Image by FJTU (de viaje) via Flickr
And the mome rath outgrabe
If I recall well, this is the first nonsensical verse from the Jabberwocky, Lewis Carrol‘s poem within Alice in Wonderland.
All mimsy are today’s borogoves, too, in Microsoft‘s vision of the future. In the video below. So beautiful, so pure, so uncontaminated by poverty, dirt, hunger. So inspiring, too, & true & realistic.
Tomorrow’s computers will be invisible. Embedded within walls, glass surfaces, tables. Touchscreens and touch-e-paper will provide the support and the interface to information, which will flow a bit more seamlessly than today, onto our consciousness, or our unconsciousness.
The girl who touches the boy’s words thousand miles away but just there on the other side of the mirror/surface. What school may get that technology for its children is not told. Not many schools, I suppose, nor today, not even tomorrow.
And this is why I want to connect this video and its pseudo-reality to Obama’s nobel prize winning.
Nobel prize to Obama? This is all the same bullshit, my friends. It’s another planet altogether.
I support and love Obama, let me spell that clear. I am with him. And I am happy for his prize. But, does he deserve it? He did a few very moving, true-to-heart speeches, and his ideas are having an impact worldwide, which is certainly very important, peace-wise. I also understand the Nobel guys wanted to Obama acquire more force and power, before the right convinces everybody he is a communist.
But. There are dozens of ONG’s out there doing a very good job at actually keeping peace and food and health. What about them? What about Obama going to send more soldiers to Afghanistan? It seems to me that the Nobel prize for Peace is that sort of nice, bullshit opium we are still eating every day.
Two good things in one morning.
1. Personal Learning Environment – A Conceptual Study – e-Learning Blog
“Personal Learning Environment – A Conceptual Study” presented by Martin Ebner et al. at the Special Track on MashUps for Learning (MASHL09) within the ICL 2009 conference. The Paper is here.
2. Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems affect teaching, by Lisa M. Lane, published on First Monday, Volume 14, Number 10 – 5 October 2009.
Abstract
Course management systems, like any other technology, have an inherent purpose implied in their design, and therefore a built–in pedagogy. Although these pedagogies are based on instructivist principles, today’s large CMSs have many features suitable for applying more constructivist pedagogies. Yet few faculty use these features, or even adapt their CMS very much, despite the several customization options. This is because most college instructors do not work or play much on the Web, and thus utilize Web–based systems primarily at their basic level. The defaults of the CMS therefore tend to determine the way Web–novice faculty teach online, encouraging methods based on posting of material and engendering usage that focuses on administrative tasks. A solution to this underutilization of the CMS is to focus on pedagogy for Web–novice faculty and allow a choice of CMS.
