Stephen Downes just posted an intro with a link to the powerpoint files for his keynote address at the Instructional Technology Institute. This will tell you what I heard when I thought what I posted in Thoughts Raised by Giants. I can’t wait to go through this again to glean some of what I’m sure I didn’t catch the first time.
Month: September 2004
Categories
Online Genealogy
My mom just agreed to pay for a domain name registration for a family genealogy site so that my brothers and I can combine our genealogy work in a central location. That is exciting for me because I get to try to implement my ideas for a system of online genealogy collaboration.
Categories
ITI Conclusion
The conference was very good from my perspective. I have requested (on my evaluation form) that they should post lecture notes or powerpoint presentations so that I could review sessions I went to or get some information on sessions I was interested in which I could not go to. If that information gets posted I will post it for anyone who is interested.
Categories
Thoughts Raised by Giants
I have a hard time blogging about what Brian Lamb or Stephen Downes spoke about because I’m sure that everything they talked about are available – through them – online. What I will say is that it was very enjoyable meeting them, listening to them and talking to them.
I will pretend that there may be a person who actually reads my blog that does not read Brian already (or to assist my memory) and put a link to his presetation which is available on the web. He gave it from the web, but it is a wiki so it will have changed a little bit by the time anyone can visit it from here.
I also want to thank Brian for posting a list of blogs by bloggers who were at this conference.
I guess I do have a few ideas that I would like to post which came through the combination of the two presentations.
It is a natural event to copy the workings of the previous technology (Stephen discussed this idea). Brian says “Lets move on beyond that replication.” I don’t think we should avoid that, but that we should recognize that in that stage there is more growth to come, but in replicating the previous technology we get to come to understand the new technology and the old technology and what is better about each. This is how we find the relative strengths of each technology and that is how we have a chance to place them in their proper relative balance. By “proper” I mean the balance that best meets our needs or creates the best complement between the technologies. I don’t agree with Stephen that the new technology always obliterates the old technology. New technology displaces old technology unless the new technology essentially outperforms the old technology on a point by point basis.
I know I’m a little late blogging about this because I have been at a conference this week, but . . .
I have been hearing this argument that Sadaam was not a threat to us because Sadaam and Al Qaeda were enemies. It just makes me sick that people can use such poor logic as the basis for their public arguments. Even if they have better reasons for opposing the war, they put forth the nice sound bite that proves nothing about whether Sadaam was a threat. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” has never been more obviously false. The fact that Sadaam and Al Qaeda were enemies does nothing to make either one of them a friend to the United States.
Categories
Parents and Children
I went to a conference for three days this week and left Laura at home with the kids. According to the report when I got back, the kids were pretty good the first day but by the third day it was unofficial warfare. I guess there is no need to wonder if it is important to have Dad around. . .
Categories
Problems with CSCL Development
Paul Kirschner is exactly right in saying that providing for good group work or good online collaboration is not the same as ensuring good group work or ensuring good online collaboration. I also liked his point that developers most often do not use different pedagogy for computer based learning as they do for classroom learning. This new technology as David Wiley said in TechTrends “should be approached on its own terms.”
It is not new to approach a human problem by looking a natural phenomenon to find ideas. We have heard of the cockle-bur inspiring the invention of Velcro. Erin Brewer has looked to biology to find some interesting ideas on how to solve the teacher-bandwidth problem as we attempt to reach wider audiences with our instruction. The question is, can we foster communities that have the benefits of self-organizing communities and symbiotic relationships?
I don’t know the answer to that, but if the answer is yes then I think we have a very powerful tool for increasing our teacher bandwidth.
What is the value of technology in teaching? I suspect that more than making teaching intrinsically better through technology the thing that we can look forward to gaining through technology in education is the economies of scale. The teaching may not be much better than it was before from an individual standpoint, but being able to spread education and expand collaboration may make the education of mankind much better.
This was a very interesting study. Erin has promised to get the paper up on the web. When I know where it is I will post a link to the paper if anyone is interested after reading my thoughts from the paper. I promise that what I have written here will not spoil the information in the paper.
Categories
Blogs
I thought this session about the new medium of discourse that is a blog importantly started that discussion with a discussion and comparison of oral speech and written speech as they compare to each other and to the various media of discourse available online. Blogs tend towards the biases and nature of written communication while threaded discussions tend toward the nature of oral communication.
With the pioneering efforts of MIT’s Open Courseware initiative it will be interesting to see what happens to academic conversation as various universities publish their courses openly – which MIT hopes they will do and which some are starting to do. Already OCW reports that 1 in 7 visitors is a teacher/professor trying to improve, augment or check their own material to improve their own teaching of subjects.