At CeLC 2010, there was a session on various bits of technologies, and how McLuhan’s 4 laws of media apply to them - what does the technology enhance, retrieve, obsolesce, and reverse? One of the presenters ended up talking about how the ability of profs to post their lectures online - whether through the .ppt files, podcasting, or some other format - made the act of note taking by students obsolete.

This struck me at the time as a gross oversimplification. Note taking is not primarily about manual duplication of a set of resources produced by a teacher. It’s an active process of sensemaking and internalization. Of visualizing the processes of thinking. There is no part of the valuable process of note taking that can be obsolesced by mere content being posted online.

A fascinating (and very long, but worth it) post by Steve Steinberg, on artificial intelligence.

If we were trying to build a true, general AI, we would first need to create a way for it to get around and interact with the larger world. And we would need a system for rapid knowledge acquisition, so that we wouldn’t have to manually explain every detail of how the world works.

Which, of course, is precisely what we’re building.

Edupunk isn't real, in and of itself. It exists only as a concept for people to use as scaffolding when discussing priorities and alternatives in education.

It doesn't matter what's inside the suitcase, only that it exists, and that we chase it relentlessly.

>...the Empire of Mediocrity (is) successfully spreading its tentacles everywhere.
>
>Anthony Bourdain. Medium Raw.

This scares the shit out of me. This is why the media/communication landscape is shifting so rapidly. It's the Empire of Mediocrity, not anything about information wanting to be free. The Market is speaking. It wants mediocrity. Blandness. Unthinking familiarity. It's not about The Shallows or anything like that. It is about the selection and reinforcement of brainlessness by the masses.

From [Science Daily](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100630171711.htm):

> While studying the paleo-environment of a fossil-bearing site situated near Franceville in Gabon in 2008, El Albani and his team unexpectedly discovered perfectly preserved fossil remains in the 2.1 billion-year-old sediments. They have collected more than 250 fossils to date, of which one hundred or so have been studied in detail. Their morphology cannot be explained by purely chemical or physical mechanisms. These specimens, which have various shapes and can reach 10 to 12 centimeters, are too big and too complex to be single-celled prokaryotes or eukaryotes. This establishes that different life forms co-existed at the start of the Proterozoic, as the specimens are well and truly fossilized living material.

canoes on lake louise, on a chilly Canada Day.

The U of C has had a really great bike shop on campus for awhile now. It's been fantastic having access to a fully equipped bike shop - although I've only needed it a couple of times, knowing it was there was a huge comfort.

Was.

It's getting the boot at the end of July.

Hopefully we can find a new home for the Bike Root on campus. Perhaps the Student's Union can find/make some space? It's pretty crappy for the U to kick the shop out, without having a backup space available. Yes, I know it was a short term pilot project, but the shop was a huge success by all accounts. Closing it, or forcing it to move off campus, is a huge step backwards in the efforts to make the U of C bike friendly.

Day 1: Calgary to Chain Lakes (via Okotoks, Nanton, and Highway 533)

8:49:11 AM: $7.3 million. Ride begins. http://yfrog.com/9fbb0yj

9:50:12 AM: First pit stop. Awesome day for a ride! http://yfrog.com/9gmkhej

11:00:10 AM: Pit stop #2. Woohoo! http://yfrog.com/jbn63zj

12:00:57 PM: 2900km http://yfrog.com/ev2rbkj

12:15:44 PM: Pit stop 3. 78km down. Lunch! http://yfrog.com/2pmitjj

1:43:13 PM: Longest/highest hill I've ever climbed. Ow. Almost to camp. http://yfrog.com/bc7o5j

1:43:58 PM: Pitstop 4. Next stop is camp.

1:49:07 PM: Guy just told me we've climbed for 13km. And we're only 3/4 of the way up. Yay.

7:59:21 AM: Packing up my stuff before checking out. Begin paranoid "what did I forget?" nagging sensation...

8:48:33 AM: Cool! Twitter liveblogging still works. Thought it might have died in the OAthpocalypse.

8:55:00 AM: It's The Boy's last day of grade 1, and I didn't get to see him off this morning. Sadface. My boy will be a Grade two-er when I see him!

Notes from the eportfolio/iPod/games panel, and Glenn Groulx' student blogging session.

I didn't take many notes for some of the sessions, but did for the education eportfolio project by UofA