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[George Siemens] June 12th, 2007 "...It's the change underlying these tools that I'm trying to emphasize. Forget blogs…think open dialogue. Forget wikis…think collaboration. Forget podcasts…think democracy of voice. Forget RSS/aggregation…think personal networks. Forget any of the tools…and think instead of the fundamental restructuring of how knowledge is created, disseminated, shared, and validated. But to create real change, we need to move our conversation beyond simply the tools and our jargon. Parents understand the importance of preparing their children for tomorrow's world. They might not understand RSS, mashups, and blogs. Society understands the importance of a skilled workforce, of critical and creative thinkers. They may not understand wikis, podcasts, or user-created video or collaboratively written software. Unfortunately, where our aim should be about change, our sights are set on tools. And we wonder why we're not hitting the mark we desire. Perhaps our vision for change is still unsettled. What would success look like if we achieved it? What would classrooms look like? How would learning occur? We require a vision for change. It's reflected occasionally in classroom 2.0 or enterprise 2.0 projects. But the tool, not change centric, theme still arises. We may think we are talking about change, but our audience hears hype and complex jargon. What is your vision for change?"

NB: I am tagging this post by George Siemens "Digital Promise" though it was published in 2007, because what he wrote then is very pertinent to the 2011 Digital Promise initiative.

"By Emil Protalinski | July 11, 2011, 10:40am PDT Summary Facebook has blocked another tool that lets you export your Facebook friends so you can import them elsewhere, like to Google+. On Sunday July 10, 2011, Facebook blocked Open-Xchange's tool that lets Facebook users export their friends so that they can be imported into other products and services. As I reported last week, the tool used approved Facebook APIs and was not in violation of Facebook's Terms and Conditions, or at least that's what Open-Xchange's management thought. ..."

Catharine McNally - April 27, 2011 "...For those of you who are still on the fence about Twitter, let me assure you that it is not always full of self-promoters or useless babble. When Twitter is "done right" it is a powerful tool for people to tell you what's going on - in a "little d democratic" kind of way. These 140-character statements challenge one to be tactful in how they write, to be understood, interpreted, and actionable. Effectively, the character limit forces one to cut through the fluff to get to the point. For a deaf person like me, Twitter is really helpful. It's kind of a digital version of my friend who sat next to me at lunch in middle school, who I would (often) turn to and ask, "Hey, what's everyone laughing about?" That person-bless her heart-would re-iterate the joke for me concisely and quickly, and of course, I would then laugh when everyone else had stopped laughing. ..."

Not "Breaking News" (see date) but likely to lead to developments

Cory Doctorow. Make. June 2011. "Consider the iPad for a moment. It's true that Apple's iTunes Store has inspired hundreds of thousands of apps, but every one of those apps is contingent on Apple's approval. If you want to make something for the iPad, you pay $99 to join the Developer Program, make it, then send it to Apple and pray. If Apple smiles on you, you can send your hack to the world. If Apple frowns on you, you cannot. What's more, Apple uses code signing to restrict which apps can run on the iPad (and iPhone): if your app isn't blessed by Apple, iPads will refuse to run it. Not that it's technically challenging to defeat this code signing, but doing so is illegal, thanks to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which makes it a crime to circumvent a copyright-protection technology. So the only app store - or free repository - that can legally exist for Apple's devices is the one that Apple runs for itself. Some people say the iPad is a new kind of device: an appliance instead of a computer. But because Apple chose to add a thin veneer of DRM to the iPad, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act applies here, something that's not true of any "appliance" you've ever seen. It's as if Apple built a toaster that you can only use Apple's bread in (or face a lawsuit), or a dishwasher that will only load Apple's plates. Apple fans will tell you that this doesn't matter. Hackers can simply hack their iPads or shell out $99 to get the developer license. But without a means of distributing (and receiving) hacks from all parties, we're back in the forbidden-knowledge Dark Ages - the poverty-stricken era in which a mere handful of ideas was counted as a fortune."

We discussed this article in the forum of lascuolachefunziona.it. Someone objected that the iPad was a great tool and gave far more liberty to developers than traditional print publishers. I retorted that it was precisely because the iPad was such a great tool that its proprietariness about content for it was irritating. Then Elena Favaron made an illuminating comparison: "There are also people who make coffee machines that work only with dedicated coffee capsules, and there are folks who even buy them..."

"Jun 9, 2011 - Adam Pash - The web is filled with opportunities to humiliate yourself. You reply all with a scathing takedown of your boss; you post pictures on Facebook of a drunken night out and your mom starts to worry; you accidentally tweet a picture of your downstairs business to the internet at large. This simple tool helps you protect the privacy of your Weiner whenever possible."

