Connectivism Course

Lost in Technology

This past week was an online feast I had not experienced before. I tried to catch as many sessions of the conference Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008 at which great minds shared their knowledge, experience, and thoughts.



If the Online Teacher or Facilitator are Missing, it’s Time for a Real Connectivism Session, CCK08

Lisa Lane started a thread at the CCK08 Connectivism online course forum about what happened when a UStream session of this online course was cancelled. She wrote:



CCK08: Concept Map

  I enjoyed this one much more than the last one :-)



Jeffrey’s Twitter Updates for 2008-11-22

Did four loads of laundry already this morning.



Facebook in case of divorce

Just a suggestion for sociological research in social networking software's.



Does Education Need to Change?

George Siemens' recent post makes me smile:"As a small research project, I’d like to ask people to answer the following questions (on their blog, in YouTube, Seesmic, or wherever - please post a link in the comments section below): 1. Does education need to change? 2. Why or why not?



Open Education & Open Learning

Open Education & Open Learning



Vendors sharing their expertise – rapid learning blends

I have been reading through a few of Kineo’s  rapid guides and tip sheets and i love them!  



Open Education Workshop: The CCK08 Student Experience

Student Experiences In CCK08 View SlideShare presentation or



Join Passports with a Purpose

Do you have a blog for your travel biz? Consider participating in Passports with a Purpose, a travelblogger-driven fundraiser for Heifer International.



Jeffrey’s Twitter Updates for 2008-11-20

The overnight doctor said Spencer is doing well. She also learned he likes turkey. # Going to pick Spencer up. Heard he has been recovering nicely.



How to get rid of black bars on youtube videos

At tourism marketing workshops I have been telling everyone to start recording video for the Web in HD format for two years.



QRcodes in eLearning

While QRcodes do break through in the marketing world, it is only slowly trickling into the eLearning world. This is quite understandeable as QRcodes are mainly used with mobile devices (small segment of learning) and within mLearning only a few people explore QRcode possibilities.



Recumbent fixed, again

About 7 minutes from my house on my bike is a repair shop with an old man in it. He should be retired, and could probably sell his shop for enough to retire on. But he and his wife, both in their 70’s, show up every day. They go slowly, but this guy can fix anything. You rarely find people like this. I like to hang around and talk to him while he fixes my bike. He doesn’t mind.



Saving money by treating sewage

Over at Freakonomics an interview with Rose George, author of The Big Necessity, about treating human waste, shows that for every dollar spent on sewage treatment, seven dollars in health care costs are saved.



Putting Down the Revolution

You may already be familiar with the image chosen as the 2008 NECC Button Winner, designed by Bill Moseley.



Reuters Closes Second Life Desk

Don't want to say "I told you so," but... Bryan Alexander, Liberal Education Today, November 24, 2008 [Tags: Second Life] [Link] [Comment]



The Missing Link to Maximum Performance

A crucial element of online learning: "The information needed is targeted and organized at the MOMENT OF NEED by embedding the solution directly into the employee's applications or workflows." The question of how to do that is to me most engaging, and has motivated my investigations into RSS, Javascript, and related technologies.



Time for a Little Comprehension

From Doug Noon, because it needs to be said: "people overlook the 'scientifically-based' textbooks scam.





The Future of Campus Email

Boston College takes the important step of not providing incoming freshmen with email addresses. I have argued this before, but, I simply don’t understand why campuses spend so much money trying to maintain and provide students with email addresses.



CCK08 Concept Map as of Week 12

Here is my “final” concept map. Overall, I guess my position has softened somewhat on concept maps. I no longer loathe them, merely dislike them. Maybe they reveal how confused and muddled my thinking is?



N.B. Bans Facebook During School Hours

Yet another institutionalized Facebook ban, and this time in the province where I live. The story and the comments (50 of them, as I write) are the same as have played out elsewhere. I don't understand why administrators and teachers don't see that they are sending exactly the wrong message when they ban things they don't like.



WordPressDirect: Like Blogging Without the Blogging

See, this is why I attach a 'non-commercial' condition to my Creative Commons license (not that sites like this respect the license). With Google set the way it is, it would be almost impossible for my genuinely free content to compete against the search-engine optimized clone blogs set up by WordPress advertising factories.



The Future of the Educational Marketplace

I was reading Stephen Downes‘ article on the Future of Online Learning, and ran into a paragraph that hit home more than the rest, about the marketplace for course



CCK08 Final Presentation

The final presentations are coming it. Worth highlighting is this one, which uses a Flash animation to illustrate some of the core concepts of connectivism.



Mary Lou Jepsen On One Laptop Per Child

Inspiring talk by Mary Lou Jepsen on the environmentally-friendly design of the OLPC computer. "By trying to do the right thing and by designing for the poorest people in the world, we've made the greenest laptop in the world. And that's not just the color!" This is the edited five-minute version, with a link available to the full talk.



CCK08 Final presentation

As my final presentation, I uploaded a 2 minute Flash file (no audio, 4.5 MB). It answers the question "How has this course influenced my view of the process of learning" and is a reduced, visually enhanced version of my yesterday's posting about the relationship between conceptual and social/ external connections.



Jeffrey’s Twitter Updates for 2008-11-23

The ornament and book signing at Saks today turned out rather well. I hope that bodes well for the economy this holiday season. # Spencer just had his surgical drain tubes removed. The surgeon said he is recovering very well. Have to schedule to remove the stitches.



Animoto

Thanks to Sarah Stewart, I’ve just discovered a really cool way of creating engaging video clips from static images. From the about page: