Terry Anderson : Weblog

Even with Information glut, we need Open Education Resources

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:21:03 GMT

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/11/16/even-with-information-glut-w

What Brian Lamb seems to confuse in this entry about the Open Education Resources, universities and information scarcity argument is that information (or more accurately a surfeit of data) available on the net does not equate to a surplus of quality learning content.
Quality learning content charts a path through complex issues, ideas and problems creating [...]

Canada/ Brazil Distance International Education Symposium

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:09:39 GMT

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/11/15/canada-brazil-distance-inter

I’m sitting in the Rio airport one leg down and three to go on my way home from the Canadian-Brazil International Seminar on Distance Education, just concluded in Goianas. The seminar featured presentations and lots of questions from about 200 Brazilian delegates and Canadian DEers Heather Kanuka, Griff Richards, Elizabeth Murphy and myself. I did [...]

Sloan-C Keynote

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:26:25 GMT

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/11/10/sloan-c-keynote/

This post from Goiânia Brazil where four of us Canadian Distance Education folks are presenting at a Brazilian-Canadian summit on Distance Education. Goiânia is one of those agriculturally based town in Central Brazil with 1.5 million inhabitants that few in North America have ever heard of. But the folks are friendly, the weather tropical, the [...]

Online Student Course Evaluations

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:07:53 GMT

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/11/10/online-student-course-evalua

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education confirms my own experience that most students enrolled in online course do not complete standard course evaluations forms. Online teachers don’t have the luxury of handing out evaluations forms on the last day of classes (naturally before marked papers are returned,) and assigning a graduate student [...]

Another great issue of IRRODL

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:59:16 GMT

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/10/26/another-great-issue-of-irrod

I feel less engaged in shameless self-promotion, with this announcement of the 9.3 issue of the International Review of Research on Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL), as Jon Baggaley was the editor in charge of this fine issue.
The issue features a video as well as text editorial by Jon, neither of which should be [...]

More on Groups versus Networks and Collectives

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:17:00 GMT

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/10/20/more-on-groups-versus-networ

During my presentation to CK08 Stephen Downes challenged me to clarify if his distinctions between groups and networks matched my own. I had a little trouble determining exactly his criteria- as I am sure he has my own, but I did find a long speech he gave in New Zealand in 2006 titled Groups versus [...]

On Privacy and web presence

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:37:16 GMT

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/09/24/on-privacy-and-web-presence/

The announcement that 6 candidates in the current Canadian federal election have had to resign from the race due to network documented “indiscretions” gives one thought about the potentially haunting effects of web exposure. Now, most of us have enough sense not to release videos of us lighting up 30 joints at a time [...]

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:48:48 GMT

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/09/08/108/

On one of my shortest transatlantic jaunts, I spent 3 days this week with an international team developing a series of eight web based tutorials on e-learning for university faculty. The series is a bold, entrepreneurial attempt to speed the adoption and effective use of e-learning and online education resources beyond early adopters to the [...]

First full release version of ELGG

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:15:27 GMT

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/08/19/first-full-release-version-o

I am pleased that Ben, Dave and others at ELGG have released version 1.0 of ELGG as scheduled yesterday. The new version promises a number of significant improvements over Elgg .9 that we have been piloting at Athabasca. The software is described here and can be downloaded and installed locally or taken for a test [...]

Creating Personal Networks as Learning Outcome

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:32:12 GMT

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/08/14/creating-personal-networks-a

Thanks to Stephen and Graham Atwell, I discovered a fascinating development in the Personal learning Environment development. To date most of the PLE implementations I have seen have been aggregators of RSS feeds, with not much more functionality than a iGoogle or Pageflake portal. The paper “Designing for Change: Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments” by Fridolin [...]