John Connell: The Blog

Amer­i­cans, when they go to the polls, will be choosing:

“.…between […] 21^st cen­tury ratio­nal­ism and Dark Age inanity…”

So says the redoubtable Pharyn­gula (PZ Myers), fol­low­ing some more words on Sarah Palin:

“…an igno­rant buf­foon who believes in the End Times and speak­ing in tongues while derid­ing some of the best and most suc­cess­ful strate­gies for sci­en­tific research.”

I could not put it bet­ter myself.

Tech­no­rati Tags: pharyn­gula, pz myers, sarah palin, us pres­i­den­tial election

In the midst of prob­a­bly the most poi­so­nous US Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in liv­ing mem­ory, it is curi­ous to see the two can­di­dates trad­ing jokes, and even and com­pli­ments, at the Alfred E Smith Memo­r­ial Din­ner in New York City. The civil­ity and the humour dis­played by both men should be les­son enough to any­one who might be per­suaded by the ‘Two Amer­i­cas’ non­sense that has arisen in the past few weeks and pro­mul­gated with mali­cious gusto by the likes of Fox News (the source, iron­i­cally, of the two pieces of video).

Thank you to Richard Sam­brook for point­ing these out.

Tech­no­rati Tags: alfred e smith memo­r­ial din­ner, john mccain, barack obama, us pres­i­den­tial election

I’ve used var­i­ous ver­sions of the Learn­scape graphic from Jay Cross in my talks and pre­sen­ta­tions recently, and his head­ings always pro­voke some inter­est­ing points of dis­cus­sion amongst those I speak to. As a ‘cham­pion of infor­mal learn­ing’, Jay seems to work mainly within the cor­po­rate train­ing and learn­ing sphere (which tends to be badged by the cor­po­rates as ‘e-Learning’), but the themes and issues raised in his dia­gram serve as an effec­tive stim­u­lant of debate and dis­cus­sion across many of the impor­tant ques­tions posed by any con­sid­er­a­tion of ‘Learn­ing 2.0′, in what­ever sec­tor we might be working.

In the gen­er­ous spirit of the wider debate to which this belongs, Jay has granted his orig­i­nal graphic a Cre­ative Com­mons licence which per­mits oth­ers not only to use the piece but also to cre­ate ‘deriv­a­tive works’ from it (always accom[anied by full attri­bu­tion to the orig­i­na­tor, of course). In that spirit, it would be very inter­est­ing indeed to see the cre­ation of fresh ver­sions of Jay’s graphic that per­haps inte­grate addi­tional head­ings for discussion.

So, who feels like hav­ing a go at fur­ther ver­sions of Jay’s graphic? You can even pro­vide your own ‘land­scape’ back­cloth if you like (or, if you’re feel­ing lazy, just down­load a blank ver­sion of mine from here).

Just remem­ber to give due credit to Jay Cross as the orig­i­na­tor.

Tech­no­rati Tags: jay cross, learn­scape, elearn­ing, learn­ing 2.0, infor­mal learn­ing, cre­ative com­mons

Howard Rhein­gold is always worth keep­ing an eye on. I have fol­lowed his think­ing since I first read Vir­tual Real­ity when it was pub­lished in the early ‘90s — and it was great to be able to lis­ten to him in the flesh and to share the bill with him at the ASLA Con­fer­ence in Ade­laide last October.

So, it is with some inter­est that I note Howard’s involve­ment in a new ven­ture: Social Media Class­room. I’ll let the site explain itself:

“The Social Media Class­room (we“ll call it SMC) includes a free and open-source (Drupal-based) web ser­vice that pro­vides teach­ers and learn­ers with an inte­grated set of social media that each course can use for its own pur­poses — inte­grated forum, blog, com­ment, wiki, chat, social book­mark­ing, RSS, microblog­ging, wid­gets , and video com­ment­ing are the first set of tools. The Class­room also includes cur­ric­u­lar mate­r­ial: syl­labi, les­son plans, resource repos­i­to­ries, screen­casts and videos. The Col­lab­o­ra­tory (or Colab), is what we call just the web ser­vice part of it. Edu­ca­tors are encour­aged to use the Colab and SMB mate­ri­als freely, and we host your Colab com­mu­ni­ties if you don“t want to install your own.”

We will be able to down­load and self-host or, in time, take advan­tage of a hosted service.

Def­i­nitely one worth watching.

Thanks to Euan for the heads-up.

