Bookmarks 13-January-2009

Contextual clothing for naked transparency
Jon Udell. 04-January-2010.
“We don’t really want naked transparency, we want transparency clothed in context. … To enable context assembly, we’ll need to organize the numeric and narrative data produced by the ‘naked transparency’ movement in ways friendly to linking, aggregation, and discovery.”
gml: This feels right. The notions of an easily mashable web or a semantic web of data stumble when confronted by the process needed to provide context for data. I believe, but have not yet satisfied myself about this, that we can help people to engage complex issues in a manner that will promote what Udell calls context assembly (or that might also be called learning; see Simmons’ article below). For example, HTML5 seems to offer hopeful possibilities here.

Brazil’s new Latin American and global integration universities launched
Susan Robertson. GlobalHigherEd. 03-January-2010.
“[T]hese three new universities are intended to enhance national, regional and global integration, and demonstrate to the world that it may be possible to unite different countries through education.”

You Can Get There From Here: Websites for Learners
Amber Simmons. A List Apart. 03-November-2009.
“As an industry, we haven’t done our best to make our content-rich websites suitable for learning and exploration. Learners require more from us than keywords and killer headlines. They need an environment that is narrative, interactive, and discoverable. … Discoverability, as I use the term, refers to how well a website lends itself to organic exploration by a curious reader. Rather than relying exclusively on an orderly, hierarchical navigation, a discoverable website helps readers choose their own adventure.”
gml: This post and Udell’s (see above) nicely complement each other. In a sense, learning is context assembly. There is no one correct context to be discovered, but rather lots of unique contexts variously assembled during learning.

Drumbeat idea: open web skills @ p2pu
Mark Surman. commonspace. 17-December-2009.
“Another Drumbeat bootstrap idea that’s getting traction is open web skills courses delivered via the Peer 2 Peer University. It’s a simple concept: people combine self organized, collaborative learning with open curriculum materials to improve their skills in areas like HTML, CSS and Javascript. Over time, a peer to peer certification system could emerge as well …”
gml: People creating tomorrow one small step at a time, no doubt failing repeatedly along the way but nevertheless learning and persevering. You’ve got to love it. Especially today, on the day after the earthquake in Haiti, this reminds me of the Haitian proverb that served as the title for Tracy Kidder’s book about Paul Farmer: Beyond mountains there are mountains.