Print Get a PDF version of this webpage PDF. The Digital Innovation Lab launched last year has spawned an even bigger and more exciting institutional innovation: the Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative, announced this ...

...When we stopped thinking in terms of physical and digital, what began to emerge were discussions that focused purely on learning, teaching, and space deisgn. Our roadmaps for individualized professional development emerged. http://www.ryanbretag.com/blog/?p=2263

Our discussions evolved to learning focused including the move away from “knowledge commons” to “learning commons”. http://www.ryanbretag.com/blog/?p=845

A subtle but important shift. It elevated the importance of space design regardless of physical or digital. The result being the IDEA. http://www.ryanbretag.com/blog/?p=2024

We also started to focus on formal and informal learning, blended learning, and edges. This allowed for a three tiered PD program to emerge.

 

This has and continues to serve us well but there remains a critical piece missing. The digital piece to the learning commons. For me, it is a critical gap and we’ve not been able to fill it with a social networking tool of any value. Yes, we’ve discussed Facebook but the discussions with students, teachers, parents and administrators always left us with no solid answer.

So, this is where I’ve seen it needing to go…

 

By Ryan Bretag http://www.ryanbretag.com/blog/?p=2432 

Via David Truss

Ross Dawson is a smart guy. The six mechanisms in the paper he discusses are: an idea ecology, a web of dependencies, an intellectual supply chain, a collaborative deliberation, a radically fluid virtual organization, a multi-user game. -- Howard

 

"One of the many reasons humanity is at an inflection point is that the age-old dream of the “global brain” is finally becoming a reality.

I explored the idea in my book Living Networks, and at more length in my piece Autopoiesis and how hyper-connectivity is literally bringing the networks to life.

Today, my work on crowdsourcing is largely focused on the emerging mechanisms that allow us to create better results from mass participation.

Some of the best work being done in the space is at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. A few of their researchers (including founder Thomas Malone) have just written a short paper Programming the Global Brain.

I don’t think “programming” is the best metaphor. I prefer to think about the enabling structures and mechanisms out of which collective intelligence will be created.

However programming can be a useful frame, and in the paper the authors propose six programming metaphors that will facilitate the formation of the global brain:"

Via Howard Rheingold

In recent decades, the sciences and the humanities have found their ways to grow ever farther apart. You don't hear many biology students raving over their literature course load, just as you do not hear language majors ...

Wired.co.ukIn academia, 'e' can't automatically mean freeWired.co.ukThe impact of "e means free" has the potential to discourage academics, reduce research, hamper innovation in publishing and potentially harm students.

Originally posted by the ACLU of Northern California.