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"Because the Internet is everything, it has always lacked coherence for me. More available than things in their entirety are blurbs about things, captions, dialogues about things; or more removed, dialogues about blurbs about things. I'm a nontraditional educator who was educated traditionally, so I tend to think about things in their entirety, and the relationships of coherence created between those things. I canonize, holding up certain works of literature as both cornerstones and harbingers of academic dialogue. The works of Shakespeare and Dickens converse with the works of Woolf and Hemingway and give them meaning. But a quote from Shakespeare tossed into the muddle of all the quotes from all the books in English loses its lucidity and relevance. And this is exactly what the internet does."

Learning should always be an active process and a two-way partnership between teaching and learning. In essence, learning and its counterpart exist as a vibrant dialogue between individuals whose role in the relationship is continually transformative. I'd like to explore this thinking further.

What becomes clear, as you dive further into the emerging research that connects what we know about learning, mindsets, dispositions for learning and the development of mathematical understandings, is that a new approach is required. We need to move away from memorisation and rule based simplifications of mathematics and embrace a model of learning that is challenging and exciting. We can and should be emerging all our students in the beauty and power of mathematics in learning environments full of multiple representations, rich dialogue and collaborative learning. 

Book Reviews Book title: Digitisation Perspectives Type: book Author: Ruth Rikowski Year: 2010 Edition: 1st ISBN: 9460912982 Publisher: Sense Publishers Publisher's Description: This book examines various views and perspectives on digitisation. As Simon Tanner, Director Digital Consultancy, King's College London says in the Foreword: "Digitisation has become a cultural, scholastic, economic and political imperative and raises many issues for our consideration." Furthermore, that the book: "...seeks to address and answer some of the big questions of digitisation... It succeeds on many levels..." There are 22 contributors in the book, all experts in their fields. The book is divided into six parts: Part 1: 'Background and Overview to Digitisation and Digital Libraries' Part 2: 'Digitisation and Higher Education' Part 3: 'Digitisation and Inequalities' Part 4: 'Digital Libraries, Reference Services and Citation Indexing' Part 5: 'Digitisation of Rare, Valued and Scholarly Works' Part 6: 'Futuristic Developments of Digitisation' Topics covered include electronic theses, search engine technology, digitisation in Africa, citation indexing, reference services, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, new media and scholarly publishing. The final chapter explores virtual libraries, and poses some interesting questions for possible futures. The book will be of particular interest to information professionals, educators, librarians, academics and I.T. and knowledge experts. Ruth Rikowski concludes by indicating that: "...hopefully, the book will provide a source of inspiration for further research, leading to some more effective ways to proceed with the digitisation process. Also, that it will be possible to do this within a framework that can be used for good rather than ill, and for the benefit of many." Reviewer: Eric Jukes (Formerly of College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London) Book Rating: 5/5 Buy this book from Amazon  Review Summary

Nairobi 2010 Conference Reoprt  Climate Change and Natural Resource Use in Eastern Africa: Impacts, Adaptation and Mitigation Report of the 3rd Scientific Conference of the Ecological Society for Eastern Africa (ESEA) and co-hosted with the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) at Multimedia University College, Nairobi, 19 - 21 May 2010 By Nicholas Oguge, Caroline Lumosi, Teddy Odindo, Joseph Ngondi and Philista Malaki October 4, 2010 Summary While the Earth's climate has changed throughout history, the current warming trend has been of particular concern because most of it is human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented.  One of the greatest concerns of this global warming is climate variability and change.  The risks associated with climate change add to development challenges such as food and water insecurity. Although climate change is only one of the many drivers negatively affecting biodiversity and ecosystem services, it certainly exacerbates the other factors such as land degradation and unsustainable natural resource use. There is general concern on the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources. This would widen poverty levels confronting eastern African countries and threaten gains made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Thus, the Ecological Society for Eastern African organised its 3rd annual scientific conference with a theme addressing this global challenge.  The idea was to bring together researchers, policy makers and the general public together to discuss the climate change phenomena, its impacts, mitigation strategies and adaptation measures with regard to natural resource use in Eastern Africa. In order to address above issues and to reach out to a wider audience, we designed the conference strategically on three tiers:   1. Plenary talks: to provide policy information and direction, science on climate change, ecological and socio-economic effects, how to commun

On this page we want to look at how to actively incorporate the backchannel (and hence the audience) in the presentation.  This moves the presentation from one-way delivery to a two-way dialogue with the audience.

