Group items tagged

Article on why open access is important. Has a long exploration of the for & against arguments in the comments.

Criticism of the scramble by universities into moocworld and the rhetoric about them being the saviour of HE. Find some of the argument linking a bit weak.

"The student digital experience tracker, a pilot scheme to provide first-hand insight into learners' expectations and views on technology in an education setting, showed that 72% of HE and 70% of FE and skills learners believe that when technology is used effectively by teaching staff it enhances their learning experience - giving credence to the argument that practitioners need to develop their own digital skills to deliver learning and teaching."

Guardian Article. "As the demise of the Sopa anti-piracy act showed, established arguments for protecting the rights of content creators are almost impossible to apply to a digital world"

"Within a week of the emergence of Occupy Wall Street, a library surfaced in the midst of the protest. Staffed by volunteers and comprised entirely of donated materials, the People's Library offers books and media to the public, provides basic reference assistance and has built an online catalog of their holdings. In this paper, I analyze the People's Library in terms of larger discussions of libraries, technology and activism. Drawing on personal experiences volunteering at the Library as well as text from the Library's blog, I argue that the People's Library offers two counter arguments to conventional claims about the public library: first, that libraries are being existentially threatened by the emergence of digital technologies and second, that a library's institutional ethics are located solely or predominantly in the content of its collection. Using the People's Library as a kind of conceptual case study, I explore the connections between public libraries, digital technologies and activist ideologies."

Argument countering recent pieces claiming online education is somehow 'not real'.

Account of difficulty with Open Access and misunderstanding / misreporting. Not an argument to stop OA but a plea to make the OA change now mean something to readers.

Handy site for winning arguments about spelling and usage of written English.

Delicious taking a lot of flak on social media after the relaunch. Will they get it right or fizzle out? More arguments for local storage with web services to join people and artifacts.

Post arguing that teachers should keep a professional distance from their students. I think I profoundly disagree with this post, not around the act of staying distant but about the power differential built into his argument. Acting ethically and modelling good and realistic practice in life is more fundamental to a useful educational stance. This post refers I think to non-adults and emotional transference is something that teachers need to be conscious of. I'm not arguing that teachers should friend all their pupils online, rather that his reasons for this are flawed.

Nuancing Prensky and introducing the 'digital stranger'. Useful although not sure how much of a cultural and economic argument is being layered on.

A piece highlighting an argument/misunderstanding that can often circumvent and derail critical discussions of educational technology.

Course site created using Posterous as the backbone and including Twitter, Scribd, etc.  Created since the teacher doesn't like Blackboard!