12/31/09

Happy New Year's!!! ...and we better fasten our seatbelts, as we'll continue to see blazingly-fast changes in 2010!

Top Internet Trends 2010: A Guide To The Best Predictions From The Web - Part 1 -- from Robin Good

Top Internet Trends 2010: A Guide To The Best Predictions From The Web - Part 2 -- from Robin Good

The top 10 trends for the 2010s: the most exciting decade in human history -- from Ross Dawson

Teaching and Wolfram|Alpha: a 2009 view -- from Liberal Education Today by Bryan Alexander

Moodle Pedagogy, at Online Educa 2009 – from Martin Dougiamas, Moodle Founder and Lead Developer

Bring the Web to your Living Room -- from Digital Inspiration

Musings on how online networking knowledge mirrors our learning brain -- from Golden Swamp by Judy Breck

Open isn’t so open anymore -- from George Siemens and David Wiley's response Response to George on “Openness” -- from iterating toward openness

Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network -- from ineducation.ca by Jon Mott and David Wiley
Abstract: The course management system (CMS) reinforces the status quo and hinders substantial teaching and learning innovation in higher education. It does so by imposing artificial time limits on learner access to course content and other learners, privileging the role of the instructor at the expense of the learner, and limiting the power of the network effect in the learning process. The open learning network (OLN)—a hybrid of the CMS and the personal learning environment (PLE)—is proposed as an alternative learning technology environment with the potential to leverage the affordances of the Web to dramatically improve learning.

Read through the Bible in 2010 with BibleGateway.com reading plans

Learning TRENDS by Elliott Masie -- #602- Updates on Learning, Business & Technology

• Cool eReader About to Launch
  There are 4 different eReaders in my office. 2 Kindles, a Sony Reader and a Kindle App on my iPhone. For the past few years, I have become a user and fan of the digital book. And, on Christmas Day, Amazon sold more digital Kindle titles than print books. So, my eyes went wide today, when I read the preview announcement of a new eReader "platform" from Ray Kurzweil, one of my favorite thinkers and innovators. He will announce this color based eReader technology at CES in a week. Check out the preview.
  
  
• Drive by Dan Pink
  The book focuses on what motivates workers - including the three elements of true motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Older students return to college and wrestle with technology - Mary Owen, Chicago Tribune -- resource and quote below from Ray Schroeder
Classrooms have been transformed –– grades are electronic, homework is submitted online, presentations must be given in PowerPoint and the best way to reach an instructor is e-mail. One professor said he hasn't exchanged a piece of paper with a student in more than five years. But instructors say they try to be understanding about older students. Many allow a struggling student to do things such as take a test on paper instead of online, write a paper on hard copy rather than type it into a computer or give a traditional presentation rather than a multimedia one.

Khan Academy -- from Mission to Learn and Sal Khan. (Sal founded the Khan Academy with the goal of using technology to educate the world. Sal received his MBA from Harvard Business School. He also holds a Masters in electrical engineering and computer science, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and a BS in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. We have 1000+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology and finance which have been recorded by Salman Khan.

From DSC:
Who knows what types of institutions of education we'll have in the future...? The point for now is to be open to change...as change will be all over the place in the next 12-18 months (at least in higher education).

Situational Interaction (video) -- from SteveKnode.com
Good explanation of how intelligent agents will replace humans for some activities soon. This avatar receptionist can function quite well.

A.I. Anchors Replace Human Reporters In Newsroom of the Future -- from SteveKnode.com
Another example of how intelligent agents will perform human functions soon, this time reporting the news.

Michio Kaku On Artificial Intelligence -- from SteveKnode.com
An excellent video by one of the best futurists, Michio Kaku, on the subject of Artificial Intelligence. evolve and learn new things.

"A network of individuals knows more than a single individual." George Siemens
That's somewhat obvious. Sure, "wisdom of the crowds" (wikipedia) can quickly become "idiocy of the crowds" (youtube comments)...and experts do know more than novices (though a network of experts knows more than an individual expert). This is evident in the education field. Education employs more people than almost any other sector - 1 in 16 jobs in the US. Which means expertise is widely distributed and capturing great ideas about teaching practices can provide much value. Looking for a simple way to aggregate these ideas? Doug Belshaw used a simple Twitter hashtag approach, moving from idea to artifact in about one month. A .pdf of the project is available here.

Web Meetings Saves Costs, Increases Productivity -- from CXOToday.com by Sharon Lobo

A Translator Tool With a Human Touch -- from SteveKnode.com
At I.B.M., a team of nearly 100, including mathematicians and software developers, is working on a project to create an automatic translation tool, so-called machine translation, that has the speed and accuracy to be used in instant-messaging between speakers of two different languages.

New iPhone app translates English into Spanish as you speak -- from SteveKnode.com
A new app for the iPhone translates English into Spanish instantly as you speak. The app, costing $25, is like having an interpreter at your side.

New Resources for 2010! An Educator's Guide to VoiceThread and an Intro to VoiceThread, V 2.0 -- from MPB Reflections

Obsolete Learning Technologies -- from InsideHigherEd.com by Joshua Kim
The Silicon Alley Insider recently named 21 technologies that became obsolete this past decade. My favorites from the list included: the PDA, paid e-mail accounts, dial-up, film developing, video rental stores, landlines, public pay phones, VCRs, phonebooks, and CDs. What learning technologies have become obsolete this decade?

Why reinvent the wheel? -- from Moodle Girl's Blog -- which links to Moodle Monthly

Online knowledge organizes itself better than educators can do it -- from Golden Swamp by Judy Breck
A recent GoldenSwamp.com post posits how knowledge for learning is growing as a superorganism from which everyone on earth can learn. That superorganism is a network that lives within the open internet.

12/28/09

Luke 2:28-32 (New International Version) -- from Bible Gateway
Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: "Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss[a] your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."

11 Ways to Listen to Music Online for Free -- from digitizd.com by David Pierce

[MI] State lawmakers pass Race to the Top reforms -- from lansingstatejournal.com; original resource and quote below from Ray Schroeder
The reform package was needed for the state to qualify for up to $400 million in extra federal funds, under President Barack Obama's Race To The Top initiative to improve education. Gov. Jennifer Granholm and legislative leaders have called for an agreement by the end of the year in order to apply for the federal grant in January. Also, two pilot "cyber schools" run by private companies would be allowed to recruit up to 1,000 students each statewide. The program, which uses online learning that students attend from their homes, would encourage the firms to recruit high school dropouts.

In online education, Hartland teacher in a class all her own -- from livingstondaily.com by Frank Konkel; original resource from Helge Scherlund

Melanie Laber is one of the busiest teachers you’ll ever read about. During the 2009-2010 school year, Laber, a Hartland Middle School at Ore Creek math teacher, teaches six seventh-grade classes. Because of her full load, Laber doesn’t even have a prep hour, but teaching middle school math is only part of her work day. The rest of her time she spends teaching trigonometry and geometry to students across the state online through Michigan Virtual School. For her efforts, Laber was recognized this month as Michigan Virtual School’s 2009 Online Teacher of the Year. She accepted the award two weeks ago at a ceremony in Lansing.

What Technology Will Bring to the Next Decade -- from technewsworld.com by Jessica Mintz
Look back at how far computers and other personal technologies have come in the last 10 years, and it's easy to see why it's so difficult to predict where they'll go over the next decade. Best guess: Look for more data to be available at any time, more information accessible through speedier devices, a greater reliance on the cloud, and technologies that work away quietly in the background.

How to Prevent Plagiarism in the Search Decade (Esp Your Own) -- from HASTAC blogs by Cathy Davidson

Hybrid Education 2.0 -- from Educause
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have developed an online learning environment that could make lecture halls -- if not professors -- obsolete.

Feedback Loops for Continuous Improvement
The most powerful feature of web-based instruction is that it allows us to embed assessment into every instructional activity and use the data from those embedded assessments to drive powerful feedback loops for continuous evaluation and improvement. As we deliver the instruction, we use technology to collect real-time interaction level data of all student use. We use this data to create four positive feedback loops. “Feedback” in this context is the information derived from student activities that is used to influence or modify further performance.

“Improvement in Post Secondary Education will require converting
teaching from a ‘solo sport’ to a community based research activity.”
-- Herbert Simon

BiDi Screen -- from web.media.mit.edu
A Thin, Depth-Sensing LCD for 3D Interaction using Light Fields
The BiDi Screen is an example of a new type of I/O device that possesses the ability to both capture images and display them. This thin, bidirectional screen extends the latest trend in LCD devices, which has seen the incorporation of photo-diodes into every display pixel.

Nursing crisis looms as baby boomers age -- from CNNMoney.com by Aaron Smith
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- America could be facing a nursing shortage that will worsen exponentially as the population grows older.

Semantic Web 3.0 -- from The Center for Internet Research

Web Conferencing Is Going Wide -- from The Webinar Blog by Ken Molay

CU Online Handbook 2009 -- from University of Colorado Denver; original resource from Helge Scherlund
"This handbook consists of four different sections. The first section is about trends and issues with online learning. The second section is about technology in action. The third section includes a brief summary of 25 different new emerging tools and applications. The last section includes different resources that you might use in your online classroom."

Engagement v. Empowerment -- Some Early Thoughts... -- from Stephen Downes
Chris Lehmann is quite right: engagement is insufficient; we should be thinking of empowerment. But how many people employed in the role of teacher will be comfortable with the idea of empowering their students? Engagement is safe, docile, controlled. Empowerment suggests that students might take matters into their own hands. "It also allows us to do away with the notion that the classroom is always fun. It's not. Let's look at coaching for a moment... a coach who is worried about engagement as the goal lets the kids scrimmage most practices because it is engaging and fun. But an empowering coach puts the kids through smart drills that allows them to play their best basketball during the games."

Mobile Technology at the University of Washington - It is about the community -- from livinginthe4thscreen.com

Gatlin Launches Continuing-Education Site for Adult Learners -- original resource and quote below from Helge Scherlund
ELearning provider Gatlin International has launched a worldwide site offering continuing education for adults and certificate courses in a variety of subjects and languages. A pioneer in online education since 1993, Stephen Gatlin founded Gatlin International, which provides eLearning solutions through partnerships with top universities, corporations, and governments around the world.

12/23/09

Luke 2:11-14 -- from Bible Gateway's Verse of the Day
“Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”

Translation Takes Center Stage -- from InsideHigherEd.com
Translation is essential to allow most people to appreciate the literature that is produced in languages other than their own. But translation is rarely the focus of attention. This year's annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, which starts Sunday, will attempt to change that, with more than 50 sessions on translation. The topics vary widely, with some focusing on specific languages, others on translations of particular authors (Chaucer, Kafka and Borges, for example), others on the role of translation and translators (exploring questions of how visible translators should be, or when new translations should be done).

-- from Educause Quarterly

Building Online Social Communities with Social Media

• The University Life Café: Promoting Students’ Emotional Health -- by Shalin Hai-Jew
• Engaging Students with Engaging Tools -- by Edward Webb
• Horton Hears a Tweet -- by Joanna C. Dunlap and Patrick R. Lowenthal
• Ning and Writing to Learn -- by Nathalie Ettzevoglou and Jessica McBride
• Implementation of ELATEwiki -- by Roger W. McHaney
• Effects of University and Departmental Community on Online Learners -- by Daniel G. Spurgin and Marcus D. Childress

In and Out of the Classroom

• From Distraction to Engagement: Wireless Devices in the Classroom -- by Berlin Fang
• Engaging Lecture Capture: Lights, Camera… Interaction! -- by Margie A. Martyn
• Teaching a Foreign Language with Video Podcast Assignments: Examples from an American Sign Language Course -- by Elaine Gale and Shiao-Chuan Kung
• Enhancing Student Learning in a Graduate Research and Statistics Course with Clickers -- by Lydia Kyei-Blankson

Tech Tools for Faculty Innovation

• Show Me! On Demand: Budget Friendly Instructional Videos -- by Marilyn McClelland
• Podcasting: A Stepping Stone to Pedagogical Innovation -- by Jan Cheetham, Steve Ackerman, and Kathy Christoph
• Creating Animations in PowerPoint to Support Student Learning and Engagement -- by Michael F. Ruffini
• Leveraging the Interplay Between a Grassroots Pen-Based Computing Pilot and an Institutional Laptop Initiative -- by Dave Berque, Terri L. Bonebright, Michael Gough, and Carol L. Smith

2010 Consumer Tech Trends - Ethan Lyon, Sparxoo -- quote below and resource from Ray Schroeder
Imagine a search engine that understands more than your search query, it understands your personality. Or, imagine never leaving your inbox — search, play games, collaborate, work, all in one location. We have examined the emerging and established consumer technologies from the past year to project what we should expect in 2010. Already, we’re starting to see incredible paradigm shifts in real-time consumer technology (think Google Wave) and explosive growth in crowdsourcing. As we approach 2010, we are entering a new age of consumer technology were the web is the operating system and information is now.

Free Online High Schools -- from Virtual School News by Thomas Nixon
The single-most common question concerning online high schools is about whether there are any free ones available. Just a few short years ago, the answer was mostly in the negative. That fact is changing almost faster than it is possible to keep up. There are several reasons for this phenomenon, but the main one is that schools, states, and companies have figured out a way to use public money to create online high schools and online courses. All perfectly legal and a reasonable use of our tax dollars. However, before you decide to sign up for that free online high school, there are some things that you need to know.

Collaborative Digital Storytelling with Storybird -- from The Whiteboard Blog
Vicki from Shoofly demonstrated Storybird, a website she’d found, and I just had to share it here. Storybird provides a very user-friendly way of combining images and text to tell a story, and then share that story with other people. You choose images from a huge bank of ready-drawn pictures which also help to provide inspiration for story ideas.You can also have several users all working on the same Storybird story, which would be a great classroom activity.

Related posts:

1. Two new digital storytelling tools
2. Digital Storytelling 1
3. Digital Storytelling 2
4. Storynory and Smartboard / Promethean resources
5. Etherpad

Concern grows over possible cell phone-cancer link -- from eSchoolNews.com
Despite a lack of consensus among scientists, some communities consider warning labels on new phones

12/22/09

-- slide 93/98 of
Smartphone Market Trends

The Top 10 tech trends of 2009 -- from CNN.com by John Sutter

Engineers didn't make huge improvements to technology in 2009. The year's big tech names -- Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon -- all existed before January. Instead, this is the year technology changed us. At year's end, we're connected to each other and to the Internet like never before. In 2009, we carried tiny computers in our pockets, through which we fed the Internet constant real-time info about where we were and what we were doing.

Heutagogy -- from Wikipedia
In education, heutagogy, a concept coined by Stewart Hase of Southern Cross University, is the study of self-determined learning. The notion is an expansion and reinterpretation of andragogy, and it is possible to mistake it for the same. However, there are several differences between the two that mark the one from the other. Heutagogy places specific emphasis on learning how to learn, double loop learning, universal learning opportunities, a non-linear process, and true learner self-direction. So, for example, whereas andragogy focuses on the best ways for people to learn, heutagogy also requires that educational initiatives include the improvement of people's actual learning skills themselves, learning how to learn as well as just learning a given subject itself. Similarly, whereas andragogy focusses on structured education, in heutagogy all learning contexts, both formal and informal, are considered.

From DSC:
THIS is what we need our graduates to know how to do. THIS is what we need to integrate into our teaching and learning endeavors throughout all disciplines. Why? So that when a student graduates, she can not only hit the ground running, but can keep hitting the ground running throughout her lifetime. No matter what comes down the pike, she will know how to learn, where to get information, how to sort through it and synthesize it. She can be a self-directed learner, getting training/information on demand...when she needs it.

THAT's a SOLID Return On Investment (ROI)!

Inaugural issue – Vol 1, No 1 (2009) –
"Current issues and future directions in workplace e-learning:
Mapping the research landscape"

-- resource from Dan Colman

University of Michigan prepares budget request for state, warns of 'aggressive' changes - Ann Arbor -- resource and quote below from Ray Schroeder
Without naming a dollar amount, the University of Michigan is asking the state for help with next year's budget. In the annual operating budget request to the state for the Ann Arbor campus, U-M President Mary Sue Coleman reminded the state of U-M's contributions to the economy. She noted the university is "an essential component in the stabilization and revitalization of the Michigan economy." The letter highlighted a number of recent cost containment measures and spoke of efforts on the university's part to help students pay for tuition.

From DSC:
If you follow Ray's blog -- Recession Realities in Higher Education -- as well as many other blogs, periodicals, etc., then you already know that this is not an isolated incident -- not at all. It's happening all over and it's a piece of the perfect storm that's developing right now. Bottom line: Major change is on the way.

Livemocha Bags Another $8 Million From August Capital, Maveron -- from TechCrunch.com by Robin Wauters

From DSC :
If I'm correctly understanding what Livemocha is about...this is the kind of thing that I'm talking about. Investing some serious cash into web-based, interactive, multimedia-driven, educational content. It's going to be hard to compete against such engaging content -- created by a TEAM of specialists and offered for a greatly reduced price (or even free).

Creating a culture of innovation. 20 lessons from W. L. Gore & Associates -- from Strategic Inspiration for You by Frank Calberg

Overcrowded and underfunded -- from Tony Bates

From DSC:
Tony brings up a good question at the end of his posting:

This will of course result in more demand for online courses, but will the resources be there to ensure good quality programs?

From DSC: We need to get this right. We need to invest in creating high-quality, multimedia-based, interactive materials that are professionally-done, engaging, and ones that turn the control/pacing over to the students.

From Tony Bates' "Six priorities for Canadian e-learning in 2010" (emphasis below is from DSC):

Establishment of (at least one) hybrid digital university.
We need more experimentation, more new organizational models, to find the right balances between digital and face-to-face learning. My proposal then to provincial governments anticipating increased post-secondary education enrolments (and most Canadian provinces with reduced budgets face this challenge over the next few years) is to ask for proposals from existing institutions to take on extra enrolments with extra funding, but using hybrid delivery methods (i.e. at least 50% of the program will be delivered online).

From the government perspective this would mean using funding that otherwise would have gone into extra buildings and facilities to support increased digital learning activities. To ensure applications, a government could limit all increases in institutional funding in a particular financial year to such a project. (There is a precedence for this – over 1993 and 1994, the BC government withheld  a total of 2.5% of universities’ operating budgets for an innovation fund. Institutions got their ’share’ by developing innovation project plans.)

