Blurts

Sugata Mitra winner of the TED Prize for his vision of School in the Cloud (you may have read about his original hole in the wall computer experiment). A vision for self guided and group organized learning. I think we have seen this before (Summerhill) so I am skeptical, but I believe in empiricism – try it and see. I do like the concept of “granny as tutor” – granny is encouraging, is amazed, and asks you to help her understand.

What I want to know is how come they have not discovered YouTube? I certainly believe you can learn a lot on your own. This, I assume, was the vision for the public library. If you have the resources, the Internet offers even more possibilities. Offering access in areas of severe poverty provides an interesting test of potential. It will be important to evaluate critically.

P.S. – This may sound far too good to be true and some say that this is the case. Here is a critic to consider and here is another.

Just saw that Evernote was hacked. I was having trouble with my Evernote password just an hour or so ago and reset it.

I see in the C|Net article that Evernote was requiring users to reset passwords. No kidding. It would have been nice if they contacted us rather than creating the weird situation in which the password stopped working without an explanation. They have emails for everyone.

Problem is I keep passwords in Evernote. Bad idea, but I still do. I sometimes need a way to access passwords from anywhere. I checked and none of the accounts would seem to involve access to money.

Whether you are a supporter of the TPACK system for thinking about classroom activities or not, the video case studies provided by an assortment of educational organizations is interesting and may useful to college educators and as a basis for personal consideration.

This report from the Huffington Post reviews the accreditation difficulties for Phoenix and describes key issues with many online, for-profit institutions.