I’ll start this by saying I’m going to sound like a broken record, but for some reason reading the Times Online’s post on “‘Self-learners’ creating university of online” (hat tip to @lisaharris) has got me feeling really irate.
The article discusses the notion of open educational resources (OERs), and the increasing trend for many universities to open up their content to the public, share their lectures, curricula, syllabi, reading lists and other course related materials.  It continues to discuss how people are beginning to reference these resources, and use them either …

Yesterday afternoon I gave a short presentation on CCK08 to the UNSW Network of Faculty Educational Developers, focusing primarily on an overview of CCK’s distributed nature, the technical environments used during the 12-week course and the underpinning logic behind the distributed framework.  Seeing as I had access to an iPod and microphone attachment I decided to record the first half of the presentation and share it here.
The talk was divided into two parts – roughly 20 minutes of which featured my presentation, and a following 10 minutes of open discussion.  …

The stars seem to all be aligning on Connectivism at the moment. A month or so ago I was approached about presenting my experiences with CCK08 to the local group of Educational Developers at UNSW, which I happily agreed to. The presentation isn’t until next week, however given I’ve more or less finished the slides today I thought I might release them for feedback, critique and suggestions.
NOTE: Due to the fine detail of the screenshots, this presentation is best viewed full screen.
CCK08 Presentation for UNFED
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[Image credit: "Openness and Collaboration" by psd (CC - by)]
When I observe people who live in an open paradigm, where learning, teaching, sharing, collaborating, and communicating are done publicly, and made freely available to others to rip, mix and burn, I see far more than simply the act of doing so, or the resulting output of tangible objects – I see a philosophy for living and being. A philosophy that is not based on self-satisfaction, personal gain, or what’s in it for you; but in the fundamental belief that …

In a discussion on digital identity the other day I expressed a concern that I have a tendency to hide behind abstract theory in order to avoid revealing too much information about myself.  The result of this is that the version of “me” that is largely portrayed on the web is very thin, and hardly representative of the whole person.
If we were to think of each individual as being comprised of Intellectual, Social, and Emotional elements, the version of me that is portrayed through this blog is largely that of …