I have been following the Burma protests, carefully optimistic, hoping that the great powers will take this opportunity to speak up and be pro-active, especially the other ASEAN countries. Now it looks like that is not going to happen, although I keep hoping, impressed with the great courage displayed by the citizens of Burma.
I came […]

I TA for a class on International Studies and International Communication, and this week we touched upon the concept of whether there was one universal standard for web aesthetics, or whether it varied according to cultural region. I notice very clearly when browsing Chinese websites, for example, that they are a lot denser than what […]

I went to talk today held by the University Bookstore (although, as I would experience first-hand, not physically at the Toronto Bookstore, rather at the wonderfully cozy Hart House library) with James E. Cote and Anton Allahar who co-wrote “Ivory Tower Blues, a University System in Crisis”, and Jeff Rybak, a friend and author […]

As noted in my OpenEd 4 submission, I really wanted to read the MIT OCW Case Studies and the MIT OCW Evaluation Report, and today I finally found time. The Case Studies are easy to locate, but the evaluation report was actually quite hidden.
I had a look at the case studies before, and they are […]

QUESTIONS: What do these overviews of the field have in common? What do they emphasize differently? What are the aims of the authors of each report? Do you see a bias toward or against any ideas, organizations, or approaches in any of the reports? Which report spoke the most clearly to you, and why do […]

When I started this blog a long time ago, I chose to license it under Creative Commons, and without much thought I selected BY-NC-SA, a license which allows you to share and remix my work, but under a non-commercial clause, and obligating you to distribute all derivative works under the same license. That was about […]

A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities   (Atkins, Brown, and Hammond, 80 pages)
OLI - pedagogical approach, lot’s of interactive tools - supposed to be used to teach a course, adapted by instructor, introductory huge classes… can be self-learner too
success disaster - a teacher has access to […]

Open Educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS Roadmap 2012   (OLCOS, 149 pages)
The current focus in open resources for education and lifelong learning is mainly on providing access to more content in digital formats. There is little consideration of whether this will promote real innovation in teaching and learning.
reasons for lack of growth in European […]

I just finished reading through the three required readings for the last three weeks. Since I was moving from Norway to Toronto, and starting all my courses and my TAing here, I have not been able to keep up, and had to do a major skippertak (from mummimamma: “Norwegian has a word for this, skippertak, […]

I have been thinking for a while about wanting to post more quick links, without having to write long articles, when I want to share articles I have read, or sites I have come across. Perhaps something like what Kottke does with his tiny links. Perhaps I could also integrate my Google Reader shared links […]