Thanks to funding from the MacArthur Foundation, The MIT Press has published a series on digital media and learning (with open access electronic versions), which they describe this way:

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning examines the effect of digital media tools on how people learn, network, communicate, and play, and how growing up with these tools may affect peoples sense of self, how they express themselves, and their ability to learn, exercise judgment, and think systematically.

In their report, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg investigate how technology and the internet are transforming shared and interactive learning. They suggest the following 10 principles as “fundamental to the future of learning institutions”.

1. Self Learning
Self-learning has bloomed; discovering online possibilities is a skill now developed from early childhood through advanced adult life.

2. Horizontal Structures
Given the range and volume of information available and the ubiquity of access to information sources and resources, learning strategy shifts from a focus on information as such to judgment concerning reliable information, from memorizing information to how to find reliable sources. In short, from learning that to learning how, from content to process.

3. From Presumed Authority to Collective Credibility
Learning is shifting from issues of authoritativeness to issues of credibility. A major part of the future of learning is in developing methods, often communal, for distinguishing good knowledge sources from those that are questionable . . . We find ourselves increasingly being moved to interdisciplinary and collaborative knowledge-creating and learning environments in order to address objects of analysis and research problems that are multidimensional and complex, and the resolution of which cannot be fashioned by any single discipline.

4. A De-Centered Pedagogy
In secondary schools and higher education, many administrators and individual teachers have been moved to limit use of collectively and collaboratively crafted knowledge sources, most notably Wikipedia, for course assignments or to issue quite stringent guidelines for their consultation and reference.26 This is a catastrophically anti-intellectual reaction to a knowledge-making, global phenomenon of epic proportions.

Instead, leaders at learning institutions need to adopt a more inductive, collective pedagogy that takes advantage of our era.

5. Networked Learning
The power of ten working interactively will almost invariably outstrip the of one looking to beat out the other nine.

6. Open Source Education
Networked learning is predicated on and deeply interwoven into the fabric of open source culture. Open source culture seeks to share openly and freely in the creation of culture, in its production processes, and in its product, its content. It looks to have its processes and products improved through the contributions of others by being made freely available to all.

If individualized learning is largely tethered to a social regime of copyright-protected intellectual property and privatized ownership, networked learning is committed in the end to an open source and open content social regime. Individualized learning tends overwhelmingly to be hierarchical: one learns from the teacher or expert, on the basis overwhelmingly of copyright-protected publications bearing the current status of knowledge. Networked learning is at least peer-to-peer and more robustly many-to-many.

7. Learning as Connectivity and Interactivity
The connectivities and interactivities made possible by digitally enabled social networking in its best outcomes produce learning ensembles in which the members both support and sustain, elicit from and expand on each other’s learning inputs, contributions, and products. Challenges are not simply individually faced frustrations, Promethean mountains to climb alone, but mutually shared, to be redefined, solved, resolved, or worked around—together.

8. Lifelong Learning
It has become obvious that from the point of view of participatory learning there is no finality. Learning is lifelong.

9. Learning Institutions as Mobilizing Networks
Network culture and associated learning practices and arrangements suggest that we think of institutions, especially those promoting learning, as mobilizing networks. The networks enable a mobilizing that stresses flexibility, interactivity, and outcome.

10. Flexible Scalability and Simulation
Networked learning both facilitates and must remain open to various scales of learning possibility, from the small and local to the widest and most far-reaching constituencies capable of productively contributing to a domain, subject matter, knowledge formation and creation. New technologies allow for small groups whose members are at physical distance to each other to learn collaboratively together and from each other; but they also enable larger, more anonymous yet equally productive interactions.

What do you think about the future of learning? Is there a business model in the future of learning and will it sustain itself?

The Course Outline
This introductory studio course addresses the design, composition, and construction of computer interactivity in authoring environments, focusing on the Web. Emphasis is on increasing visual and sensory-based literacy through the application of digital skills. Students also learn to apply the principles and processes of interaction design for the use of animation, still imagery, video and sound for diverse applications, including those for educational, commercial, and communicative purposes.

This course will include:

• Usability
• User Experience
• Graphical User Interface Design

The course syllabus can be found here:
http://www.ecuad.ca/~harmen/classsyllabus.html

If you have any suggestions on what you’d like to see on this blog, comment below.

