Australian Walled Gardens

Despite the relative material affluence in Australia, they seem to have 'missed the boat' to equip the population for the 21 century. Digital literacy and digital citizenship are not a common practice of the systemic educational institutions. "The physical ICT infrastructure that has developed since the 1990s has not been matched by a concomitant investment in education - public or private - to promote creative uptake of digital technologies by entire populations."

While some young people enthusiastically acquire the skills of digital natives, the system, their educational guardians seem to hinder their development. "For the most part the education system has responded to the digital era by prohibiting school-based access to digital environments, apart from walled gardens under strict teacher control...Kids also learn that formal education's top priority is not to make them digitally literate but to "protect" them from "inappropriate" content and online predators."

Meanwhile their parents devote themselves to their impeccable (and unsustainable) lawns and passionately trim edges.

Networked open learning

Building open, customised learning networks to collaboratively rip, mix, burn and share under Creative Commons licensing. Richard Baraniuk, Connexions and open learning. An inspiring presentation, unfortunately with advertising so go and watch it at TED.

Effectiveness and efficiency of visually supported oral presentations

Visual presentations accompanied by oral presentations are a common medium in formal education and business settings 'to get something across'. It was held, that supporting the spoken word with a visual aid (Powerpoint or Keynote software) would enhance understanding. Researchers now claim that the learner can process information better, when only one channel is used. In 'The Performance of Visually Supported Oral Presentations' ... ' the informational value of the use of presentation software' is analyzed in F2F situations by Prof. Knoblauch.(via Der Standard)

The pro and cons of (the daily 35 million) PPT presentations have been on-going. Some use minimal visualisation to emphasise their speech, others are very effectively omitting standard PPT features. Very rarely does someone (video) merge the visual with audio effectively (video). Most of the time it seems to be a talking head's memo crutch, that everybody has to read along.

Outside walled learning, shared online slides at least give the user the options to navigate tempo or hark back into the visual or audio. One is not 'held hostage' by the frontal presenter.
EdTech slides on Slideshare
PPT help for walled education
Designing effective PPT presentations

Using the Palm PDA for educational purposes - video

Teacher Tube features a video on how to utilise the Palm PDA. Pity the Ozzie lawn-mower ruins the audio.

Informal Learning video by Jay Cross

Jay Cross gives an introduction to his idea of 'formal learning'. Unfortunately in the 'talking head' mode. So grab some visual stimulation and listen to the video.

Learning in Transition

About the act of passing from one state to the other, for individuals, groups or systemic bodies.