Emerging Technologies in E-Learning - good information, refreshingly amusing

I read and thoroughly enjoyed this essay. It really is cool to have some hard, simple definitions in one place for reference . . . it's the objectivity I appreciate here, that and the good real-life examples offered. I didn't know what a mashup was, Top City Books sounds good, really in my interest arena, but will not come up in any browser and I'm not interested in spending anything beyond a few minutes trying to get in. I'll give it one more shot. Social Computing was a good mini-essay here, but here is where the utopian ideals start to color the essay - "people will be able to A) find great treasuries of information on almost any imaginable topic and B) contribute their knowledge to it". We can already do that. It's called A) a good library, and as for B) contributing to it, let the buyer beware of the information subsequently found. Know your sources! As for institutions abandoning top-down management and employees and partners "becoming part of a living fabric of brand loyalists", that's admirable thinking, but alas, flawed in that it sounds col, antiseptic and corporate in the same way that top-down management in corporations now demands the same thing under pain of termination. Try drinking coke if you work for pepsi - a friend of mine works for one of them and believe me, they don't joke about it. I am all for employee-ownership of their company, with equal participation and success, and everybody wins. Go visit the Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley for a whopping success of a real-life example. Their credo:

We are a collective of about 30 members. Everyone who works at the Cheese Board is a member of the collective with equal decision making power. There is no boss, manager, or non-owner worker. Everyone makes the same hourly wage.

Easily the best cheese and especially bread you can find, and the best service anywhere. If you had to base an electronic social network on a community ideal, this would be the one to do it on.

Mobile learning - "the logical next step for e-learning". I don't think so. A small segment, maybe.

Augmented reality - where you separate the toys from the real deal, i.e. guided surgery.

Smart mobs - Stop, you're killing me. Enough already, let me up! " salvos of text messages" from a "million Filipinos" apparently "toppled President Estrada". Too many sci-fi shoot 'em ups and bad coffee for the quoted Rheingold, I'm afraid. I physically winced when I read this.

MMOGS - the going gets a little sloppy here; "will use" is a tad hasty for me. Kinda, well, kinda goofy if you ask me.

WIKIS - excellent, tight mini-essay that keeps it simple and reminds us it's not authoritative.
information.

One of my deep concerns is addressed with the statement on page 16 - "the challenge will be for learners (all of us) to manage information overload". So true for so long now (decades) and it's getting more so every day. But to state in this paper that "Google and other search engines will evolve to provide tools for people to manage it all" is a royal naieve blunder and insulting to the intelligence; it sounds like a punch line to a Bizarro comic.

I like the glossary and overall, digging for usable nuggets in this article was successful, and some of the idealism made me chuckle.

Reflection for February 19 class - goals for learners

I enjoyed last week's class a lot. Just visited Academhack and joined in the discussion on tenure. Checked out pbwiki; I'll construct one. The short stories were effective and fun; I like the side by side revision feature a lot. I do think twitter is a phenomenon that may or may not be truly useful to learners, but the excellent group presentation allayed some of my doubts. Using it as a conferee at a conference among other conferees is a good idea, for example. I think the key for me in social networking as an effective learning tool is compaction, making it have impact (like Kim does, a style I really try to emulate). I can and do write long rants, commentaries, letters, e-mails and all manner of correspondence but continue to strive for saying more with less - there is a lot of information out there to wade through and I'm cautious about devoting too much time to opinions offered on a whim.

Educational Wikis

http://shannongoodwin.wikispaces.com/ high school

http://mysideofthemountain.wikispaces.com/ 4th grade

http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/wikis/index.htm SDSU

Stars and their boring tweets

Had the opportunity to read local newspaper column
inches devoted to boring, pointless drivel from some
tweeters. A "treat". Not. They range from a post about
how someone is accusing someone else of tweeting too much
(that's three layers of pointless, people) to the kind of personal
"details" you avoid by putting your headphones on when
someone tries to bore your ear off on an airplane flight.

In a world desperate for real experience for the past three
decades at least, this is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Apparently new "celebs" are being "created" by twitter, just
'cause they tweet. Hmmm.

Staying tuned; but with online privacy an issue, I'm just
tweeting out loud in the real world so far, to the birds wintering
in the garden . . .

Twitter soaks investors again; still no revenue

Twitter has raised another $35 million, it's third "dip",
though it has no revenue and says it didn't want the cash.
Right. It now has $50 million in cash reserves and 29
employees. They are working on a project to make money,
expected in April.

A lot of resources are tied to this - it will be interesting
to see who the whole thing will benefit in the end.

Thursday 2-12 class - Eugene Lee

I published a long post about last night's class
but this blog deleted it after posting (??? why)
So I'll give an abbreviated version. Don't feel
like remembering the whole thing.

I enjoyed Eugene's talk last night - in-depth,
interesting, and a good look at business

Terms like actitvity feeds, followerships,
tweet, aggregates, blending, etc. are new to
me in this context - I don't social network much
now and don't see myself doing it all that much,
though I will try it. Seems like a lot of time and
bandwidth in an already info-overload situation.

Yesterday the Pew Internet Project released a study
showing 11% of adult online users have used Twitter,
Facebook, etc. for "status updates". This phenomenon
has earned the sobriquet "oversharing". Twitter has
a median user age of 31, Myspace 27, Facebook 26.
11% of all online users have created a blog, possibly
slightly up since I created mine yesterday, of course!

Blogcat

Online Privacy Guidelines from FTC issued yesterday

Online Privacy - a big concern of mine

The FTC issued guidelines yesterday (another
big announcement on class day - prophetic?) for
online privacy - clueless consumers are being
tracked and mined relentlessly. FTC wants
the consumer's data collection disclosed, the
consumer to be able to "opt out" of tracking,
and express consent to be obtained from
consumers about children's behavior, health
history, and financial data.

You'd think (hope?) that OnlineBiz inc. would have
done this on their own. Looks like legislation
might be brewing, but hopefully they'll see the
handwriting on the wall 1st.

I'm uncomfortable being tracked, to say the least.
If I see signs of it, I cease consumer activity with
that entity.

BTW, I still think we should be asked as consumers
if we want to "Opt In" to being tracked.

ITEC 830

Hello everyone in 830, 'ere's me blog. I'm the blogcat.