I’ve long been a fan of Clayton Christensen’s ‘disruptive innovation” theories outlined in “Innovator’s Dilemma” and the follow up “Innovator’s Solution I think he provides a great deal of sound theoretical and practical reasoning about the process of innovation. Unfortunately, the examples in his books come mostly from industry and especially high tech innovation [...]
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I am pleased to announce the 2nd edition of the edited text Theory and Practice of Online Learning. As the first edition, this one is available in paper copy ($39.95 Canadian) and in PDF for open access download. This is one of the first 6 books produced by the newly launched Athabasca University Press which [...]
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The following is a rather long and scholarly type post arguing for the use of Networks in addition to groups commonly employed in formal campus and distance education. The essay will probably find its way into a published paper or book chapter, but I thought I would post it here in case anyone has interest [...]
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The latest issue of EduCause Review headlines an article Conference Connections: Rewiring the Circuit by George Siemen, Peter Tittenberger and myself. The work is mostly George’s but I was happy to play a supportive role in its production and editing. The article does a good job of overviewing the ‘augmented’ use of network technologies [...]
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Recent posts have gotten me thinking further about the “taxonomy of the many” groups/networks and collectives that Jon Dron and I have been interested in for the past year or so.
First there has been a small buzz about “Personal Learning Networks” I enjoyed Jim Lerman’s post Will Richardson adds some nice comments on Utube [...]
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Scott Leslie and his colleague Bruce Langdon have crafted an excellent review of the promise and practice of social software use in both formal and informal learning. The 27 page report is titled Social Software for Learning: What is it,
why use it? and is published by the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education.
The report makes a [...]
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With all the buzz about blended learning coming from our campus based colleagues, it got me thinking about the value of “blended learning” in distance and online courses. I realize that there are a number of different ideas and “blends” associated with the term ‘blended learning’, but it seems the common institutional and educational use [...]
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In a very interesting post titled Social Network Transitions, Fred Stutzman discusses the often lemming-like move of the masses from one social site to another. Of particular interest is Fred’s distinction between between object and ego based social software sites. Fred writes “An ego-centric social network places the individual as the core of the network [...]
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David Snowden in an interesting post titled Aggregative or emergent identity? Rethinking Communities
(thanks for the pointer Stephen Downes ) argues that we need more discussion on the aggregations of individuals to note the emergent capacity of aggregations - beyond those of individual members being connected. He notes the confusion and multiple meanings [...]
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On the train yesterday, through the beautiful fall colored Swiss countryside, I was delightfully surprised to speed through the small town of Elgg - It is located between Zurich and St Gallen. It seems the kind of town you’d feel comfortable owning a pet Jersey cow but I image you could get by with a [...]
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