This is a post I promised some time back in Divisions are Counterproductive. I have to confess in advance that as I sit down here to write this, I have only the barest of outlines of what I think on this subject and I’m relying on you all to comment to help me flesh this idea out.
Read the rest of this entry »
Online Learning Update has a link to a story that contains this line:
“One of the obstacles to distance learning on the Internet is the difficulty with viewing lectures”
The MAIN obstacle to distance learning on the internet is this silly insistence that viewing lectures has anything to do with education to begin with. Why in Finn’s name are we
I’m not going to say that better video over ip is a bad thing, but using it to broadcast a teacher’s face and hands better so they can LECTURE?! Come on! Is that the BEST we can do?
NL
If you do not currently have an aggregator, stop reading this NOW. You do not have time to read this.
Go get an aggregator and set it up. Point it at D’Arcy Norman, Will Richardson, Stephen Downes, and Don Little.
Add http://www.aect-members.org/dld
Add http://www.aect-members.org/wordpress
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, email me.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve had a LOT of people asking me about this one — from a variety of places so let me try to fill this in a bit
Read the rest of this entry »
Back in the 80s when I was in MIS, I was the only programmer in my shop (of some 250 technical folks) with email. Not just “email at home” but “email” … as in anywhere. Granted we were in coastal Maine where innovations tend to struggle amid the Luddites and poverty, but still, it was available and I had it.
In those days I used to ask people, “Do you have email?” I’d usually get a blank look. In those instances where they knew what email was, the answer was, “Why in the world would I want email?”
From L. symposium “drinking party”
From Gk symposion “convivial gathering of the educated”
From syn- “together” + posis “a drinking”
Gotta love them ancient Greeks. They knew that if you mix wine with intellectual discussion, you have the makings of a heck of a party. AECT is no different.
Except it’s not a party.
The drinking happens after the “intellectual discussion”
There’s darn little
And most of it isn’t all that intellectual.
And THERE is the crux of the issue.
Because the perception is that AECT
I want to get back to when scholarship meant something other than money you got because you could play basketball/baseball/oboe/test games.
Education needs to find its roots and stop playing with all the peroxide.
Last week I suggested that the divisional structure is counter-productive and causes more problems than it solves. Judging from the feedback commentary, I’m right, so I’ll be adding the recommendation to the strategic planning committee’s wiki.
This week, I want to address the issue of AECT publications.
Read the rest of this entry »
I feel like I’ve had my finger in a light socket or something.
These last few days have been a hectic scramble to help Patty get the DLD web spaces lined up so that the communications committee can take them over. I’m VERY pleased that the “front page” for the division will be a wordpress based blog. Most of what the membership needs to know should appear on those pages and be served up via RSS so that all the news will be delivered to the members’ computers as it happens. The ability to reply with commentary, trackback from their own blogs, and stay informed means we’re turning the corner on the “If we build it, they will come” mentality.
The BAD news is that only the early adopters will be getting the news and participating in the community.
Ah, well. One step at a time.
NL
Convince me that the AECT needs divisions.
This is one of the subjects that raises hackles and sets teeth on edge, I know. People get all defensive over it, but consider. Every strategic consideration of the AECT undertaken over the last 5 years has returned the finding that Divisions are problematic. I don’t have access to the reasoning behind those earlier findings, but I have it on Pretty Good Authority that it is so.
Read the rest of this entry »
