Jeff Jarvis questions the need for lectures and seems to foretell their death. Ironically by being a sage on the stage.

But he is not lecturing. He is storytelling. And most good TED talks are stories, not lectures. Storytelling is not going away. Lecturing might. In fact, it should and for all the reasons Jarvis mentioned.

If lectures need to persist, they could be shared lectures like the ones in YouTube or iTunes U. Jarvis put it best when he said: Do what you do best and link with the rest.

Video source

How many creative people does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

If the video above is any indication, the number is irrelevant. Creative people might not screw in lightbulbs.

Sometimes you need creative people to come up with unorthodox solutions to problems. Sometimes creative people come up with solutions to problems you did not know exist.

Sometimes they are creative to entertain. Yet other times they serve no purpose other than to just be creative.

My reaction to reading Edudemic’s How Technology is Changing Education as We Know It was mixed.

If education is made up of two main elements, teaching and learning, then I think that technology has done much to change learning but little to change teaching.

One of the key affordances of technology is providing access to resources. A learner does not have to wait to be taught. He or she can teach himself or herself if there is enough access.

On the other hand, teaching has not evolved much. It is still delivery-oriented instead of experience-oriented. Ask most learners to draw or describe a classroom and you will see what I mean. The fact that we even associate teaching with a classroom shows that there has been little change (this Swedish school bucks the trend).

The sad fact is that most classrooms today still limit access via technology. Teaching takes precedence over learning. Without this access, teaching can prevent learning.

This video is not only an introduction to the talent at the Centre for e-Learning (CeL), it is also a demonstration of what I like to call a “decision tree” video.

This type of video takes advantage of YouTube’s annotation tool to add “hotspots” at any point in a video that link to other videos. In the video above, you get links to the CeL team videos near the end of the video. At the end of the team videos, you get links to the videos of each team member.

While we used this video to showcase the talents in CeL, the same technique could be used provide users with choices in scenario-based learning. We will be working on one such video soon.

Many thanks to Choo, our tech-admin for the idea to shoot the promotional videos, to Niko for marking up the videos and to the rest of my department for being good sports. You can tell we are not actors, but we are good at our day jobs!

Sometimes you get interrupted. Sometimes you get mad. Sometimes you go with the flow.

Video source

We will see lots of lion dances over the next few weeks.

Depending on where you stay, you will also hear a lot of them whether you want to or not. I would not mind so much if they added some variety like the troupe above.

Those lions certainly aren’t dragon their feet! Actually, they are tigers (different heads), so that might explain the unusual behaviour.

Many thanks to Cheryl for sharing the video with me last week.

This is practically my mantra. I am all for looking back and reflecting. But I you can only go forward by moving forward, one mistake at a time. Onward, ho!

I followed with great interest Apple’s education-related announcements on iBook textbooks for the iPad, the free iBooks Author (video above) and the new version of iTunes U.

To catch up on the news, I recommend:

• LifeHacker (for a concise version)
• Edudemic (for a more detailed, curated version)

I also read some reactions at Edudemic’s tweet collection and RRW’s Why Apple, Why Does it Have to Be Like This? The Cold Cynicism of the iBook EULA.

The author of the RRW article had an issue with the iBook end user license agreement:

It’s hard to wrap my brain around the cold cynicism of Apple’s releasing a new tool to democratize the publishing of eBooks today, only to include in the tool’s terms and conditions a prohibition against selling those books anywhere but through Apple’s own bookstore.

But look again. That same article highlighted that “if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means”.

So the complaint is not entirely valid. Apple has a right to make money out of its publishing platform. But we as creators also retain the right to publish freely on any platform.

As a creator of content you have a choice, which is better than having none at all. You also have a choice of making some of the content free and charging for the rest (like “lite” and full versions of apps).

But ultimately, the opportunity to publish more professional looking documents for free is the value-add to the game that is already changing. I do not think that Apple’s move is a game changer.

We have already created content on other platforms before iBooks 2. Now we can do it in a slick way that has a publishing, distribution and selling platform, iPad readers for consuming, and a ready market.

Schools can curate, create and distribute their own textbooks. Learners can be authors or co-authors. Teachers can rethink the way they teach. This is freeing in more ways than one: Freeing yourself from traditional publishing costs and also from outdated ways of educating learners.

That said, the “new” iBook ecosystem does not go as far as I had hoped. It is a level 1 e-book in my books. The dominant creatures in the ecosystem are flash cards, multiple choice questions and highlighters. Those features are dinosaurs compared to the emerging mammals like shared annotations and social interaction with authors, experts, teachers and peers.

Then again, this may just be the start of Apple’s e-book evolution.

  by  miss vichan 

The first article was a satirical piece at CNNGO on the top 10 most boring things to do in Singapore. I found item #3 (taking walks in a mall) to be particularly sad but true.

We are so short of space that a walk does not happen in nature but in our concrete jungle instead. You cannot hear yourself think in the constant din of such a place. For me that defeats the purpose of going out on a walk.

The New York Times had an interesting article about countering group think by being alone with your thoughts. It highlighted how solitude could promote creativity, productivity, deeper learning and even personal well-being.

The article was not positioned to be misanthropic or anti-collaboration. It was recommending a balance in what seemed to be mindless pursuits that result from group think.

I can relate. I am so protective of time and space for myself that I schedule meetings with myself in my public calendar so that people know when to leave me alone. I am also hoping that staff at CeL use their 10% time at work to learn to be with themselves.

My son had a health check at school. After his eye exam, he was given a postcard with “helpful” tips from the Health Promotion Board.

This is part of that postcard. I have excluded the parts of the card about washing your hands regularly and a five-question quiz at the back (in tiny font, I might add).

I wonder why the “unnecessary near work” is all technology-oriented. Was this to contrast with the unwritten but implied necessary near work like reading, slogging over assessment books and even more reading?

We should focus on what is important here: The preservation of good viewing habits regardless of the type of close up or near work.

For example, even though I am already near-sighted, I use a Chrome extension, 20 Cubed, to remind me to look away from the computer screen every 20 minutes. My wife and I insist that our son take breaks from close up work every 40-45 minutes. If he is on a mobile device, he uses the built-in timer to remind him.

We are using the tools for work and play to remind us of good viewing habits while at work and play.

The advice in the card is an unnecessary attack on technology. If well managed and well leveraged, the very things labelled unnecessary are necessary for the well being and healthy future work life of kids today.