R:e:learning

UploadLog

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:45:18 GMT

date	user	location	storeUrl	toFilename	origin
28/2/2007 23:8:2	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
1/3/2007 16:43:34	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
1/3/2007 16:44:50	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html	Ok
1/3/2007 17:56:41	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html	Ok
1/3/2007 17:57:11	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
2/3/2007 0:16:29	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
2/3/2007 12:37:3	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
2/3/2007 12:37:33	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
4/3/2007 20:32:3	Richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
4/3/2007 20:36:21	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
6/3/2007 22:57:1	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
6/3/2007 23:4:46	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
6/3/2007 23:4:57	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html	Ok	Ok
6/3/2007 23:5:23	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
6/3/2007 23:5:54	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
6/3/2007 23:6:3	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
6/3/2007 23:6:30	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
6/3/2007 23:7:5	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
6/3/2007 23:7:36	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
7/3/2007 13:25:58	Richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
7/3/2007 13:26:22	Richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
7/3/2007 13:27:13	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
7/3/2007 17:37:56	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
7/3/2007 21:27:56	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
8/3/2007 23:15:7	Richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
8/3/2007 23:41:58	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
11/3/2007 23:9:2	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
11/3/2007 23:26:18	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
12/3/2007 2:58:47	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
12/3/2007 3:16:44	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
12/3/2007 3:36:8	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
12/3/2007 23:11:21	Richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
12/3/2007 23:11:56	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
14/3/2007 17:43:29	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
19/3/2007 1:2:6	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
20/9/2007 21:26:43	YourName	/	store.php
20/9/2007 21:27:37	YourName	/	store.php
20/9/2007 21:29:8	YourName	/	store.php
20/9/2007 21:29:32	YourName	/	store.php
20/9/2007 21:30:43	YourName	/	store.php
20/9/2007 21:31:8	YourName	/	store.php	index.html
20/9/2007 21:45:48	richard	/	store.php	index.html
24/9/2007 15:46:56	YourName	/	store.php	index.html
24/9/2007 15:47:48	richard	/	store.php	index.html
24/9/2007 15:58:34	richard	/	store.php	index.html
24/9/2007 16:1:3	YourName	index.html	store.php	index.html
24/9/2007 16:1:31	YourName	index.html	store.php	index.html
24/9/2007 16:6:43	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
24/9/2007 16:8:32	richard	/	store.php	index.html
25/9/2007 17:20:49	richard	/	store.php	index.html
26/9/2007 16:44:59	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
26/9/2007 16:45:34	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
26/9/2007 16:48:50	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
26/9/2007 18:27:3	richard	/	store.php	index.html
1/10/2007 0:15:45	richard	/	store.php	index.html
1/10/2007 15:44:44	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
1/10/2007 15:49:40	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
1/10/2007 15:59:54	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
1/10/2007 18:1:55	richard	/	store.php	index.html
1/10/2007 22:30:39	richard	/	store.php	index.html
29/10/2007 21:28:10	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
4/11/2007 23:30:10	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
4/11/2007 23:32:6	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
4/11/2007 23:34:0	richard	/	store.php	index.html
11/11/2007 18:32:48	richard	/	store.php	index.html
14/11/2007 0:15:28	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
18/11/2007 23:15:52	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
18/11/2007 23:31:26	richard	/	store.php	index.html
18/11/2007 23:38:20	richard	index.html	store.php	index.html	Ok
18/11/2007 23:41:53	richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
18/11/2007 23:42:13	richard	index.html	store.php	index.html	Ok	Ok
18/11/2007 23:52:46	richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
21/11/2007 23:37:5	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
21/11/2007 23:38:36	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
21/11/2007 23:41:14	richard	/	store.php	index.html
21/11/2007 23:41:38	richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok	Ok
22/11/2007 0:42:10	richard	/	store.php	index.html
1/7/2008 11:15:31	Richard	/	store.php
1/7/2008 11:16:9	Richard	/	store.php	index.html	Ok
1/7/2008 11:18:38	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
3/7/2008 22:12:24	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
20/9/2008 10:23:1	YourName	/	store.php	index.html
20/9/2008 10:25:46	YourName	/	store.php	index.html
20/9/2008 10:37:31	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
20/9/2008 14:45:19	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
21/9/2008 18:48:57	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
21/9/2008 21:52:12	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html	Ok
21/9/2008 21:56:7	Richard	index.html	store.php	index.html
22/9/2008 0:54:5	Richard	/	store.php	index.html
23/9/2008 11:45:18	Richard	/	store.php	index.html

