Half baked but crispy

There are lots of interesting things going on at Mozilla labs. For example, Ubiquity is an experimental plugin that makes mash-ups between web services possible with a few natural language commands. This blog posting from Asa Raskin explains the idea, but the video makes it clear.

Martin Weller of the OU has published a draft of a paper on the digital native and the use of ICT in education in which he has tried to find facts to support some of the preconcpetions for the beliefs of the e-learning community.

From the conclusion:

The evidence for radical and imminent revolution in higher education may not be as strong as I once liked to believe, but we shouldn’t ignore the fact also that there are some very significant trends which are founded in data and research and not just anecdote and rhetoric. These suggest very strongly that engagement with new technologies is a core practice for higher education. And more significantly, these trends indicate that we have a richer environment in which to explore changes in teaching and learning practice. We have a convergence of a base level of technological competence, an expectation of the use of ICTs in education, a range of easy to use tools, and models from other sectors to investigate. So while the absolute necessity for radical change is overstated, there are unprecedented opportunities for the use of technology in education. And as educators we shouldn’t need to wait until the case has been proven for each one to try it, because as the saying goes, it doesn’t take a whole day to recognise sunshine.

This paper deserves time for study, and I have possibly misrepresented it, but I wanted to provide a link to it for my colleagues in South West Wales.

Michael Wesch (The Machine is Us/ing Us, A Vision of Students Today), keynote speaker at ALT-C 2009, mentioned this "Anthropological Introduction to YouTube" on YouTube. Here it is ... on YouTube.

David Lammy revealed details of plans to overhaul the funding system for English universities at the same time that Universities announced plans to fundamentally review the way degrees are marked after concerns that the standard of degrees has slipped.

More on the UUK meeting in Edinburgh and Higher Education minister David Lammy's address to it from The Guardian. A double whammy -- worries about degree grade inflation and a review of funding. After a couple of research assessment exercises it was only a matter of time before Teaching Quality would rise to the top of the agenda again!

Lammy demands ‘further and faster’ progress towards economic impact

The higher education funding system is set to be reformed to ensure that universities make a greater contribution to the UK’s economic needs, it was announced today.

Looks like there's more trouble ahead!

There are four key functions an e-Portfolio could fulfil to help learners.

The first is in developing their digital identity – as a learner – though a dynamically generated profile.

The second is in reflecting on learning.

The third is in reporting on that learning – flexibly and creatively.

The fourth is developing and sustaining a personal learning network

The problem is that e-portfolios are remarkably poor at doing any of these. 

Graham Atwell was another panellist at the #vle is dead debate at #altc2009. I subscribed to his blog "Pontydysglu - Bridge to Learning" also. Here is link to one of his thought provoking recent posts. The extract has been very selectively edited and may reflect my own point of view -- or not -- you decide. It of course does not necessarily reflect the views of my employer (which you can take in whichever way you like!)

I discovered Steve Wheeler's blog after he spoke (against the VLE) in the #altc2009 Symposium of the death of the #VLE. I subscribed to his blog feed and discovered in the "back issues" this conversation starter on the use of Twitter in education. Follow the links and read the comments ... there's a lot of good stuff here.