Martian Dougiamas on Moodle
Many people want the traditional locked down LMS, where students are seen as needing competencies and knowledge, where content is to be dumped, absorbed, and pumped out via tests. But…
Downes
Notes on open government, open data and open pedagogies
Talk about open government/data and open pedagogies including underlying philosophy, practices, benefits and challenges with specific reference to NRC So let’s talk about open government and open data. Geodata –…
Hard is Easy, Soft is Hard
Partial summary of presentation by Terry Anderson and George Siemens of Jon Dron's preconference workshop. The topic is basically around finding the right balance between Moodle and alternatives. We began…
A Vote for Layton, A Vote for Canada
I remember standing in the front row of the Coalition demonstration in December of 2008. Jack Layton came over and shook my hand, and I said to him, "I hope…
NDP Rally, Saint John
NDP Rally, a photo by Stephen Downes on Flickr.Jack Layton speaks to a very crowded NDP rally on the dock in Saint John, New Brunswick. Full set of photos.
Five Key Questions
In its 2010 Speech from the Throne, the Government of Ontario, Canada announced its intention to create an Ontario Online Institute (OOI) to support online learning in the province as…
More on Sameness
Responding to the enquiries posted to this blog post. Originally intended as a comment, but Blogger very arbitrarily limits the size of comments, and I can't seem to change that.…
Progress and Learning
I commented, here: The best learning I've ever done has been on my own, working through a hard problem, by reading and then writing, either text, or software, or derivations.…
What Networks Have In Common
David T. Jones asks, "Does connectivism conflate or equate the knowledge/connections with these two levels (“neuronal” and “networked”)? Regardless of whether the answer is yes or no, what are the…
Brakeless Trains – My Take
(Note to philosophers: this represents only my take on the brakeless trains example, and is not intended to be a full and accurate depiction of Russell's argument (and does not…
Moncton’s Future
I attended an open house to discuss the city planning exercise with various city officials on Wednesday at the city's L'Odyssée High School (they let the students name the school…
Easy RSS
RSS is ridiculously easy to create. It should be available to everyone, without the need for a specialized blogging application. Here's a Perl script that will create an RSS feed…
Six Tweets on Self
Downes : Thinking:Our concept of 'self' is not created through internal reflection. It is created via our perception of self from the external world. Downes : 'self' is a concept,…
Success Verbs
A 'success verb' is a verb that refers not only to an action or set of actions, but also tacitly to the outcome of that action. Such verbs are often…
Enabling Economic Development in New Brunswick
Responding to David W. Campbell, this post, in which he refers to this column and asserts "We need a new approach – see the column for a few ideas."Update: It…