A metaphor for learning

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:45:14 GMT

I was thinking along similar lines to Andrew's join the dots idea. Knowledge is a vast, multidimensional net, and acquring it (knowledge, not the net) entails forging those multidimensional links. Like the most complicated knitting pattern you can imagine. And of course if you take the links away, you're left with nothing (or lots of holes).

I imagine this is akin to the neural network concept (but that's just another net metaphor) or any number of electronic and communications applications that implement the same kind of model, particularly on the Internet (another net).

But I also thought there was a more kinetic aspect to the rather passive net/web metaphor, and so I also thought about pinball. The "links" are the silver ball's paths between the bumpers, which flash and buzz as it hits them. The flippers are our chance - whether as learners or teachers - to influence the path of the ball, keep it in play, and keep improving the score. In fact, the difference between a learning-focused approach and more "traditional" instruction might be, that in one you are the flipper (at least partly in control) and in the other, you are the ball!

Oh dear, "Tommy" is starting to make sense.

E-learning, Politics and Society

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:55:00 GMT

External resources

MSc course library at Edinburgh
EPS Blog (forum) on Eduspaces
My Delicious links
My CiteuLike library
EPS Assignment essay The contribution of "open" initiatives in ICT to social justice on Google Docs

Journal

This is an occasional journal of my attempts to try to keep up with the course work. Entries are listed below in reverse order, latest on top.

21 November 2007
Open Source: thinking and choosing creatively
Open Source: the hacker ethic isn't always aesthetic

14 November 2007
Online ideologies: Cyberspace and democracy

7 November 2007
Digital Citizenship: "Help, they're knocking down my Ivory Tower!"

4 November 2007
Online Identities: Blogging and identity
Online Identities: Aspects of online identity

1 October 2007
Economics of E-learning: Mustn't grumble

29 September 2007
Economics of E-learning: Those dark, Satanic, digital diploma mills

25 September 2007
Globalisation:

19 September 2007
History: "The Poor Man's Arpanet"

18 September 2007
On Eduspaces

Papert: A word for learning

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:52:00 GMT

Papert bemoans the absence of a word to denote the art of learning, to parallel "pedagogy" (the art of teaching) and "heuristics" (the art of problem solving). Revealing his interest in etymology, he proposes "mathetics" (though selon Wikipedia:Mathetics, the term was coined for this purpose by Comenius in the 17th Century).

Papert uses a couple of case studies. In one he subversively suggests to a boy with apparent learning difficulties, struggling as he has been forbidden to count on his fingers, that he use his tongue and teeth instead. The other concerns his own difficulties in remembering the names of flowers, overcome when he realises that there is etymological fun to be had in relating the plants' names to their appearance.

So one conclusion we draw from Papert's discussion is that, whether as teachers or learners ourselves, we need to identify what those learning hooks are that will best serve the learning process. An apparent inability to learn suggests that those connexions have not been made, not an inherent inability to learn (after all, where is the human being who has never learned /anything/).

Understanding Learning in the Online Environment

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:48:00 GMT

External resources

Journal

This is an occasional journal of my attempts to try to keep up with the course work. Entries are listed below in reverse order, latest on top.

23 September 2008
A metaphor for learning

21 September 2008
Papert: A word for learning

20 September 2008
No MyEd this Saturday morning

No MyEd this Saturday morning

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:37:00 GMT

Hmm, would love to get to MyEd and WebCT this morning to do some reading but getting a big Page Load Error each time I try (in Firefox or Safari). Rest of web seems ok, so presumably something quirky going on with MyEd. Don't seem to be able to hack directly to VLE URLs.

