24/10/2009 • 06:51 0
Open access to knowledge is something I firmly believe in. The open access week perhaps provides a good oportunity to us all to learn more about the movement and its aims.
There are more and more individuals as well as universities opening access to knowledge. An open society can provide a better future to us all.
A few useful links:
Open access week
Wikipedia: Open access publishing
SPARC Europe
Science Commons
CC Learn
Directory of Open Access Journals
19/04/2009 • 09:17 0
This video by Stephen Downes is still worth watching although it comes from a conference that was two years ago!
Right at the end Downes says something that strikes me as very important. He says:
This is not a message about how you should create a learning environment for your studets …. but this is a message about how you should learn.
I can’t stop thinking about the things I could do for my students, the opportunities I could create for them to learn. That seems the perspective from which I view teaching and myself as a teacher. It takes a shift in our views, a shift in our pedagogies or philosophies I guess.
Earlier on I was watching presentations at Educamp09 at http://bit.ly/R2tay when somebody said something along the line:
I can see my students use all these Web 2.0 tools but they don’t seem to use them for learning.
It struck a chord with me. However, the more I think about it the more I think this is a symtom of a situation which is not about Web 2.0 or e-learning but about our own philosophy so typical of an educational environment. We believe we have to make students learn what is good for them. But are we really sure this is what they need? What if they watch jokes and music spots on YouTube because this is exactly what they need? They may not want to become what we (or the society) want them to be. A shift in our viewpoint is needed. I’m not quite there yet. Perhaps rethinking what we want to help our students learn could be the first step and Stephen Downes is qite helpful here as well. Check his article Things you really need to learn.
12/04/2009 • 11:46 0
Mark Perensky said some very interesting things in an interview at the IATEFL conference in Cardiff. He raised for example the issue of the relationship between modern technology and teachers and said:
Before you can take advantage of modern technology, you have to change pegagogy.
I couldn’t agree more. We are flooded with new tools that aim to enhance our teaching practices. And too many CALL workshops focus on what needs to be clicked on to make a tool functional. But untill it’s not clear to us what pedagogical assumptions lie behind the new tool and what change it would bring to our teaching practices, we should not use it. However, once we are comfortable with the change in the pedagogy and the new tool, we can do wonders.
Also, Perensky suggests that schools should invest in modern technology wisely: some of the tools (e.g. interactive board) are very expensive and the scool would be better of investing that money into something that would be more useful to their students (e.g. 3D printers, iphones, etc.).
Finally, I support another idea of Perensky:
Governments should invest into pedagogy … and technology will actually take care of itself.
Here’s the video.
26/03/2009 • 17:07 0
In the European year of creativity and innovation I’d like to draw your attention to an online journal I’ve recently come across: Innovate – Journal of Online Education. The articles are a valuable source of knowledge to anyone engaged in online education. I warmly recommend it.
Filed under: CALL, Useful sites/links
14/03/2009 • 09:28 0
Graham Attwell has recently written about Santos and Pedro’s presentation at the Thoutght Fest 09. They are developing a supported personal learning environment campus wide that seems most promising. You can visit their blog or watch their slides below.
