Posterous: CMS for simple web publishing via email
"Posterous is the easy way to get content online using e-mail. You can e-mail content of just about any type (such as rich text, photos, music, video, Word/Powerpoint/Excel/PDF documents, and zip archives) to us. We will post it online in the most web-friendly format, then reply with a public URL that can be forwarded or shared with friends. Account creation is never required, but if a user does create an account, posts from your various e-mail addresses (work, home, and mobile phone) can all be integrated into one blog."
(Posterous, Inc.)
Fig.1 Susie Blackmon's Posterous weblog [available at: http://susieblackmon.com/].
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
There was relatively little divide between spectator and performer in the archaic theatre
"In the archaic theatre there was relatively little divide between spectator and performer, seeing and doing; people danced and spoke, then retired to a stone seat to watch others dance and declaim. By the time of Aristotle, actors and dancers had become a caste with special skills of costuming, speaking, and moving. Audiences stayed offstage, and so developed their own skills of interpretation as spectators. As critics, the audience sought to speculate then about what the stage-characters did not understand about themselves (though the chorus on stage sometimes also took on this clarifying role)."
(Richard Sennett, 2008, p.125)
Sennett, R. (2008). The Craftsman. London, Penguin Books.
Fig.1 Lysistrata Summer 2006 University of Florida
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Microlearning: learning from microcontent
"We understand microlearning primarily as learning from microcontent - from "small pieces, loosely joined" (Weinberger, 2002).
Microlearning as a term reflects the emerging reality of the everincreasing fragmentation of both information sources and information units used for learning, especially in fast-moving areas which see rapid development and a constantly high degree of change.
While in the past a single authoritative work (or even a single authoritative teacher) may have been all that was necessary to sufficiently acquaint oneself with a given topic of interest, this is increasingly untrue, especially as the necessity to (quickly) learn (a lot) extends into almost everyone’s work life.
Books, magazine articles, a multitude of web resources (like online books, tutorials, encyclopedias, forum and weblog postings, emails and comprehensive teaching material collections as produced by MIT’s OpenCourseWare project or the Connexions effort hosted at Rice University) form essential ingredients of the source mix of almost any non-institutionalized learning effort - and, increasingly, of many institutionalized efforts as well.
Fragmentation of sources has both positive and negative aspects. From a producer’s standpoint, information fragments are much easier to create than larger works. Furthermore, disaggregated content - theoretically - can be re-aggregated to optimally suit an individual learner’s preferences (instead of the needs of an idealized common denominator). The other side of the coin is that a significant fraction of the consolidation and organization effort is shifted towards the learner.
It will increasingly be the task of microlearning management systems to assist the learner (or group of learners) to consolidate information gleaned from such disparate sources into a coherent whole. We see personal knowledge mapping as enabled by combined wiki/weblog software as a first step in that direction."
(Christian Langreiter, Andreas Bolka, 2005)
Weinberger, D.: 2002, Small Pieces Loosely Joined. Perseus Books.
[2] Langreiter, C. and A. Bolka (2005). Snips & Spaces: Managing Microlearning. Microlearning Conference. Innsbruck, Austria.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Open City: The Closed System and The Brittle City
"The idea of an open city is not my own: credit for it belongs to the great urbanist Jane Jacobs in the course of arguing against the urban vision of Le Corbusier. She tried to understand what results when places become both dense and diverse, as in packed streets or squares, their functions both public and private; out of such conditions comes the unexpected encounter, the chance discovery, the innovation. Her view, reflected in the bon mot of William Empson, was that 'the arts result from over-crowding'. Jacobs sought to define particular strategies for urban development, once a city is freed of the constraints of either equilibrium or integration. These include encouraging quirky, jerry-built adaptations or additions to existing buildings; encouraging uses of public spaces which don't fit neatly together, such as putting an AIDS hospice square in the middle of a shopping street. In her view, big capitalism and powerful developers tend to favour homogeneity: determinate, predictable, and balanced in form. The role of the radical planner therefore is to champion dissonance. In her famous declaration: 'if density and diversity give life, the life they breed is disorderly'. The open city feels like Naples, the closed city feels like Frankfurt."
(Richard Sennett, 2006)
Fig.1 Busy street in Naples, marlenworld.com
Fig.2 Paris, Les Olympiades, 1969-1974, Thierry Bézecourt in 2005
[3] Sennett, R. (2006). The Open City: The Closed System and The Brittle City. Urban Age.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Open-ended play environments enable rich learning experiences
"Children learn about themselves, others and the world they live in through play. Outdoor environments for play and learning can provide rich experiences for children who seek fantasy and adventure and are innately curious about nature. Children's environments, particularly school and neighbourhood playgrounds, parks and gardens, have the potential to facilitate learning through social, emotional, cognitive and creative opportunities. Unfortunately, in America, the play and learning potential for many outdoor play spaces is underdeveloped."
(Lauri Macmillan Johnson)
Fig.1 The Adventure Playground, 160 University Avenue, Berkeley, California is an example of an open-ended play environment.
Fig.2 commercially available play environments often work to regulate engagement according to social norms.
[3] Johnson, L. M. (2004). American Playgrounds and Schoolyards - A Time for Change. In School of Landscape Architecture. Tempe, AZ, The University of Arizona Press.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
