1. What makes anyone think that the video games push (mostly by the iOS platform devices, but Xbox, Playstation and Wii) has anything to do with formal education? 

Well, I don't know if gamification gained any traction, but things like achievements in video games have lent themselves to things like badges. I suspect that my original assertion that it will be marginalized, will remain until someone can quantify and measure the whole process, much like they've tried to do with standardized testing.

2. Why haven't educational institutions really pushed for a mobile learning environment? 

I think there's been some motion here - certainly the open courses are structured so that they are mobile friendly, and the big two LMS vendors (Desire2Learn and Blackboard) are both becoming more mobile friendly, I suspect the resistance comes from the institution's inability to control and verify that a potentially mobile student may not be that student, and the only way to assess a person is still in-person. I don't think it matters anymore, in work most people will use the Internet to research a possible solution to whatever problem they face, so knowing something isn't as crucial as it once was. Knowing something however does allow you to find a solution sooner - making you a more efficient worker - which is what capitalism wants.

3. Will the consolidation of the web conferencing tools that education typically use (Wimba and Elluminate) mean that new companies with new models will arise? 

Well, they haven't arisen yet, but there's a plethora of tools out there to replace Blackboard Collaborate or whatever it's called this week. However, no one has put together the killer app - which I hope is the form the web conferencing takes - mobile native, low bandwidth friendly, and most of all, accessible.

4. Wither edupunk? 

Yup. edu-post-punk should be interesting.

5. What will Pearson as a publishing giant and accredited University mean? 

Turns out, not much. Unless you consider an extremely walled off garden of textbooks in a proprietary LMS with Google Doc integration something.

For me this is a real advancement in LMS's. We're not relying on written skills (which have been in decline for the last few decades) as much as one used to because profs are bored with marking papers and students are bored with writing papers. Yes, papers still have a purpose in higher education. Look at the popularity of Michael Wesch, who largely has gained his academic fame from videos on YouTube (not to say that he's not a highly respected anthropologist, he is the author of many of those papers!). Surely these are markers that education is changing - shouldn't academics respond?

OK, now that's out of my system, I don't think D2L should have sued but should have just walked away from it - sure it's half a million dollars - but in the long run if the start-up can't handle it, they'll collapse and one of the big LMS players will swoop in and clean it up.

I've been working both angles of my strengths lately - I was asked by a faculty member who was trying to use the D2L tools for glossary and content in conjunction to provide context sensitive tool tip like definitions of terms. Like all web programmers, why start in a vacuum? So knowing that a great tooltip JS is available in JQuery, I considered using it.  The JQuery solution is a large one to embed the entire library for a couple of functions. Looking further, I searched out this tutorial/premade tooltip script, which does the job nicely. It would clobber any styles created by D2L that had been already added to a topic created prior to adding the script, so I had to hack around it to fix that. I also had to fix the tooltip always surfacing above the text, which in the frames based LMS world, defeats the purpose of having a definition; in this case you get a definition you can't read because it's behind a frame (or the top of the window). Another fix I put in was to ensure the box did not appear off screen if it was too close to the edge of the window, it still does in certain cases, which I haven't narrowed down - if anyone out there wants to take a crack at fixing it, be my guest.

The implementation of the script isn't too difficult if you're OK with editing HTML code (a matter of adding three lines and editing two lines) and are precise in your edits.

Here's a link to the PDF instructions and the zipped file with the javascript and CSS file.

Of course, if there's any errors please let me know and I'll correct and/or clarify them as soon as possible.

Are we doing too much?

Is there too much information, or are people turned off by the sheer amount of resources and contact we've provided? Or maybe is it not enough? Our rough estimates guess that we've maybe seen one third of the faculty. Will another two hundred sessions get everyone? What about the part timers? No one pays them to attend workshops, no one pays them to develop resources, but it's in their best interest to do so (keeping it for themselves and reusing it again or elsewhere).

I think that maybe we're stifling people's curiosity - people might explore and innovate with online learning if they had the curiosity to do so. Maybe too much is too much and we're creating a real version of information overload. If this is the case then we need better ways to manage the information, or to teach these skills to people (which we do not). Maybe we're killing people's sense of play by telling them what they should do. I don't have any answers really, just questions, which if you've read my blog at all, you should come to expect.

Another thing is that after a year of full D2L implementation, we're getting better quality online courses for review. It's nice to see that faculty have taken the time to embrace some of these ideas... and it's even better when they surpass what's been laid out in front of them.

I've also got to start refreshing my presentation from a couple weeks ago for a new audience, this one more receptive to web 2.0 and online stuff in general. Also it needs a piece that talks about how easy (and the potential drawbacks of integrating it into a LMS) it is to put into D2L.

I'm also doing my normal work routine stuff, helping train some faculty, creating media, working with video and text. By 9:30 this morning I hit most of my targets and was already drowning again in more work. Semester start-up indeed.

I hate that I spent half a day picking out the right font (Communist, if you must know) and at least that amount of time laying out the presentation in PowerPoint, which has to be among the worst product for design, and Slideshare screws it all up via the upload. Here's a preview, mind the odd formatting of my boxes, font, and at times incongruent fonts. There must be a way to get it right?

If you download it, you'll get it with the proper layout; you'll also get the notes, which has the sources of the photographs (all licensed by Creative Commons, labelled for reuse, except the one taken by my wife, who allowed me to use it in exchange for the $20 Tim Horton's gift card I got at work).

That's not to say that I'm unhappy with Desire2Learn,  it doesn't have any performance issues (much like what Stephen Downes wrote about the Sakai vs. Moodle in the OLDaily) and it's been the best of the lot by a longshot. I wish it was more robust in the web 2.0 area, and a built in collaborative document would be a good way to have student collaborate (without their LiveRoom add in), but it's easier to use than Blackboard and WebCT and is web-based, which is a plus for those who don't want to download the client for FirstClass.

For instance, a mechanical engineer can share his drawings and the feedback from the content expert (teacher/trainer, or in a distributed environment, an external panel of experts) and this can be assessed as a measure of skill. Seeing as that's what employers want (from a skills-based College), it seems like a natural fit for the College system in Ontario. It would set us apart from Universities now that OAC's are gone. OAC was the old-old Grade 13, which was a post-graduate year in high school, for people who wished to enter University - you'd get 6 extra credits of High School and take advanced courses that would prepare you for the academic rigor.

I know McMaster University is approaching their medical program with Problem Based Learning which is a similar demonstration of skills that a Portfolio Based Learning program might have.

Anyone out there use a portfolio as a final assessment?