teaching and learning in virtual spaces

Edufire breathes fresh air into online language learning

Submitted by Dominik Lukes on Mon, 16/06/2008 - 11:20.
We live in exciting times. About 7 years ago (in the days of dialup internet) I gave a talk at a conference on teaching Slavonic languages and predicted that once broadband is more readily available, teaching languages online will be revolutionized because we will be able to exchange voice and eventually video which are essential to language learning.

Dabbleboard: Another online whiteboard hits the internets

Submitted by Dominik Lukes on Mon, 16/06/2008 - 11:12.
Digital collaborative whiteboards seem to be the holy grail of educational and presentational services. But by and large, most offerings todate have been less than impressive. Dabbleboard has a lot going for it (primatily simplicity) but will be enough? Personally, I'm more excited about social software used for learning.

Cognitive and social consequences of choice?

Submitted by Dominik Lukes on Sat, 31/05/2008 - 13:05.
Here's an interesting article on the consequences of reading news online. Dvorak claims that by the increased ability to customise once consumption of information, individuals will loose the serendipidity of discovering information outside their immediate interest and the society as a whole will lose one of its sources of internal cohesion.

Education in 2025

Submitted by Dominik Lukes on Sat, 22/03/2008 - 22:16.

Futurelab held a meeting about the future of education with respect to building new schools and using technology. Below are some of the questions they asked themselves in their group discussion exercise.

Case studies and the future tense

Submitted by Rob Walker on Wed, 27/02/2008 - 10:39.

Ethnographers sometimes talk about their use of the 'ethnographic present' in their writing. In classical ethnographies, the accounts that were 'written up', often some years after the field notes were 'written down', disguise the fact that communities had changed, or even disappeared in the spaces between words. There is slippage in the process that suggests a timelessness, and insulation from social change and presents the world as stable, cultures as continuous and enduring and an image of 'other' societies as distant from our own actions.