Just goes to show why it's a good idea to store copies of reading materials in CiteULike.

Hello World

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:28:00 GMT

This website is a place for studies, notes and adventures I'm having in E-learning, chiefly as part of a course at Edinburgh University. If you want to find out a bit more about this website, go here.

Resources for courses

Understanding Learning in the Online Environment (2008) uloe
E-learning, Politics and Society (2007) eps
Online Assessment journal (2007) ola
Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning journal (2006) idel

Recently featured items

My Week 3 MCQs (OLA)
My other Week 3 MCQs (OLA)
Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning assignment

MainMenu

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:27:00 GMT

home about idel ola eps uloe etc

More on plagiarism

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:12:00 GMT

Painting with broad strokes:

In the traditional, humanist approach to marking, a benign marker might work through a few dozen papers, looking for signs of the candidates' understanding of the matter at hand, some very objective (dates and facts right?), others more subtle or subjective (seem original or parroted?). Submissions assessed, as objectively and rigorously as possible, 10%, say, are forwarded to a verifier for quality control.
In the computerised approach, essays are submitted to an automarker, that compares them with an algorithmic interpretation of many essays, good, bad and indifferent. In tests the computer system was deemed highly reliable in matching unseen essays with others of the same or similar grade. A small number of essays - typically up to 10% - receive scores that indicate a high degree of uncertainty by the computer system, and these need verification by a human agent.

What's this to do with plagiarism? Given the nature of the computerised assessment, it's going to be necessary to run a plagiarism check as well. This is because, in the "assessment" test, non-originality is likely to be key - the essay must "match" set criteria. Yet as there are no doubt many online models of competent essays, we need the "plagiarism" test, where originality is king. So in many ways the same engines drive both - the scores just need inverting.

IDEL Bibliography

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:18:00 GMT

This is an automated bibliography from the Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning course. Links and bookmarks are stored elsewhere, accessed and reformatted on-the-fly and dynamically embedded in the page below!

(If this doesn't work, here are direct links to my accounts on Cite-U-Like and Del.icio.us.)

Books and articles from Cite-U-Like

Web links from Del.icio.us

Assignment idea.. guess what... repositories!

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:42:00 GMT

Predominanty EDTR IRs and TRs, but coud also incude LORs (particulary now I've got my JHove login!)

Open Access - which of the other Open/Free models does this most conform to? Open Source and Open Access must be related, and it's interesting that imperatives of both the open-source hacker and the academic researcher collide in the repository model, and particuarly in its open source expressions, such as Eprints. (Surprised Willinsky's artice doesn't mention Harnad anywhere.)

So are open access repositories a humane pursuit (where was the concept of distance learning as a "humane" imperative from? Rumble or smthg round Week 2-3?) And are they a necessary fillip to academic research in the way that the vavavoom of F/OSS is to the evolution of computing?

Open Source: the hacker ethic isn't always aesthetic

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:41:00 GMT

"prestige is central to the hacker culture's reward mechanisms" (Raymond)

Eric Raymond was right, in 1998, to predict that Applications would be the place for hackers and the open-source movement to turn its attentions to, after it had conquered the network and the operating system.

Like many open source or free software pioneers, he overlooked one important factor, which is that usability and overall presentation of open source software tends to look a little shoddy. Remarkable though the GIMP image processor is, its particular GUI is extremely idiosyncratic, and demonstrably less friendly to less adept classes of general user beyond the hacker community. Photoshop, by comparison, is slick and friendly. Of course, GIMP being GNU and Free, there's nothing to stop someone designing a new UI to interface with its powerful, free, image processing libraries. It's a non-trivial task, but it is possible: a similar makeover for Photoshop, other than one originating with Adobe themselves, is not a possibility.

(Looks like this has already happened, it seems. Latest versions of GIMP have an option for a Photoshop-like layout, and ZDNet's latest review is far more upbeat than a few years ago.)

The same goes for Moodle - last time I looked, out the box it looked a bit ugly. Nothing a bit of wizardry a good web designer couldn't remedy, and that will surely come. Same, of course, also goes for the OS repository software I'm involved with.