"August 1, 2011, 5:51 pm By Rachel Wiseman College students with very poor vision have had to struggle to see a blackboard and take notes-basic tasks that can hold some back. Now a team of four students from Arizona State University has designed a system, called Note-Taker, that couples a tablet PC and a video camera, and could be a major advance over the small eyeglass-mounted telescopes that many students have had to rely on. It recently won second place in Microsoft's Imagine Cup technology competition. (...) The result was Note-Taker, which connects a tablet PC (a laptop with a screen you can write on) to a high-resolution video camera. Screen commands get the camera to pan and zoom. The video footage, along with audio, can be played in real time on the tablet and are also saved for later reference. Alongside the video is a space for typed or handwritten notes, which students can jot down using a stylus. That should be helpful in math and science courses, says Mr. Hayden, where students need to copy down graphs, charts, and symbols not readily available on a keyboard. (...) But no tool can replace institutional support, says Chris S. Danielsen, director of public relations for the [NFB]. "The university is always going to have to make sure that whatever technology it uses is accessible to blind and low-vision students," he says. (Arizona State U. has gotten in hot water in the past in just this area.) (...) This entry was posted in Gadgets."

In "(Arizona State U. has gotten in hot water in the past in just this area.)" the words "in the past" are linked to http://chronicle.com/article/Blind-Students-Demand-Access/125695/ , about a Spanish work book inaccessible to blind students, with a reference to the lawsuit against Arizona State U over the adoption of the Kindle. So classifying this post in "Gadgets" is particularly paradoxical: in fact one reason why Arizona State U. was sued over the adoption of the Kindle was that Amazon presented its text-to-speech as a gadget.

Paris, Ile-de-France landed on http://etcjournal.com/2011/08/11/open-learning-at-p2pu-an-interview-with-jessica-ledbetter/ 3:48:47 GMT on 2011-08-28

Paris, Ile-de-France landed on http://etcjournal.com/2011/08/01/belgian-newspapers-against-google-decision/ 5:12:01 GMT on 2011-08-29

Paris, Ile-de-France landed on http://etcjournal.com/2011/08/11/open-learning-at-p2pu-an-interview-with-jessica-ledbetter/ 7:00:30 GMT on 2011-08-29

"A new national center founded to spur breakthrough technologies that can help transform the way teachers teach and students learn. Educators Empowering you with tools to help you reach every single student. Innovators Making it easier for you to turn a great idea into a product that delivers results for learners of all ages. Researchers Translating cutting-edge research on how we learn into cutting-edge technologies that can help us learn. Citizens Preparing Americans of all races, regions, and backgrounds to succeed in college and a career. ..."

Main site of the Digital Promise initiative

"The purpose of this document is two-fold: - to offer an online history of the development of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) - to use that history to describe major elements of a MOOC Each chapter of this guide looks at one of the first MOOCs and some early influences. It contains these parts: - a description of the MOOC, what it did, and what was learned - a description of the element of MOOC theory learned in the offering of the course - practical tools that can be used to develop that aspect of a MOOC - practical tips on how to be successful Contribute to this Book You are invited to contribute. (...) In order to participate, please email or message your contact details, and we'll you to the list of people who can edit pages. (...) Your contributions will be accepted and posted under a CC-By license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/"

"The Kentucky Virtual Library presents: How to do research! Step 1: Plan your project Plan your project tutorial Define your subject Brainstorm What do you already know? Group similar ideas Identify key words and phrases Make a quest strategy Gather your tools Step 2: Search for information Search for information tutorial The Kentucky Virtual Library The library catalog Encyclopedia Reference books: table of contents and index Magazines and newspaper articles Dictionary Search the World Wide Web What if you can't find anything? Step 3: Take Notes Take notes tutorial The KWL method Fact finder method Data sheets Clustering method (also called mapping or webbing) Venn diagram method Note cards Prints and photocopies Bibliography page Step 4: Use the information Use the information tutorial Scan the page first The five finger test Is the information true or bogus? Put it in your own words Organize the information Compare and contrast Put the information in order Add your own conclusions Step 5: Report Share what you've learned tutorial Step 6: Evaluate Ask yourself, "How did I do?" Glossary Back to the introduction page Portal | Home Base (Site Map) | Plan | Search | The Web | Take Notes | Use | Report | Glossary Teacher's Toolbox | Flash Version | Text Only Version Kentucky Virtual Library"

Shared by Joel Josephson in http://www.facebook.com/groups/EUEducators/?view=permalink&id=205580599503651

By Aaron Smith, Aug 15, 2011 "Overview Mobile phones have become a near-ubiquitous tool for information seeking and communicating--83% of American adults own some kind of cell phone--and these devices have an impact on many aspects of their owners' daily lives. In a nationally representative telephone survey, the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that, during the 30 days preceding the interview:..."