100 Fun & Informative Blog Posts Every Grammar Geek Should Bookmark -- from onlineuniversities.com

12/21/09

Luke 2:6-7 (New International Version) -- from Bible Gateway
While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Elevating the Teaching Profession -- from Ed.gov blog
“It’s time, once and for all, to make teaching the revered profession it should be,” Secretary Arne Duncan writes in the current issues of “NEA Today” and AFT’s “American Educator.”

Encouraging New Media In Higher Education: Pushing the Glacier -- from OSU

Intelligent Viewing: 100 Most Informative Video Collections on the Web -- from onlineuniversities.com

10 multimedia books for your holiday wish list -- from Interactive Interactivity Tracy Boyer

1. Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell
2. Digital Multimedia by Nigel Chapman
3. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites by Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld
4. Information Visualization, Second Edition: Perception for Design by Colin Ware
5. Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works by Janice Redish
6. Multimedia Applications (X.media.publis​hing) by Ralf Steinmetz
7. Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis by Stephen Few
8. The Smashing Book by Smashing Magazine
9. Visual Thinking: for Design by Colin Ware
10. Writing for New Media, Third Edition: Content Development for Bloggers and Professionals by Timothy Paul Garrand

2009 Edublog Award Winners

• Best Individual Blog is Free Technology For Teachers (Richard Byrne)
• Best Individual Tweeter is Web2.0Classroom (Steven Anderson)
• Best Group Blog is MacMillan Dictionary Blog
• Best New Blog is Kirsten Winkler
• Best Class Blog is Billings Middle School Tech Class Blog
• Best Student Blog is Civil War Sallie
• Best Resource Sharing Blog is Free Technology for Teachers (Richard Byrne)
• Most Influential Blog Post is Anseo.net’s Head in the Clouds
• Most Influential Tweet Series #edchat
• Best Teacher Edublog is Two Writing Teachers (TIGHT CATEGORY!)
• Best Library/Librarian Blog is Never Ending Search
• Best Educational Tech Support Blog is iLearn Technology
• Best ELearning/Corporate Blog is MPB Reflections — 21st Century Teaching and Learning
• Best Educational Use of Audio is Xyleme Voices Podcasts
• Best Educational Use of Video/Visual is Bitacora de Ánibal de la Torre
• Best Educational Wiki Greetings From The World
• Best Educational Use of a Social Networking Site is English Companion Ning
• Best Educational Use of a Virtual World is Virtual Graduation at the University of Edinburgh
• Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Karl Fisch

-- from Lynne Marentette

Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence and the Future of Education -- from 2009 Pre-conference Keynote for the K12 Online Conference 2009

Religious Revival -- from InsideHigherEd.com
Religion is the most popular theme studied by historians, according to a new survey of members of the American Historical Association. The survey asks members to name three themes of interest to their work, so many of the historians who picked religion may not have that topic as a sole focus. But the new position for religion in history is a dramatic change: Until this year, culture had been the top selection in surveys over the last 15 years. The data suggest that those coming into the profession are more likely than their elders to have a focus on religion. According to the AHA, more than half of those who selected religion as one of their key themes received their highest degree since 2000. And almost 40 percent of the AHA members who picked the theme either were graduate students, assistant professors or associate professors -- categories that make up only 33 percent of the association's members. The association released an analysis of the survey Friday, written by Robert Townsend, the association's assistant director for research and publications.

Engaging Students with Engaging Tools -- from George Siemens and Ed Webb
Ed Webb provides a clear summary of how he re-created his conceptual and technological approach to teaching a course at Dickinson College: Engaging Students with Engaging Tools: “This kind of pedagogical approach demands time, enthusiasm, and enough self-confidence to make mistakes in front of students and model that as part of the learning process….The process of playing, experimenting, breaking, stretching, adapting, adopting, or rejecting — that is something students should be equipped for.” What I find most interesting is the tone of discussions like this – optimism about teaching and learning (even though he acknowledges not all students enjoyed the process). I too have found experimentation and play in learning design and delivery are motivating and satisfying. The challenge, of course, is for educators to remember the student in the process :) .

Tools for Learning: Trends and Implications to Language Education -- from Teemu Arina

Network laws emerge the true and unbiased as peer review falters -- from goldenswamp.com

Creating Skeptics: Helping Students to Judge the Credibility of Online Content -- from spotlight.macfound.org by Barbara Ray
There’s an old adage in the newspaper business on verifying claims: if your mother says she loves you, check it out. That adage could go far in the classroom in helping youth discern fact from fiction, poseur from expert online. Yet it gets a little tricky.

Books I Want to Read in 2010: Designing Learning and Learning about Design -- from Sahana Chattopadhyay, India

College Admissions - The Stars Might Lie, But The Numbers Never Do -- from hsdent.com by Rodney Johnson

So while the numbers look good today, colleges should be doing some very focused strategic planning for tomorrow [emphasis DSC].

Google personalized search for everyone -- from Liberal Education Today by Bryan Alexander
Google extended its Personalized Search functionality to every user last week.  This means that every Web search using Google – the world’s most popular search engine – is now inflected by previous searches from that same computer. According to Google, this means “customize[d] search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser.” One leading search observer thinks this is extremely important.

With the BBC bringing web apps to your TV, expect how you consume media to change -- from thenextweb.com [UK] by Peter Evers

30 Cool Educational Webcams -- from aceonlineschools.com

Internet Not Linked To Social Isolation, Study Shows -- from Ian Jukes
Online activities such as e-mail, blogging and frequenting Internet hangouts can even lead to larger, more diverse social networks, according to the study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The study refutes research earlier in the decade suggesting that people's growing embrace of technology has come at the expense of close human connections.

Adapting to the digital culture -- from the Thinking Stick by Jeff Utecht

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for December 21 is now online
Summary: Usability is like cooking: everybody needs the results, anybody can do it reasonably well with a bit of training, and yet it takes a master to produce a gourmet outcome.

Evaluating My 2009 Predictions -- from InsideHigherEd.com by Joshua Kim
One year ago I made a series of 8 predictions for learning technology in 2009. Below are the predictions, with an accompanying evaluation...

From DSC:
I post this because Joshua is probably right on regarding many of these trends. The timing may be off on some of them (as he mentions), but the trends are worth periodically doing a pulse-check on.

Cloud Computing -- from John Seely Brown
We also spent the past year combining extensive research and industry insights to explore the topics of cloud computing and next-generation Web services. This resulting publication explores the topic from different perspectives: business drivers, architectural models, and transformation strategies...

New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs -- from the New York Times
Hybrid careers like Dr. Halamka’s that combine computing with other fields will increasingly be the new American jobs of the future, labor experts say. In other words, the nation’s economy is going to need more cool nerds. But not enough young people are embracing computing — often because they are leery of being branded nerds.

Educators and technologists say two things need to change: the image of computing work, and computer science education in high schools. Teacher groups, professional organizations like the Association for Computing Machinery and the National Science Foundation are pushing for these changes, but so are major technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Intel. One step in their campaign came the week of Dec. 7, National Computer Science Education Week, which was celebrated with events in schools and online [from DSC: which was initiated by Calvin College's own Joel Adams].

One goal, Ms. Cuny and others say, is to explain the steady march and broad reach of computing across the sciences, industries, culture and society. Yes, they say, the computing tools young people see and use every day — e-mail, text-messaging and Facebook — are part of the story. But so are the advances in field after field that are made possible by computing, like gene-sequencing that unlocks the mysteries of life and simulations that model climate change.

Firefox 3.5 is Now the World’s Most Popular Browser -- from thenextweb.com [UK]

The Advanced Placement Juggernaut -- from The New York Times

ePals, the future of student-led global collaboration -- from teq

12/18/09

Amazing 3D video projections bring buildings to life and shape our environment -- from Ross Dawson

How To Design Schools And A New Education System For The Future: A Video Interview With George Siemens -- from Robin Good

Revisiting Moodle -- from Susan Smith Nash

It is often difficult for learning management systems to keep up with social networking and collaborative technologies. Their architectures are a bit clunky, and even when they allow embedded html to link into social networking, it's often difficult to incorporate them in an outcomes-based way. Further, they are not dynamic and it is difficult to integrate mobile activities and devices.

In these cases, Moodle, as an open-source solution, is often overlooked. The basic structure and philosophy of Moodle are simple: object-oriented, with a focus on reusability of components, and a very transparent structure that rests on a foundation of forums, which makes it very friendly to interaction and collaboration. Further, the flexibility of Moodle makes it ideal for programs ranging from certificate programs to graduate programs such as an online MBA program.

Luke 1:68-70 -- from Bible Gateway's Verse of the Day
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),”

Video Games and Impacts on Performance -- from The Futurist Update
The types of video games you play may affect your performance at school, work, or other activities, according to Wheaton College psychology professor Rolf Nelson. Playing an adrenaline-pumping action game for an hour before doing your homework or tackling a task at work could help you finish the assignment quickly--but with lots of mistakes. Playing a strategy game, on the other hand, will yield more-accurate work, but at the cost of speed, observes Nelson. In his study, published with co-author Ian Strachan in the journal PERCEPTION, Nelson tested subjects playing either a fast-action video game (Unreal Tournament) or a puzzle-solving video game (Portal). “While there has been a great deal of [research] focused on performance differences between non-video-game players and avid video-game players, we were interested in looking at the effects of playing different types of video games," Nelson says. “Results convincingly demonstrate a priming effect for two different types of video games."

Mobilizing the Millenials -- from The Futurist Update
A foundation to promote youth philanthropy, an interactive game to promote financial literacy, and electronic budget journals for daily "wealth watching" are among the award-winning ideas generated at the recent Youth Summit sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and Mobilize.org. The summit brought together young people from around the United States to discuss issues affecting members of the millennial generation, such as high rates of unemployment and student debt. Their discussions in work groups led to the development of solutions, which were then voted upon by the group, with the winning proposals receiving funding from Mobilize.org.First place winner was Daniel Kaufman of Sacramento, California, whose One Percent Foundation calls on young people "to make a collective impact by making recurring donations of 1% of their annual income through a single funding entity." SOURCES: Mobilize.org; Peter G. Peterson Foundation

Creating the Future of Media: 4 Driving Forces, 4 Strategic Issues, 4 Essential Capabilities -- from Ross Dawson

What Is Cloud Computing? -- from committedsardine.com

12/17/09

Matthew 1:20-21 -- from Bible Gateway's Verse of the Day
“But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

2010 Semantic Technology Conference
June 21st — 25th, 2010  Semantic Technology Conference— at Hilton Union Square, San Francisco, California

An Instructional Media Selection Guide for Distance Learning -- from Jolly T. Holden, Ed.D. | Philip J.-L. Westfall, Ph.D. | Chairmen Emeriti | United States Distance Learning Association | 2009

Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon Naturally Speaking that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages.

With Dragon Search, you can simply speak your search queries and get simultaneous results from a variety of top websites and content sources.

On the Wire – Video resources -- from Eductional Origami

1. Teacher Tube – www.teachertube.com
   
2. TED – http://www.ted.com/
   
3. Media Storm – http://www.mediastorm.com/
   
4. Academic Earth http://www.academicearth.org/
   
5. Cosmeo – http://www.cosmeo.com/
   
6. Brightstorm – http://www.brightstorm.com/
7. YouTube Edu http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400
8. Research Channel - http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/
9. Learner.org – http://learner.org/resources/browse.html
10. MathTV - http://www.mathtv.com/

Moodle Books & Screen Capturing -- from Moodle Girl's Blog

Essential Books for User Interface Designers [12-17-09] -- from designingwebinterfaces.com by Theresa Neil

 

Proverbs 1 -- Warning Against Rejecting Wisdom [V 20 - 33]

Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:

"How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?

If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you.

But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke,

I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you- when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you.

"Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me.

Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the LORD, since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.

For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm."

-- from A Hands-On Overview of the Semantic Web (2009)

Google Browser Size -- from Konigi.com and Google
...is a visualization of browser window sizes for web sites. Enter a URL into the app, and the page is displayed behind an overlay showing the percentage of browser users who are able to view the visible portion, based on their browser's available viewport size, and their display's screen resolution. For example, the "90%" contour means that 90% of people visiting the site have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

Transliteration goes global -- from Google
Most of us use a keyboard to enter text; it's one of the most basic activities we perform on a computer. However even this simple activity can be cumbersome in many parts of the world. If you've ever tried to type in a non-Roman script using a Roman keyboard, you know that it can be difficult to do. Many of us at Google's Bangalore office experienced this problem firsthand. Roman keyboards are the norm in India, making it difficult to type in Indian languages. We decided to tackle this problem by making it very easy to type phonetically using Roman characters and we launched this service as Google Transliteration.

Building a social learning environment -- from Social Media In Learning by Jane Hart
The series looks at three different ways of creating a social learning environment - for free or at low cost:

• Part 1 - Using free public social media tools, October 2009
• Part 2 - Using Google tools, November 2009
• Part 3 - Using Elgg, an open source social engine, January 2010

12/16/09

Interesting...ability to charge per video/lecture...

Lessons Learned From Lessons Learned: The Fit Between Online Education “Best Practices” and Small School Reality -- by Al S. Lovvorn, Ph.D., Michael M. Barth, Ph.D.,R. Franklin Morris, Jr., Ph.D., John E. Timmerman, D.B.A, ; resource from Stephen Downes.
Abstract
Schools of all types and sizes are exploring the merits and facets of online learning approaches; but, the online delivery literature has focused on “best practices” generated primarily through the experiences of larger schools that are on the leading edge of this innovation. Small public schools, on the other hand, are faced with unique challenges in profiting from the advice of these first movers. Small schools are hampered as a result of severely constrained resources, among which are personnel, money, infrastructure, and time. These factors limit the ability of small public institutions to fully adopt widely approved online best practices. This article reviews contemporary research on the implementation of online learning, examines one small public school’s experience as a case study, discusses the disparities between the capabilities of large versus small public institutions of higher education, and outlines implications for other small schools that wish to pursue online education.

Tips for Building a Personal Learning Network on Campus and Online -- from Faculty Focus by Maryellen Weimer

21 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade -- from The Business Insider
Along these lines, also see:
21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020 -- from TeachPaperless

Elluminate: your grandkid's classroom - Matt Bowman, VatorNews -- quote below and resource from Ray Schroeder
Wondering what school will be like for the next generation? Check out Elluminate. It gives an instructor the ability to hold a web conference with up to 300 participants, host interactive displays, video streaming, private-but-moderated chats between participants and just about every function a teacher could want in an online classroom. Last week, the company announced it’s social network, LearnCentral, which launched in June of this year, has reached 25,000 members worldwide.

Webinars: Past, Present and Future -- from Karl Kapp

Webinar: The Future of eLearning Content -- by Janet Clarey

Video streaming still on the rise -- from vator.tv
Nielsen reports online video streams for month of November up 17% year-over-year

Detroit PS Expands Use of Online Writing Tool -- from The Journal by Scott Aronowitz
Detroit Public Schools (DPS) will increase its use of the online writing program My Access! from Vantage Learning. Citing positive feedback from students already using the software and from teachers who say they have seen noticeable improvements in their students' writing skills, DPS will increase from 300 to 500 the number students using the program at the district's Cass Technical High School.

Balancing a worrisome thought about multitasking and work capability -- from Steve Hargadon

5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year – 2009 -- from FlowingData.com

Managing Blogs in the Classroom -- from TechTicker.net by Mike Bogle

12/15/09

Wimba Modern Marvels 2009 -- from Wimba.com
Top-Ten Unique and Innovative Uses of Wimba Collaboration

Virtual Schools -- from Education Next by Terry Moe, Larry Cuban and John Chubb
Will education technology change the role of the teacher and the nature of learning?

Brace yourself for the real-time Web -- from CNN by Pete Cashmore

The next generation of computer interfaces will bring together the physical and digital worlds -- from Ross Dawson

Web accessibility no longer an afterthought -- from CNN by Tom Krazit

Empowering Deaf Online Learners with Video Discussions -- from MPB Reflections

As I had expected, the faculty turnout for the workshop was small -- there was only one person who showed up. But this faculty member brought something very unique to my workshop. She was deaf. And she was there to learn about VoiceThread. Hmmm.

Embedded in my VoiceThread presentation, I had an example that Steve Muth, a Co-Founder of VoiceThread, had shared with me that showcases what I consider an amazingly innovative use of VoiceThread. What you see below is a VoiceThread that contains two slides. The first slide includes an introductory video comment by who I believe is a teacher (and I'm sorry I can't identify her). Then click on the "right arrow" icon to go to slide two. There you will view a discussion in which deaf children are empowered to engage in an online dialogue using sign language, rather than being required to type their thoughts. Imagine the liberating potential of this medium... [emphasis DSC]

New Rubric – Blog commenting -- from Educational Origami

eLearning Development: 4 Tech Considerations When Using Videos -- from upside learning blog

Fix Boring Schools, Not Kids Who Are Bored -- from the Innovative Educator

From DSC:
I think it would be incredibly difficult to teach in any K-12 school, as the variety of agendas being expected of me would seem overwhelming. So I don't post this item as a criticism.

However, I do think the topic of engagement is critical throughout K-20. Due to the technologies and media the K-12'ers see and experience each day, it may take more to keep them engaged. Therefore, I believe we need content created by -- and delivered by -- teams of specialists.

12/14/09

The Educator-to-Student Ratio -- from InsideHigherEd.com by Joshua Kim
College teaching is transitioning from a craft model where a single faculty member designs, delivers and evaluates a course to a model that encompasses a range of professionals. This shift has been led by online courses, but is filtering out towards hybrid and on-ground classes. In this model a faculty member (subject matter expert) works with a team of learning designers, library subject specialists, media experts, and technologists to create and deliver the course.

A team approach for developing and delivering effective online courses is a necessity. The online environment is unforgiving of poor pedagogy and course design, and requires the introduction of multimedia content and collaborative platforms to succeed. The business model of online course delivery, namely eliminating the need for physical classrooms and the ability to grow enrollment, has facilitated the funding of the course design/delivery team approach. [emphasis above by DSC]

From DSC:
(This comment is aimed at content creation and delivery.) Just as in the medical world, those of us within higher education need to specialize . No longer can one person do it all. We need to move towards content that has been developed by a team of specialists.

Luke 1:26-28 -- from Bible Gateway
[The Birth of Jesus Foretold] In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."

How Long is the Ideal Learning Event? -- from Karl Kapp

New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education
Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, 2009, 138p. ISBN: 978-1-74128-169-9 (online). Complete book available here - individual chapters below...