It's not a hard and fast rule, though: the OpenOffice office suite and the Mozilla internet applications suite (notably Firefox, Thunderbird and Seamonkey) do break the mould, and have reached a remarkable level of design maturity. Yet both have the best part of a decade's development in the open source arena, having evolved from already well implemented applications (StarOffice and Netscape) and being particular darlings of many of Microsoft's prominent competitors, such as Sun and Netscape.

And, in the same corner, we must acknowledge the resurrection of Apple, which managed to have its cake and eat it, when it chose to switch its operating system to use a Unix variant. If not open source itself, it nevertheless bought it into line with many aspects of Linux culture and the many open source projects based on GNU/Linux. Yet Apple also built for MacOS X a completely wonderful graphical interface, the like of which no free OS has ever seen. An Apple Mac now offers discerning hackers the possibility of scripting, coding and compiling at their beloved command-line interface, yet at the same time being able to use arguably the best and most innovative commercially available GUI environment for other tasks, whether fun, business or creative!

In Raymond's terms, an Apple Mac is definitely the choice of the Open Source pragmatist.

Open Source: thinking and choosing creatively

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:26:00 GMT

The study outlined by Williams van Rooij is particularly fascinating when considered in the light of some longstanding practices.

Certain classes of product, including database systems, report generators, operating systems and application suites aimed at large enterprises (SAP, SAGE) have long been sold by vendors in very restrictive packages. The customer may have very few choices to make once embarking on such a package. Even hardware choices and configurations may be limited. This is a hangover from the days when hardware and software were inseparable: to run an IBM or ICL machine meant running the same company's database and application development packages.

In the case of some applications suites, the vendor may also insist on providing the specialist help to configure, customise and install the system. Further upgrades or development may also only be at the behest of the vendor, or of specialist contractors possessing up-to-date certification from the vendor. To do otherwise may "invalidate your warranty". And those specialists don't come cheap - why should they, with all that training and certification to maintain?

Then came Free Software and Open Source, and its ability to create first acceptable, robust operating systems, then applications that could start to vie with commercial offerings. The applications became more sophisticated - often still some way behind the commercial offerings - but these applications are customisable. Freely customisable, unlike, say, the house that SAP built. Expensive SAP or RPG developers can be dispensed with, in favour of cheaper, generic programmers familiar with Java, PHP, Perl - as long as they are familiar the application domain, whether education, libraries or accounts.

The model that Williams van Rooij's study presented to its participants, and which received a considerable degree of acceptance, is therefore precisely one that offers choice and flexibility. The institutions can choose an Open Source offering from several available, then choose how to develop that to best meet their needs. Significantly, they can also choose how to manage the ongoing development of that resource, whether through in-house developers, ad hoc contractors, or the "onshore outsourcing" package. All combinations are legitimate, and any institution may have good reasons to consider on more suitable than another.

The argument didn't quite wash ten years ago (when Raymond invoked the Bazaar) as the applications really weren't up to the job. But they have moved on - and it's encouraging to see in WvR's study, that a growing number senior administrators and senior information officers are aware of this. IBM, SAP, Adlib, Blackboard, etc., may all have excellent products, and but in the face of the flexibility and falling TCO of F/OSS systems, they cannot expect to take a tied customer base for granted.

Online Identities: Blogging and identity

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:52:00 GMT

One of the biggest obstacles blogging faces is that it has a bad name - the B-word. If the word "blog" were replaced with "online journal" wherever it occurred in Ewins' paper, many of the associated explanations would seem superfluous. (I know that in my institution, where I am convinced that adopting of online journals would hugely improve our information sharing and knowledge base.)

Of course blogs have acquire new features not available to earlier kinds of journals and journalists. Speed - in this case the speed of hypertext, not Marinetti's motor cars - has shrunk the world. But the essence of a journal is unchanged:

But the value of a journal, as a kind of cumulative, reflective self-assessment, and the urge to journal have not changed. The cumulative value to the self of reflection and self assessment - have not changed, nor the historical value, to posterity always looking to understand the past, of journals, singly or en masse. See how readily Pepys's diary is adapted to the form (http://www.pepysdiary.com/), or consider the National Trust's "History Matters, Pass It On" initiative, inviting everyone in Britain to write a blog entry for October 17th 2006. (Shame this seems to have vanished from the web.)

