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Great for checking if Websites are down for everyone or just you

Conversation with Vicki Marchant around the concept of the person as a learning object and the systemisation of learning, top down management that enables rather than controls, a bottom up 'People Learning Management System' that aggregates people to come together around a particular subject, task, problem...when needed. I'm lucky enough to be going to the ILTA Edtech conference in Dublin! this week. Looking forward to Don Dron's discussion on Designing the undesignable around the systemisation of social software where he'll be presenting on:Conversation with Vicki Marchant around the concept of the person as a learning object and the systemisation of learning, top down management that enables rather than controls, a bottom up 'People Learning Management System' that aggregates people to come together around a particular subject, task, problem...when needed.

"At the other end of this educational theory spectrum is the idea of instructivism. Instructivism, by this name or any other, has been around for many years and has formed the basis of the American, among others, educational system. Based on behaviorist theories, Instructivism, sometimes referred to as Direct Instruction incorporates a teacher-directed, carefully planned curriculum, with purposeful teaching at its core. It follows two basic assumptions. First, the purpose of instruction is to help the learner understand and interact with the world; and, secondly, learners should be directed by instructors who make the decisions about the content and sequence of the learning (Margules, 1996). The instructors would base these decisions on professional training and scholarship. According to Fosnot, 1996, ". . . the instructivist, or behaviourist, approach is to pre-plan a curriculum by breaking down a subject area (usually seen as a finite body of knowledge) into assumed component parts, and then sequencing these parts into a hierarchy ranging from simple to more complex," (in Malibar & Pountney, 2002). This approach is more of teacher as "sage on the stage," than as a facilitator of learning. Even further, "according to instructivist principles, learning flows in a mostly unidirectional path, proceeding from the knowledgeable authority (teacher), or from instructional content, to the passive learner," (Diaz& Bontenbal, 2000). Not only is the teacher the authority, but the learner is also passive and merely absorbs the content. For students, there is little room for self-discovery and reflection. In instructivism, real world situations are not the models of instruction, nor are there modifications made for individual learning style; the lecture, in its different forms for primary, secondary and tertiary, is the primary mode of content delivery. Students are aware of expected learning outcomes, and outcomes are easily assessable. Further, students are rewa