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Lessons From Sweden
This month I had the pleasure to spend time in Sweden, hosted by Patrik Svensson, Director of the HUMlab at Umea University in northern Sweden, and then with Göran Blomqvist, CEO of Riksbankens Jubileumsfond as well as Arne Jarrick, a prominent historian as well as the Secretary General for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Swedish Research Council. It was a fascinating trip but it was especially exciting to talk with these leaders in the world of academe and philanthropy about digital media and learning. Most interesting to the DMLcentral community were discussions about the Swedish response to its own economic downturn.… more
In Praise of Mo' Better Grading
Meanwhile, back at the pedagogical ranch...You may remember that back in November I reported on my experiment in grading, combining the long tradition of contract grading with what I call “crowdsourced grading.” Since I was already constructing “This Is Your Brain on the Internet” (ISIS 120) as a peer-taught course, I decided that the students responsible for team-leading each class would also be responsible for determining if that week’s required blogs on their reading assignments measured up to the contract standard. It didn’t seem like such a radical idea. This is a course on cognition and collaboration in the digital age and responsible evaluation, feedback, and participation are part of that equation. I thought of this as simply “practicing what I was preaching,” an object lesson to the students in how to be responsible public citizens of the Internet. Well, some people thought of it differently. They acted as if “Prof Davidson” was destroying civilization as we knew it.… more
"Scaling John Seely Brown" and the "End of Endism"
I recently had occasion to talk on the phone with someone whose posts on education and social media I follow with interest on Twitter. ToughLoveforX (his Twitter name) is a retired printer whose scan of the educational horizon in the digital age is as eagle-eyed as that of anyone I know. I follow him on Twitter because I know that, if I click through to one of the url’s he posts, I’m bound to find something good. When I asked him what he would do, if he could make one monumental change that would have an impact on the worlds of learning and social media, he said, “Scale John Seely Brown.” Perfectly to the point of my question. Perfectly Twitter. You cut right to the chase when you think in 140 characters or less. Scaling John Seely Brown is an awfully good idea.… more