Category Archives: Teaching

Another non-course

By alex | Published: 12/2/2010
Chatting with the program director tonight over dinner, I discovered that my “Locative and Mobile” course is unlikely to “make”–just not enough student interest. This despite efforts to poll the students and move toward something they wanted. Really disappointing, since this was the course I was most looking forward to working on next semester. Luckily, [...]
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What makes up a badge?

By alex | Published: 12/2/2010
One of the discussions I was particularly excited about at the Barcelona Drumbeat Festival was using badges to indicate certain skills, abilities, capacities, traits, or accomplishments. The idea here is what you might find in Boy Scout merit badges, or Foursquare badges, or Stack Overflow badges: a quick way to see what a person knows, [...]
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Mozilla Drumbeat: Enter the Lizard

By alex | Published: 11/16/2010
Who knew so much could be packed into so few hours. I’ve spent the last week burrowing out from things that piled up while I was in Barcelona at the Mozilla Drumbeat festival, an event dedicated to creating a learning web. Over this period, some things have marinated a bit, and so this is not [...]
Also posted in Research, Technology | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Participatory black boxes

By alex | Published: 9/9/2010
Every time I see the mention of digital natives or the assumed proficiency of those who have grown up with digital technologies, it irks me a little. It’s not that I disagree–not exactly. This came up in a discussion we’re having in my seminar on participatory learning, and I found myself having to try to [...]
Also posted in Technology | 1 Comment

Free Range Assessment

By alex | Published: 8/5/2010
Over the last few months I’ve been keeping a close eye on the development of the (Mozilla and P2PU) School of Webcraft. (Here’s a 103 second introduction.) One reason for this is obvious: I’m interested in how people learn to produce content for the web, and I am interested in teaching using the open web [...]
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In whose name?

By alex | Published: 7/22/2010
Each semester, I ask students to blog publicly. There are many who argue that this is the only way to blog, and although I am not that extreme, I do think it has particular advantages. That said, there are good reasons for and against blogging in your own name. For students who are unsure, I [...]
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Does Adlai Stevenson matter?

By alex | Published: 6/29/2010
There is a great “fluff” piece over at the New York Times detailing the provenance of dorm rooms at a few schools. It includes a photograph of four freshmen at Princeton who, when told they were occupying Adlai Stevenson’s old dorm room replied that they didn’t know who the guy was but that “there’s famous [...]
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