Earlier this week, I delivered a presentation to TEDxEdmonton on why openness and learning analytics are critical for rethinking the future of education. The theme of the event was on open source culture and whether the promises of open source have been oversold. Openness in response to change. Be open. MORE >>

So what’s the real source of pedagogic change? Suddenly we had Google, then in the last ten years Facebook,Twitter, BBM, MSN Messenger, Wikipedia, YouTube, iTunes, Nintendo, Playstation,Xbox. They text, BBM,IM, Facebook (primarily a text medium), every day, often many times a day. So let’s just call it learning practice. MORE >>

Anybody know when we first started talking about open source? Depending on when and where you look up open source , you’ll now get up to three billion results, or more. But they will need to adapt to the new networked environment, where everybody can contribute. In that context Facebook is a trilobite. MORE >>

However, open source initiatives like Moodle offer reasonable alternatives. Take a step back to 2001/02: pre-YouTube, pre-Facebook pre-Twitter. virtual worlds, social media, networked learning). The open source market for synchronous tools is not well developed. Here’s why. Web 2.0 on July 19). MORE >>

Social media (Twitter, Facebook) are all about weak ties. Not networks. As an example, Gladwell ridicules the opening story in Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody , about how “the crowd&# got a smart phone returned to its rightful owner. But hierarchies can work with networks. Why would we think they were? MORE >>