Since I have worked extensively with archivists, perhaps it's not surprising that I see the urge to record as key, and in order to record we need the media to support "retrievable forms of discourse" (Feenberg, 1989).

Ur-texts, after all, tend to be laundry lists (early blogs were frequently personal gazetteers of meanderings on the web). But listing objects evolves into narratives of why I might, or you should, find the objects interesting, and so to records of actions and events, then reflections and opinions, then internal monologues, and reflections on record-keeping and all that goes with it.

Ewins and Merchant are right to suggest that what has changed most perhaps, in the global online environment, is the ability to aggregate, to compute the trends, the links and networks between journals. Nevertheless, I don't think the blogger loses his identity in the blogosphere any more to any greater extent than any individual is lost in any statistical crowd.

Whether "what matters in the blogosphere is what the collective thinks" depends on your perspective. A collectivist point-of-view is a valid one, and identifying trends at the aggregate level is an important activity. But it doesn't in any way invalidate the individual's perspective. Each of the stages of the development of narratives occurs at the level of the collective, but also, uniquely, for each individual finding their own authorial voice within their and with the media available to his or her generation and moment in history.

Off now to read some more of Jill Walker's stuff. (So Jill has married Scott Rettberg - that must be an interesting household!)

Course schedule

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:38:00 GMT

Hopefully this schedule will bear some resemblance to the entries in the Journal!

Week 2 (E-learning and globalization): Steve, Christine, David

Week 3 (The economics of e-learning): Anton, Richard

15/10 Week 4 (Digital divides, domestic): Jim, Amanda, Graham

22/10 Week 5 (Digital divides, north-south): Stuart, Jim, Nisha

29/10 Week 7 (Changing identities in online society): Anton, Christine, Amanda

5/11 Week 8 (Digital citizenship): Edith, Stuart

12/11 Week 9 (Online ideologies): David, Edith

19/11 Week 10 (Open source): Steve, Nisha

Week 11 (Intellectual property): Richard, Graham

History: Esperanto for computers

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:31:00 GMT

Jim suggested that Esperanto's failure was due to its Indo-European bias, but I don't believe that really way its Achilles heel (not dispensing with the accusative case was, IMO, a much graver omission)!

In the 70s and 80s some of the best Esperanto publications came out of China and USSR, and it got considerable backing from the Internationalist and Youth movements in many Communist countries. But nationalist undercurrents were strong too, and I think Esperanto was often, subconsciously, promoted as the ideal solution for someone else's problem. Each of the major political-linguistic axes - anglophone, russophone, sinophone - tacitly assumed that its native language would prevail in the end.

But one telling difference between an artificial natural language layer, and an artificial computer language layer, is that the latter is generally much quicker to install! That's a much more significant factor when comparing the success and uptake of Esperanto-like innovations in the real and digital worlds.

History: "The Poor Man's Arpanet"

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:30:00 GMT

(Naughton, J. (2000) A Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet, paperback edition, London: Phoenix, chapter 11, pp. 169-184.)

We shouldn't be suprised that the spread of the Internet is a cascade of knowledge, tools and systems from one group to another, each less "elite" than the last, and each paving the way for the next. It's hardly a pattern that offends against common-sense.

Interesting to see the extent to which strong personalities are evident in the story, and this lends it a social aspect. Dennis Ritchie is closely associated with his invention, C, and his book is the bible of that critical language in the evolution of computing. Comparable personal cults don't attach to COBOL or BASIC: each had its place in the development of computing, but none has become and remained integral to the global network in the way C has.

(There are other computer languages associated with colourful personality cults Larry Wall, PERL; Seymour Papert, LOGO._

The "intrinsic elegance" of UNIX (and C) seems a perfectly good Darwinian reason for its success. Another is its viral aspect, being easily portable to a wide range of relatively inexpensive computers.