Tech­no­rati Tags: howard rhein­gold, social media class­room, web 2.0, euan sem­ple

Luck­ily I was not taken in by this par­tic­u­larly skil­ful phish­ing attempt, received today from ‘Lloyds@nit.it’ (which I read first as “Lloyds in’it?” — with apolo­gies to many non-Brits, who might not get the idiomatic reference):

“We recently deter­mined that var­i­ous com­put­ers con­nect on your account Lloyds TSD, Pass­word and of mul­ti­ples checs taient present before con­nec­tion. We now need assure you again infor­ma­tion of your Lloyds TSD account. If this n’ d’ is not com­pleted; here on Octo­ber 24, 2008, we will be con­strained to sus­pend your account indef­i­nitely, Because it can have uses d’ fraud­u­lent ends. We thank you for your com­pre­hen­tion in this man­ner. To con­firm your online bank­ing of the files, click on the fol­low­ing bond:

Thank you for your patience. Lloyds TSD ser­vice cus­tomers. S’ you like it do not answer has this e-mail because c’ is only one noti­fi­ca­tion. Email to send has this address can­not be answered. 1999–2008 Lloyds TSD. All rights reserved”

The ‘click here’ goes to an address on the domain of a Mex­i­can Tourist site (no wor­ries, I haven’t linked to the ‘give us your login and pass­word’ page).

And how did I know it was a scam — because, of course, I do not have a Lloyds TSD (sic) account — oth­er­wise, I might have been fooled

Tech­no­rati Tags: phish­ing

Sarah Hor­ri­gan takes a Wired arti­cle — Twit­ter, Flickr, Face­book Make Blogs Look So 2004 — to task, and rightly so, since it announces the death of the blog, no less. At least peo­ple had the decency to wait 500 years before announc­ing the death of the book (they’re wrong about that too, of course), but to do the same for the blog a mere decade or so after its begin­nings is quite absurd.

Paul Boutin has pro­duced a piece of dri­vel here, and mainly because his assump­tions about why some­one would want to main­tain a blog are just too ridicu­lous for words. For instance:

“…scroll down Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and you’ll find per­sonal sites have been shoved aside by pro­fes­sional ones…”

And:

“…cut-rate jour­nal­ists and under­ground mar­ket­ing cam­paigns now drown out the authen­tic voices of ama­teur word­smiths. It’s almost impos­si­ble to get noticed, except by hecklers…”

What sort of strange nether­world does this guy inhabit? Obvi­ously that weird world where, if you’re not in the top 100 you’re nobody, noth­ing. It’s just such a ludi­crous place to be.

Why do so many in this sphere seem to believe that every deci­sion in life has to be a binary deci­sion, an either/or choice?

And, the strangest thing of all, that this piece of hog­wash should appear in the mag­a­zine edited by Chris Ander­son, he of Long Tail fame. Maybe some­one should take Mr Boutin aside and explain the con­cept to him. Whether you are in the top 100, top 1000, top mil­lion, or not, really doesn’t mat­ter a jot. Whether you have an audi­ence of 1 or 100 or 1000 or 1,000,000, you have a rea­son to blog.

So keep on blog­ging, and chuck this piece of dri­vel in the vir­tual bin.

As Som­er­set Maugham said:

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have noth­ing what­ever to do with it.

Works for blog­ging too.….

Tech­no­rati Tags: blog­ging, sarah hor­ri­gan, wired, paul boutin, chris ander­son, long tail

Thanks to Ewan for the great pic.

The judges at the Hand­held Learn­ing Con­fer­ence awards could not have picked a bet­ter win­ner for the Spe­cial Achieve­ment Award than Derek Robert­son. Derek, I believe, is well on his way to becom­ing a national trea­sure, the Stephen Fry of Scot­tish Edu­ca­tion, but even fun­nier (he even does a mean Gen­eral Melchett impression!).

Thanks to the Stephen Fry of Scot­tish Edu­ca­tion him­self for the great pic of Anna in Suzi Qua­tro pose play­ing Gui­tar Hero.

The work he has done in the whole area of hand­held learn­ing and of gam­ing in edu­ca­tion is sim­ply superb, and is most def­i­nitely lead­ing the world in this vibrant and promis­ing area. I extol the virtues of the Con­so­lar­ium wher­ever I go in the world.

Derek, of course, is typ­i­cally mod­est and gen­er­ous in his reac­tion to the award.

And, also great to see Anna Rossvoll nom­i­nated as a final­ist in the Pri­mary Prac­ti­tioner Award — her old dad will be rightly proud!

Tech­no­rati Tags: derek robert­son, hand­held learn­ing, con­so­lar­ium, anna rossvoll

A lovely post from West­ley Field about Lucy, a stu­dent at MLC School in Syd­ney, one to warm the cock­les of the heart and remind us why we do this edu­ca­tion thing.

