lol

Thanks Jon.

Merry Christmas.

Dear Jon,

Thanks for the logo. I put a copy of one logo beside the original in a word doc and together -- the trees looked less alone.  The white snowy path formed a "W" for Winner which is the AU Landing.

Thanks Jon, and Merry Chrismas

Boo!

Good thing the Landing has bookmarking. Most of my Delicious bookmarks may well migrate here.

I knew this was on here somewhere (has the search function improved, or have I just gotten better at using it?)... Delicious has been acquired by AVOS, which is nice for me because I use it to organize bookmarks into researchable tag bundles, but their terms of service have changed to include the following, which is not so nice for me, since most of what I'd like to collect in researchable bundles is 'obscene content':

Current (and about to be former) Delicious Terms state:

The linked websites’ content, business practices and privacy policies are not under the control of Delicious, and Delicious is not responsible for the content of any linked website or any link contained in a linked website. (…) In accessing Delicious or following links to third-party websites you may be exposed to content that you consider offensive or inappropriate. You agree that your only recourse is to stop using Delicious.

The New AVOS-Delicious Terms have new rules - rules that change Delicious in a serious way:

You agree not to do any of the following: post, upload, publish, submit or transmit any Content that: (…) violates, or encourages any conduct that would violate, any applicable law or regulation or would give rise to civil liability; (iii) is fraudulent, false, misleading or deceptive; (iv) is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar or offensive (…)

Punishment for posting links that violate the new Terms: AVOS-Delicious has the right to remove all your bookmarks/content at its discretion and without notice.

Also note in that excerpt regarding violating laws or regulations: does this mean linking to GeoHot-like issues, Torrent Freak topics, or links pertaining to the organization of revolutions?

My bookmarks might have to migrate just for the sake of being able to bookmark them without risking losing a goldmine of media representations of (fear of) sexuality, revolution and cyborgs with no notice. 

Thanks for noticing that; I thought I had read the AVOS fine print. Boo again.

Bill C32 actually has the potential to provide some substantial gains for everyday and educational fair dealing. I think denouncing it as totally evil overlooks this potential. What threatens the legitimacy of the bill and trumps its fair-dealing gains is, as you note, its protections of TPMs (technological protection measures, or "digital locks"). TPMs are becoming invisible and ubiquitous, and what really bugs me about their protection in this bill is, first, that this protection takes back all the fair dealing it claims to offer; and, second, that TPMs are not intellectual property as defined by the traditional scope of copyright. So their protection has no place in C32 -- which otherwise might not be so bad.

Shelving for now a more radical rejection of IP regulation tout court (which is, btw, what the USA itself did for its first century or so), it might be more pragmatic to insist the bill be fixed, not scrapped. Otherwise the issue goes  dormant for maybe five years or until the US Trade Dept gets grumbly again. (This was sort of what Michael Geist suggested at the ABC Copyright conference this spring.)

Now, as for the principled refusal to use TPM-locked devices and content in teaching: I'm totally on board with that. I'm very wary about the growing adoption of e-books as course texts: e-books and their platforms are TPM'd to the hilt. And the US supreme court recently ruled that iTunes songs arrive sufficiently locked down that they shouldn't be called "purchases" at all. (You don't buy an iTunes song so much as you rent it, under a very strict lease.)

But to effectively implement this practice will take some intensive monitoring. The more legitimacy they gain in IP law, the more Big Media corporations will apply them to any and every IP product.

This is fascinating and new to me.

It's new to all of us Charity! But some of the principles are becoming pretty clear and the way forward is looking clearer. The real challenge, or at least one of the big ones, is finding ways to orchestrate the soft stuff and make it hard when we need it, to avoid being lost in network space without losing its power as an enabler of expansive and creative learning.

Hello Jon - There really is a fascinating aspect to this topic but I think you have captured what I see as a rather large struggle in the use of the social Web 2.0 world in more formal learning. You state, "The real challenge, or at least one of the big ones, is finding ways to orchestrate the soft stuff and make it hard when we need it, to avoid being lost in network space without losing its power as an enabler of expansive and creative learning." There is a real struggle between having learners use the comfortable LMS "hard" world as you call it versus the richer "soft" social world. At this stage in its evolution I see that the soft world gets in the way of learners' process of learning, they really do get "lost in network space". I would love for them to slow down enough to see through their fog of process while learning within the Landing but we have so much going on in our courses that the environment must be transparent to allow the learning and this just does not happen.

I really like what you are talking about and I know that you and Terry have pushed hard to make the Landing work in this way but I am looking for some form of a bridge device until there is a greater understanding of its use in the more formal learning process. I have thought about how an LMS could become more flexible to incorporate some of the Web 2.0 functionality but then I back away with this thinking as I believe that LMS's are not really suited for a hybrid world. Is it just a matter of time in terms of audiences becoming more accustomed to living in social space or does our more formal learning require a hard structure?

Thank you Jon for this insightful post.

I work in the field of adult literacy, and observe first-hand on a daily basis in my teaching the legacy of residential schooling for First Nations learners. Many adult learners share a lowered tolerance for the classroom setting -the shared space, the lighting, the noise, the distractions, the goings in and out, the set start and end times.

It drives me crazy to see how well students do with hands-on work on English and Computers only to be halted by testing. For one thing, many learners talk through their learning, but in a testing situation they are not allowed to talk it through. Oftentimes, after the student has handed the test in, I ask a number of questions to check. In many cases, a student is able to give correct answers when I read the test questions aloud, even though the answer is wrong in written form.

Instead of telling students to write out their ideas, I get them to map them out, using a number of graphic organizers, and then get them to prepare a talk based on the organizers. I record the talk, and then get them to use the recording to prepare for the written paper.

Empowering students to assess their own learning, and monitor their own progress, is more important and transformative an act than being the evaluator, and removing the choice and responsibilities from the elarner to adjust their learning themselves to improves their strategies for future.

Students should be engaging in the learning process over a longer time period, adjusting and refining their activities on the basis of feedback and preliminary "rehearsal" grading.