Perhaps the non-Unix context of the story could be better handled by Naughton. Why did C and Unix not spread quicker? What other viable languages and systems, or business interests, were competing with it? What was everyone else doing at the time? (Space Invaders: 1978; IBM PC: 1981; Windows: 1985).

My own experience is of how, from its origins in an elite environment in the early 1970s, by the late 80s Unix it had become a viable option for administrative systems in government, such as in the Home Office, Met Police, M.O.D., (where I worked from 85-89). It's worth noting that such organisations were often tied in to the cycle of suppliers like IBM or (in UK) ICL whose proprietary hardware and software were largely inseparable. The hardware independence of both personal-oriented desktop computing (DOS, Windows) and server/network systems (Unix, FTP) were powerful antidotes (though in the case of Windows, a new kind of lock-in would evolve).

On Newsgroups: interesting also to consider the contrasting models of ARPANET mail lists, and Usenet news, still with us in many ways (Listserv, NNTP) and now augmented by web BBs and of course blogs.

Economics of E-learning: Mustn't grumble

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:28:00 GMT

Happened to read another article by Greville Rumble: Social justice, economics and distance education (Open Learning Vol. 22, No. 2, June 2007, pp. 167–176). Very interesting exposition of the morality of education in general, and distance learning in particular.

Must followup Honderich references, e.g. After The Terror (2002). Concept of "good" lives, "bad" lives and "vicous" policies/societies seems intriguing.

Economics of E-learning: Those dark, Satanic, digital diploma mills

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:27:00 GMT

Noble's paper warns against the dangers of letting (higher) education succumb to techno-charlatans and dumbing-down. Students deserve better than "a cyber-counterfeit" of the face-to-face education they have been led to expect. Policy-makers and chalk-face pedagogs should beware of treating students as "guinea pigs in product trials masquerading as courses".

But in doing so, it sets out a dismal view of the commoditisation and industrialisation of education in the Information Age. "As in other industries, the technology is being deployed by management primarily to discipline, de-skill, and displace labor." Like some cyberpunk dystopia, Noble's vision is of students and teachers in an unlikely alliance to fight a rearguard action against the combined forces of computer vendors, university administrators, corporate training advocates and technozealots.

These are the four horses of his apocalypse. He makes a lot of assumptions about their motivations, and he's not always generous. I imagine slates, chalk, printed books, video cassettes were also once peddled by enthusiastic neophiles, lacking peer-reviewed proof of their efficacy.

But why /not/ package up the best educational projects and share them, sometimes on a commercial footing, other times pro-bono? Is this really so novel? Haven't Blackwells, OUP and the rest been doing this for centuries?

Seems to me the information revolution is creating greater demands for information that can only be serviced by products of the revolution! Maybe if we teach people more quickly and effectively the ever-growing number of things we think they need to know (including, unfortunately, corporate training) they'll have more time and space to explore the more picturesque avenues of education.

On Eduspaces

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:27:00 GMT

I'd love Eduspaces to be better, I really would. But its interface is a walking usability disaster - great long sidebars, with the rest of the page blank, menus all over the place, really intrusive ads. It's clearly got the functionality of a promising social network, but would need substantial customisation before I'd feel happy deploying it at our place.

R:e:learning

UploadLog

A metaphor for learning

E-learning, Politics and Society

External resources

Journal

Papert: A word for learning

Understanding Learning in the Online Environment

External resources

Journal

No MyEd this Saturday morning

Hello World

Resources for courses

Featured items

Recently featured items

MainMenu

More on plagiarism

IDEL Bibliography

Books and articles from Cite-U-Like

Web links from Del.icio.us

Assignment idea.. guess what... repositories!

Open Source: the hacker ethic isn't always aesthetic

Open Source: thinking and choosing creatively

Online Identities: Blogging and identity

Course schedule

History: Esperanto for computers

History: "The Poor Man's Arpanet"

Economics of E-learning: Mustn't grumble

Economics of E-learning: Those dark, Satanic, digital diploma mills

On Eduspaces