How Wikis Streamline Student Collaboration Projects -- from Faculty Focus by Mary Bart

Utter the words “group project” and you’re likely to hear at least a few groans from your students. The reasons for their dislike of group work are many, but logistical difficulties of getting everyone together and lazy group members who don’t pull their own weight are two of the biggest complaints.

With wikis, you’re able to remove these two obstacles because wiki sites not only make collaboration a breeze, but they contain tracking tools that let instructors see who’s contributing to the project, and when they’re making their contributions.

In the recent online seminar, Designing an Effective Collaborative Wiki Project, Rhonda Ficek, Ph.D., director of instructional technology services at Minnesota State University Moorhead, provided an overview of the different types of wikis, the benefits of using them for group activities, and how to use a rubric to evaluate wiki-based projects.

-- my thanks to
Mr. Joseph Byerwalter
for this resource

Social Media: Trends and Implications for Learning -- Dave Cormier and George Siemens
The recordings for all sessions, including December's, are available here. We are continuing the series in 2010 and will provide more information on dates soon.

10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010 -- from ReadWriteWeb.com by Ravit Lichtenberg from Ustrategy.com

From DSC:
How could we use this technology within education?

Can gaming change education? - Meris Stansbury, eSchool News -- item and quote below from Ray Schroeder
As video games continue to permeate our culture, schools and students are increasingly interested in using video games for learning. This interest has prompted universities and neurologists to explore what makes a successful educational game, what the current barriers to adoption are, and how gaming as a whole affects the brain. According to a recent paper by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), games, when developed correctly and used appropriately, can engage players in learning that is specifically applicable to school curriculum—and teachers can leverage the learning in these games without disrupting the worlds of either "play" or school.

4 tech trends to watch -- from money.cnn.com by Michael V. Copeland, senior writer
Tech investing is all about the next big thing. Here are the trends that could really pay off:

1. On-demand software
2. The rise of the smartphone
3. Data, data, everywhere
4. Electricity gets smart

Top 10 Ways Social Media Will Impact Employee Development and Training in 2010 -- from LearningPutty.com by Renée Robbins

• Microblogging
• Text and voice
• Networks
• Forums
• Blogs
• Video
• Webcasting
• Wiki
• Google Wave
• Smart Phone applications

Professors push foreign language to the next level - Alexa Sykes, the Pendulum -- item and quote below from Ray Schroeder
Imagine having the luxury of traveling to another country and experiencing the language and culture without the hassle of purchasing a plane ticket or checking luggage. This ideal situation is now possible with Digital Game-Based Learning and is helping foreign language students at Elon University experience the countries of the languages they are studying without ever leaving their computer chairs. According to David Neville, assistant professor of German and director of language learning technologies, Elon is the only university in the entire country that has begun to integrate DGBL into its foreign language curriculum.

Doing What Works -- from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Educational Sciences
"We make it easy to find research-based practices. Our mission is to translate research-based practices into practical tools to improve classroom instruction."

45 Breathtaking Examples of Slow Shutter Speed Photography -- from SmashingApps.com

Free Screencasting Tools: Guide To The Best Tools To Record Your Screen -- from Robin Good's blog by Daniele Bazzano

The Future of the Multiversity -- from Chief Learning Officer
Learning and business executives who are successful in developing a multiversity, and not just a training organization, should be aware of the scope and power of what they are creating. In an era when the answer to the majority of a student’s content questions is 0.27 seconds away via a search engine, the heritage of the traditional university as a “brain dump” by renowned professors is becoming increasingly irrelevant. What organizations and nations in the knowledge economy require instead are people capable of engaging in rigorous, cross-disciplinary problem formulation and collaborative work to solve those problems. That’s what a corporate multiversity can deliver, if organizations and their executives are willing to step up to the opportunity.

Galatians 4:4-5 -- from Bible Gateway
But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.

Digital Dialects - Activities for Learning 55+ Languages -- from Free Technology for Teachers

Exploring a new, more dynamic way of reading news with Living Stories -- from Google
There's been no shortage of talk recently about the "future of news." Should publishers charge for news online? How do they replace lost sources of revenue such as classified ads? How will accountability journalism endure? And, even more fundamentally, will news survive in the digital era? These are questions we're deeply interested in, and we've been exploring potential solutions. But what's often overlooked in these debates is the nature of the news story itself and the experience of how it's read online. We believe it's just as important to experiment with how news organizations can take advantage of the web to tell stories in new ways — ways that simply aren't possible offline.

The future of video and man-machine interfaces -- from Ross Dawson

Social Media Burnout-part 4: Finding Balance -- from Donelle O'Brien

Will Learning Adopt the Linux Model for Development in the Future? -- from the Upside Learning blog

I came across this really interesting interview with Greg Kroah-Hartman – Linux Kernel Dev/Maintainer. In this interview, Greg talks about how the Linux project has accommodated the accelerating rate of change for the kernel. It was very interesting to draw parallels between some of what he says and learning.

“And then I send stuff off to Linus. So, Linus trusts 10 to 15 people, and I trust 10 to 15 people. And I’m one of the subsystem maintainers. So, it’s a big, giant web of trust helping this go on.”

Web of Trust’ Networks of trust are becoming very important to the way we create products/services where each individual on the network is a potential contributor. There are just such networks in the enterprise as well, and they play a big role in how tacit knowledge is transferred in the organization. Increasingly, social networking tools are available within the organization and analyzing these networks gives a good idea who the knowledge leaders in an organization are, and which individuals form their network. The ability to target and influence knowledge leaders will lead to similar effects on their networks as well.

Storytelling on the web -- from carsonified.com by Rob Mills

Note sharing sites - a challenge to academic experiences? -- from Ian Gardner

Ten Things I (no longer) Believe About Transforming Teaching and Learning with Technology: Introduction -- from Stephen Ehrmann, The TLT Group

12/11/09

Isaiah 7:14 (New International Version)
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

5 K-12 Technology Trends for 2010 -- from The Journal by Bridget McCrea
A look at the top technology tools and trends to keep an eye on in the coming year

R2D2: A model for using technology in education -- from eSchoolNews.com by Curtis J. Bonk
'Read, Reflect, Display, and Do' can help instructors leverage the internet's potential to help students learn.

During the past two decades, I have designed several models and frameworks to help college professors sort through their options. The Read, Reflect, Display, and Do (R2D2) model is one such framework. While some look at it as a learning-style model, it is intended as a problem-solving wheel that represents phases of learning--from reading and exploration, to reflective writing, to visualization of the content learned, to attempts to try it out. R2D2 is also a means to help instructors consider diverse learner needs. At its core, it is also a tool for reflecting on one's teaching practices. The four phases are described below...

Subject: 2010 IRS Mileage Rate
Please note that the mileage reimbursement rate for 2010 will be 50.0 cents per mile for miles incurred January 1, 2010 and after.

From DSC:
Using tools like Wimba Classroom is looking better all the time...

Excerpt from:
Online learning opens doors wider for students in tough economy:

Reform does not include building more brick and mortar "solutions" to absorb additional "traditional" students. Reform has more do with rethinking the way we design and deliver learning opportunities to our students, and understanding the nature of today's learner, who wants to be engaged, yet needs convenient access. Reform must include new strategies to support students completing their degrees, and attracting adults back into our educational system to complete their education.  These adults must sustain employment while continuing their studies.

Florida's state college system, including Broward, is uniquely poised to embrace a key component of the American Graduation Initiative — the "online skills laboratory."  Through the state's Orange Grove Digital Repository, Florida's colleges and universities already share flash animations, lessons, videos, open access textbooks, books, games, maps, pictures, graphs, lesson plans, professional development materials, courses, institutional research, and planning documents [from DSC: See consortiums and pooling of resrouces page].

However, in an era of diminishing state support, we must find ways to reduce cost while increasing access. Clearly, the face-to-face model cannot be sustained in an era of diminished public support and demand for increased access. Nor can higher education increase degree production, as we need to do, by building capacity through tuition increases that make higher education unaffordable [emphasis DSC]. We must build in new ways — we must reach out to adults to help them complete their college education while maintaining employment, and we must use redesigned online learning opportunities to connect with students.

-- J. David Armstrong, Jr., President of Broward College,
and former Chancellor of the Florida Community College System

Video by NJIT Online Discusses Wimba's Interactive Attributes -- from Wimba.com
Watch how Wimba facilitates interactive online math programs and guest lectures in this video moderated by Katia Passerini, Hurlburt Professor of Management of Information Systems at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) School of Management. When talking about NJIT’s distance learning program which utilizes the Wimba Collaboration Suite, Passerini says, “It’s a very interactive experience, it creates a community that goes beyond the classroom, and it’s really easy and user friendly.”

Video Streaming – Can This Be A Useful Tool For Online Education? -- from onlineedublog.com

What is the Future of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE's)? -- from Peter Beaumont

The average American child spends over 40 hours per week consuming media, the equivalent of a full-time job. This means that by the time children born today turn 30, they will have spent an entire decade of their lives in front of some type of screen. Remote Control, based on the findings of the Kaiser Family Foundation's landmark study Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8 to 18-year-olds, examines the implications of this unprecedented level of exposure. Putting a human face on the report's statistical findings, filmmaker Bob McKinnon explores the media habits of two families, supplementing their powerful personal insights with testimony from media experts, educators, and policymakers.

Remote Control offers a fascinating look at the centrality of media in our lives, revealing far-reaching effects that we are only beginning to understand, and suggesting ways we might begin to help our children live a life instead of watching one. More info...

Education beats Poverty – and enables people to help themselves.

• Education is key to breaking the cycle of poverty for families, communities and whole countries.
• It leads to economic growth, democracy and a more stable future.
• Education is the best tool we have for tackling poverty, and it is the one investment that ultimately pays for itself: When a child gets educated, they will eventually earn more and be better able to support their family.
• A child who goes to school will earn an extra 10% for every year of schooling they receive and be 50% less likely to become infected with HIV/AIDS if the complete Primary School.

Education For All is urgently needed if we are to tackle poverty, ill health and hunger.  An education can offer hope and a future to children in the developing world who desperately deserve a chance in life. More info at Join1Goal.com.

A New Wiki: “The Evaluation of Digital Work” -- from profhacker.com by George Williams

Not only are digital tools transforming the commercial publishing business (Well, hello there, Kindle!), they’re also changing–slowly and unevenly–the production and distribution of academic scholarship. However, it’s not enough to notice that scholars are distributing essays in non-traditional ways: via online-only journals like Postmodern Culture (one of the oldest of such journals) and Digital Defoe (one of the youngest), for example, or through pre-print sites like arXiv.org.

As Christine L. Borgman writes, we must also pay attention to the ways in which, “the wealth of online information, tools, and services [allow scholars] to ask new questions, create new kinds of scholarly products, and reach new audiences.” The digital tools have long been available to us, she points out, but it’s the “social and policy changes that are most profound.” This statement assumes, of course, that there actually will be social and policy changes to accompany the changes in scholarly work enabled by the changes in technology. Unless tenure and promotion criteria change, unless hiring practices change, unless grant awarding practices change, our scholarship will remain largely defined by the previous technological revolution: print.

12/10/09

Streaming TV comes to more devices (December 2009) -- from Becta [UK]

A Collection of PLE diagrams -- from edtechpost

College for $99 a Month -- from washingtonmonthly.com by Kevin Carey, back in Sep/Oct issue
The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities.

12/9/09

5 Higher Ed Tech Trends To Watch in 2010 -- from CampusTechnology.com by Bridget McCrea

1. More Interactive Classrooms
2. More Information at Your Fingertips
3. Mashed-Up Technologies
4. Breaking Out of Technology Isolation
5. Capabilities That Go Beyond 1:1

More Interactive Classrooms
Today, both students and educators are tapping technology to make the classroom environment more interactive and dynamic. Purdue University's Web-based Hotseat application, which allows students to use handheld devices to interact with professors in the classroom environment, is just a taste of what's to come [emphasis DSC].

"Anything that helps make the classroom more interactive, animated and engaging--be it multimedia, streaming video or some other innovation--will be in demand this year,"[emphasis DSC] said Gregory Phelan, chair of the department of chemistry and associate professor at SUNY College at Cortland in New York, which is upgrading its facilities to include streaming video that professors can access via the server while teaching (rather than "carrying" the content with them into class). "We'll be there soon."

An Introduction to the Eno Board by PolyVision (Workshops) - Friday, December 18
Next week CIT's Teaching & Learning team is offering two, 45-minute workshop sessions on the Eno Interactive Whiteboard from PolyVision. The Eno whiteboard is a ceramic steel board that allows instructors to:

• Go from markers to multimedia, from ink to internet right on the whiteboard.
• Project a computer screen onto the whiteboard.
• Navigate through documents, presentations or web sites right from the board.
• Make notes or annotations with a regular dry-erase marker or interactive stylus.
• Save all the interactive notes to post to a server, print or email to their students.
• Reload earlier sessions and begin where they left off previously.

Friday, December 18 -- 11:00 - 11:45 a.m. | Friday, December 18 -- 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Both sessions are in HL 122 (on the 1st floor of Hekman Library). Register for either of these sessions.

50 Best Blogs for Special Ed Teachers -- from onlineuniversities.com

Learn the five secrets of innovation -- from CNN.com
Professors from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University have just completed a six-year study of more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneurs, that included interviews with high-profile entrepreneurs including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell, founder of Dell computers...

Six Tips for Effective Writing Groups -- from Faculty Focus by Kathryn Linder

Is Internet Addiction Disorder Real? -- fom internetphenomenon.co.uk

How the iPhone Could Reboot Education | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
The verdict? It’s working quite well. 2,100 Abilene [Christian University] students, or 48 percent of the population, are now equipped with a free iPhone. Fully 97 percent of the faculty population has iPhones, too. The iPhone is aiding Abilene in giving students the information they need — when they want it, wherever they want it, said Bill Rankin, a professor of medieval studies who helped plan the initiative.

Usability Testing Toolkit: Resources, Articles, and Techniques -- from noupe.com

Top 125 Workplace eLearning Posts of 2009 -- from Tony Karrer

Best of Edutopia's 2009 Technology Coverage -- from Edutopia.org
Year in Review: Ten great 21st-century-classroom resources.

-- from TeachPaperless

12/8/09

How we’ll be publishing our newspapers/magazines in the future
-- from mnvideopro.wordpress.com

Congratulations to
Calvin College Professor Joel Adams for starting this effort!

From DSC:
Wouldn't it be cool if...?

Looking at this video...

Wouldn't it be cool if students showed how they did a math problem -- even if such entries included many wrong and different answers? They could explain their thinking outloud while going through a problem. The teacher or professor could see where their thinking process was either right or went wrong...and could then address such items via electronic feedback (which would be accessible for all of the students to hear and see).

Perhaps the faculty member could even create such recordings, saying something like, "Here are some problems spots I've seen in the past." So a wiki-like piece but with the wrong answers...followed or preceeded by the right answer.

Keynoter: Make higher education more accessible -- from eCampusNews (p. 29 of 35)

Colleges should consider accrediting web-based programs offered at free or low-cost online schools, making higher education more widely available to populations with little access to post-secondary classes, a former official from the United Kingdom’s Open University told EDUCAUSE conference attendees Nov. 6.

Brenda Gourley, vice chancellor of the Open University from 2002-09 and a long-time advocate for education’s role in social justice, stressed that colleges and universities that cannot afford to launch web-based classes should evaluate courses offered at ventures such as the Open University and allow students to take the class for school credit.

Gourley warned against trimming back college offerings as campus operating budgets shrink and endowments dwindle, reminding IT officials gathered at the conference that this could be a chance to bolster online education that would keep campuses financially afloat and serve non-traditional students whose schedules don’t allow for on-campus lectures.

“I don’t think these … times should be some kind of excuse for putting that on hold while we sort something else out,” she said. “Exactly the opposite. … If your strategic thinking of technology isn’t combined in your holistic strategic thinking, I think you’re in trouble” [emphasis DSC].

Google launches five new services and tweaks -- from Bryan Alexander

Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today -- from publicagenda.org by Jean Johnson, Andrew Yarrow, Jonathan Rochkind, and Amber Ott

From DSC:
Interesting how efforts aimed at accessibility are helping many more of us, such as this one:

12/7/09

Papastergiou, M. (2009). Exploring the potential of computer and video games for health and physical education: A literature review. Computers & Education 53(3) 603-622.

Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age -- from serendipity35.net
Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age was an invite-only Google forum this past October to bring together 200 of the nation’s top thought leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, research, philanthropy, and policy to create and act upon a breakthrough strategy for scaling-up effective models of teaching and learning for children. The forum was hosted by Google, Inc., in cooperation with forum founders: the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, Common Sense Media, the MacArthur Foundation. Since I didn't get the invite to Mountain View, CA for the event, I did take a look at some of the video of sessions.

• Day 1 Keynote: Geoff Canada
• Breakthrough Ideas to Drive Student Success
• Teachers for a Digital Age
• New Learning Designs
• Literacy 2.0
• The Next Revolution in Learning

$3.5 billion available to help failing schools -- from eSchoolNews.com
School Improvement Grants target the nation's worst schools; ED aims to turn around 5,000 schools in five years. The Obama administration will spend at least $3.5 billion to push local officials around the country to close failing schools and reopen them with new teachers and principals, and applications for the money are now available to states.

Keep students connected to your curriculum from home and back -- with iPod Touches -- from learningcontinutity
If you use iPod Touches in your classroom and students have access to either an iPod Touch or an iPhone, here are some "Apps" that we have on the AUHSD iPod Touches that can help with continuity of learning. iTunes required to access the links. Use the "Sort" link to find Apps by discipline.  Items labeled "z-Possible" are possibilities to add to the iPod Touch library once they are evaluated by teachers.

Send Large Files Of Any Size: Guide To The Best Tools And Services To Transfer Large Files -- by Daniele Bazzano from Robin Good's blog

Operating System File-Sharing Technology Multiple Upload Expiry Date PipeBytes Web-based Storage server NO N/A 2Peer Desktop app, web-based P2P YES - Unlimited N/A FilePhile Desktop app P2P YES - Unlimited N/A Zapr Desktop app Storage server YES - Unlimited Unlimited Otengo Desktop app Email YES - Unlimited Unlimited FilesOverMiles Web-based P2P NO N/A Skype Desktop, mobile app P2P YES - Unlimited N/A SendThisFile Web-based Storage server YES - 3 3 days Conexme Desktop app P2P YES - Unlimited N/A GigaSize Web-based Storage server YES - Unlimited Unlimited Binfer Desktop app P2P YES - Unlimited N/A

Interactive media solutions for collaborative academia initiatives -- from Tracy Boyer at Innovative Interactivity

Making Change for a Quarter: Re-Envisioning 6th Grade IT -- from always learning by Kim Cofino

Getting to Know GarageBand -- from always learning by Kim Cofino
Musical Composition and Podcasting in the Elementary Classroom

From DSC:
When I was interacting with a group of 7-10th graders two summers ago, they all instantly loved this application! It is highly engaging.

