Group items tagged

Learning design concepts in a neat diagram.

Gilberto Gil's copyleft philosophy.

David Wiley on a philosophy of Open and the fit / role of Moocs.

Article on the philosophy of LMS and PLE and the development (in progress) of an OLN open Learning Network at a US uni coupling central services with student owned spaces / tools online. Worth reading

This article defines transliteracy as "the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks" and opens the debate with examples from history, orality, philosophy, literature, and ethnography.

Networks, security and philosophy. Why wikileaks is right to release the unredacted files.

Spaces for Knowledge Generation is an ALTC project which was undertaken as a partnership between La Trobe University as lead institution, Charles Sturt University, Apple and Kneeler Design Architects. The context of the learning experience necessarily changes over time, with technological, economic and social developments influencing the types of learning spaces learners and teachers require to achieve their learning outcomes, and this $220,000 project was designed to inform, guide and support sustainable development of learning and teaching spaces and practices, maximising flexibility so as to be used by as many disciplines as feasible. The project was based on the philosophy that constructivist approaches to learning, as well as to research and study, should make use of technologies and approaches that students favour, and that learning spaces should therefore be organised to accommodate learner-generated aspects of learning. Spaces for Knowledge Generation provides a model for designing student learning environments that is future-focused and sustainable for the medium term.

Education, and in particular higher education, has seen rapid change as learning institutions have had to adapt to the opportunities provided by the Internet to move more of their teaching online1 and to become more flexible in how they operate. It might be tempting to think that such a period of change would lead to a time of consolidation and agreement about approaches and models of operation that suit the 21st century. New technologies continue to appear,2 however, and the changes in attitude indicated by the integration of online activities and social approaches within our lives are accelerating rather than slowing down. How should institutions react to these changes? One part of the answer seems to be to embrace some of the philosophy of the Internet3 and reevaluate how to approach the relationship between those providing education and those seeking to learn. Routes to self-improvement that have no financial links between those providing resources and those using them are becoming more common,4 and the motivation for engaging with formal education as a way to gain recognition of learning is starting to seem less clear.5 What is becoming clear across all business sectors is that maintaining a closed approach leads to missing out on ways to connect with people and locks organizations into less innovative approaches.6 Higher education needs to prepare itself to exist in a more open future, either by accepting that current modes of operation will increasingly provide only one version of education or by embracing openness and the implications for change entailed. In this article we look at what happens when a more open approach to learning is adopted at an institutional level. There has been a gradual increase in universities opening up the content that they provide to their learners. Drawing on the model of open-source software, where explicit permission to freely use and modify code has developed a software industry that rivals commercial approaches, a proposed

"The message to students is clear: the internet is not looking out for you, and it's certainly not going to do the thinking for you. Educators miss the chance to teach such valuable lessons when they restrict the use of the internet for research."

"Real teaching is not about passing on the 'the material', as if knowledge were some sort of mass-produced commodity that ships from Amazon. Real teaching is about conveying a way of thinking. How can a teacher convey a way of thinking when he doesn't genuinely think that way?"

Seven essential qualities of open source

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

"Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught.". From 2008.

Beth Kantner tellsa tale of having her CC image reused and having an 'All rights reserved' label put on it. She gathers the comments that were made with some interesting takes on it.

"The same top nine characteristics are common between online and face-to-face students, with only the order for the two bolded characteristics changing. Responsiveness is more highly valued online, moving five positions."