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Is everything an urban myth?
When I was doing the post yesterday about the wisdom of crowds, I was going to use the example of the mob that attacked a paediatrician, confusing them for a paedophile, as an example of the dumbness of crowds. I was sure that this actually happened on an estate in Portsmouth, and many well informed people have used it as an example of the dangers of hysterical crowds. Turns out it is something of an urban myth, and the truth is more about the dumbness of an individual than a cautionary tale about mobs, as the BBC reports. I always flattered myself for having a reasonably good nose for urban…
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The Granularity of Ideas
I’ve finally got around to reading The Wisdom of Crowds. It’s enjoyable, and while I know lots of bloggers have retaliated with tales of the dumbness of crowds, but I think that misses the point. We know that crowds can be dumb, and become mobs, but what is interesting is when they become smarter than the smartest individual. Suriowecki claims that conditions need to be right for this to happen. What had put me off reading it though was that the title, or maybe the introduction, kind of told you all you needed to know. This is true of many popular business books that cross over to a general audience…
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The book manuscript leaves home
Today I finally managed to get the manuscript for my VLE book in the post. Well when I say manuscript what I actually mean is: 2 printed copies of manuscript Author questionnaire 2 compact discs containing files Folder containing 2 copies of all artwork Disc overview sheet Manuscript checklist It has probably taken me as long to do all the post-writing stuff as it did to write the thing in the first place. You appreciate that academic publishing operates on fine margins so a lot of the mundane work is pushed back to the author. I bet Dan Brown doesn’t have to do all this extra work. There is a…
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Guardian Online
I was up in London yesterday to have a meeting with Emily Bell, editor of Guardian Online. This was part of the broadcast review we are conducting at the OU. She had lots of interesting things to say, but perhaps what most struck me were the similarities between our organisations. For reluctant academics read entrenched journalists. There are concerns about maintaining a traditional market while reaching out for a new one, and the different quality demands in an online and print world, and also different styles of writing and working online. The Guardian solved some of these by setting up their online division as a separate business. I don’t think…
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Why you should love Zidane
Watched the world cup final last night which was of course marred/made memorable by Zidane’s headbutt and red card. I’ve been puzzling about this. He was about ten minutes away from being remembered as the greatest French player ever, probably overtaking Platini. And I think that is the key to his action. He could see the endless smug after dinner speeches, the fawning chat show appearances, the publicity work with Blatter and Chirac. It was a frightening epiphany. So he committed reputation suicide. Now he can enjoy his retirement in peace. You’ve got to admire that. More people should do it I think and save themselves from a kind of…
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The A word
I was looking at the draft theses of two of my PhD students last week. One is in the area of theoretical artificial intelligence, and particularly non-conceptual content. The other is in the area of learner experience and decision making. Two very different fields, but both had made use of the concept of affordances. This demonstrates one of two things: i) Affordances are such a powerful concept that they have application in multiple domains. ii) It has become so meaningless that you can apply them to any domain I have used the term myself quite a bit, and it crops up in my new book. Personally I find it a…
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Death of broadcast?
I am part of the Broadcast Strategy Review group at the OU at the moment. This is currently realised through our relationship with the BBC, with the general audience programmes and the excellent open2.net stuff. But in an e-learning, internet age the very definition of broadcast needs to be re-examined. The OU needs to reexamine what it means from pedagogic value and return on investment perspectives. To put it crudely, is it better to have 10 high quality programmes or 10,000 lower quality podcasts/feeds. There are a number of issues here: Quality – generally people are prepared lower quality on a lot of internet media, e.g. podcasts, video clips, etc…