Recordings/talks from the 2009 Virtual School Symposium

Software helps students with autism -- from eSchoolNews.com by Laura Devaney
Study showed improved communication skills among students using TeachTown Basics, which combines both on- and off-computer activities

Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs
Resources and ideas for teachers of learners with severe, profound, intensive, significant, complex or multiple special needs.

10 websites to keep your finger on the online pulse -- from webdistortion.com

Universities Sign PBS TeacherLine for Teacher Continuing Ed -- from The Journal by Dian Schaffhauser
Three universities--Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant; Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, ID; and Madonna University in Livonia, MI--have joined 25 other institutions in granting teachers graduate credit for completing PBS TeacherLine courses. The service offers about 130 online facilitator-led courses in reading, math, science, instructional technology, and instructional strategies.

Short-Term Memory and Web Usability [Jakob Nielsen]
Summary: The human brain is not optimized for the abstract thinking and data memorization that that websites often demand. Many usability guidelines are dictated by cognitive limitations.

12/5/09

2010 Horizon Report: Preview

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

 Mobile Computing
 Open Content

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

 Electronic Books
 Simple Augmented Reality

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

 Gesture-Based Computing
 Visual Data Analysis

World's largest open university goes mobile -- from pr-inside and above report from the NMC
The classroom of the future is moving to mobile phones, and reaching farther into India thanks to a new partnership between Ericsson and The Indira Gandhi National Open University.

A series of 1-hour FREE webinars concerning the emergence of Mobile Technologies and its game-changing effects on how we learn. The first event mLearning Goes Mainstream will include two presentations:

“Key Findings on Mobile Learning Products and Services”
Mobile Learning has gone mainstream and entered the wide adoption phase. Drawing from key findings of Ambient Insight’s report on Mobile Learning Products and Services: Forecast and Analysis 2008-2013, Tyson Greer CEO of Ambient Insight, will discuss market trends, catalysts, and opportunities in Mobile Learning. She will review advances in development tools and platforms, and also highlight two types of products: brain trainers and location-based learning products and services.

“Educational Mobility”
Mobility is defined as “the quality of being able to move freely”. The combination of a sound pedagogy and an understanding of morphing “mobile” technologies and environments can help us better understand and deliver mobile learning solutions that actually work. This presentation, by Supra Manohar EVP Emantras, defines the meaning of Educational Mobility and introduces MOBL21 as a cost effective and unique mLearning platform.

Innovative eLearning campus for Biblical Theological Seminary -- from PitchEngine.com
MindActive Inc, a Web marketing and eLearning development firm based in St. Louis, Missouri, recently created and launched a new online eLearning platform for Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, PA.

Biblical Theological Seminary, an accredited interdenominational seminary, had asked MindActive, and its partner, Shapevine.com, to help create an innovative online campus, called “The Digital Campus Project”, so it could offer credit-based courses for its Master's Degree in Missional Church Planting.

“We have integrataed our live interactive technologies with an open-source application called Moodle, to build the Learning Management portion of the eCampus. They wanted the ability to enroll students for online courses using their existing registration process. The integrated eCampus platform was built to allow users seamless use of their course applications with a single login, said Paul Shirer, partner with MindActive”.

MindActive also integrated their own innovative video webcasting, live event video, and video email applications into the seminary’s Learning Management System (LMS) to allow administrators, students, educators, and faculty members to share, communicate, and collaborate all within the same school based platform.

10 Web trends to watch in 2010 -- from CNN by Pete Cashmore

ED's New Tech Chief Previews National Tech Plan -- from Assistive Technology

A strategic vision for online learning -- from OrgeonLive.com by Denise Herrenbruck; original link from scherlund.blogspot.com As more students turn to Oregon virtual charter schools, there's a brewing conflict between educators and parents in the K-12 community. Educators are worried about the redistribution of public school funding and how to monitor quality and compliance in schools operated with business sector services. Many parents are fuming over the Oregon Legislature's move to halt the growth of virtual schools. They want the freedom to chose a school option that they say works for their children. Both sides have important concerns, but there is something crucial missing from the debate. A strategic vision for online learning is the key to finding a solution that's best for kids.

New Series: Principles Of Design -- from sitepoint.com by Jennifer Farley
Elements and Principles
In the past we’ve looked at elements of design, namely Type, Line, Shape, Texture.. Consider these as the building blocks for your design. The principles that we’ll look at over the next few weeks are what makes the structure strong and holds it together. The five principles that can help to build a strong design and make it stand out are:

• Balance
  To create a clean, balanced look, every element should have a visual connection with another element on the page. Don’t just fill your page with stuff willy nilly (official design term). Nothing should be placed on the page arbitrarily.
• Proximity
  When elements that are related to each other are placed close together, they become one visual unit, reducing clutter and giving a clear structure. Organizing information into appropriate groups is one of the quickest and easiest ways to improve your designs.
• Contrast
  If everything on the page looks the same, you’re going to have a pretty boring design. By bringing contrast into the design, your page will instantly become more attractive. Contrast can be applied to shapes, colors, type and lines. For good contrast, make the elements very different.
• Value
  Value can be described simply as the relative lightness or darkness of an object. Like contrast, value can add depth and dimension to your designs.
• Color
  Color and value are closely related. Color has incredible power to create a mood and change the intent of a design. Color choices should be made carefully to ensure the success of any design.

Look, Listen, Learn: 10 Podcasts For Designers -- from sitepoint.com by Jennifer Farley

Ben Stein: Christmas Confessions -- excerpt from About.com webpage. It has been circulating via email, and is "a commentary on the state of American culture attributed to author, pundit, actor, and game show host Ben Stein". Description: Email flier | Circulating since: Jan. 2006 | Status: Attribution is partly correct Email example (below) contributed by Ross F., Feb. 11, 2006:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu.

If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period.

I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.

But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke, it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this Happen?" (regarding Katrina)

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?

In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says

Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?

From DSC:
I have felt this way for decades...it takes a lot to amaze me these days. Yet I'm utterly amazed at how patient the LORD is with me and with others. I hope there's still time to seek Him while He may be found in the United States of America. I don't mean to come off as some righteous know-it-all telling others how to live. Conversely I'm tired of seeing others continually slap the LORD's face, refuse to honor Him, and arrogantly tell the Creator of all to go take a hike (i.e. saying "We know better than You."). We refuse to let Him into our schools and many other institutions. Then we wonder why our nation is crumbling around us and our youth are so disillusioned and often depressed.

Few, if any, of the major news-related shows ever touch upon the real problem within us -- our hearts and our minds and the sinful nature we battle throughout our lives. Here at Calvin, we try to work on the hearts and minds of our students as well as ourselves. We know we need help. We don't kick the LORD out of our lives and out "of the public square."

Again, we know we need Him. Some people call this weakness. But they might just want to read Psalm 73 (NIV), of which the following verses jumped out at me:

When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me... till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.

One last thought here. I hesitated to publish these thoughts at first, as I'm trying to contribute to the world and make it a better place; and I realize there will be some (many?) who read this and instantly remove me from their list of folks they check in on. But I'm not ashamed of the gospel...and I don't answer to those folks.

"Every man is born an original, but sadly, most men die copies." -- Abraham Lincoln; per the Quote of the Day from TADO

Putting some pieces together: Learning Activities and Learning Motivation -- from Williams Instructional Design, LLC

-- resource from Helge Scherlund

12/4/09

Items regarding intelligent agents

• 2009 IEEE Symposium on Intelligent Agents -- from IEEE
• The Intelligent Software Agents Lab -- Carnegie Mellon
• Classes of Intelligent Agents -- wikipedia.org
• Intelligent Agents - Knowledge Bases -- from compinfo.co.uk
  Intelligent agents are programs that carry out a task unsupervised and apply some degree of intelligence to the task. The intelligence may be pretty minimal but often will include some degree of learning from past experience. For example, an agent that searches the Internet for interesting material can be told by the user whether what it found was interesting or not. In this way it can be trained to be more successful in the future.Some intelligent agents can also interact with one another. There is considerable ongoing research in this field, with many exciting possibilities.
• Intelligent Agents in Desire 2 Learn (D2L) -- from James Moore, DePaul
  I have been teaching a class in Desire2Learn (MKT 595: Internet Marketing) as part of long-term study and comparison of Learning Management Systems (teaching in Blackboard, D2L and Moodle to explore the respective advantages and disadvantages of each system). My colleagues in SNL, SoE and SPS are doing the same. I had not posted about my experiments here, but have decided that I should. This week I decided to see how well Intelligent Agents could be put to use. Intelligent Agents are scriptable events that send out e-mails based upon a set of criteria. You could use them to send a gentle nudge to students who had not logged into the course for several days, or who had not completed an assignment before the deadline. This is a great feature, but I did not want to send students automated e-mails until I had tested things for myself. What I did instead was to create an intelligent agent that sent me e-mail as each of students completed milestone tasks. This highlighted some issues that I would have to work through...
• Intelligent Agents: A Physics Education Opportunity in Latin-America -- from journal.lapen.org.mx
  Abstract: Intelligent Agents are being applied in a wide range of processes and everyday applications. Their development is not new, in recent years they have had an increased attention and design in learning and as mentoring tools. In this paper we discuss the definition of what an intelligent agent is; how they are applied; how thy look like; recent implementations of agents; agents as support in learning process; their state in Latin-American countries and future developments and trends that will permit a better communication between people and agents. Keywords: Intelligent Agent, Software Development, Tutoring System, Web-based Systems, Artificial Intelligence.
• Intelligent Agents Software -- from sourceforge.net
• IVA 09
  Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are interactive characters that exhibit human-like qualities and communicate with humans or  with each other using natural human modalities such as  speech and gesture. They are capable of real-time perception, cognition and action that allows them to participate in a dynamic social environment.
• Using Intelligent Agents to Change the Delivery of Education -- from John Rosbottom, University of Portsmouth and Claude Moulin, Université du Havre IUT; Annual Joint Conference Integrating Technology into Computer Science Education
• Designing Distributed Learning Environments with Intelligent Software Agents -- Fuhua Oscar Lin (Editor)

From DSC: A brief thought on this Friday morning...

It's snowing like crazy in Grand Rapids, MI. Some areas of West Michigan are seeing up to 18" this morning, and 100+ schools are closed throughout the surrounding areas. But what was interesting to me about our first major snowfall this year -- and different from the past years (at least that I can remember) -- is that all of the radio stations redirected people to their websites for the list of school closings.

Not a big deal right? Well...it is in a way. If you want to (quickly and easily) know if your school is closed, you need to have Internet access. If not, you need to find other means...and such means probably will not be as quick/efficient. (What was that phone # again? Which office/dept do I call? The scrolling list on the TV takes forever to get to my school district. etc. etc.)

Hmm...now look at the parallel trends happening in education....one better be connected into the Internet from here on out. One better be connected with peers/colleagues all over the world if you want to be the best in your field....or learn a topic with the most up-to-date information.

Using Google Reader to Streamline Your Reading -- from ProfHacker.com by Amy Cavender

Blended Learning -- book by Pete Sharma and Barney Barrett
The ideal companion for any teacher interested in the use of technology in the language classroom, Blended Learning provides a practical overview of current technology. It combines basic information for the technological novice with sophisticated ideas for using technology in the classroom. Blended learning offers practical ideas and suggestions for ways to use technology to enhance and support students' learning. Pete and Barney also examine the implications of the use of technology for language teaching methodology in general. Blended Learning is ideal for:

• Teachers already interested in using technology who want to discover new and innovative ways to use it
• Teachers with little experience of technology and/or feel unsure about implementing it in their classrooms.

From DSC:
I like the way Macmillan is attempting to keep this "book" updated.

How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age -- by Alison J. Head, Ph.D. And Michael B. Eisenberg, Ph.D. | Project Information Literacy Progress Report | 12/1/09 | The Information School, University Of Washington; key findings below:

1. Almost all of the respondents relied on the same few information resources—regardless of which research contexts they were trying to satisfy and regardless of whether they were conducting course-related or everyday life research.
2. Google was the go-to resource for almost all of the students in the sample. Nearly all of the students in the sample reported always using Google, both for course-related research and everyday life research, and regardless of whether they were looking for the big picture, language, situational, or information gathering context.
3. When it came to course-related research, however, almost all of the respondents turned to course readings first—more than Google, and more than any other resource. The findings suggest that students in our study turned to course readings because the resource was inextricably tied to the course and the assignment, were at hand, and were sanctioned by the instructor.
4. In addition to course readings, nearly all of the respondents used scholarly databases in their course-related research in order to satisfy all four of their context needs.
5. Almost all of the students in our sample consulted their instructors first when looking for research information from a person—before they consulted librarians, if they did, at all.
6. Few respondents made use of librarians—whether it was during course-related or everyday life research.
7. Overall, the findings suggest that respondents appear to be driven by familiarity and habit. The use of convenient and nearby information resources—no matter what contextual questions they were trying to answer and no matter whether it was for a course assignment or for their personal use.

Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom -- from Faculty Focus
The reasons why students need to be involved and engaged when they attend college are well established. Engagement can be the difference between completing a degree and dropping out. Research has sought to identify what makes student involvement more likely. Factors like student-faculty interaction, active and collaborative learning experiences, involvement in extracurricular activities, and living on campus have all been shown to make a difference.

Not surprisingly, faculty play a critical role in student engagement … from the obvious: facilitating discussions in the classroom; to the often overlooked: maximizing those brief encounters we have with students outside of class. This special report features 15 articles that provide perspectives and advice for keeping students actively engaged in learning activities while fostering more meaningful interactions between students and faculty members, and among the students themselves.

Hybrid Education: The Interactive Class of Today and Tomorrow -- from educational technolgy & change blog

12/3/09

Elluminate recording here

Community Colleges Get Gift of Millions for Online Education -- from The Chronicle by Josh Fischman
While Congress is still weighing legislation that could put $500-million into the development of open, online courses, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has stepped up to the plate. The charity is giving $12.9-million to advance technology at community colleges, improving virtual learning environments for both students and teachers.

From DSC:
$500 million may go a long way towards creating highly-engaging, interactive, multimedia-based content that can then be accessed freely via the Internet. How is your college or university going to handle this if this trend continues? Also...if your college or university is in the middle of a fundraising campaign, you would be very wise to set aside $1-$5million of it for developing such engaging, interactive content.

Five key trends in assistive technology -- from eSchoolNews.com by Meris Stansbury
Convergence, portability, and customizability are among the features that will define the next generation of AT devices for students. Once considered a highly specialized field, assistive technology (AT) now increasingly can be found in applications and devices sold to the general public, says a new report that highlights several key trends in AT development. The Nation Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI) presented the report during its annual conference last month. The issue brief, titled "Unleashing the Power of Innovation for Assistive Technology," comes at a time of great opportunity for both schools and AT providers, the organization says. Download the Unleashing the Power of Innovation for Assistive Technology issue paper.

Wimba Study Break: Transitioning from Face-to-Face to Online Instruction
Even though most schools have transitioned some aspects of their in-classroom instruction to the online environment, there are still so many ways to do so effectively. Learn from two customers who have successfully helped their faculty make the leap. Join Gary Shouppe of Columbus State University (GA) as he replicated a face-to-face (f2f) masters degree program into an online degree program, and then hear from Cliff Eberhardt of Central Michigan University as he explains how using Wimba and Blackboard have helped ease faculty into online instruction because they feel it's easy for them to create effective online courses. Presented by: Gary Shouppe, Columbus State University & Cliff Eberhardt, Central Michigan University | Hosted by: Matt Wasowski, Wimba.

Lecture Capture Considerations in a University Environment [Camtasia Relay] -- from TechSmith

10 Power Tools for Lifelong Learners -- from Open Culture by Dan Colman

 

New Wave of Student Activism -- from InsideHigherEd.com
WASHINGTON -- Students at California public universities have been staging protests against budget cuts and fee hikes all fall, capturing local and national attention with administration building sit-ins, 24-hour library occupations and large outdoor rallies.

From DSC:
There is little doubt in my mind that we are seeing a shift in the power structure within higher education. Students will continue to become more knowledgeable "consumers" of educational offerings. As tuitions have increased, it seems to me that this has pressured students to demand relevancy and want to know how their learning directly applies to what they will need to be able to know and do in their futures. They will continue to demand more accessible, more affordable options. The Internet is starting to provide far less costly options -- so I believe that we are only seeing the beginnings of this shift in buyer/seller power.

BETT is the world’s largest educational technology event. Use this site to find products and suppliers, and discover the latest ways to use technology for teaching and learning.

The Cloud Opens the Floodgates for Faculty Innovation -- from CampusTechnology.com by Trent Batson
Web 2.0, named in 2004, was the cultural tipping point when virtualization or cloud computing became the emerging default throughout our society and therefore on campus: Though this moment is, and will be understood decades from now to be, the end of one human era--when the entire thrust of knowledge-making was toward permanence and individual authority--and the beginning of another when the entire thrust of knowledge-making is toward conversation and consensus authority, few have any sense of the true disrupted equilibrium we live within every day.

Items from Lynn Marentette re: the latest issue of IEEE's Computing Now:

• 3D Media and the Semantic Web 
  Michela Spagnuolo and Bianca Falcidieno, National Research Council of Italy
• Managing and Querying Distributed Multimedia Metadata Collections 
  Sebastien Laborie, Ana-Maria Manzat, and Florence Sedes
• Using Social Networking and Collections to Enable Video Semantics Acquisition
  Stephen J. Davis, Christian H. Ritz, Ian S. Burnett

12/2/09

Disrupting Class: Inspiring Change in Online Learning -- by Jamey Fitzpatrick, President & CEO, Michigan Virtual University and Michael Horn
Disrupting Class uses the theories of disruptive innovation to identify the root causes of schools’ struggles and suggests a path forward to customize an education for every child in the way he or she learns. In his keynote address, Horn will share the main ideas of his book to inspire change in today’s online learning field.

