Ming the Mechanic: Automatic Academics

Some clever grad students have used an automatic computer science paper generator to create a gibberish paper, which they’ve gotten submitted to a conference. They now plan on randomly generating a gibberish speech which they can go and deliver there.

You know? I thought some of those proposals looked a little vague…

The second part of Sharon’s charge was to examine our description and mission. I’ll quote out what I know of it here. This is from the small paragraph on the AECT website. It’s the only description I remember seeing.

AECT’s Division of Distance Learning represents members with interests in the full range of distance learning techonologies as a means of addressing the educational needs of students, the educational community, and the general public.

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We have 6 months before Orlando. More, Sharon Smaldino has called for a completion of divisional action plans by the end of the Summer Leadership Program in July. It’s a stretch goal … but one that we might be able to accomplish. We have some outstanding issues regarding how our strategic plan can contribute to the larger AECT strategic plan (given that it’s not been formulated yet) but there are some things we can do.
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Remixing a meme from Stuart Brand, the people over at Blogs / Weblogs in Higher Education had this to say about re-zoning the classroom

Put a folksinger on the corner of the quadrangle; put a podcast in the middle of the lecture; put a microphone in the hand of the student in the back row; bring food to class; have a story-telling place and time in your course; take some portion of a familiar class and change it, no matter how comfortable it is the way it is.

A fast blog-n-run on this idea. Collaboration isn’t necessarily about concensus. Aggregation plays a role in determining ALL the things the vision may hold — not just the things we agree on.

elearnspace: One of us is smarter than all of us

A group following a group created ideology has the potential to be dangerous. A group of individuals following an aggregated vision is exciting. Groups, organizations, and institutions need always keep the individual in mind. Failure to do so, weakens the whole structure (this is particularly true of knowledge management initiatives).

One of the goals for this year is to adopt by-laws and get them submitted to the Executive Director. Pat Miller has done a heck of a job getting us this far and it’s time we put this to bed.

This is where we stand.

We have the draft by-laws below, but have not ratified them. Given that we have no current by-laws governing adoption of by-laws, and the only guidance we have from the AECT by-laws is

(e) A Division has freedom to pursue matters within its professional or academic area that are not reserved to the Association and the Board. It may determine the right to vote of its members on Divisional matters, provided that a Division may engage in no activity which is, in the opinion of the Board, inconsistent with the purposes and objectives of the Association or which is inconsistent with the tax exempt status of the Association.

we need to determine how we shall proceed.

[ Note: According to Pat Miller (then president and the person who drafted these by-laws) they were adopted by a vote of the membership at the Dallas Conference]
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Will Richardson over on Weblogg-ed is a blogvangelist from way back. He has a great post about the risk of the web becoming a TV-substitute rather than a TV-replacement.

Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom :

Our kids are going to get there one way or the other, but if we educators don’t take the lead on this and soon, we’re going to be rendered irrelevant. As I’ve said before, we don’t own the content any more, and what we should own, the mastery of how to use that content, is sorely lacking. Unless we become able to teach and model effective practice in short order, it will be more than passivity that we’ll have to deal with.

He also makes it clear that the leadership on this has to come from educators.

Do we know any educators?

Rehearsal and Repetition May Be Bad For Learning

Rehearsal and repetition may be bad for learning. They are even worse for learners at a distance for whom external influences such as work stress, frequent travel, deployment to war zones, and personal or family issues are creating learning anxiety. This is the conclusion reached by several learning specialists and educational psychologists who studied why students perform poorly even after adhering closely to the “practice makes perfect” traditional cognitive learning strategies of rehearsal, organization, and elaboration. This is Part I of a two-part series.

If you don’t know the E-Learning Queen, you should pay a visit. She’s got some great stuff including both parts of this excellent two part series.

Now, is she a member?

Cognitive Dissonance � What To Do With It?

This is the second part of my series on blogging that explores what you can DO with blogs once you know what the basic tools are.

Cognitive Dissonance � Blogging Beastiary

Sharon asked for an explanation about blogging. This part is an introduction to the basic tools of blogging — blog, rss, and aggregator.

I hope you find this useful information.