Nov

1

Discipline

November 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment

I am going to be leading a workshop on “Investigating teaching in your discipline” next Wednesday. The outline is attached to this page (below).
Discipline is an interesting word, which we often use without reflecting on the complex valency of meanings that it bears. I have been reading Foucault’s Discipline and Punish in preparation for the [...]

Oct

15

Wi-Fi Direct: a step towards the mesh? via Slashdot

October 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Wi-Fi Direct will connect at existing Wi-Fi speeds– up to 250 mbps. Wi-Fi Direct devices will also be able to broadcast their availability and seek out other Wi-Fi Direct devices.
via mobile.slashdot.org
Some of you might have heard me witter on about widely distributed databases (e.g. bit torrent) and mesh networks (e.g. OLPC). I made a few [...]

Oct

15

Fascinating bi-modality in charts of social media use by young Europeans via @GrahamAttwell

October 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment

European survey data on how young people are using social media.
via pontydysgu.org
Either they use it or they don’t. Not much middle ground. 25% use the Internet more than 20 hours a week; 30% less than 5 hours. Well, it is more complex than that, of course, but even stronger bimodality is showm with IM. Not [...]

Aug

26

Sustaining support

August 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Further to the last post, Sustaining Communities, the tension in higher education is between: open educational dialogue and institutional pragmatics.
Open educational dialogue is concerned with networks or communities for information sharing, which take a user-centred approach to learning and design for learning on all scales. These networks make use of user-generated content for learning resources, [...]

Aug

25

55 out of 193 countries (28%) account for 97% global GDP and 99% IT expenditure

August 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment

…according to:
Franda, Marcus (2001), Governing the Internet: the emergence of an international regime. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, CO, USA p 206
Posted via email from George’s posterous

Aug

24

I was asked to comment on difference between education, training, learning

August 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment

I used to be concerned in this direction when making a transition from working in industrial training and development education to working in educational development roles in higher education.
All categorisations of this sort serve to channel people and institutions into differently funded and privileged regimes. There are no essentials of this sort. Conceptual categories are [...]

Aug

21

how HESA normalises black, mixed and other ethnic group graduates to reduce their impact by a quarter! http://bit.ly/gsVwv

August 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Or, at least that is one possible reading of this following example from HESA’s Guidelines for the use of the DLHE Longitudinal Survey Dataset.
To illustrate how this is done:Black, mixed and other ethnic group graduates accounted for 21.9% of the selected Sample A.
From the initial census it is known that these graduates represent just 4.9% [...]

Aug

17

A response to Leigh Blackall: The New Colonialism in OER

August 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment

In many respects, OER and the Creative Commons licenses help propel US centered ideas of copyright and intellectual property, indirectly inserting such ideas on the back of moral concepts such as sharing, freedom and openness, as though sharing, freedom and openness didn’t exist before, and that the only way to protect such notions is with [...]

Aug

16

Defining “Creepy Treehouse” #pcthe

August 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment

In the field of educational technology a creepy treehouse is an institutionally controlled technology/tool that emulates or mimics pre-existing technologies or tools that may already be in use by the learners, or by learners’ peer groups. Though such systems may be seen as innovative or problem-solving to the institution, they may repulse some users who [...]

Aug

15

Josie Fraser (@josiefraser) on 3 ways to characterise online identity

August 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment

There are three main ways we can characterise most peoples online internet and mobile activity and presence. Let me state up front that these distinctions are purposely blunt, but do act as effective and critical distinctions, especially when talking to people about how and why they can manage their online identities.
via fraser.typepad.com
Josie Fraser characterises these [...]

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