 

JISC Strategy 2010-2012 -- from JISC

Scholarly Communications must be Mobile -- from Academic Evolution

Five Tips for Wrapping Up a Course -- from Faculty Focus by Margaret Walsh

Brookings: Where has all the education journalism gone? -- from earlyedcoverage.org by Liz Willen
At a time of unprecedented federal involvement and investment in education, coverage of the issue is so lacking it makes up only 1.4 percent of national news coverage, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution. The report, entitled: "Invisible: 1.4 Percent Coverage for Education is Not Enough,'' finds scant coverage of critical issues like teaching, learning and curriculum; most stories "dealt with budget problems, school crime and the H1N! flu outbreak,'' according to the report, funded with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

India offers lessons for the world -- from The National by Anuj Chopra; original resource from Ray Schroeder
BANGALORE // Every day at 2am, Sapna Ajay, an English teacher in Raipur, wakes up to begin her lessons. As her first cup of coffee hits, Ms Ajay switches on her computer to connect with her student, who is sitting half a world away in the US. Receiving grammar lessons from an Indian teacher using an imperfect American accent at the other side of the globe may sound bizarre, but teaching in a virtual classroom has never been cheaper and more convenient, she says.

Hot Topics in eLearning for 2009 -- from Tony Karrer

50 Fascinating Lectures for Music Lovers -- from onlineuniversities.com

Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America; September 2009
The digital revolution has hit education, with more and more classrooms plugged into the whole wired world. But are schools making the most of new technologies? Are they tapping into the learning potential of today s Firefox/Facebook/cell phone generation? Have schools fallen through the crack of the digital divide?

In Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology, Allan Collins and Richard Halverson argue that the knowledge revolution has transformed our jobs, our homes, our lives, and therefore must also transform our schools. Much like after the school-reform movement of the industrial revolution, our society is again poised at the edge of radical change [emphasis DSC]. To keep pace with a globalized technological culture, we must rethink how we educate the next generation or America will be left behind. This groundbreaking book offers a vision for the future of American education that goes well beyond the walls of the classroom to include online social networks, distance learning with anytime, anywhere access, digital home schooling models, video-game learning environments, and more.

Notschool.net is "a proven successful alternative to traditional education" -- from inclusiontrust.org
Notschool.net is an international 'Online Learning Community' offering an alternative to traditional education for young people who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to engage with school or other complementary provisions such as home tutoring or specialist units. After almost 9 years and 5000 young people, Notschool.net is a full-time alternative provision; successfully demonstrating that young people for whom 'school does not fit' can renew their confidence in learning and gain a range of qualifications that recognise their progress. Notschool.net is a last resort for young people disengaged from classroom learning because of:

• Illness or phobia
• Pregnancy
• Bullying or disaffection
• Travelling
• Reluctance to learn
• Exclusion
• In care

P2P And The Social Cloud - The Emergence Of Peer Economic Systems - Part 2 -- from Robin Good's blog by Rafael Pezzi
P2P and The Social Cloud is a two-part white paper which discusses some of the limitations of the current economic system, in particular its dependence on non-renewable resources to sustain infinite growth. It also suggests considering the opportunity to move to a sustainable economy based on a new concept for building social networking services. This new concept, the Social Cloud can be summarized as  cloud computing running in a peer-to-peer social network.

Also see:
P2P & the Social Cloud - The Emergence Of Peer Economic Systems - Pt 1

12/1/09

2020 Visionaries -- from The Futurist

Remaking Education for a New Century -- from The Futurist
Communications scholar Janna Anderson is charting a new path for education outside of the classroom.

Literary Learning in the Hyperdigital Age -- from The Futurist by Mark Bauerlein
From DSC: I don't agree with much of what Mark says on his site, but I need to post both sides of the coin here.

Webinars from:
The Future of Education: Charting the Course of Teaching and Learning in a Networked World

• 12/1 1pm Pacific Time (US): Join me for a live and interactive hour with Dan Willingham to discuss his book "Why Don't Students Like School?" The book has been called "brilliant" (Wall Street Journal) and "a triumph" (Washington Post).
  
  
• 12/2 7pm Pacific Time (US): Science Inquiry and Real World Data Sources, hosted by the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh's EXCEL Center and the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium. A discussion of the integration of authentic data in science inquiry with Dr. Stephanie Slater (University of Wyoming).
  
  
• 12/3 5pm Pacific Time (US): Join me for a live and interactive hour with Curtis Bonk, author of The World Is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education.
  
  
• 12/5 9am Pacific Time (US): The weekly Classroom 2.0 LIVE show focuses on "Learning Games Network and Caduceus" with Alex Chisholm and Wade Munday. Alex and Wade share information on the Learning Games Network, a series of events using games in the classroom as learning tools and Caduceus, a learning game built as part of Children's Hospital Boston's "Generation Cures" initiative.
  
  Coming Up Next Week: Interview with Director/Producer Rachel Dretzin of the PBS FRONTLINE Digital Nation project | Angela Maiers on "Classroom Habitudes" | Elizabeth Kanna on "Virtual Schooling"

Activist's Web site, tweets put new face on homelessness -- from CNN.com by Valerie Streit

John 1:1-2; John 1:14
“[The Word Became Flesh] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Faculty and Student Support Without Borders -- from Wimba
Web-based conferencing has become an integral part of Study Abroad opportunities for faculty and students participating in exchange programs. Through Wimba Classroom, international faculty can engage with students, faculty and content, prior to coming to campus. Likewise, VSU faculty traveling to international campuses have the opportunity for advance engagement with host institutions. Exchanging faculty can continue to teach VSU online courses from their international settings, through live conferencing with their U.S. students. For international students studying on the VSU campus, Wimba Classroom provides communication with their home campuses.

Capturing Lectures: No Brainer or Sticky Wicket -- from Educause by Joshua Kim
This ECAR research bulletin describes how the formerly separate domains of lecture capture technologies and the emerging options for publicly sharing lectures on Web 2.0 consumer platforms are destined for convergence and are raising important questions related to policy, control, and governance. Lecture capture and cloud-based consumer publishing platforms are creating a range of opportunities and challenges for academic leaders that will touch on issues of openness, transparency, outreach, and control.

Improving Subject Matter Mastery through Lecture Capture -- from University Business and Tegrity
Pensacola Junior College presents research on impact of Lecture Capture. University and college students, and especially ESL students, often struggle with challenging subject matter, heavy course loads or the pace of instruction. Find out how a campus-wide lecture capture system has helped improve student achievement and reduce attrition at Pensacola Junior College in Florida (PJC).

Some other Learning Management System/Content Management Systems:

• epsilen
  Epsilen Environment—An innovative global eLearning system
  Epsilen Environment engages today’s students in their digital world—combining fully integrated Web 2.0 social networking with the best practices of eLearning course delivery—so that faculty and students can easily work together on campus and around the world. Unlike legacy systems, Epsilen Environment is intuitive and interactive, allowing students and faculty to create online identities, store work in Epsilen ePortfolio, and move seamlessly between courses, groups, and collaborative tools.
  
  
• SchoolDude.com
  
  

BCIT launches The CUBE: Centre for the use of 3D simulation technology taking teaching and learning to a new level -- from bcit.ca; original resource from Tony Bates
BURNABY, BC: It will transform the way instructors teach and the way students learn at BCIT. It will bring the workplace into the classroom and enrich curriculum – virtually. Unique to BCIT, the CUBE initiative will place 3D simulations of expensive, rare and modern equipment in the hands of every BCIT student, anytime, anywhere. This will allow learners to explore complex components, systems and concepts in a 3D virtual world before they touch the real thing. They will be able to manipulate virtual objects from rail cars to knee joints, explore an aircraft engine and its internal components, and even disassemble, assemble, and cross-section it using laptops, tablets, and other new communication devices. 

With a US$1 million grant from Lockheed Martin and $380,000 in software contributions from NGRAIN (Canada) Corporation, BCIT is launching The CUBE. This visionary two-year initiative will move the institution’s learning and teaching to a new level through the development of NGRAIN interactive 3D simulations that will enrich curriculum and enhance many elements of the learner experience [emphasis DSC].

Program Tracks include:
The Cutting Edge | Pedagogy | Faculty Development | Inventive Uses of Media and Tools | Immersive Learning and Virtual Environments | The New Learning Communities | Emerging Technologies for Administration, Infrastructure, and Support Services | Architecture and Applications | Pre‐conference workshops

Examples of topics for pre‐conference workshops might include: Moodle training, support, software development, or hosting, developing and vetting learning objects, management perspectives, low‐cost tools, designing hybrid course for the net generation learner, Web 2.0 technologies and student‐centered learning, Google apps to organize your work, cloud computing for student services, moving laboratories online, copyright issues, content creation, and social networking tools.

Top

11/30/09

The Future of Higher Education -- from Educause by Diana Oblinger
Session Type: Teaching and Learning; from Educause recording
The economic downturn and society-wide changes catalyzed by information technology (disintermediation, consumerization, and so forth) are causing many colleges and universities to question what the future of higher education in the digital age will be. Many historic challenges persist, such as cost, access, retention, and graduation rates. The digital age offers new opportunities (for example, online learning) as well as threats (for example, competition from other providers). IT is a tool that can help address these challenges, but it may also change how we frame the future. This presentation will explore common themes emerging worldwide, including cloud computing, identity management, analytics, and open educational resources.

Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 Tools -- from Educause by W. Gardner Campbell and Cindy Jennings

100 Tips & Tools to Teach Your Child a Second Language -- from onlineuniversities.com

View MAX keynotes and sessions on demand (Adobe Max 2009)

Discovery Communications To Launch New Multimedia, Multi-Year Science Initiative, "Be The Future," Supporting Obama Administration STEM Priorities
DirecTV Boosts Support of Science Literacy with Move of Science Channel to Total Choice, Offering Millions of Additional Subscribers Access to Quality Science Programming
(Silver Spring, Md.) Underscoring its commitment to leading in science-related programming and education, and answering President Obama's call to action to encourage science literacy, Discovery Communications today announced a new multimedia, multi-year nationwide initiative called "Be The Future." Over the next five years, Discovery will launch a programming block, education curriculum and tools to inspire student learning and careers in the sciences and support the White House's efforts behind science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.

Moving To Google Apps for Education -- from Serendipity35

-- from Six Easy Ways for Students to Create Videos Online
(from the Free Technology for Teachers blog)

Interesting Ways [Collection of ideas for K-12] -- from Tom Barrett
"They have been a great example of crowdsourcing good quality classroom ideas and it has been great fun connecting with all of the people who have taken time to add an idea. It is remarkable what can be achieved and created together if you give people the right way to do it. Thanks for all the help so far."

-- from Liz Kolb

Hyperlocal journalism with ipadio? -- from ipadio.com

11/29/09

Number of students taking online courses rises -- from USA Today by Justin Pope (back on 11/9/09), The Associated Press; my thanks to Ginger Howell for this resource
Roughly one in six students enrolled in higher education — about 3.2 million people — took at least one online course last fall, a sharp increase defying predictions that online learning growth is leveling off.

A new report scheduled for released Thursday by The Sloan Consortium, a group of colleges pursuing online programs, estimates that 850,000 more students took online courses in the fall of 2005 than the year before, an increase of nearly 40% [emphasis DSC..and below as well]. Last year, the group had reported slowing growth, prompting speculation the trend had hit a ceiling.

"The growth was phenomenal," said Jeff Seaman, Sloan's CIO and survey director, who also serves as co-director of the Babson College survey research group. "It's higher in absolute numbers and higher in percentages than anything we've measured before. And it's across the board," at schools ranging from doctoral institutions to those offering associate's degrees to for-profit colleges.

If we want the very best for our students, their teachers must be able to provide them with the very best education. The members of the next generation of Americans will need to graduate from high school ready to compete in a world of rapid globalization, burgeoning technological innovations, and changing labor markets. They will need to be informed citizens in a complex world [emphasis DSC]. Not only do our students need to be primed for this new world, our teachers must be prepared to guide them. Yet, just as our students do not always receive the preparation they need for twenty-first-century success, neither do all of their teachers. All too often, the two situations are interrelated.

Here is your lecture -- read or listen, it's your choice -- from 21st century teaching & learning

Search User Interfaces - Marti Hearst’s book available online free of charge -- from elearningpost. Marti Hearst’s new book is now available for reading online.

Psalm 136:1; 136:26
Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.

Low use of web 2.0 in e-learning -- by Tony Bates
From the Chronicle’s news report: Online education has grown in popularity, yet it remains dependent on learning-management systems, with content-delivery built around text, says Richard Garrett, an Eduventures managing director.

Managing Curriculum Change: Transforming curriculum design and delivery through technology -- from JISC

iNACOL Announces Online Learning Innovator Award Winners at Virtual School Symposium
The winner of the award for Best and Most Innovative Online Learning Practice was the “Fire and Ice” program, managed by Elluminate, Inc. of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. “Fire and Ice” was created as a non-profit initiative to connect K-12 schools in the Northern Hemisphere (the “Ice”) with those in the Southern Hemisphere (mainly rural areas of developing countries – the “Fire”), to engage students in highly collaborative projects, using live and non-live communications technologies [emphasis DSC], on universal themes such as climate change and poverty reduction. Since 2006, “Fire and Ice” has resulted in the creation of creative international content and generated unforgettable learning experiences for thousands of students in more than 25 countries.

Engaging Interaction: The speakers and experiences of Interaction 10 -- from BoxesAndArrows by Jeff Parks

11/28/09

1Chronicles 16:8
Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done.

You Can't Innovate Like Apple -- from Pragmatic Markting by Alain Breillatt
When what you teach and develop every day has the title “Innovation” attached to it, you reach a point where you tire of hearing about Apple. Without question, nearly everyone believes the equation Apple = Innovation is a fundamental truth. Discover what makes them different.

“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what’s the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’’’

From DSC:
This is how I feel about integrating technology into the classroom. I don't expect our faculty members to lead in terms of integrating technologies into the classroom -- I feel that's the job of our Teaching & Learning Group. Faculty members:

1) Don't have enough incentive to investigate all of the technologies out there (and therefore may not know what's out there that's potentially very useful in the classroom)
2) Don't have the time to do so
3) May not be interested in doing so in the first place
4) May feel that their game is a winning one and not in need of any change (which may or may not be the case as the years go by).

In other words, faculty members are not generally going to lead in this ever-increasingly important and influential space. But they must be open to change in this area. They must be open to developing a culture of innovation; a thing, which this article suggests, is neither easy nor inexpensive. But, I would argue, a must if an institution of higher education wants to survive in this new climate.

From formal courses to social learning -- from Mark Berthelemy [UK]

Directions in Education and Learning -- George Siemens at University of Oslo
"Our ability to know is defined by our involvement in networks."

      

11/25/09

Study: Inc. 500 CEOs Aggressively Use Social Media for Business -- from Inc. bBy Tamara Schweitzer
Fast-growing companies are particularly visible on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, according to a new study.

Also see:
Education: Under the hood with Finguistics as well as my multi-touch page

Get Educated -- from MSDN.com
We've highlighted education and Microsoft Surface a few times before. I had inquiries on Twitter and I thought it would be good to post a compilation on Surface in education. Here are some applications by Microsoft, our Microsoft Surface partners and others.

• Churchend Primary School shows how teachers and students react to Surface in the classroom. There's also a great behind the scenes for developers.
• I had a few visits with Dr. Neil (1 2 3) talking about his firms edu apps for primary and secondary school kids.
• A paint application called Paint Touch that shows how even pre-schoolers can be engaged with Microsoft Surface.
• Wales Education Suite is a set of applications for primary schools
• Play together, learn together mixes fun with education
• Surface Math shows primary school kids engaged with Surface
• Magnification Ring has applications in education and museums
• The Local Impact Map used by Microsoft to educate representatives of governments and NGOs on corporate social responsibility
• History at your Fingertips is an adult focused application used at the national conventions last fall during the US presidential race
• The Pits is used at trade shows for sales, but has great educational applicability.
• Calculation Game by Ohio State's Computer Science & Engineering students and Geography faculty
• This clip from Microsoft Research UK show's how magical Microsoft Surface is for primary school students. It's fun to see the kids reactions.
• This video by Max is a music creation application, but imagine the possibilities with the objects to create educational applications linked with the physical world.
• Neuro-rehab is focused on healthcare, but can easily be applied to education as well.

We've had a number of higher education institutions buying Microsoft Surface as well, so if you're at college you may see curricula including Surface in markets where it's available. Education developers - don't forget that MSDN-AA has the Microsoft Surface SDK Workstation Edition for subscribers to get you started. Let me know if I've missed anything in my list above. I'll make future posts on healthcare, financial services, etc.

-- resource passed along by Stephen Downes

I don't know if this site is any good or not...however, I find the explosion
in innovation incredible...and much of it is happening online.

11/24/09

Through a detailed review of online/blended learning environments, you will examine:

• The evolving role of instructors
• How to establish effective communication and interaction in the absence of face-to-face instruction
• How to motivate students to learn
• Pedagogical techniques that differ from traditional face-to-face techniques
• How to create ideal learning experiences
• Assessment techniques for measuring student achievement and learning
• How higher order student learning outcomes can be assessed

We will create a wiki that will be a living reference for everything you've learned and created with your peers.

Apple Unveils ‘Live Music’ in iTunes -- from Wired.com by Eliot Van Buskirk
Is it live — or is it iTunes?

Google Lays the Groundwork for Extensions in Chrome -- from Webmonkey.com by Scott Gilbertson

Also see:
ABS Record.com | DailyBible.AmericanBible.org | Bibles.com

Preparing the Digital Health Workforce of Tomorrow, Today -- by David Blumenthal
Today’s announcement of $80 million in Recovery Act funds for workforce training marks the first in a series of HITECH grant programs to address our nation’s growing need for highly skilled and trained health IT professionals. The development of this workforce will have a significant impact through job creation in two fields – technology and health care – that comprise a significant portion of our economy.

Readings in Touch Screen, Multi Touch, and Touch User Interface -- by Touch User Interface

VITTA 09 Larry Johnson 7 Ways Technology is Unfolding -- from John Pearce

• 3D computing
• Gaming
• Interfaces are changing
• Content is everywhere
• User generated content
• The network is everywhere
• The people are the network

15 multimedia training opportunities for 2010 – from Innovative Interactivity by Tracy Boyer

Velocity of Media Consumption: TV vs. the Web -- from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox

Summary: The granularity of user decisions is much finer on the Web, which is dominated by the instant gratification of the user's needs in any given instant. Content must cater to this rapid pace.

