Insights

8 Random Facts Meme

Tagged (again) by Donald Taylor on this one. So this is the way to do it. First post the rules: Post these rules before you give your facts. List 8 random facts about yourself. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them. Leave a comment on
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Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

Elliott Masie’s Learning Trends arrived yesterday and alterted me to Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture. He is dying of cancer and  this Carnegie Mellon Professor was giving his lecture of a lifetime:  covering his own life, loves and achievements.  You can watch it here or here .  I should have been working, but it totally captivated
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Blogging

 "Never have so many people written so much to be read by so few." Katie Hafner She is a New York Times technology journalist. (Quoted by Stephen Downes in a presentation to the International Distance Education Conference this year in Taipei)
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Rise and Rise of Moodle

Stephen Downes in his OL Daily drew my attention to a blogged report  by Tony Karrer the CEO/CTO of TechEmpower , on user satisfaction with LMSs. The link is here.  What is fascinating is how well Moodle does overall.  Not just in education and government as you might expect, but it comes out no 1
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One Year On

It is almost exactly one year since I left the BBC. Time to reflect.  In that year I have been round the world twice:  around Australia twice and worked in 9 different countries.  I have tried to connect with the learning leader community and made many excellent new friends. I have been challenged with new
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Two Great Courses

This is an unashamed plug for two really innovative courses; one on each side of the Atlantic.  The first is the Executive Programme in Work-Based Learning Leadership run jointly by Wharton Business School and the Graduate School of Education at the Universit of Pennsylvania.  It is an innovative and ground-breaking doctoral programme that combines the
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Talent Goes Local

Crikey! is a great Australian institution: an oneline news paper available on subscription only. Today’s edition quotes a new book by Margaret Simonscalled the Content Makers. She contrasts the cultures of News Corp and Fairfax. She claims that one of NewsCorp’s strengths is its strong culture. She goes onto say: "One senior News Limited executive
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Talent Goes Global

I happened to be sitting next to a young PhD engineering student who was going home for a couple of weeks to Malaysia. He was nornally based in Australia.  Obvioulsy smart.  Obviously talented.  We talked about his future:  big company or start up? Research or operational role? and so on. Then the most interesting part
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Who Cares About Learning?

Charles Jennings the Global Head of Learning at Reuters (one of the world’s largest news organisations) is quoted in today’s Workforce Week  (on line edtion). ‘He says he could not care less about learning.     "What I am passionate about is performance," ‘ If you want to read the full interview it is here .
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Lucas Neill

Little Thomas Dawson in Melbourne doing a passable imitation of Lucas Neill, his fellow Australian, to wish him luck as the new captain of West Ham United. Note he is wearing the new 2007/8 strip. Here’s the announcement
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