My life is a MOOC

I have been meaning to catch up with the interesting discussion happening around MOOCs. I believe that there will be and should be plurality of approaches and intentions – they are the inevitable accompaniment to change itself. The top tensions in the conversation are: How do MOOCs compare with other initiatives like the Stanford AI? Should [...]

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The Informal Educators: Steve Jobs and Jagjit Singh

Steve Jobs, S.J. and Jagjit Singh J.S. SJ and JS. Full Circle. Closed Loop. Rest in peace. While SJ epitomised creativity and innovation in technology, JS did the same with Music. While SJ brought personal computing on its own, JS brought life to the dying art of the ghazal. Two people who were never formal [...]

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Epistemic Games

Clark Quinn pointed me to the work of David Williamson Shaffer and the work around Epistemic Games, the site provocatively taglined Building the Future of Education. Defined: Epistemic games are computer games that can help players learn to think like engineers, urban planners, journalists, lawyers, and other innovative professionals, giving them the tools they need [...]

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Learning Histories

What happens to learning histories? Traditionally, in the school or college system, we treat textbooks and references built by experts as the starting point of our education. Students are encouraged to discover through the texts and teacher led activities. However, from one group of students to the other, from one year to the other, it [...]

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MOOC, DIY-U and Edupunk

I was reading with interest Stephen Downes’ critique of Anya Kamenetz’s approach in her book DIY-U. I am reading Anya’s book, but could not help writing this post, even though that exercise is incomplete, so I beg your indulgence. The point Stephen is making is definitely not just academic. The term DIY (do-it-yourself) affords primacy [...]

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Learning Styles and Learning

When I was building up the story for LearnOS, in my mind I had a mathematical model for how a complex of factors, assessed through various instruments (psychometric, inventories, observable analytics), could result in heuristics not only for content presentation, but also for collaboration, tools usage and learning process design. A Learning Weights Matrix mapped [...]

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Learning and Chaos

Found an interesting article after talking with an expert in Chaos theory. JoAnn discusses possible impacts of Chaos theory on classroom learning using systems, initial effects, bifurcations and fractals. She also explores existing theory in relation to chaotic systems for learning. Essentially, the point that needs to be explored is whether learning is linear, deterministic and predictable [...]

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Centenary Post

For my hundredth post, I would like to focus on a few key questions that attack various aspects of what I have experienced and learnt in the past two years. These questions are extremely important for me to attempt to answer and I hopefully will, atleast in part, as I go on. The questions may [...]

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3 Idiots: Educational Pedagogy or Fantasy

In case you didn’t know, 3 Idiots is now a record-breaking Hindi movie, that explores and exposes the educational system. As of the time of this post, it has been released worldwide and is the highest grosser in Indian cinema history (about US$68mn in 19 days and also made 43 million pounds worldwide to date). The movie [...]

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Networked Learning Environments

So are LMSs now part of a technology trend that is headed south? Will incorporation of Web 2.0 features make them more enticing? Will learning really become more effective if Web 2.0 happens to these LMSs? Will they start working on a networked learning SCORM advanced API soon, maybe by defining standard runtime Web 2.0 interactions [...]

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Network based Training (NBTs)

I have written earlier about what I am proposing as the evolution from the CBT and WBT – the NBT or Network based training, for some time now. NBTs provide a framework for organizations who want to adopt Web 2.0 and networked learning (the connectivism way) in their systems. The main components of the NBT [...]

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Connectivism and social action

In the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, I have witnessed in graphic detail the many aspects of socio-political crisis. On one hand, there is the actual terror and consequent military action. On the other is the political shakeout because of mass opinion that reflected in the local elections and change of power positions in [...]

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CCK08 Week 2

End of week two of the “course” and I think I have come some way. While Week 1 was about Connectivism and the changing face of the web at an introductory level exposing me to some interesting ideas and getting me acclimatised to a massively online course, Week 2 has been the process of getting my [...]

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