Please take the time to read Steve Downes response (2/3 of the way down the post) to my The Experts vs The World post where he makes a few excellent points clarifying his initial remarks on the latest Economist debate.

The Democratic Experts

Downes makes an excellent distinction between becoming an expert and being appointed one. Expert bloggers uniquely achieve their standing without being annointed by one party or another. They achieve their standing by being read and by being quoted in other blogs.

Sorry, I have been neglecting Olli Answers lately. My nose has been in the code lately and I am really excited about some of the changes coming up that will make Ask Olli a lot more useful and easy to use. However, I find it difficult writing and coding at the same time. When I get sick of one, I can’t bring myself to do the other, so the writing has suffered.

Last night, I read Stephen Downe’s reaction to the next Economist debate, about the impact of social networks on education, and was surprised by his rather vitriolic response.

I have started getting TOEFL data ready for the Ask Olli index. I did a teaching TOEFL course about seven years ago, but I have never taught it so I decided that I need to refresh my knowledge.

So, after reading a bit about the different TOEFL flavours now available, I started looking for an online TOEFL practice exam.

The Course Management System (CMS) developer Blackboard released a report on online learning for k-12 students. I found it through an article posted on The Journal titled Study: Students Want To Learn Online.

My immediate reaction was deep skepticism—of course a study sponsored by one of the leaders in Course Management Systems finds that students want to learn online. But I decided to get the report to see if it has any lessons to apply to online language learning.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been getting various notices about two new MMORPGs for preschool children by Disney and Nickleodeon. The first notice that I found was on paidContent.org. Then a couple of blog postings announcing the new services and pointing out that they aren’t anything new. All this buzz left me wondering a couple of things.

Didn’t Disney Just Buy an MMORPG for Kids?

Yes, they most certainly did: Club Penguin for $700 million. Club Penguin is for children aged 6-12. Disney’s new offering, Bunnytown, will tie-in with a Sunday-morning puppet show for preschool children.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, the Economist magazine is having an online debate on technology in education.

Proposition: The continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most education.

I was going to write a summary of the comments on the Economist debate on technology in education because there are so many of them (they require quite a bit of sifting), but I had too many negative comments and didn’t want to seem like a jerk.

So, instead, I would like to elaborate on my own thoughts on the subject.

The respected business and international affairs weekly, The Economist, is currently holding an online debate on the usefulness of technology in the classroom.

Proposition: The continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most education.

The debate is concerned with technology in the classroom, but I think a lot of the comments apply to online language learning resources.

Sir John Daniel, in his opening statement for pro side of the debate, argues that, while there are a few notable successes where technology is used to solve specific problems, mostly technology is used as a fancy tool to spruce up education.