I figured it's time to build a page to anchor the Goal Of Educating Kids...

somewhat different Framing than a Meaningful Life. (more)

I was doing some quick-list-making recently, and threw together a couple lists relevant to Raising Reality Hackers. (more)

Educational Technology guru (more)

founder Huffington Post (more)

Jon Udell did a PodCast with Bob Glushko and Anna Lee Saxenian to discuss their new program in services design at UC Berkeley's school of information. (Web Services, Network Economy) Glushko blogged about the topic. You can download papers from their recent symposium. See also 2006-11-13-SpohrerEducationServices.

variety of PayWall that lets someone read some number of pages for free (in a day? in a month? forever?), then forcing payment (Paid Site) for more/full access. (more)

playing with the Game Rule-s, doing something unanticipated, to accomplish something (more)

In North America approximately 25% of the population relies on septic tanks; this can include suburbs and small towns as well as rural areas. (Indianapolis is an example of a large city where many of the city's neighborhoods are still on separate septic systems) (more)

Some fascinating thoughts from Paul Snively (Nov'00) on cross-platform libraries that offer specific features (replication, crypto, etc.) equivalent to those in Groove (or the possibility of adding Groovy features to Radio Userland). Reimplementing Groove: Hopefully Groove Networks are already looking at this, as it seems they've painted themselves into a rather nasty corner by being COM-based. However, the Mozilla project of course already ran into these same issues and appears to be on the road to resolving them. If I were going to reimplement Groove, here's what I'd be looking at... (more)

Adina Levin on Emergence vs Infrastructure. But looking at Greenwich Village as an example of ant-like emergent behavior misses a lot of the story. There is a large substrate of of social and cultural structures that enable these unplanned activities to create a pleasing and diverse order. The neighborhood has sewers and clean running water. Without these, the city neighborhood would harbor endemic infectious diseases. There is a Fire Department which protects the block if a single house catches fire. There are people with the technical and project-management skills required to design and repair plumbing, heating, and electrical systems. A colony of ants couldn't create Greenwich Village. Neither could a tribe of Hunter Gatherer-s. There are underlying levels of Infrastructure - some of which require Planning - in order to enable the higher-level decentralized behavior. (more)

Python Web Framework made from merger of PyLons and BFG (Repose Bfg). Or, rather, it is BFG, and PyLons is merging into it, or something. (more)

Time to do some Simplest Thing development. (more)

Founder of AutoDesk. (more)

Jon Udell wonders whether the Business Models For Information around Learning Object-s will mainly be Barter. So, for example, you'd trade me a video of your guitar lesson in exchange for my screencast on animating scatterplots in Excel. Seems like Gift Economy/Reputation Management is likely to be much bigger.

Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based e-learning. It defines communications between client side content and a host system called the run-time environment, which is commonly supported by a learning management system (LMS). SCORM also defines how content may be packaged into a transferable ZIP file called "Package Interchange Format". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharable_Content_Object_Reference_Model (more)

OER as Co-Creation EcoSystem: *The richest exchanges on day two of the Hewlett Open Educational Resources Grantee Meeting came from those who challenged the fundamental premises of the meeting. In designing the meeting, Berkman staff imagined three groups: Learners, Facilitators (teachers, librarians, coaches, educators, etc.), and Builders. They assumed a kind of "supply and demand" model of OER where builders create stuff and distribute it to learners, sometimes through the mediation of facilitators (wholesalers, I guess?). (more)

Ubiquitous Computing (more)

1956 bestselling book by William Whyte... A central tenet of the book is that average Americans subscribed to a Collectivist ethic rather than to the prevailing notion of rugged Individualism. He observed that this system led to risk-averse executives who faced no consequences and could expect jobs for life as long as they made no egregious missteps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Organization_Man (more)

*Social engineering is a discipline in political science that refers to efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale, whether by governments or private groups. In the political arena, the counterpart of social engineering is political engineering. (more)