Sept. 9, 2011 "...we have not yet even begun to develop the protocols for the new world of communication parallel with the ones we created for the 19th and 20th century world of communication. We will. We're fifteen years into the commercialization of the internet and now is the perfect time to begin thinking how to protect ourselves as worker in an "adjunct" world (and not just for academe), how to train ourselves as life-long learners to make the tools help us not use us. "

Reference: MEMO/11/333 Date: 24/05/2011 "What does the proposal for a Directive on orphan works say? The Commission's proposal, which takes the form of an EU Directive, rests on three pillars. First, the proposal contains rules on how to identify orphan works. It provides that the user has to conduct a diligent search to find the copyright holder. In this search, the user should rely on sources such as databases and registries. One such tool that exists in the book publishing sector is ARROW, the Accessible Registry of Rights Information and Orphan Works. It is hoped that other sectors will also develop similar central rights information databases. Doing so would greatly simplify and streamline the conduct of a reliable diligent search. Secondly, the proposal establishes that if the diligent search does not yield the identity or location of the copyright holder, the work shall be recognised as an orphan work. This status shall then, by virtue of mutual recognition, be valid across the European Union. This implies that once a work is recognised as an orphan work, it shall be recognised as such across the European Union. The proposal also foresees that there will be a generally accessible record of all recognised orphan works. Thirdly, the proposal establishes the uses that can be made of the orphan works and the conditions for such uses depending on their nature. Thus, the current proposal should make a major contribution to the development of various European digital library initiatives and their accessibility for everyone throughout the European Union. Clear rules on what works can be posted online as orphan works will also provide the beneficiaries of the Directive - not only libraries, museums and archives but also film heritage institutions and public service broadcasters - with a sound legal framework that safeguards them against claims of copyright infringement. In this respect, a degree of legal certainty can be achieved that will exceed the one th

-> piece on British Library + Google and this EC directive?

"Rupert Murdoch uses eG8 to talk up net's power to transform education News Corp chairman claims 'Victorian' schools are 'last holdout from digital revolution' Kim Willsher in Paris guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 May 2011 18.10 BST Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation founder and chairman, used his address to the eG8 Forum in Paris on Tuesday to call for more investment in education and "unlocking the potential" of the world's children. Murdoch said it was not a question of putting a computer in every school, but concentrating on opening up opportunities for youngsters to flourish by using targeted and tailored software. News Corp moved into the $500bn (£310bn) US education sector in late 2010, paying about $360m in cash for 90% of technology company Wireless Generation, which provides mobile and web software to enable teachers to use data to assess student progress and deliver personalised learning."

"Would it not be better to train teachers in adapting whatever software is generally available, be it desktop or on the cloud, to fit their and their specific students' needs?' I disagree with this analysis. Software not created for educational purposes will only adapt so far. It is, for example, word processing substituting for paper and pencil. That's worthy of doing but really makes no difference in instruction. When software is created specifically for learning, it can reach much more deeply into the learning processes. It's not just peripheral but central to learning. You can adapt lots of software to education in lots of ways, and I've read of many very clever adaptations. Almost all could be done without the use of a computer, albeit somewhat less efficiently but nonetheless effectively. I read Murdoch's call, which echoes something I've been saying for many years, as meaning that we have to build software that answers the necessities of learning. We don't have much today.

Taking up your example of word processing as substitute for pen and pencil , Harry: true, and that's what I retorted in the late 1990's to a digitalophobe academic, when we met about the Italian translation of one of his books, and he boasted of having got a letter from a publisher saying he was their last author to deliver typescripts on paper and not as a digital file. I pointed out that cut and paste, copy and paste (the things he particularly hated the ease of in digital media) existed in the real world looooooong before computers, let alone PCs, let alone the Web. And yet... in 2007 I was asked to set up at very short notice an intensive preliminary French workshop for participants in a master course in intercultural studies: though in Lugano, the course was to be in French and English. I asked for access to the Moodle for the course, to store course materials there etc. The organizers refused: "The Moodle will only be explained to the students in the first week of the course proper". The idea that graduate students needed to have a Moodle explained to them in 2007 seemed peregrine, but rather than arguing, I set up a for-free wiki instead. At our first meeting, the students asked why we weren't using the Moodle, I repeated the official explanation, they laughed and got the hang of the wiki immediately. Then, for reading comprehension, they chose one of the assigned texts for the course: a longish book chapter they had received by e-mail as a grayish PDF based on a low-resolution scan, based on a reduced photocopy to make 2 pages fit on an A4 sheet: i.e. with no margin to take notes on. So we printed the PDF, separated the pages with scissors, pasted the separate pages with glue sticks on new A4 sheets, to get wider margins to write in. And then we made a wiki page for it, copied in it the subheadings, between which the students, added the notes they were taking, working in groups on the new paper version. Result: http://micusif.wikispaces.com/Vinsonneau

Posted by xarxatic (Jordi Martí) on Aug. 25, 2011 "... la autoformación del docente (mediante el apoyo de una comunidad -que no se encuentra en cursos reglados-) está siendo la única capaz de crear y mejorar las capacidades docentes del profesorado (a nivel de nuevas tecnologías y mejora de praxis). Por tanto, ¿a qué esperamos para reformular esta formación "oficial" y reconvertirla en esa formación individualizada y guiada que tanto se necesita? O, ¿por qué si la realidad demuestra que la autoformación en comunidad es la que da un mejor resultado, no se intenta aprovechar por parte de la Administración ese camino?"

Translation of the quotation: "... teachers self-training (with a community's support that isn't available in formal courses) is the only one that can create and improve the teaching capacities of the teachers (at the level of new tech tools and improvement of praxis). Therefore, what are we waiting for before we reshape that "official" training and convert it into this so needed personalized training? Or: why, given the evidence that self-training within a community gives the best result, does the Administration not take this path?"