‘One does not own social capital’

The ConnectedCourses were discussing social capital and networks last week. Kira Baker-Doyle – Assistant Professor of Education, Arcadia University. Author of The Networked Teacher – started by explaining that one can own financial capital but not social capital. That is because your social capital is situated outside of yourself, in loose… Continue reading

Progressive and emergent games / online courses

I’ve been looking into an interesting course going on right now, Understanding Video Games, at Coursera by Leah Hackman and Sean Gouglas (Alberta University). It’s a rather institutional Massive Open Online Course, not the connectivist style we experience at connectedcourses, but I’m very interested in the subjects they teach. The… Continue reading

Bringing together distributed learning

One of the important topics at the connectedcourses is… how to connect all the posts on the many platforms learners use. Facilitator Alan Levine mentions on his blog cogdogblog a few ways to aggregate content, two seem particularly interesting: gRSShopper by Stephen Downes, the guy who introduced me and so… Continue reading

Learning is tinkering and narrating it

[iframe] [/iframe] Why should you blog? Own a domain name? Because learning is so tremendously enjoyable and the web teaches us so much about what learning is. The web is not just a tool for learning, it’s an experience which allows one to experience, to live learning. In this video Jim… Continue reading

Mindmapping Oculus Rift

I’m still working on the Oculus Rift coverage and will meet users and developers. I made a wiki mind map (so you can add, change to it) about Oculus, using sources such as the Oculus subreddit and Wired Magazine. Scanning the reviews and reactions it seems obvious that Virtual Reality… Continue reading

Learn Literature, New Media, Creative Programming

[iframe] [/iframe] I look forward to this course on Coursera focused on Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings Online, exploring what happens to stories and films when they become online games. Jay Clayton of the Vanderbilt University will teach about narrative theory, media studies and video games (history and… Continue reading

Second Life 2.0 will be interesting, but no breakthrough for the multiverse

Quite some excitement among virtual worlds fans: Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, confirmed that they work on a new virtual world. They won’t let themselves be restrained by concerns about backward compatibility with the eleven year old Second Life as they want a fundamentally better virtual world and… Continue reading

Inventing a New University

One of the courses I really enjoyed these last few months was History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education, by professor Cathy N. Davidson (Duke University) on the Coursera platform. The final assignment was the invention of a new institution of higher education. This was my answer, and yes, I… Continue reading

A future for virtual worlds after all

The virtual reality head-mounted display Oculus Rift makes virtual worlds folks dream of a bright future. The Rift exists now as a developer version, but a consumer product could be available in 2015. Second Life is anticipating on this rather thrilling development by releasing a Rift-compatible viewer: [iframe] [/iframe] Read… Continue reading