Do you know the percentage of people in the world who use mobile phones? In 1997, the answer was 4 percent. By 2007, it was nearly 50 percent. The fraction of people who are mobile phone users is the kind of fact you might read in a magazine and quote at a cocktail party. But years later the number you would be quoting would not just be inaccurate, it would be seriously wrong. The difference between a tiny fraction of the world and half the globe is startling, and completely changes our view on global interconnectivity.

Introducing the mesofact originally appeared on Portable Learner on March 2nd, 2010 Tweet this post.

Learning styles: Reports of demise exaggerated originally appeared on Portable Learner on February 19th, 2010 Tweet this post.

We used to think that we could publish speculative research which advanced interesting new ideas which may be wrong, but which were important to provoke debate and discussion. We don’t think that now. We don’t seem able to have a rational conversation in the public space about difficult controversial issues without people drawing a conclusion which could be very averse.…The 19th-century days where you could sit in the salon at the Royal Society and have a private conversation amongst your fellows just doesn’t exist anymore. So I think yeah, too much information in this particular case is a bad thing, which seems to go against every kind of democratic principle that we believe in. But in the case of science, it seems to be true.

But it is not. I can’t help but wonder if we had had this conversation, in public, ten years ago when the study was still “speculative research” we may well have averted the flawed decision to publish it in the first place. We need more information, not less, and more inclusive conversations, not narrowly confined to the medical community. The public may well have to engage the medical community in the public space “difficult conversations without drawing a conclusion that could be very averse…”

Vaccines, The Lancet retraction and open scientific debate originally appeared on Portable Learner on February 9th, 2010 Tweet this post.

Real body language originally appeared on Portable Learner on February 1st, 2010 Tweet this post.

Surprising gaps in your self-knowledge originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 31st, 2010 Tweet this post.

Atoms to bits originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 29th, 2010 Tweet this post.

When your Jeep spins lazily off the mountain road and slams backward into a snowbank, you don’t worry immediately about the cold. Your first thought is that you’ve just dented your bumper. Your second is that you’ve failed to bring a shovel. Your third is that you’ll be late for dinner. Friends are expecting you at their cabin around eight for a moonlight ski, a late dinner, a sauna. Nothing can keep you from that.

It is an engrossing read. Narrative experiences can be so powerful. Some will transport you to another place and time in a way that is so compelling it seems real. A narrative like this could provide the structure for an entire training program. The story offers an organizing structure for new experiences and knowledge. It could shift the focus from a rote memorization of facts in a textbook to a diagnosis of a real-world condition.

The cold hard facts of freezing to death originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 27th, 2010 Tweet this post.

I think what is really very important to recognize is that, when we look at the history of the world, we’re not looking at the history of different civilizations truncated and separated from each other. They’ve a huge amount of contact with each other, there is a kind of inter-connectedness. So I’ve always felt, not to think of the history of the world as a history of civilizations, but as a history of world civilizations evolving in often similar, often diverse ways, always interacting with each other. And this is a very different view from the clash of civilizations to which we were exposed some years ago, as a way to understand enmity in the world. Enmity has not been the general condition of the relationship between people across the world in history.

The programme is fully socially mediated, both online and offline with regional museum programs; it will be interesting to see if the stories sustain the momentum generated in these first episodes.

Telling a history of the world with objects originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 26th, 2010 Tweet this post.

…who we are on the web is simply a reflection of who we already are offline. We project hierarchical systems into the virtual world. We extend our interests and make them happen using the tools the web provides. We seek out things that make us feel good about ourselves. The web is a mirror, and we have to face it in confidence, warts and all.

Democratic, but dangerous too: how the web changed our world originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 24th, 2010 Tweet this post.

…what is absolutely accurate, in Haiti right now, and on Earth always, is that human life matters more than property, that the survivors of a catastrophe deserve our compassion and our understanding of their plight, and that we live and die by words and ideas, and it matters desperately that we get them right.

When the media is the disaster: Covering Haiti originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 22nd, 2010 Tweet this post.