Blog posts

By far the researchers' most significant finding was one that simply matched previous research: students who had a more racially diverse group of friends and classmates <em>outside</em> of the study tended to write essays with higher ICs. Again, however, this finding is only a correlation, and cannot on its own show that racial diversity improves learning.

But what information is it that is actually being "leaked" through Facebook by these irresponsible employees ?<br><br>The article gives no specifics, making me wonder if the threat is real or just imagined by the corporate control freaks.

What is a good length for a module? Through countless hours of instructional design, field testing, and client feedback, I have found that 30 minutes is about the maximum, and less than 15 is too short.

<p>I believe there are three primary reasons why an enterprise would want to “manage its knowledge”:</p> <p>One, to share learning, so that the same mistake is not made multiple times.</p> <p>Two, to share learning, so that activities get sped up.</p> <p>Three, to share learning, so that people are motivated to learn and to teach.</p> <p>To share learning.</p>

Knowledge management is not really about the content, it is about creating an environment where learning takes place. Maybe we spend too much time trying to create an environment where teaching takes place, rather than focus on the learning.

Consider our happy little edublogger world. Some members have been blogging for a long time (notably Stephen Downes, Will Richardson, Jay Cross). Through their established networks, they can serve important roles of guiding and directing others to resources and concepts. Their experience enables them to put new developments into a historical context. They assist others to create networks...but they do more. They serve as curators of ideas, connections, philosophies, and world views. They create frameworks of interpreting and understanding history, new technologies, and trends through their work and public dialogue.

Today the Archive includes over three million photographs, manuscripts, audio recordings, and moving images. It consists of documentation of traditional culture from all around the world including the earliest field recordings made in the 1890s on wax cylinder through recordings made using digital technology. It is America's first national archive of traditional life, and one of the oldest and largest of such repositories in the world.

The Center's 35,000 cubic feet of documents, 500,000 photographs, and 3000 films provide unique insights into worldwide developments and issues of the 19th and 20th centuries. Major subjects covered in the records include agriculture, the arts, African-American history, education, international relations and economic development, labor, medicine, philanthropy, politics, population, religion, the social sciences, social welfare, and women's history.

The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century <a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/directory/where/North+America/">North American</a> and <a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/directory/where/South+America/">South American</a> maps and other cartographic materials. Historic maps of the <a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/directory/where/World/">World</a>, <a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/directory/where/Europe/">Europe</a>, <a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/directory/where/Asia/">Asia</a>, and <a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/directory/where/Africa/">Africa</a> are also represented.

<p>We compute the reputation of Wikipedia authors according to how long their contributions last in the Wikipedia. Specifically, authors whose contributions are preserved, or built-upon, gain reputation; authors whose contributions are undone lose reputation. </p> <p>We call this a <em>content-driven</em> reputation, since the reputation is computed automatically via text analysis. This contrasts with other reputation systems, such as those in use at <a class="external" href="http://www.ebay.com"><img src="http://trust.cse.ucsc.edu/wiki/modern/img/moin-www.png" alt="[WWW]" height="11" width="11"> Ebay</a>, where buyer and seller reputations are computed on the basis of user-provided ratings.</p>

Equally, and perhaps more importantly, the PLE concept focuses on the individual learner. All well and good, but the concept (or perhaps just the name) doesn’t give great emphasis to the fact that individuals contribute to the learning of others. Whilst PLEs clearly accept the importance of the networks learners establish in supporting their own learning, there’s also the significant fact that the very nature of the emerging technologies that support PLEs also play a huge role in allowing each learner to help others learn – the community nurturing learning and giving rise to an almost greater conciousness that helps support, develop and nourish learning amongst all the community participants.

At this point I’m not completely sure whether I’m introducing a new concept here or simply posting a plea for help but it does strike me that there’s a wider entity beyond the PLE and VLE – the idea of sharing learning – helping others in a mutually supportive community to foster learning and encourage participation – to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts – <strong>a shared learning environment</strong>.

A problem with the PLE, VLE, CMS etc - is they imply separate entities; whereas the SLE paints a picture of using the tools most suitable for the job, from both the user and institutional prospective, then working together and sharing across boundaries - surely a worthy goal?

But if it isn't the tools, is it the process? Is RA simply the dropping of ADDIE in favour of quickly reiterated prototypes or indeed of making it up off the top of your head and getting it out there same day? If that's the case why are we saying it needs instructional design?