The second generation Apple iPod Touch was unveiled in Spetember, 2008. "iPod touch 2 is the funniest iPod we've ever created," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. It is perfect for Music, Movies& Games.Compare with the first generation, iPod touch 2 packs more new features into a sleeker design. For the sleek new design, iPod touch feels much better in your hand. Volume buttons are built into the left side of iPod touch, giving you easy access to the most frequently used controls. Longer battery life enable you to keep on rocking （and watching and playing）even longer. A built-in speaker lets you hear the music, dialogue, and action without headphones, perfect for casual listening. iPod touch 2 also offers built-in wireless support for Nike +iPod. iPod Touch 2 is also a musical genius. Music on iPod touch not only sounds amazing, it looks amazing, too. And movies and TV shows have never looked so perfect on a portable device. Clear 3.5-inch color widescreen display, 6 hours video playback enable you largely enjoy the Hollywood blockbusters. General music and movie files can play with iPod Touch 2.

conferences and events EVENTS ECIS provides programs of professional development that enhance and improve the effectiveness of all teachers and administrators in its member schools. ECIS creates opportunities for the study and discussion of educational topics and for ongoing dialogue with educational leaders worldwide. It organizes and offers a range of conferences and workshops held at various sites in Europe and around the world.

Powerful learning begins with the perfect provocation. Creating, refining and skilfully presenting the perfect provocation is an essential capability for teachers hoping to engage their class in rich dialogue. Claims that the percentage of students engaged by their learning declines from 75 percent in fifth grade to 32 percent by eleventh grade suggests a need for a more provocative environment. 

"Virtual Assistants have been with us for a while and many of us have had experiences similar to the dialogue above. However, they are getting better and becoming more of an assistant than a hindrance. Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon all have voice activated assistance. I've used them all at different times for my personal use, especially Google Now, but Amazon's Alexa assistant is the only one I've used in the classroom via an Amazon echo. Many of the following ideas can be done on any of the above assistants, but I will focus on Amazon's Alexa."

This week I joined with teachers, students, researchers and policy writers at Melbourne University to discuss student voice. This conference was hosted by Social Education Victoria and made possible by the conference partners, The University of Melbourne, Education and Training Victoria, Foundation for Young Australians and Connect. Over three days, participants engaged in rigorous dialogue about the significance of student voice and what is required to ensure its benefits are maximised for all.

Stephen Downes on the future of e-learning: personalised learning, networks and PLEs amongst much else

This is a great site tha enables you to create 3D animated cartoons. It's like a cross between Dvolver and Xtranormal.Fantastic. Select different motions for the characters chose backgrounds and add their dialogue.

Jon Mott recently published an article in EDUCAUSE Quarterly on Envisioning the Post-LMS Era. Jim Groom captures the reactions of individuals who have been exploring the link between learning management systems and personal learning environments. There is a sense - and I'll admit I felt it as well in reading the article - that many long-time contributors to the discussion were not referenced in the article. In theory, the review process should draw attention to important omissions of literature. However, most reviewers would likely not see the spaces (blogs) where much of the conversation happens before it jumps into mainstream as good sources. I've posted below that I wrote while at University of Manitoba addressing the LMS/PLE issue. I'm not sure how long an archive of their copy will exist, so posting it here might give it a bit more of an existence.

In 2001 Marc Prensky divided the world into two broad groups, Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. His idea struck a chord with popular culture and has become a dominant paradigm in education. Given the core concept remains a feature of educational dialogues it is worth re-visiting and seeing how the idea might evolve to better serve our needs and understandings of how people born after the internet, learn with and think about, technology.