Stephen Downes: The Role of the Educator. How often do we read about the importance of teachers in education? It must be every day, it seems. We are told about "strong empirical evidence that teachers are the most important school-based determinant of student achievement" again and again. The problem with the educational system, it is argued, is that teachers need to be held accountable. We are told we must fire incompetent teachers. Not just in the United States, but in the UK and elsewhere, the concern is that bad teachers must go. The problem with focusing on the role of the teacher, from my perspective, is that it misses the point. Let me tell you how I know this. Each of these has contributed in one way or another to an overall approach not only to learning online but to learning generally. It's an approach that emphasizes open learning and learner autonomy. Concordant with this approach has been the oft-repeated consensus that the role of the educator will change significantly.
There's no end to such projects online. Mark Zuckerberg & Facebook, Part 1 - 60 Minutes.
MIT Enterprise Forum. Social Networking: The Past. Editor’s note: This is the first of a three-part guest post by venture capitalist Mark Suster of GRP Partners on “Social Networking: The Past, Present, And Future.” Be sure to also read Part II and Part III. This series is an adaptaion of a recent talk he gave at the Caltech / MIT Enterprise Forum on “the future of social networking.” You can watch the video here , or you can scroll quickly through the Powerpoint slides embedded at the bottom of the post or here on DocStoc. Follow him on Twitter @msuster. Social Networking 25 Years Ago: CompuServ, Prodigy & The Well Listening to young people talk about social networking as a new phenomenon is a bit like hearing people talk about a remake of a famous song from my youth as though it was the original version.
If you think “Don’t Stop Believing” was first recorded on the show Glee I’m talking to you. Yes, I was doing it when I was a teenager and yes, it was online, too. The Bridge Between Online Services & The Internet: AOL And then came AOL. Social Networking: The Present. Editor’s note: This is the second of a three-part guest post by venture capitalist Mark Suster of GRP Partners on “Social Networking: The Past, Present, And Future.” Read Part I first, this one, and then Part III. Follow him on Twitter @msuster. This series is an adaptation of a recent talk he gave at the Caltech / MIT Enterprise Forum on “the future of social networking.” You can watch the video here , or you can scroll quickly through the Powerpoint slides embedded at the bottom of the post or here on DocStoc. Social Networking in Web 2.0: Plaxo & LinkedIn In my last post, I discussed the origins of social networking online, beginning with CompuServe, Prodigy, the Well, then the rise of AOL, Geocities and Yahoo Groups.
And come after they did. And importantly Web 2.0 ushered in the era of “participation” – we all know that. But the masses didn’t want to blog. Modern Social Networking: Friendster, MySpace & Facebook Except that MySpace didn’t handle images or video well. Enter Facebook. Social Networking: The Future. Editor’s note: This is the third of a three-part guest post by venture capitalist Mark Suster of GRP Partners on “Social Networking: The Past, Present, And Future.” Read Part I and Part II first. This series is an adaptation of a recent talk Suster gave at the Caltech / MIT Enterprise Forum on “the future of social networking.” You can watch the video here , or you can scroll quickly through the Powerpoint slides embedded at the bottom of the post or here on DocStoc. Follow him on Twitter @msuster. In my first post I talked about the history of social networking from 1985-2002 dominated by CompuServe, AOL & Yahoo! In the second post I explored the current era which covers Web 2.0 (blogs, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook), Realtime (Twitter), and mobile (Foursquare). 1.
Right now our social graph (whom we are connected to and their key information like email addresses) is mostly held captive by Facebook. 2. 3. Facebook made a deal with us that our social network was private. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. The People People: Simple, effective networking ideas to help build stronger relationships.