State of the Earth 2010 -- from National Geographic

[Some] Journalists' Education Blogs -- from Hechinger Institute

Continuing our conversation about Health IT… A new ONC blog kicks off from Health IT Buzz -- by Dr. David Blumenthal

Students use digital tools to tell a real child soldier’s story -- from spotlight.macfound.org by Mac Montandon; resource from Serious Games Market

11/23/09

Blogs, Reflection and Learner-Centred Design -- from Mike Bogle

$2 Million Competition Seeks Ideas to Transform Learning -- from Digital Media & Learning

Decentralizing and democratizing the creation of learning resources is radically changing the way we produce learning content. A range of tools (including those for rapid development) have the potential to reduce costs and engage learners in ways that will finally deliver on e-learning’s potential. Taking lessons from the history of learning technology and software development, the speakers will shift the "rapidization" debate away from a short-term efficiency perspective, offer a vision for the learning eco-system of the future, and present a roadmap on how to get there.

• New, diffuse learning organisations
• Software cycles; what they mean for e-learning tools
• From 'few create, many consume' to 'many create, many consume'
• 21st Century knowledge management
• The roadmap, and the systems and cultural changes required

An Introduction to Personal Learning Environments -- from towardsmaturity.org
PLEs are made up of a number of different elements (known as widgets) including:

• Production tools – allowing learners to develop their own content eg via a blog or wiki
• Collaboration and sharing tools – allowing learners to share their content with others, and to work with others on projects or assignments
• Communication – allowing learners to communicate via a variety of media such as instant messaging, video-conferencing or email
• Storage tools  - allowing learners to store their own content, preferences
• Aggregating content- allowing learners to access a variety of information relating to a particular topic (eg news items)
• Aggregating people – allowing learners to join together via social networking sites
• Aggregating software – allowing learners to mash-up (or join together) various elements into one place
• Identity management – allowing learners safe, easy and quick ways of logging in to websites
• APIs and protocols – these are key requirements for PLEs to grow as a concept. Rather than locking learners into a particular platform, where content is confined to a space owned by an organisation, the learning can be in a platform under the control of the learner

More on PLEs, Networks, Connectivism, PLNs...
and
Vygotsky, ZPD, Scaffolding, Connectivism and Personal Learning Networks -- from brains.parslow.net

Psalm 100:4-5 -- from Bible Gateway's Verse of the Day
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

Improving Subject Matter Mastery through Lecture Capture -- from University Business
Pensacola Junior College presents research on impact of lecture capture.

Converting video for the iPod touch -- from Louise Duncan

21st Century Educators Don’t Say, “Hand It In.” They say, “Publish It! -- from The Innovative Educator

12 Ways for Students to Publish Slideshows Online -- from Free Technology from Teachers

Just a handful of the links to the story about a modern-day replica of Noah's Ark:

• Working replica of Noah's ark opened in Schagen, Netherlands
• Man builds replica of Noah's ark (by exact scale in Bible)
• Replica of Noah's Ark Opens Doors to Visitors

11/20/09

25 practical ideas for using Mobile Phones in the Classroom -- from Stephen Downes
Good list of ideas, credited to Doug Belshaw (here is his new blog location). A lot of people promote the use of mobile phones in learning. But here's my take: I want to see something like a cost-analysis on this. How much does using a mobile phone (with unlimited data transfer, at decent (3G or better) speeds) as compared to using (free?) wifi and a netbook? Or as compared to a typical desktop with DSL or cable? Also, I would like to see a study of how much freedom a mobile phone user has to use software and access content as compared to a computer user. We're getting a lot of promotion for mobile phones - but honestly, I think moving in this direction in any serious way would be a big mistake.

NEA Study Finds Digital Divide Narrowing in U.S. Public Schools -- from B2E
Parents Overwhelmingly View Internet as Help, Use Email as Main Communication Tool with Teacher
WASHINGTON - November 16, 2009 - Poll results released today show the digital gap is increasingly becoming a thing of the past in America’s public schools. The National Education Association and Harris Interactive have released the results of an Omnibus poll showing parents have embraced the benefits of Internet at school and even use the technology to communicate with their children’s teachers.

-- from Jeff Achen [for those following changes within the journalism industry]

With the launch of YouTube Direct, it’s clear they now “get” online news video even better than most of us in the news industry. YouTube Direct is a new service that will help news organizations aggregate, solicit and take ownership (in a way) of citizen produced videos of newsworthy issues and events. I just hope news organizations don’t look—or overlook—this gift horse in the mouth. This service will allow video producers, be they citizen journalists or average folks in your community, to upload their videos to YouTube THROUGH your site WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR WEB SITE! News organizations then review the videos and approve or reject them. Once approved, the video appears on your web site. Here are a few responses to questions about...

Kenneth C. Green on the Current and Future Climate of IT in Higher Education -- [12-minute podcast] from Educause

12 educational ways of using 12seconds.tv -- from Doug Belshaw

Releasing the Chromium OS open source project -- from Google
In July we announced that we were working on Google Chrome OS, an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web. Today [11/19/09] we are open-sourcing the project as Chromium OS. We are doing this early, a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users, because we are eager to engage with partners, the open source community and developers. As with the Google Chrome browser, development will be done in the open from this point on. This means the code is free, accessible to anyone and open for contributions. The Chromium OS project includes our current code base, user interface experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development. This is the initial sketch and we will color it in over the course of the next year.

11/19/09

Online Learning for Dollars: Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions - Winnie Hu, New York Times -- resource and quote below from Ray Schroeder

Between Craigslist and eBay, the Internet is well established as a marketplace where one person’s trash is transformed into another’s treasure. Now, thousands of teachers are cashing in on a commodity they used to give away, selling lesson plans online for exercises as simple as M&M sorting and as sophisticated as Shakespeare. While some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies in a time of tight budgets, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even home renovation, leading some school officials to raise questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms.

Following graphic from Daniel Christian:

Virtual Classrooms Could Create a Marketplace for Knowledge -- from the New York Times
Teacherless or virtual-teacher learning is described by enthusiasts as a revolution in the making. Until now, they say, education has been a seller’s market. You beg to get in to college. Deans decide what you must know. They prevent you from taking better courses elsewhere. They set prices high to subsidize unprofitable activities. Above all, they exclude most humans from their knowledge — the poor, the old, people born in the wrong place, people with time-consuming children and jobs.

Champions of digital learning want to turn teaching into yet another form of content. Allow anyone anywhere to take whatever course they want, whenever, over any medium, they say. Make universities compete on quality, price and convenience. Let students combine credits from various courses into a degree by taking an exit exam. Let them live in Paris, take classes from M.I.T. and transfer them to a German university for a diploma.

“This is putting the consumer in charge as opposed to putting the supplier in charge,” said Scott McNealy, the chairman of Sun Microsystems, the technology giant, and an influential proponent of this approach. He founded Curriki, an online tool for sharing lesson plans and other materials, and was an early investor in the Western Governors University, which delivers degrees online.

From DSC:
Students will demand better in the future. If we don't give it to them, they will go elsewhere. Our offerings must be relevant, accessible, affordable, and engaging.

NOTE: Using technology to electronically deliver education does NOT prohibit a live human from being involved! The role of what a "teacher" is may change along the lines of a guide...a mentor...a person who steers others in the right direction. For example, SMARTHINKING.com provide live tutors -- so using technology and involving human beings are NOT mutually exclusive!

Psalm 119:105
"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path."

Educational Networking: The Important Role Web 2.0 Will Play in Education -- social networking whitepaper from Elluminate by Steve Hargadon
...discusses social networking, Web 2.0, the emergence of educational networking, and its adoption for personal learning. The paper also looks at how the LearnCentral social learning network is providing a platform for professional development for educators on a global level.

Future Of Learning: A Video Interview With Curtis Bonk -- from Robin Good's Latest News
What does the future of learning look like? What is going to change in the future of our education systems? What role will new media technologies play in the way you and I will share knowledge and skills in the near future? If you want to see a glimpse of how you can impact the way in which you and your kids are going to learn in the future, check out this video interview.

Learning in 2020 -- by George Siemens

Web 2.0 plays to the strengths of educators — curiosity and love of learning — by opening the doors to collaboration and participation. It encourages and facilitates the natural desire to share what you know and to learn from your colleagues. And fully embracing Web 2.0 is a logical extension of the attempts that so many educators have made to use the Internet to connect, collaborate, and create since the first days of bulletin boards and listserves. So for many educators, it’s an incredibly exciting time. But it may also be confusing and even intimidating to a larger number. My purpose here is to offer some clarity around the confusion, and, more importantly, explain why the excitement around Web 2.0 is not just a passing fad, but is grounded in the deep roots of how we learn.

Here's an interesting one...

Smart spectacles aid translation -- from the BBC
In this scenario the microphone on the headset picks up the voices of both people in a conversation, pipes it through translation software and voice-to-text systems and then sends the translation back to the headset. At the same time as a user hears a translation, they would also get text subtitles beamed onto the retina.

From DSC: Nice idea...but information overload. Perhaps they will develop the option to tune out one or the other information channel.

Connected Colleges: New Study Suggests Using Social Networking Tools to Engage Students -- from EducationPortal.com

11/18/09

Mobile Learning Jam Reflections -- from Judy Brown
Regarding DevLearn in the Mobile Learning Jam. Other links mentioned:

• Overview of Mobile Learning – Who is Doing What?
• Getting Started with Mobile Learning Planning Session with Austin Winters, Microsoft
• Mobile Learning in Government and Military - Mark Friedman and Jason Haag
• Discussion of Mobile Learning Standards, or Lack Thereof with Mark Friedman and Jason Haag
• Tools for Mobile Learning Examined
• Mobile Learning Examples Examined
• Future Directions in Mobile Learning: A Look at New Technologies and Potential

College Receives $250,000 Federal Grant for Mobile Learning Initiative -- from Thomas Edison State College; original link from learning and teaching at BCIT
Funding to Advance Use of Flash Drives & Develop New Course Delivery Platform
Trenton, N.J. (November 10, 2009) —Thomas Edison State College has recently received a two-year, $250,000 federal grant that will be used to accelerate the deployment of a new course delivery system that utilizes cloud computing technologies and is designed to increase access and minimize technical issues for adults earning a college degree.

Quote from BCIT:
Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey is implementing an interesting model of mobile online course delivery that uses cloud computing technology and flash drives to deliver the courses. The goal is to make the courses accessible without the need for a constant Internet connection.

What’s New Inside Microsoft Office 2010 -- from Digital Inspiration

#1. Save Office Documents to the Cloud
#2. Embed Web Videos in your Presentations
#3. Quick Steps in Outlook
#4. Built-in PDF Writer
#5. Document printing made simple!
#6. Broadcast Slideshows within PowerPoint
#7. Video Editing meets PowerPoint
#8. Distribute your slides as video
#9. Built-in Screen Capture
#10. Outlook gets social

'The College Fear Factor' -- from InsideHigherEd.com
Despite best intentions, today’s first-generation college students and their professors “misunderstand and ultimately fail one another” in the classroom, according to a new scholarly work on community college pedagogy. The College Fear Factor, published last month by Harvard University Press, is based upon five years of observations of community college courses and interviews with students and professors by Rebecca Cox, professor of education at Seton Hall University. In her work, she tries to show how “traditional college culture” is a barrier to student success, particularly for disadvantaged students.

HTML5: The Web Beyond Web 2.0 -- from The Journal by Ruth Reynard
And the potential impact of Google Wave on instruction

While current distance and online education uses chat technology for real time connection as an augmentation to asynchronous exchange, the future will have immediacy as central to every exchange. The future will also have actual realities being exchanged and developed as ideas are immediately applied and integrated into reality development. Therefore students will not be passive receptors of anything but will rather be fully engaged in all processes of exchange and will also be central to the development of their own learning--customized learning at its fullest.

As always, the bigger challenge will be to educators themselves and to accrediting bodies who will probably lag in their acceptance and understanding of the technology. Our challenge, as educators and co-learners with students, is to engage sooner rather than later and while there is still time to influence emerging technology uses for better instruction.

Purdue U Brings Social Networking to the Classroom -- from CampusTechnology.com by Bridge McCrea. "Hotseat" allows students to text in class

Can Clickers Enhance Student Learning? -- from Faculty Focus by Mary Bart

Touch Screen, Multi Touch, and Touch User Interface Resources -- from Touch User Interface
...massive list of touch screen, multi touch, and touch UI stuff.

Colleges and Universities Select Cisco TelePresence to Extend In-Person Collaboration Beyond the Campus Environment -- from Cisco Web Ex
Higher Education Institutions Create Virtual Learning Environments and Foster More Open Innovation Between Academic and Private Industry Researchers with Cisco TelePresence.

From DSC: Notice how some other colleges and universities are using products from Cisco WebEx -- we can do the same things with Wimba Classroom.

11/17/09

Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning -- from Virtual School Symposium 2009 Overlay

Key emerging trends for online learning?

• We haven’t addressed the mobile device and we know it is what students want – might not be 2010 but in 18 months we will see mobile devices
• We will continue to see the conversation changing from what is it to how we manage it
• We will see integration into special education in much greater numbers
• We will see more states require online learning experience - MI, AL already have this
• Several different waves are coming – growth in elementary, blended learning – adults needing a high school diploma are a huge audience coming to virtual schools
• Within corporate training, we will see more cohort based collaborative learning in the corporate world
• More multiple pathways to learning – more ability to just in time resources to support the learning that needs to happen for students
• All states will finally have online learning and the discussion will dramatically change
  
  This is the wave, the wave is coming – you either ride the wave or wipe out! [emphasis in bold red by DSC]

Tools - Banned and Mobile -- from Miguel Guhlin (looks at the top learning tools and how many are banned in K-12)

Big Picture: A Better School Model? -- from Big Picture Learning by Sarah Fine
The Big Picture Learning Company structures high schools around the belief that kids learn best when they are doing what they love. In the world of American public education, this is nothing short of radical.

Empowering Youth-directed Learning in a Digital Age -- from DML Central by Barry Joseph

Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education -- from Virtual School Symposium 2009 Overlay

RSS- Day 2 -- Using RSS -- from Enagaged Learning

ELI Discovery Tool: Blended Learning Workshop Guide -- from Educause by Veronica Diaz (Educause) and Jennifer Spink Strickland (Maricopa Community College District)

Apple's Shocking App Store Numbers -- from Forbes.com by David Ewalt

Apple announced [11/4/09] that developers have created over 100,000 applications for its iPhone and iPod Touch App Store, and that users have downloaded well over two billion apps in the 16 months since the store's launch.

Stop for a second to think about those numbers. The store's only been around 482 days. It launched with only 500 apps, so that averages out to more than 200 new apps a day, and a staggering 4,149,377 downloads a day [emphasis DSC].

From DSC:
The blazingly-fast pace of technological change continues!

This January, what he does intend to start is something that could boost online education and threaten competitors. The Welch institute plans a marriage of investment capital, minimum admission standards, online reach, established academics, and the global brand of Fortune's Manager of the Century. That contrasts with other for-profit online colleges that offer open admission, including a brand whose reputation was recently mocked on Saturday Night Live. The Welch program's cheaper tuition may also lure students away from some traditional business schools.

From DSC:
As Jack's health is very questionable, his longevity is not the key to his contribution to online learning. However, his current backing signifies to the corporate world that this new online learning world is to be taking extremely seriously. More than that, the investment community is getting behind this movement as well. Someone with deep pockets will get this thing right...and when they do...lookout!

11/16/09

[Really Simple Syndication] RSS – Day 1 – An Introduction -- from Engaged Learning

Connectivisim: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age -- from E-learning Practice & Research blog; and ultimately from George Siemens
The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application. When knowledge, however, is needed, but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses [emphasis DSC].

Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity. How people work and function is altered when new tools are utilized. The field of education has been slow to recognize both the impact of new learning tools and the environmental changes in what it means to learn. Connectivism provides insight into learning skills and tasks needed for learners to flourish in a digital era.

-- slide #49 or 63 of Rodd Lucier's "Learning 2.0 / Top 10 Trends" presentation

Cases on Online and Blended Learning Technologies in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices From Information Science Reference Although online education is becoming an important long-term strategy for higher learning instructors, blended learning through a balanced mix of traditional face-to-face instructional activities with appropriately designed online learning experiences is expected to become an even more significant growth area in the future. "Cases on Online and Blended Learning Technologies in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices" provides real-life examples and experiences of those involved in developing and implementing the merge of traditional education curriculum and online instruction. A significant resource for academicians, this advanced publication provides a wide range of the most current designs, methodologies, tools, and applications in blended course teaching.

Shaping the Promise of Cloud Computing for Higher Education -- from Educause by Brad Wheeler and Shelton Waggener
Could the broad adoption of cloud computing be a critical multi-institution step toward Vest's meta-university? Vest noted: "The meta-university will enable, not replace, residential campuses, especially in wealthier regions. It will bring cost-efficiencies to institutions through the shared development of educational materials. It will be adaptive, not prescriptive."

-- from Jane Hart

CCK09 Is the future a race between education and catastrophe? -- from Suifaijohnmak’s Weblog

What unfolds during the course of the film is a very inconvenient truth about education. It concludes that, while there are signs of spring, a transformation of the education system is vital if the UK is to continue to compete effectively in an era of globalization the world has changed enormously but our education system has not kept pace. We need to recognise that there are many paths to success for young people and provide the right support and opportunities for them to develop their individual talents.

Globalization has exploded the Information Age. Yet our education system isn’t preparing our children for how to compete in the Global Economy. America is a nation in crisis. Did you know how little media attention this very real crisis receives?

Mobile Learning -- presentation from National Distance Learning Week

Social Media FOR learning - Part 2 -- from Jane Hart

Colleges Find Creative Ways to Cut Back -- from Time Magazine by Sophia Yan

Heads in the Cloud | anseo.net -- from John Pearce, Educational Consultant
Simon Lewis is a great Irish educator and this very practical post explores how he is using Google Docs across his school. I particularly like the way he uses the tools to meet real needs by fashioning them in very innovative ways.

Are Teacher Colleges Producing Mediocre Teachers? -- from Ian Jukes

This is an excellent Time Magazine commentary on the state of teacher education today. Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education has some strong opinions on this subject. What do you think? Is it the institutions? Is it the traditional mindsets held about what a real education is? Or is it something else?

