I came across the Columbia University Medical Center's Center for Education Research and Evaluation accidentally, but was interested in some of their projects. In particular, their Faculty Development page had a number of interesting projects on it. I liked their take on Classroom Teaching and their development ...

I was starting to respond to this post when I decided my response was really a whole new topic. But to this idea I wanted to point out that MIT has been developing ultracheap computers for countries with struggling economies which have "crank" power and the like for maybe 100 bucks. But the problem is that you can't sell these machines in the US because it would flatten our economy. (sorry, can't find the article for this part) But this doesn't explain why Mexico isn...

When I was on the PES website, I stumbled across a group called IERG, or the Imaginative Educational Research Group. On their website, they describe their goal as: “Ultimately we want to help bring about a change in the way schooling is conceived, organized and practiced worldwide. The change we want to bring about may be broadly summarized as a transition from an industrial age school system to a post-industrial system: from a system that attempts to squeeze people and thoughts into standardized boxes, often to the detriment of originality and adaptability, to a system that enables the unusual and effective to flourish wherever possible."

I have been further delving in the literature about design research this weekend. If you are not familiar with it, it is guided by the following needs: a) “The need to address theoretical questions about the nature of learning in context," b) “The need for approaches to the study of learning phenomena in the real world rather than the laboratory," c) “The need to go beyond narrow measures of learning," and d) “The need to derive research findings from formative evaluation" (Collins 2004). What is interesting about this method is that since it is not controlling for a few variables, but r...

it's not really informative in the traditional sense, but there's a humerous video on the current movements of google, amazon, etc. in a weird way it's vaguely realistic too, which makes it all the more funny. New York Times Sues Google: Robot to Blaim!

The excerpt below is from an interesting article, with the subtitle, "by preaching the virtues of 'cultural competence', the academy betrays its lack of confidence."the polemic "So where, then, do the values of the university repose? Where have they taken firm enough root to guide and inspire the thoughts and words of faculty and students? Profland, by and large, flatters itself that the ancient virtues flourish in its soil, that mercenary or hypocritical though the university may be in many respects, its professors, at leas...

As promised, I'm posting some links which relate to the post-platform technologies for education. I think some of these blogs start getting at those ideas. Also, as mentioned, Prof. Vausvedan is using Blogger and Ulises's Social Software Class has a whole slew of post-platform technologies in use. Blogs: Terra Nova: Collobarative weblog featuring several important scholars in the field. General focus is MMORPGs and social aspects of online gaming comm...

It looks like UCLA merges Information Studies and Education in more than administrative ways. Maybe it is not completely crazy for TC to tap into this market...

I had a conversation with Ian last night about texts, pictures, cartoons, comics and movies. Ian is fascinated about cartoons and comics. He thinks that using them is a very good way to teach kids foreign (second) languages. Ian indicated that cartoons and comics help kids learn both the foreign language and the nuances of the language (with the exaggerated facial expressions and gestures). I was pleased to hear this because it supported my eager search for comic books (e.g., Garfield) in Spanish in order to help my son learn Spanish. [Ian also made the comment about why the facial features of...