Stephen Downes calls it, “a completely useless and misleading piece of non-information” while the Globe & Mail earnestly reports that, “Once formal schooling ends, learning rates drop“. They are both talking about the Canadian Council on Learning’s Composite Learning Index.
Given the CCL’s support of homework without any data to back it up, or pushing formal [...]
Filed under: Learning | 2 Comments »
I came across two articles about public education yesterday, one is four years old, the other quite recent.
Here’s a snippet from a long article Why Nerds are Unpopular (2003):
Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens’ main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to [...]
Filed under: Learning, Work | 4 Comments »
The real power is in making others powerful
… is attributed to Ben Zander, author of The Art of Possibility, found on Presentation Zen [an excellent resource on presentation design and worth a check before your next PowerPoint presentation]. Garr then says this about teaching:
In presenting — and certainly in teaching — we need to make [...]
Filed under: Learning | No Comments »
Most people have a five-day work week. Now, I know that many people work more than the 35, 37 or even 40 hours per week mandated in their contract, and that it’s common to work through breaks and lunch to get the job done.
I would surmise though, that most of us feel that a five-day [...]
Filed under: Learning, Work | 8 Comments »
Do you enjoy reading this blog? Has it ever helped you out with your work? Do you consider it a dependable source of information?
I’ve been writing this blog for over three years and while many of the benefits are personal, the number of visitors indicates that there’s something of interest for others as well. This [...]
Filed under: Work | 11 Comments »
At the Internet Time Community we’ve been having a discussion about adopting blogs and social bookmarks for organisations. These kinds of efforts need pioneers to go out and test the myriad of web 2.0 applications and figure out which ones will work in their organisation. With all of the options available, it can be a [...]
Filed under: Informal Learning | No Comments »
We conducted several “unworkshops” on informal learning on the Web last year and learned a lot. We also met some interesting people, several of whom have continued the conversation around the use of two-way web tools for organisational learning.
Jay has now created The Unworkshop Legacy Page as an information resource and has coupled [...]
Filed under: Informal Learning | 1 Comment »
Two years ago Albert Ip wrote how our schools are failing us. The other day I was reviewing some of my online bookmarks and re-read Albert’s post.
My own criticism of our current school model is that it too closely resembles the industrial economic model of the past and is not suited to our current societal [...]
Filed under: Learning | 6 Comments »
Three years ago, Seth Godin wrote about what the future might hold in 2009 and I wondered how this would change anyone’s business plan. We’re more than half way there, so are these assumptions coming true?
There is no doubt that hard drive space is getting cheaper, and Gmail’s 2.8 GB of free space is a [...]
Filed under: Technology, Work | 1 Comment »
It’s Friday, and if you have some time you may want to watch the keynote speech by Jennifer James, at the BCEd Online Conference. It’s a streamed presentation and is over an hour long but I found it fascinating. James is a cultural anthropologist and discusses how technology and people have been interacting for thousands [...]
Filed under: Communities, Technology | 2 Comments »