-- from Mobile Learning Presentation from NDLW

Blended Learning: Where Online and Face-to-Face Instruction Intersect for 21st Century Teaching and Learning -- from Blackboard

11/13/09

More Teachers Trading in Textbooks and Lectures for Interactive E-Learning Software To Engage Students -- frrom B2E

Future of learning: LMS or SNS? -- George Siemens

Net Cetera: Chatting With Kids About Being Online
...OnGuard Online gives adults practical tips to help kids navigate the online world. Kids and parents have many ways of socializing and communicating online, but they come with certain risks. This guide encourages parents to reduce the risks by talking to kids about how they communicate – online and off – and helping kids engage in conduct they can be proud of.  Net Cetera covers what parents need to know, where to go for more information, and issues to raise with kids about living their lives online.

Slide 3 of 64 of Stephen Downes' Presentation:
Open Education: Projects and Potential

Journal of Interactive Media in Education

LibraryThing.com -- my thanks to Steven Chevalia in the T&L Digital Studio for this resource
LibraryThing is a free, immense tool. You can catalog book collections in two simple steps. If you and your spouse, or friends, have different book collections but want only one account you can create new “collections” or “libraries” within your account. LibraryThing allows you to export all of your books into an expansive Excel sheet, where you can sort all of your books anyway you want. LibraryThing lets you rate, review, and research books you are interested and/or own. This is a great tool for any book lover or library looking for a new way to catalog books.

EasyBib.com -- my thanks to Steven Chevalia in the T&L Digital Studio for this resource
EasyBib is a place you can go to for quick and reliable citations of any material.

Google poised to become your phone company -- from Wired.com by Ryan Singel

“Enrollment has been growing steadily, but this was a tidal wave for us this fall,” said [LaGuardia Community College's] president, Gail O. Mellow, pointing out that the student body had risen by almost 50 percent in the past decade. “I’ve never seen anything like this. We used to pretty much be an open door.”

A New TV Guide for Internet Television -- from Open Culture
Today, Clicker.com comes out of beta and promises to become the complete guide to Internet Television. Currently, the site “contains more than 450,000 episodes, from over 6,000 shows, from over 1,200 networks, tens of thousands of movies, and 50,000 music videos from 20,000 artists.” The content (all apparently legal) is generally supplied by other content providers, and then aggregated by Clicker. Although the content is often quite pop, you can find some university content (Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc.) in the mix, much of it supplied by Academic Earth. Other quality content appears in the Art & Artists section here and the Documentary section here.

11/12/09

Gov. Granholm Terminates 96,000 Michigan Promise College Scholarship Grants - TaxPayers United Michigan Foundation -- resource from Ray Schroeder

Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010 -- from Gartner Newsroom (back on 10/20/09) -- resource from BizDeansTalk blog
Analysts Examine Latest Industry Trends During Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, October 18-22, in Orlando

Is Cloud Computing a Credible Solution for Education? -- from CampusTechnology.com by Denise Harrison
Can cloud computing live up to its hype, or is it just another empty promise designed to create demand and liberate more funds from already strapped IT budgets?

Moodle is an Airport, Not a Total Solution! -- from Zaid Ali Alsagoff (From DSC: This posting includes a nice discussion of what Moodle is and is not)

The Shake Up in the VC Market -- from Videoconferencing out on a Lim
Are you following all the interesting developments in the videoconferencing market? Here’s an interesting review and analysis of the changes coming down the pike. I highly recommend that you take some time to read it. Here are a few snippets to convince you to read further...

From Logitech to Acquire LifeSize Communications:

"We expect this acquisition to enable Logitech to extend our leadership in video communication beyond the desktop," said Gerald P. Quindlen, Logitech president and chief executive officer. "Together we can make life-like, HD-quality video communication as mainstream and seamless as a telephone, for meeting participants in the boardroom, at their office desk, in a remote-location meeting room, telecommuting from home or on the go with a laptop."

11/11/09

Presentation: Podcasting and the Listening Culture -- resource from eLearning Blog by David Hopkins
This posting focuses on a presentation from Steve Wheeler.

From DSC: This next one is very relevant for those of us in higher education:
The One-Minute Journalist Guide To Understanding The Internet -- from Robin Good's blog, by various authors

Money can be made on the Internet with journalistic content. There are many examples of this today already. Yet because the Internet is fiercely competitive, business models have to be adapted to the structure of the net. No one should try to abscond from this essential adaptation through policy-making geared to preserving the status quo [emphasis DSC]. Journalism needs open competition for the best refinancing solutions on the net, along with the courage to invest in the multifaceted implementation of these solutions.

Site simplifies text for students with disabilities -- from eSchoolNews.com
A new national online database is making it easier and quicker for college students with print-related disabilities, including blindness or dyslexia, to obtain the alternative textbooks they need for their academic courses. The AccessText Network contains more than 300,000 textbook and novel titles available in alternative formats. To date, more than 650 colleges and universities have enrolled. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) developed the database in conjunction with the Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC) at the University of Georgia.

eXe Learning
The eXe project developed a freely available Open Source authoring application to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup. Resources authored in eXe can be exported in IMS Content Package, SCORM 1.2, or IMS Common Cartridge formats or as simple self-contained web pages.

eXe is currently supported by CORE Education, a New Zealand-based not-for-profit educational research and development organisation. eXe grew out of the New Zealand Government Tertiary Education Commission's eCollaboration Fund and was led by the University of Auckland, The Auckland University of Technology, and Tairawhiti Polytechnic. It has also been greatly assisted by a global group of participants and contributors.

11/10/09

Advice to Grads: ‘Be Ready for Change’ -- from Higher Education Weblog

Smart college students know their career futures won’t be stable. Most new graduates will work in several fields or jobs over their lifetimes and will be continually adapting to ever-faster technical developments [emphasis DSC]. But you can take steps to be ready for an uncertain work world. First, accept that your education doesn’t stop with college or graduate school. To be successful and rise up through the ranks, you’ll need to be a lifelong learner. Second, be ready for change. View new systems and processes as opportunities and volunteer to get involved with them.

Five Tips for Young Professionals
When making forecasts about your career future, one thing is sure: it’s going to be buffeted by change. As a young professional, you can take steps to be ready for some likely twists and turns, says Glen Heimstra, founder of futurist.com in Kirkland, Wash.:

• Get on a learning curve. Identify what you need to learn in the next six months and create a plan for accomplishing this goal. Continue to set learning agendas for yourself. As the world keeps changing, successful professionals will stay up with new developments.
• Be technically knowledgeable. Virtually all work in the future will require technical competence. You don’t have to be a programmer, but you should be competent on basic computer systems and software programs and aware of how technology can be applied.
• Improve your personal-interaction skills. More routine work will be automated, leaving employees to do what’s left. Young professionals will stand out if they can interact with and manage people effectively.
• Be good at balancing work and life. As work spills over into life, and vice versa, professionals must know when work starts and stops and help other employees to set those boundaries as well.
• Take time to look over the horizon. Be a futurist. Cultivate the ability to forecast what’s just around the corner, so you can prepare for it, says Mr. Hiemstra.

VoiceThread + WordPress + VodPod = Simple solution for sharing digital narrative and reflection -- from David Wicks

Pillars of Institutional Pedagogy: Ten Principles for the Future of Learning -- from The Macarthur Foundation's "The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age"

1. Self-Learning
2. Horizontal Structures
3. From Presumed Authority to Collective Credibility
4. A De-Centered Pedagogy
5. Networked Learning
6. Open Source Education
7. Learning as Connectivity and Interactivity
8. Lifelong Learning
9. Learning Institutions as Mobilizing Networks
10. Flexible Scalability and Simulation

Calvin College is about to pilot the Eno Interactive Whiteboard. We are working with
Scott Custer and Amanda Lovell at Custer Workplace Interiors.

Frequently asked questions about viewing and syncing video with iTunes and iPod -- from Apple support

11/9/09

Joshua 24:15 (New International Version) -- from Bible Gateway's Verse of the Day
But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

The K-12 Online Conference
...invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2009 conference theme is “Bridging the Divide.” This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote by classroom teacher and international educator Kim Cofino the week of November 30, 2009. The following two weeks, December 7-11 and December 14-17, over fifty presentations will be posted online to our conference blog and our conference Ning for participants to view, download, and discuss.

[webinar] Engaging Students In and Outside the Classroom with Interactive Digital Solutions -- from The Journal

Inside Google: Challenges and Opportunities -- Calvin grads at Google to speak Friday, November 13, at 4:30 p.m. in SB 382
Nathan Beach and Jack Veenstra both attended Calvin College. Both currently are employed at Google. They will be in town this week to give a presentation at the computer science seminar.

Want to see awesome ways you can use your mobile phone? Do you want to discover a glimpse of how Google continuously improves the quality of search results? Come join Google employees and Calvin graduates, Jack Veenstra and Nathan Beach, to see some cool demos and learn what it is like to work at Google. After the talk, Jack and Nathan will take questions. You may submit questions NOW and vote on other people's questions using Google Moderator.

More Engaged and Engaged or Confused? -- from InsideHigherEd.com

Engaging Learning -- from Clark Quinn
How do you systematically design learning experiences that effectively engage the learner?

Fans and Fears of 'Lecture Capture' -- from InsideHigherEd.com

Managing Flow in the New Newsroom -- from WordCampNYC

Professional Video Editing Software: Comparison Guide To The Best Video Editors -- from Robin Good's blog by Daniele Bazzano

'Managing Online Education' Study Sheds New Light on the Operations Side of Online Programs -- from Faculty Focus by Mary Bart

11/7/09

-- my thanks to Mr. Ed Jennings for this resource

Radar Networks makes Twine. Think of Twine as your own artificially intelligent personal web assistant. That’s the message we get from Radar Networks CEO, Nova Spivack, about his new project from Radar Networks. Twine is a semantic web application that auto-organizes all your information and media based on an auto-tagging engine. It’s been in the works for some time, but will make its public debut soon.

-- my thanks to Dr. David Klein at Capella University for this resource

Openness, Dynamic Specialization, and the Disaggregated Future of Higher Education -- from IRRODL.org by David Wiley, John Hilton III
Abstract:
Openness is a fundamental value underlying significant changes in society and is a prerequisite to changes institutions of higher education need to make in order to remain relevant to the society in which they exist. There are a number of ways institutions can be more open, including programs of open sharing of educational materials. Individual faculty can also choose to be more open without waiting for institutional programs. Increasing degrees of openness in society coupled with innovations in business strategy like dynamic specialization are enabling radical experiments in higher education and exerting increasing competitive pressure on conventional higher education institutions. No single response to the changes in the supersystem of higher education can successfully address every institution’s situation. However, every institution must begin addressing openness as a core organizational value if it desires to both remain relevant to its learners and to contribute to the positive advancement of the field of higher education (emphasis DSC).

From DSC:
What are our plans here? What are your plans here? If they haven't already, the conversations better begin soon...

If you need a laugh today...check out the 10 Most Viral Videos for October

Create your customized view of the news using Google News
Go to http://www.google.com/news/ and click on the Add Section in the upper right portion of the screen

11/6/09

[Re:] The Higher Educational Bubble Continues to Grow -- from Stephen Downes
Higher education, writes Karl Kapp, is in the grip of a bubble. The signs?

• core mission and fundamentals are ignored
• disproportionate compensation at the highest levels
• product value doesn't match marketplace expectations
• prices are manipulated without regard to market supply and demand
• perception of exclusivity
• a delusion that "this market is different"

I have long affirmed that such a crisis is coming and that it would arrive very suddenly after being years in the making. It is now very close - within a matter of months. 2010 some time, maybe (at the outside) 2011, at least in North America. Funding will dry up, there will be significant staff reductions, institutions will merge or close, and administrators will be desperate for alternatives. Not just in education, but education will be very hard hit, and at all levels.

From DSC:
This is not a joke folks...I couldn't agree with Karl and Stephen more.

In Search of the Big Idea -- from InsideHigherEd.com
NEW YORK -- Nothing concentrates the mind like a fiscal crisis; or at least that's the hope of higher education leaders. Gathered here Thursday for the TIAA-CREF Institute's Higher Education Leadership Conference, some of the nation's most prominent figures in postsecondary education wrestled with the central question of their time: What is the future of this thing called college?

What became quickly and painfully obvious in their deliberations is that the center will not hold. In something of an irony, higher education leaders acknowledged here Thursday that the very system that put them in the position to run the nation's colleges and universities is no longer fit to groom their successors or the rest of the U.S. work force. Diminishing state support, a skeptical public pressing for accountability, and dramatically shifting demographics all point toward the necessity for a serious rethinking of the way colleges educate students, according to just about every panelist who spoke at the conference.

...And therein lies the tug of war within higher education. Innovation is invariably greeted with a mix of applause and raised eyebrows, as an "industry" steeped in tradition seeks to redefine itself for the 21st century. Is the skepticism rightful protection of a system that is the envy of the world or unwarranted protectionism of a system that is built to fail? That's the question college presidents say they're now confronting every day, according to several who attended the conference.

BlackBoard, Sakai and Moodle – Point/Counterpoint at Educause 2009 -- from Mark Smithers

Pearson launches a bold new approach to online learning: Pearson LearningStudio -- from Pearson.com

Blending Learning Webinar (via Elluminate): Nov. 10th, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 pm (ET)
This webinar will explore the economy of scale and power of blended learning which is derived from its "elasticity": the ability to integrate a variety of synchronous and asynchronous media allowing the instructional designer to attain the most appropriate blended learning solution. Each participant will receive a FREE copy of the USDLA Instructional Media Selection Guide for Distance Learning authored by Dr. Jolly Holden and Dr. Philip Westfall.

Higher Education (Via Elluminate): Nov 9th, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. (ET)
This webinar will explore a broad range of issues related to the institution's/unit's practices and procedures as new global campuses become the norm and the traditional education landscape transforms. Specific areas of interest may focus on strategic planning, accreditation, faculty workload, international programs, virtual learning communities, leadership, connecting educational institutions globally, trends, best practices and alternative education as an issue of national competitiveness.

Inspiring Teachers' Use of Curriculum Videoconferencing: What Works (via Elluminate) -- Nov 110th, 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm (ET)
Teachers are the most important key to implementing any new technology innovation. So how to do you hook teachers on curriculum videoconferencing? Learn what works in Southwest Michigan and apply these principles to your own school.

Google releases Dashboard privacy tool -- from CNN.com by Doug Gross
Ever wonder what information Google knows about you? With a click or two, now you can find out.

GoingOn Announces First Community Platform for Education at EDUCAUSE 2009 -- from B2E
The GoingOn Community Platform leverages social web technologies to create online communities for collaboration, learning and social knowledge management
November 4, 2009/San Francisco, CA – GoingOn provider of the first open source community platform for education, will showcase its cornerstone technology, The GoingOn Community Platform at EDUCAUSE 2009, November 3-6, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.

11/5/09

Educause09 opening keynote: "Good to Great"
Stages of decline:

1. hubris born of success
2. undisciplined pursuit of more
3. denial of risk and peril
4. grasping for salvation
5. capitulation to irrelevance or death

'Convergent education' comes together -- by Gregg W. Downey, Editor
Commentary: Educational transformation will come--whether entrenched interests like it or not

As I was saying last month, an avalanche of change is rumbling towards our field. I propose we call this cascading phenomenon "convergent education." [From DSC: I call it tidal waves of change.]

Here's what I mean: A new species of education is emerging that artfully aggregates up-to-the-minute instructional technology, sophisticated pedagogy, robust and standards-based educational content, and web-based delivery that requires a computer or other personal digital device but no fixed address. Under most circumstances, convergent education certainly can amplify the impact of traditional instruction, but it is not necessarily dependent on face-to-face encounters between teacher and student.

At its best, convergent education features diverse learning opportunities delivered via multiple media platforms combined with field trips (virtual or real), live streaming video, interactive archived video, educational gaming, student collaboration, animation, celebrity lectures and adventures, project-based instruction with student-managed data, virtual demonstrations and experiments, continuous monitoring of student engagement and learner satisfaction, and classic, in-the-classroom instruction.

In general, convergent education is based on developments such as distance learning and lecture-capture strategies that have been around for some time, but which are now reinforced by the completely unprecedented fact that nearly every willing learner has (or soon will have) economical access to the rich multimedia resources of the internet--access delivered by such devices as personal computers, netbooks, smart telephones, personal digital assistants, interactive whiteboards, pocket projectors, and handheld reading devices.

Convergent education has been made feasible--and perhaps even inevitable--by a unique confluence of social and technological forces that ultimately must transform the way we learn. Such forces include--but are by no means limited to--the thinning of our teaching corps by retirement, reductions in force, and classroom abandonment; the movement toward charter schools, open-courseware, and online universities; the push for school reform from government and industry; and the desire and necessity of multitudes of adults to obtain new skills and knowledge to survive and thrive in a swiftly changing job market.

Here's what's profoundly different now: This time the transformation will come whether entrenched interests like it or not.

Lecture Capture with Wimba -- Nov 9 Time: 3pm EST
In addition to using Wimba Classroom and the podcasting feature of Wimba Voice for online instruction, did you know they can also be used for capturing face-to-face lectures? Learn tips and tricks of lecture capture with Wimba. This demonstration will not only give practical tips and tricks for successful lecture capture, but will also share numerous real-life examples of how schools today are already doing this.

Using Collaborative Online Technology for Non-Instructional Use (Wimba) -- Nov 12 2pm EST
Using Collaborative Online Technology for Meetings, Disaster Preparedness, Office Hours, and other Non-Instructional Uses Across a Campus

Except re: Narrative from this article from "A List Apart"

Narrative is essential to learning. From epic films to conversations with toddlers, all human communication revolves around storytelling. We use story to convey information and to make emotional connections with each other. Writers use narrative to align what they know about the world with what their readers know about the world, and through the exchange of story a sense of trust is born. The reader identifies with the writer, and thus with the information presented.

Google Wave makes a big splash as it hits the shore -- from San Jose State University's Spartan Daily by Suzanne Yada

Apple Announces Over 100,000 Apps Now Available on the App Store -- from Apple.com

Social Isolation and New Technology -- from PewResearch.org
How the Internet and Mobile Phones Impact Americans' Social Networks

Americans Are Lonelier, but Don't Blame the Internet, Report Says -- The Chronicle

Sony shows prototype 360° 3D screen -- from Sony and news.techworld.com
Images can be viewed from any direction

How an old guy saved online music journalism -- from Wired (UK) by Warren Ellis

Which brings me around to what Morley is doing today instead of The South Bank Show. Given that print is apparently dead, or at least not paying much, Morley is putting on his own show via the good offices of the Observer Music Monthly. Buried in the OMM's web presence, once a month, is a multimedia presentation by Morley. Not just a music column, but video of the interviews he conducted in support of the month's subject or theme, music files, filmed performances, and, most unsettlingly, a Flash file that places an immense screen-filling Morley as rambling disco ringmaster. In this way, he surrounds a subject in a manner that music journalists normally just don't get to do. It is still music journalism, even as it's a music performance show and arts show.

