Digital diploma mills

"How can we relate this (Noble's article)early concern with commercialism to current debates about MOOCs, for example"?

I think the relationship is clear, as we can see in many recent articles which focus on the possibilities of revenue. The concern is maybe even rising as pointed out in article presented bu Hamish... But now I´m having trouble toi find the article... I´ll have to get back to this..

Day made of glass #edcmooc

This film was for me more utopian than dystopian. Even if the education did not seem to change that much. The teacher speaks and directs the learning, and the students listen and react. The glassy future seamed quite possible and in a way not that much like future. Maybe from the glassmakers viewpoint this is future, but in a way we already do have quite a lot of technologies that would make this kind of future possible to put in to practice today. Although, I´d personally rather give my two daughters something made of concrete and iron to work and  play with, than something, maybe expensive, made of glass...

Enjoying Daniel's speech... #edcmooc

Well, i'm still working with week 1 materials, but hope to catch the ideal next week... I found the John Daniel's speech really enlightening , informative and also had a lot of fun reading it. This part was funniest , and at the same time , a fine example of 'out of box' thinking:

"Another example of the need for broad thinking about technology comes from Latin America. How do you get children to school in a rural, mountainous region when they live a good way away and you don't want them to arrive at school already tired out? The answer was that you get hold of some donkeys. The problem is that it is difficult to buy donkeys under the United Nations procurement guidelines. These guidelines require performance specifications, tendering and suchlike. The solution is to hire the donkeys as consultants, which is fine under the UN rules. Donkeys also have one great advantage compared to human consultants - they do not write reports. " (Daniels, J. 2002)

Technological determinism in practice...#edcmooc

Yesterday I had a meeting, where I could recognize some features of technological determinism in the discussion ;) When we were talking about IT-choices considering teachers´ and students´tools in the future  - the idea of people´s needs as a start point for the change, was not mentioned. But, I´ve found that sometimes the possibilities that a new technology opens, are hidden from us who do not have the "technological framework".

Course start

Ok, the course is now open. I answered the background survey already. Next friday there will be a "google-hangout"... I have no idea what that will be like ,but there is still some time to find it out.