PSU TLT

Today Diigo released a Chrome Style browser for iPad.  Hmm.  I like Diigo, I like Chrome, I like the iPad.  This may be good. Of course I also like martinis, roller coasters, and fire. But I'd never combine the 3.  Or maybe I would . . .

jeff, I was very interested in this article and went looking for the "mountains of research" regrading success rates in online & f2f environments. after not having much success, I noticed that the author of the piece posted the 3 articles he used to support his argument in the comments section. you can draw your own conclusions from them, but I'll just say that I'm unconvinced of the 50%/75% gap that he mentions. retention & quality control are real issues in online education, and they are legitimate points to discuss. in terms of useful data, controlling for learner type would seem to be obvious; working adults are more likely to take online courses, and more likely to drop out. conflating these two findings is not all that useful, in my opinion, because working adults cannot always prioritize education the same way full-time 'traditional' students can.

There are many parallels to how learning is changing and how gardening is changing. The concept of a gardener some may have as a fogey in a big floppy hat is as quaint as the concept of a knitter being an elderly lady with a cat or a professor being John Houseman in the Paper Chase.  Note how younger gardeners are learning - not from books. I see this constantly. They reject the idea of manicured lawns as not only old but of questionable morals given effects on environment. They believe in eating META local. They believe in collaboration and community. This is continuing adult learning, and it's blended learning.  Note where Emily Goodman got her idea for her garden design - not from a book. And guess what - it's not limited to age. Just interesting to me how stuff like this is happening in so many aspects of the world outside higher ed. I think this offers more evidence we need to keep up. 

"But my inner worrywart wonders whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity. " "Genuine Empathy" is the one that really concerns me, and I see it in how my nieces, and others, use facebook. The FB birthday thing comes to mind...now people get as many "Happy birthday!" notes as they have friends...but are the well-wishers even thinking about my birthday? Probably not, it's just FB reminding them "Hey, it's bart's bday" and now the norm is to stop by and say "happy birthday" without even thinking about it. The end of the article has a nice quote from a novel as well: "The generation that had information, but no context. "

This is a well written piece. The author does a great job at tugging on our emotions. However, I believe he possesses only a superficial understanding of the medium.

Interesting read on some of the hooks game designers use to keep people motivated and engaged, with a few plugs from educators on how we can use things like autonomy and agency to better engage.

I hope that lifelong access becomes the new norm. I keep hearing publishing companies talking about online textbooks with access that would be limited to a set period (a semester or six months). That's fine if you're taking a single course that you don't really care about - but I don't want students to feel that way about their learning. Courses build upon each other. Good reference materials should serve a purpose for years, not months.

I returned many of mine, but kept the foundation books that I'd need for other courses - calculus, mechanics, chemistry, etc... Many of them were used for more than one course (e.g. Math 140 and 141). I'd hate to have to buy the same book twice and then not have it afterward for other courses.

I think that's typically what these students do in the focus group, but it was all about 'having the option' to keep the book at the end of the course. Might be some sort of perception of options thing going on here. The other popular comment was "I look at computer screens all day, I definitely don't want to look at a computer screen to read fine print another 1-2 hours a day". A couple students really bashed their profs about the quality of PDFs they are putting online, meaning that profs are STILL photocopying PDFs from journals, that cut words from a column and are angled funny in the PDF. Claimed these were unreadable online and they had to print them out to 'guess' at some of the words and fill them in by hand.

I know, I know, online research methods, but darn it if this doesn't just get me all excited.

Apple's vision of the future, from 1987. They got the iPad part down pretty good, except they completely missed Angry Birds. Makes you wonder what people are envisioning for 2035. More awesome, Coming soon to a life near you!

Another amazing Documentary by Adam Curtis Individuals acting as independent agents, without hierarchy, form orders without design, and how network computer technologies facilitate this in society. This is Part 1, Just shown tonight on the BBC in England, but copyright laws what they are, the links to LiveLeak in this Reddit post will probably be taken down soon.  But there are always other means.

Lays out some compelling reasons to include tablets. I like the last line, btw.

While about web design this is a look into how we need to think about designing learning online.

Interesting suite of tools to consider exploring.

Very good demo, illustrating how far you can push HTML 5 in terms of building browser-based games. I would have guessed this was flash at first glance.

Directions for removing the MacProtector trojan horse.