Spolsky, guru of real-world software development, on social software -- in 2004 (pre-Facebook)! It turns out that non-features can be crucial...

"My goal today is to talk about the next level of software design issues, after you've got the UI right: designing the social interface..."

"Google and the WPP Group have teamed up to create a new research program to improve understanding and practices in online marketing, and to better understand the relationship between online and offline media. The Google and WPP Marketing Research Awards Program expects to support up to 12 awards in the range from $50,000 to $70,000. Awards will be in the form of unrestricted gifts to academic institutions, under the names of the researchers who submitted the proposal. Award recipients will be invited to participate in a meeting highlighting work in this area and will be encouraged to make their results available online and in professional publications."

"Google has made a fortune by understanding what makes people happy when they're looking for advertising and online search, but it still feels it needs to know more. Its latest solution: fund grants so that the best and brightest of the academic world explore the areas it's interested in."

lots to explore linked from this post that I found linked from Downes

Higher education faces many challenges in the short run. Our solutions will not stick if we do not re-examine the potential value of "Rolodex" presidents, slash-and-burn financial officers, and too many corporate leaders who could not mind their own stores.

Another way of looking at the financial crisis as an opportunity for "creative destruction".

"We should abolish faculties in universities. Faculties are the most conservative bulwarks against change. Europe must move to a radically different trans-disciplinary approach. Most of the interesting things happen on the boundaries of the discipline," he said. \n\n"Second, I emphasised the social perspective: the selection and meritocratic functions of schools often impose themselves as external limitations on the innovative capacities of schools. The 'pedagogy of failure', which often dominates schooling, is not the best environment for the development of creativity and heteronymous thinking. Innovation and creativity in the classroom can only flourish in a 'pedagogy of success', in which all talents of all children have the chance to develop. Well-performing school systems are those where the drive for excellence is linked with a strong equitable ambition."\n

Complex inter-relationship between: space, time, locality, practice, boundary crossings between different practices. For example trainee doctor in the hospital in one practice, translation of this experience into 'evidence for assessment purposes' needs to then be 'validated' by auditors in another community of practice.

This Powerpoint from the Keynote at Canada Moodlemoot 2009 has two references to the Harvesting Gradebook and interest in the comments below the presentation.

How would we integrate information about this effort as a resource in alt.wetpaint?

"The basic idea is to bring all four of these classes together in this one space," Mr. Gold said in an interview. Each class will have its own turf on the Web site, and each will concentrate on a different era of the poet's life. Students at NYU and City Tech will focus on Whitman in mid-19th-century New York, those at Mary Washington will examine his Civil War-era experience, and the Rutgers contingent will turn its attention to his sage-of-Camden period. Each group will work with and annotate the relevant edition or editions of Leaves of Grass. Each will have access to the others' work. So will the general public - at least that's the plan. "We really don't know what these interactions will be like," Mr. Gold said. "It's one of the risks of the project but also one of the exciting things about it."

April 10: Henry Jenkins post contains a good reading list on media policy and participatory culture.

"People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them." "We no longer search for the news, the news finds us... "

most of history, only the wealthy have been able to afford an education geared to the individual learner. For the rest of us, education has remained a mass affair, with standard curricula, pedagogy, and assessments. The financial crisis will likely change this state of affairs. With the global quest for long-term competitiveness assuming new urgency, education is on everyone's front burner. Societies are looking for ways to make quantum leaps in the speed and efficiency of learning. So long as we insist on teaching all students the same subjects in the same way, progress will be incremental. But now for the first time it is possible to individualize education-to teach each person what he or she needs and wants to know in ways that are most comfortable and most efficient, producing a qualitative spurt in educational effectiveness. In fact, we already have the technology to do so. Well-programmed computers-whether in the form of personal computers or hand-held devices-are becoming the vehicles of choice. They will offer many ways to master materials. Students (or their teachers, parents, or coaches) will choose the optimal ways of presenting the materials. Appropriate tools for assessment will be implemented.