I started the Computer Sciences 101 course taught by professor Nick Parlante (Stanford University) as a massive open online course (MOOC) on the Coursera platform. Nick says there are not enough people on this planet with computer skills, so he hopes that this introductory course will incite some of us… Continue reading
I just finished reading William Gibson’s Distrust that Particular Flavor. Gibson is the man who gave us the notion of ‘cyberspace’ in his 1982 story “Burning Chrome” and popularized by his 1984 novel Neuromancer. Here is his formulation of “cyberspace” in Neuromancer: Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate… Continue reading
There is a true explosion going on in open online learning. I don’t know whether it’s always “massive” as in Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), but anyway, there is a lot happening out there. I don’t have statistics about how many projects there are, nor about the total number of… Continue reading
The blog has been idle for about two weeks now – because of family emergencies, the launching of a liveblog and a column at my newspaper. Which allows me to reflect on the issue of loyalty toward online projects and communities. – Gameification does not really work for me. I… Continue reading
These days I’m working on my contribution for Howard Rheingold’s Peeragogy project. I’m working on “connected learning”, much inspired by the Massive Open Online Courses organized by Stephen Downes en George Siemens. I’ll add some stuff I learned by organizing daily chat sessions and (live)blogs for my newspaper (I wrote… Continue reading
I just bought the Kindle edition of Net Smart, Howard Rheingold‘s new book, published by the MIT Press. I participated in various of Howard’s courses: one about literacies of cooperation, another one about mind-amplifying tools, and now I’m involved in a collaborative project facilitated by Howard aimed at creating a… Continue reading
Welcome to another episode in which I post about my strange journey through the Wonderland of online courses. Last week I had a most wonderful session of the Digital Awakening course in Second Life: we discussed professor Sherry Turkle’s fascinating text Video Games and Computer Holding Power, and we also had… Continue reading
Applying Aristotle on interactions between humans and computers: it can be done. Just read Brenda Laurel about The Six Elements and the Causal Relations between them (in the New Media Reader, MIT, links and documents here) as we did in the Digital Awakening course. Aristotle talks about drama as an organic… Continue reading
Imagine you explore in group wild and exotic lands. After six weeks the journey is over, and it’s time to say goodbye. Often that is a sad experience – just sharing the same experiences creates a bond between people, and when they leave, one feels a void. This was what… Continue reading
I had some busy days covering the European debt crisis for my newspaper De Tijd and trying to keep up work for my online courses. I had to focus on the Toward a literacy of Cooperation course, facilitated by Howard Rheingold, as the course itself is now in its last… Continue reading