Tech­no­rati Tags: mlc school, west­ley field, con­fi­dence

John Naughton has already pointed us to this superb, sus­tained rant from Keith Olber­mann, of MSNBC, about the per­ni­cious, and highly dan­ger­ous, rhetoric drip­ping from the mouths of increas­ingly des­per­ate Repub­li­cans dur­ing these final stages of the US Pres­i­den­tial race. He does not miss his targets!

Else­where, we have the faintly nau­se­at­ing sight of Sarah Palin pre­tend­ing to be a fem­i­nist — this from the run­ning mate of a man who, accord­ing to an open let­ter from a fem­i­nist cam­paigner picked up by the Huff Post:

• voted 19 times against increas­ing the min­i­mum wage (the major­ity of min­i­mum wage earn­ers are women) before he finally voted for it because it included busi­ness tax cuts.
• voted to gut the Fam­ily and Med­ical Leave act and opposed expand­ing its coverage.
• opposed the Lilly Led­bet­ter Fair Pay Act, which would restore women’s abil­ity to fight wage dis­crim­i­na­tion in the courts, telling women our prob­lem was that they ‘needed to get more edu­ca­tion and training’.
• voted NO on the Vio­lence Against Women Act and NO on fund­ing for the Office of Vio­lence Against Women.
• voted NO on start­ing the US Army’s Breast Can­cer Research Pro­gram, which has funded hun­dreds of mil­lions in breast can­cer research
• voted NO on reau­tho­riz­ing the State Children’s Health Insur­ance Pro­gram and sup­ported Bush’s veto.
• opposes a woman’s right to choose, and Palin her­self opposes legal abor­tion even in cases of rape and incest.
• voted to ter­mi­nate fed­eral funds for fam­ily planning

I can see more than a lit­tle dif­fi­culty in build­ing a fem­i­nist plat­form on that record. Per­haps, though, Sarah Palin has ‘real Amer­i­can’ def­i­n­i­tion of fem­i­nism?

Tech­no­rati Tags: keith olber­mann, msnbc, sarah palin, fem­i­nism

[A slightly amended ver­sion of this has been posted to The Con­nected Repub­lic blog]

Given the ubiq­uity of its use, I can­not be the only per­son who won­ders what peo­ple really mean when they write or speak about col­lab­o­ra­tion. I was reminded of the ques­tion dur­ing a recent talk from a col­league on the devel­op­ing notion of Gov­ern­ment 2.0, dur­ing which he indi­cated that con­sen­sus should be seen as a key aspi­ra­tion of mod­ern, col­lab­o­ra­tive, demo­c­ra­tic modes of gov­ern­ment. I ques­tioned this and won­dered whether con­sen­sus was a red her­ring, whether it might even be viewed, some­what per­versely, as anti­thet­i­cal to a healthy democracy.

Demo­c­ra­tic pol­i­tics is, in an ideal form, about the art of com­pro­mise, about find­ing a path through com­pet­ing aims and com­pet­ing bud­gets in ways that, while meet­ing the needs of the major­ity, do not act to dimin­ish unnec­es­sar­ily or pre­cip­i­ta­tively the inter­ests of those whose views or posi­tions place them out­side the major­ity on any one issue. Fol­low­ing this thought through, I won­dered whether a healthy democ­racy depends on a notion of pro­duc­tive dis­pu­ta­tious­ness rather more than it does on any cosy or ide­al­is­tic con­cept of consensus?

I am more than will­ing to con­cede that this is a debat­able point, but it did serve to get me think­ing from a wider per­spec­tive about the poten­tial com­plex­i­ties of col­lab­o­ra­tion, a notion that is per­haps too often viewed in fairly sim­plis­tic, soft-edged terms, if it is analysed at all. That soft edge can be iden­ti­fied by the use of terms such as con­sen­sus, har­mony, una­nim­ity, con­cord and their ilk.

While the desire for unity is laud­able, in the real world of vested inter­ests, prej­u­dice and con­flict­ing social and polit­i­cale mores, I feel that the recog­ni­tion of a process by which some kind of com­pro­mise is reached through dis­pu­ta­tion offer a more real­is­tic def­i­n­i­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tion. A process in which com­pet­ing inter­ests are rec­og­nized and acknowl­edged from the start, and in which all sides rec­og­nize that no one inter­est should hold sway over all oth­ers, is, for me, a bet­ter def­i­n­i­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tion than the softer, consensus-based intepre­ta­tion. Con­tention rather than consensus!

So what then might be the impli­ca­tions of this def­i­n­i­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tion for our under­stand­ing of col­lab­o­ra­tive learning?

Still think­ing about that one.….…but I shall come back to it.

Tech­no­rati Tags: col­lab­o­ra­tion, pro­duc­tive dis­pu­ta­tious­ness, con­sen­sus, com­pro­mise, con­flict