1. Hoop Dreams (1994), directed by Steve James, Peter Gilbert and Frederick Marx
2. The Thin Blue Line (1988),directed by Errol Morris
3. Bowling for Columbine (2002), directed by Michael Moore
4. Spellbound (2002), directed by Jeffery Blitz
5. Harlan County U.S.A. (1976), directed by Barbara Kopple
6. An Inconvenient Truth (2006), directed by Davis Guggenheim
7. Crumb (1994), directed by Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb
8. Gimme Shelter (1970),directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin
9. The Fog of War (2003), directed by Errol Morris
10. Roger and Me (1989), directed by Michael Moore
11. Super Size Me (2004), directed by Morgan Spurlock
12. Don’t Look Back (1967), directed by DA Pennebaker
13. Salesman (1968), directed by Albert and David Maysles
14. Koyaanisqatsi (1982), directed by Godfrey Reggio
15. Sherman’s March (1986), directed by Ross McElwee
16. Grey Gardens (1975), directed by Albert and David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer
17. Capturing the Friedmans (2003), directed by Andrew Jarecki
18. Born into Brothels (2004), directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski
19. Titticut Follies (1967), directed by Frederick Wiseman
20. Buena Vista Social Club (1999), directed by Wim Wenders
21. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), directed by Michael Moore
22. Winged Migration (2001), directed by Jacques Perrin
23. Grizzly Man (2005), directed by Werner Herzog
24. Night and Fog (1955), directed by Alain Resnais
25. Woodstock (1970), directed by Michael Wadleigh

I’ve seen 20 of the films from this list. But my favourite doc wasn’t mentioned and that is Fast, Cheap & Out of Control by Errol Morris.

To get an idea of how frustrating it is to develop sites for IE 6,  I’ll give you an example from a typical project. At Lift we initially code our HTML (XHTML and CSS) and test it in Firefox or Safari. It generally doesn’t matter which one we use for our initial testing, because both of those browsers are considered standards compliant, which means they should render correctly if the code was written well. We tend to use Firefox more often as there are a slew of indispensible tools for debugging sites like the Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug. After we finish the coding, we then test it in IE 7. IE 7 is a surprisingly good browser – not perfect, but good. It handles CSS very well and also supports transparent PNGs. The last step – usually the most painful – is making it work in IE 6. Since we often use a lot of AJAX, CSS and transparent PNGs in our designs, we end up having to spend hours creating hacks and workarounds to make everything render correctly in IE 6. It’s timely, expensive and it pisses us off to no end.

Forcing Windows users to finally update to IE 7 will shave off countless hours of needless hacking and additional coding, which is a welcomed sigh of relief. Although Microsoft’s reasons for forcing the update on Windows users is because of security, the only reason for Web Designers is because it will take IE out of the dark ages.

I’m curious about genealogy. Maybe it has something to do with being Armenian and having your family tree cut off after only a few generations, but I’ve recently been looking into software to enable genealogy tracking. What I’ve found is the following software:
Family Tree Maker (PC)
Legacy Family Tree (PC)
RootsMagic (PC)
REUNION (Mac)
MacFamily Tree (Mac)

They all seemed somewhat amateur and small, if not completely dated. I realized that this is a perfect opportunity for an online application. After all, you need a community of people inputing data into it, to be effective. Wikipedia had a few open-source genealogy options.

As a trial, I’ve installed phpGedView at treeinaforest.com to give it a whirl. My first impression is that it seems fairly comprehensive but lacking in usability and aesthetics.

Starting January 8th I will also be teaching Interactive Essentials at Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design (ECIAD).

1. My Dreamhost account: lots of stray orphans here. It’s time to round up the unused domains and testing sites, back them up and then throw them to the fire.
2. Teaching Resources: consolidate all those lectures and online bits of blogs, wikis and such and throw them into a box.
3. The Lab: a place on my computer for experimentation – Design patterns, colour palettes, sketches, ActionScript code. All will be gathered and organized and backed up.
4. Goodbye Microsoft: I’ve tried doing this before but now the tools seem to be there to leave the Microsoft software behind.

Installing Rails on Leopard was easier than on Panther. Leopard actually comes with PHP, MySQLite & Rails and just needs some configuring.

A good place to start is here:
http://developer.apple.com/tools/developonrailsleopard.html