Reading Brett over on Rhymes with Purple got me thinking about the Gagne Assumption. The assumption is two part. First, there are different kinds of learning (e.g., learning facts is a different thing from learning to classify). Second, different conditions are most suited to bring about these different types of learning. If one buys into this assumption, which I do wholeheartedly, then a prescient question regarding games becomes - what type (or types) of learning are best promoted by game-like instructional conditions? ...

There’s an interesting thread on IT Forum regarding the purpose of doctoral education. I figured as long as I was answering the “what’s the purpose” question I may as well post it here as well. ...

Several interesting thoughts about sustainability are making the rounds after our recent conference. I thought Kerry struck a particularly alarming chord: Eisenhower National Clearinghouse is a good example - once enc.org, home to a plethora of math-based lesson plans, tutorials, java applets, etc. - now a paid subscription site due to the end of NSF funding. Is this really the eventual end of opencourseware and other open education projects once Hewlett funding and other sources dry up? Do the resources disappear from those who can’t afford them (trans. those who need them most)? Saying things like “oh, the Internet Archive will still have them” is only helpful as long as people keep funding the archive. ...

So I’m sitting here in the annual Hewlett Foundation Open Education Grantees meeting thinking… what is the future of open education? Where is it going? I think there is only one answer: localization. ...

Hadn’t mentioned my new book project here yet, mostly because I didn’t want to be accused of talking up vaporware. However, the new learning objects book is well underway and it’s time to get more people involved than my students. The book is written as a series of conversations around a conference room table, and deals with the what I feel are the least understood / most important concepts in learning objects. Also, the book is being written on the OpenContent wiki, and I would encourage anyone interested to jump in and have a go and writing new dialogue - or if you’re seriously committed - writing in a new character. And now, the links: ...

In Stephen’s notes on Wenger’s ALT-C talk, Etienne makes this absolutely wonderful comment: It’s a shift, from learning being viewed as a (vertical) relation between a provider and a recipient, to a (horizontal) peer to peer relationship of negotiation of multual relevance. Best definition of meaningful learning I’ve heard in ages. I’ve often thought that if a teacher can’t “convince” a student they need to learn a certain “required” subject (i.e., if they can’t demonstrate the relevance of material so supposedly important it was put into the core curriculum), they should not be allowed to teach it. Period. Of course, when the curriculum and assessments are set by the federal government, there is no mutual negotiation of anything. “Open wide,” says the omniscient panel of PhDs….

Just a note to say that today I turned on some new functionality in oishii!, the tool I use to watch del.icio.us. oishii! displays the most recently added sites which 30 or more users have bookmarked, and now provides links to three similar sites (where similarity is based on tagging behavior in del.icio.us). oishii! updates every 10 minutes. Check it out!

This one was just too funny not to repost. Enjoy this conversation between a Microsoft recruiter and Eric Raymond (Founder and Emeritus President of the Open Source Initiative) in which M$ mistakenly makes Eric a job offer.

If it makes sense to mobilze the army and everyone else to come to the aid of the poor and unfortunate after a natural disaster (like Katrina), why doesn’t it make sense to mobilze this level of support for “them” the rest of the time? Is it because, barring a natural disaster, it’s their own fault and so they don’t deserve any help? Is it that we would really rather not help at all, but what with all the images on TV it would be political suicide not to help? Seems rather duplicitous to be helping now. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying we shouldn’t be helping now. I’m saying we should be helping more often. Helping, of course, is what open education is all about.

If it makes sense to mobilze the army and everyone else to come to the aid of the poor and unfortunate after a natural disaster (like Katrina), why doesn’t it make sense to mobilze this level of support for “them” the rest of the time? Is it because, barring a natural disaster, it’s their own fault and so they don’t deserve any help? Is it that we would really rather not help at all, but what with all the images on TV it would be political suicide not to help? Seems rather duplicitous to be helping now. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying we shouldn’t be helping now. I’m saying we should be helping more often. Helping, of course, is what open education is all about.