An article on A List Apart on public speaking tips got me thinking on some of my hard-learned presentation lessons: Read the rest of this entry »

Jon Mott and David Wiley have posted their paper on Open learning.  Well done, nicely argued, with good supporting references.  Bravo!  Their basic point is traditional Content Management Systems — i.e. Sakai, Blackboard — reinforce the the management side of teaching to the detriment to the innovative, student-centered, learning side of the equation.  And while I agree with much of their argument, I’ve come to realize that this approach also misses some important  points: Read the rest of this entry »

Summer is passing too fast, and my reading list is growing too quickly.  Two recent additions to the list, Doug Rushkoff’s Open Source Economy, and right at the top of the list, Curtis Bonk’s The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education.  I looked over Bonk’s introduction and I think this is going to be a must-read for anyone interested in where our education system is heading.  In fact I’m thinking of organizing a virtual discussion group/book reading group around it — anyone interested?  With the start of the school year upon us now is probably not the time to start something like this, so I’m targeting late September/early October.

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People constantly build models of real world systems to inform activities like business strategies, classroom technology deployments or a software development project.  This model takes some subset of real-world conditions, make assumptions, which then drive the project.  And often the solution will influence user behavior — the medium is the message.  The world is constantly changing, and so must our models and resulting assumptions and solutions.  And at one university their model of the classroom no longer includes PowerPoint.

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Last week I attended the Educause institute on Learning Technology Leadership.  In short good program, great people and a fantastic experience.  And pretty intense.  We started with a half-day on Monday (not too bad).  Tuesday and Wednesday both started promptly at 8am, and with our team project work ran until 11pm!  Thursday was a more typical day, still starting at 8am, but the dinner finished around 8:30, and then a half day on Friday.  The strength of the program is how active we all stayed.  There was very little sitting and listening — and the few weak points in the program occurred during these moments.  We had a lot of active discussion, group projects, and a multi-day team activity with formal presentations in front of the whole group.  It was both exhausting and invigorating.   I always find the most valuable part of these experiences is working with and trading ideas with peers so it is wonderful to have a program that puts this type of collaboration at the center.

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In Dealing with the Future Now: Principles for Creating a Vital Campus in a Climate of Restricted Resources, the authors propose foresee a relatively dire situation for Higher Education.  They pretty convincingly argue that our current economic issues are not cyclical, but systemic.  In fact the systemic problems were masked by recent economic boom years.  Incremental changes, such as across the board budget cuts, reflect our widespread belieft that the good times are just around the corner — the authors warn, that they are not, and that transformational changes are needed.

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