ABC News recruits college reporters -- from eSchoolNews.com by Dennis Carter
Journalism students use laptops, advanced editing software in contributing to local and national news broadcasts

Tactics for Successful Grant Writing -- from CampusTechnology.com

The Genetic Science Learning Center -- from Jessica Overbeeke, T&L Digital Studio
...is a science and health education program located in the midst of the bioscience research being carried out at the University of Utah. Our mission is making science easy for everyone to understand.

From DSC: This is brilliant! The use of storytelling/plot in learning genetics!

236 Online High Schools -- from Online High

100 Open Courses to Learn Any New Language -- from Online Universities.com

Toyota launches user-submitted multimedia interface “Beyond Cars” -- from Innovative Interactivity by Tracy Boyer

11/4/09

Research Confirms Trend to Learning-Centered Spaces -- from Herman Miller
Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) and Herman Miller, have recently partnered on a survey to add data to our understanding of just how pervasive the trend toward learning-centered space design is on campuses today. Critics of the traditional approach to learning spaces have long contended that the regimented arrangements in our educational institutions are meant for a different age than the one in which our current students must function. It's no surprise that changes in the design of learning spaces suggested by this research are being seen on more and more campuses.

Laying a Foundation for Success for New Academic Leaders -- from Faculty Focus by Mary Bart

LMS 3.0 -- from InsideHigherEd.com by Kenneth Green
In a thoughtful commentary published in Inside Higher Ed earlier this year, my friend and colleague Lev Gonick, vice president and CIO at Case Western Reserve University, proclaimed that “course management systems are dead; long live course management systems.” This was one of his eleven IT predictions for 2009.

The future of interface design -- from ux booth by David Leggett
Did you know the first “brain-tweet” was sent out this year? How about that we may someday be customizing windshields with widgets? In the not-to-distant future, we may be interfacing with computers in exciting and innovative new ways.

del.icio.us Tidbits: Mobile learning tools -- from Mary Williams

Visual Bloom's -- by Michael Fisher
I want the visual representation to be more fluid than the above, where web tools can live on different levels and change levels, depending on their usage. I'm sure we could make a case for each of the tools to live in each realm of the hierarchy but in the interest of time and space, I created the following. The arrows are meant to indicate the fluidity with which the tools can travel through the different levels. The middle line is meant to separate the higher cognitive levels from the lower ones, but only with the understanding that it would be for that particular tool on a particular level, and does not consider the multiple ways that the tool could possibly be used. Again, this is meant to be a discussion starter as we evolve the representation of web tools with visuals that are meant to help us understand the interconnectedness of technology resources.

Reverse ISBN lookups sites:

• http://www.irazoo.com/PopularSites/ISBN-Lookup.aspx 
• http://isbndb.com/
• Ottobib.com <-- from Steven Chevalia in the T&L Digital Studio
  

11/3/09

Students Unimpressed with Faculty Use of Ed Tech -- from CampusTechnology.com by David Nagel
While students and faculty seem to agree on the importance of technology in education, the two groups do not agree on how well it's being implemented. According to new research released Monday, only 38 percent of students indicated that their instructors "understand technology and fully integrate it into their classes." Students also rated that lack of understanding as "the biggest obstacle to classroom technology integration."

From DSC:
We need to move towards using TEAM-created/delivered content, as not everyone has all of the necessary interest, gifts, and abilities.

 

-- The 2009 21st-Century Campus Report: Defining the Vision

Now in its second year, the CDW-G 21st-Century Campus Report examines the current and future role of technology in higher education. CDW-G surveyed more than 1,000 college students, faculty and Information Technology (IT) staff members to understand their respective perceptions of campus technology. The 2008 report provided a baseline for campus technology use. The 2009 study examines how student needs are changing, and how campuses are –and are not – responding. This year’s survey also asks the higher education community to define the elements of the 21st-century campus. The resulting report identifies strengths and weaknesses associated with campus technology and recommends steps forward.

Using Wimba Classroom to Bridge Online and Face-to-Face Learning and Assessment -- from Wimba
Thomas Angelo's classroom assessment techniques (CATs) have long been recognized as the best approach to evaluate learning. But, these techniques were very difficult, if not impossible, to replicate in the online learning environment - until now! Wimba Classroom gives faculty several tools to engage online learners synchronously and to evaluate learning in real-time. This is a tremendous advancement to the online learning environment because faculty and students can engage one another in a give-and-take manner that replicates the spontaneity and familiarity of the face-to-face classroom. Experienced online faculty and students enjoy the enhanced learning environment, while novice faculty and students are relieved to have immediate interaction with one another.

-- my thanks to William Overbeeke in the T&L Digital Studio for this resource

Wimba Collaboration Suite 6.0 is now available for Moodle -- memo from Wimba
MP4, whiteboard, and assessment innovation extends learning beyond physical classroom
The Wimba Collaboration Suite™ 6.0, unveiled in April, is now available for Moodle. By creating a highly personal and dynamic environment for online learning, thousands of higher education institutions and K-12 districts around the world rely on Wimba’s technology to improve outcomes and increase student retention.

Customers now have access to innovative new capabilities of Wimba Classroom™ 6.0, Wimba Pronto™6.0, and Wimba Voice™ 6.0 - enhancements that include advanced MP4, whiteboarding and assessment functionality. For more information on how the Wimba Collaboration Suite 6.0 can impact teaching and learning at your school or campus please visit: Solutions for K-12 | Solutions for Higher Education

The use of audio in elearning with Dr. Karl Kapp and Daniel Bliton -- also see Audio in E-Learning

The Future Of The Web: Where Will We Be In Five Years? -- from Noupe by vitaly

Photo Journalism 101 (story + images + music + animation = success) -- from Rich Hoeg

October Hot List: Mobile Learning Content -- from mLearnopedia

Uncovering Steve Jobs' Presentation Secrets -- from BusinessWeek.com
For his new book, communications coach Carmine Gallo watched hours of Jobs' keynotes. Here he identifies the five elements of every presentation by the Apple CEO

Wimba Study Break: Transitioning from Face-to-Face to Online Instruction -- from Wimba
Even though most schools have transitioned some aspects of their in-classroom instruction to the online environment, there are still so many ways to do so effectively.  Learn from two customers who have successfully helped their faculty make the leap. 

Preparing Your Students for the New Era of Journalism: Backpack Journalism and Documentary Film Making -- from CampusTechnology.com > webinars

11/2/09

20 Places to Watch Free Movies Online -- from Open Culture

Video Editing Software: Comparison Guide To The Best Consumer Video Editors Under $100 -- by Daniele Bazzano

From SETDA Handouts For Today's Presentation: Living on the Future Edge -- from Ian Jukes
Let’s recap here. We started with trend 1, Moore’s Law, with processing speed doubling every 12 months
while the cost is reduced by 50%. This led to Trend 2, Photonics, with data transfer rates now tripling at 4
to 6 times the rate of Moore’s Law. The ripple effect these two trends create leads to Trend 3, the Internet,
where we are all connected to each other anywhere and all the time. The intersection of these three
trends brings about an information age and brings us to Trend 4, InfoWhelm, the access to the sum of all
human knowledge in seconds, and right in the palm of your hand. But now the Information Age has begun to converge with the life sciences. This has presented us with a global exponential trend that has, according to history, been in practice for centuries even before today’s digital age. This is the fascinating field of biotechnology...

"In this age of disposable information, our papers are out of date as soon as they arrive. Information still has value but is now more perishable."
-- The 21st Century Fluency Project

From DSC:
This is why I try to get our faculty to build their respective global academic networks within their disciplines...because if they don't, what they are teaching might not be totally accurate anymore.

Top 50 Mobile Learning Resources -- from The Upside Learning Solutions Blog

40 New Useful Web Development Tools and Resources -- from Noupe.com

Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic - Individual Membership is now Free -- from Assistive Technology

How to Edit PDF Files without Adobe Acrobat -- from Digital Inspiration

Apple online seminars are available for the following topics:
Accounting | Audio | Business | Enterprise | Sci/Tech | Servers/Networks | Video

Art School -- from InsideHigherEd.com
What does it mean to be an art school today? How should art education regroup and evolve in response to changes in the art world, higher education, information technology, the art market and the broader economy -- and what should it mean to be an art school tomorrow? These are some of the many issues addressed in Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) (MIT Press), a new book edited by Steven Henry Madoff, who is senior critic at the Yale University School of Art. The book contains essays, questionnaire interviews, and transcripts of conversations by and among prominent artists and art educators, all of them addressing the mission and means of the art school.

Top

10/31/09

Online Education, Growing Fast, Eyes the Truly 'Big Time' -- from The Chronicle by Marc Parry

Orlando, Fla. -- Online education is a runaway best seller. Its growth rate -- 12.9 percent -- dwarfs the overall pace of academe’s student expansion. More than 25 percent of all students may have taken at least one online class this year, according to a speculative estimate suggested at a distance-education conference that wraps up here today. But the success isn’t smashing enough. Not even close.

That’s the case made by A. Frank Mayadas, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation program director who called on online educators gathered here to meet what he sees as a major need -- fast. And Mr. Mayadas, considered the Father of Online Learning, suggested in an interview following his speech that the government should step in with some $500-million to support traditional online courses -- not just the experimental “free” courses that have emerged as a darling of the Obama administration.

It’s Been Three Big Weeks for Online Learning, Blended Events and Mediasite -- from sonicfoundry.com

From Textbooks to Virtual Learning Villages -- from EducationWeek
According to this article in the Boston Globe, Houghton Mifflin, one of the largest textbook companies in the U.S., has signed a $40 million contract with Detroit public schools to provide not only textbooks, but also the software to create an interactive classroom network called Learning Village.

Publisher enters new chapter in textbooks
Houghton sells $40m high-tech teaching system

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one of the oldest publishers in the United States, plans to unveil today the biggest deal in its history: a $40 million, multiyear contract with Detroit public schools. But this is not the typical agreement to sell a textbook to every student.

Instead, Houghton will be providing a computer-based teaching system it developed with Microsoft Corp. that will connect teachers, students, and administrators. It’s a radical shift away from the classic textbook publishing model and represents an industry transformation, as technology supplants books.

“We are now in a transformational period. Everything we have has to be two worlds: print and digital,’’ Cohen said. “The future of learning is going to be high-quality online material and, to a lesser extent, textbooks.’’

MANAGING ONLINE EDUCATION
The 2009 WCET-Campus Computing Project Survey of Online Education (22 Oct 2009)

Google Wave Use Cases: Education -- from ReadWriteWeb

What Google Wave Means for Students -- from HackCollege

Nanotechnology program targets schools -- from eSchoolnews.com by Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor
NanoProfessor curriculum and equipment will be used at 2-year colleges -- and even some high schools -- early next year. The nanotechnology industry will employ an estimated 2 million people worldwide by 2015, and with President Obama calling on colleges to ready students for the field, an Illinois-based company has introduced a program designed to teach the complex subject to undergraduates.

10/30/09

Ephesians 2:8-9 -- from Bible Gateway's Verse of the Day
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

Learning Environments: Where Space, Technology, and Culture Converge -- from Educause
The introduction of information technologies into higher education added new dimensions to the educational enterprise and led to investigations into how the design of learning spaces affects teaching and learning. The time has come to broaden the scope of that inquiry and consider factors beyond space, including learning culture and the changing roles of instructors, students, and other people involved in teaching and learning. The effort to understand and develop effective learning environments includes more individuals and more roles than have generally been involved in the discussion about teaching and learning, and the factors at issue include, but go beyond, technology.

The Netflix of Academic Journals Opens Shop -- from The Chronicle by Ben Terris
By opening the largest online rental service for scientific, technical, and research journals, the company Deep Dyve is hoping to do for academic publications what Netflix has done for movies: make them easily accessible and inexpensive for everyone. The Web site has been an academic-journal search engine since 2005 and unveiled its rental program this week. Now anyone can “rent” an article—which means you can view it on your computer without ownership rights or printing capabilities—for as little as 99 cents for 24 hours. Users can also subscribe for monthly passes. Currently the site has 30 million articles from various peer-reviewed journals.

2009 Ubiquitous Learning Conference
Northeastern University | Boston in December

7 Things You Should Know About Google Wave -- from Educause

Defriending can bruise your 'digital ego' -- from CNN.com by Breeanna Hare
If you harbor a bit of angst over Facebook friend requests gone unanswered, a surprise "defriending" or being deserted by your Twitter followers, you're not alone.

Digital Media and Learning Research Hub Launches -- from Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning
University of California at Irvine has launched a new research initiative, Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, and website—http://www.dmlcentral.net—to study the impact of digital media on young people’s learning.

New Millennium Learners in Higher Education: Evidence and Policy Implications -- by Eva Szalma
This document is an excerpt of Chapter 5 in the upcoming CERI volume on Technology in Higher
Education in the Higher Education to 2030 series, which takes a forward-looking approach to analysing the impact of various contemporary trends on tertiary education systems.

Smart.fm: Developing a Great Experience -- from adaptivepath.com

If a user leaves the game, either by returning to browse goals or by quitting the app then their state needs to be saved and resumed at a later time. In addition, the user’s study progress needs to be synced back to the Smart.fm web site so that they can continue learning on a PC. And wait! What if the user studied that same goal, or another one in the mean time… download that progress and figure out the user’s total progress across all goals. [emphasis DSC]. And wait! Since goals are “alive” other users might have added new items, so download them too.

....the [smart.fm] iPhone app has been submitted to Apple and is very close to being in your hands. Screenshots of the app are available at http://smart.fm/iphone. Early in November we anticipate seeing a smiling Smart.fm owl sitting in the iTunes app store.

10/29/09

Holy smokes! We are most definitely in a game-changing environment! Play this out and it's mind-blowing...syndicated courses...matching up buyers and sellers of courses via online-based exchanges...creating a platform for distributing one's (or a team's) work... wow.

-- resource from Ray Schroeder

Picturing the Story: Narrative Arts and the Stories They Tell -- from the NMC
Every work of art has a story to tell, either through image and symbol, or through custom and ritual. These stories can explain the unexplainable, teach a life lesson, or celebrate our common human experiences.  Picturing the Story uses works of art as a springboard for an interdisciplinary approach to culture, environment, language, and learning. Using selected narrative works of world art from the permanent collection of the Memorial Art Gallery, the Pachyderm presentation explores 7 works of art across many cultures and time periods, dating as early as 1500 BCE. The stories behind the objects are interpreted in a variety of ways and through many different digital media. You can read or listen to the story or legend told orally, or you can watch an ASL interpreter sign the story. Please take a look at this extensive resource at: http://mag.rochester.edu/PicturingTheStory/

Enhancing Student Learning with Technology | Miami Dade College -- by Ruth Ann Balla, Executive Director, Virtual College

Best of the Web - Web Design and Development
A helpful resource for researching Web design on the Internet.

Looking for Music You’ve Never Heard Before? -- from digital inspiration
Find New Music Based on Music That You Like Already

When You're not the Smartest Person in the Room -- by Dean Shareski

Though Wimba was not a part of these reviews, here's an interesting list of players:
Unique around the world: vendor-independent review of web conferencing solutions

Increasing Student Success: Redesigning Mathematics -- from National Center for Academic Transformation
From working with large numbers of students, faculty and institutions over the past 10 years, NCAT has learned what works and what does not work in improving student achievement in both developmental and college-level mathematics. The pedagogical techniques leading to greater student success are equally applicable to both developmental and college-level mathematics. The underlying principle is simple: Students learn math by doing math, not by listening to someone talk about doing math. Interactive computer software combined with personalized, on-demand assistance and mandatory student participation are the key elements of success. NCAT calls this model for success, the Emporium Model, named after what the model’s originator, Virginia Tech, called its initial course redesign.

Kent Career Tech Center launches college 3-D Animation, Game Design course for high schoolers -- from Rapid Growth
Kent County high school students now have the option to receive college credit for 3-D animation and game design at Kent Career Technical Center (KCTC).

10/28/09

Smart Classroom of the Future -- from Daniel S. Christian

Features:

• Flexible, movable, adjustable tables -- for easy, quick reconfigurations of a room -- perhaps even multiple times within the same class period
• Comfortable chairs on wheels -- for easy, quick reconfigurations of a room -- perhaps even multiple times within the same class period
• Puck-like devices -- like those featured in Steelcase's Media:Scape product -- would allow for a student to plug in a variety of devices and "play" them for the class
• Multi-touch, wall-sized "monitors" / "displays"
• Pan-Tilt-Zoom cameras -- controllable via the web even -- that can be used for web-based collaboration

Example Scenarios:

• Scenario 1:
  I'm a student at Table #4. I want to show my project to the class. I click on the puck-like device that I've hooked up my laptop to...and because the professor has approved it, I am able to instantly start showing/playing my presentation up on one of the wall-sized monitors (some of which are multi-touch boards).
• Scenario #2:
  I'm a Music Major at Table #3. I want to play a piece from my recent recital that I had recorded and is now on my iPod. I hook up my iPod to the puck-like device and then I click on the puck to let the rest of the class listen to me version of Bach's Concerto Op. 13 No. 2.
• Scenario #3:
  I am the professor and I want to bring in a class from Italy. I use a web-based videoconferencing product to show the other class on one or more of the wall-sized "displays".

Enlarge image of:
"Vision of a Smart Classroom of the Future"

Tools of Engagement: Technologies and Strategies for All Learning Styles -- from Faculty Focus by Mary Bart

List of Multi-Touch Devices -- from Touch User Interface

Software Helps Music Students Collaborate Online With Crystal Clarity -- from The Chronicle by Jeff Young
Music schools have a tradition of bringing in famous musicians to hold master classes with a handful of students, but many of those visits have been cut this year because of tight budgets. Free software developed at the University of Southern California promises to make videoconferencing clear enough to hold such classes remotely over high-speed Internet connections. The software is called EchoDamp, and it was developed by Brian K. Shepard, an assistant professor of composition at Southern California's Thornton School of Music.

Guidelines for Developing Mobile Web Content -- from Gary Woodill
The W3C has published a set of guidelines for developers of content on the web that is designed to play on mobile devices. These guidelines are called Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 and are based on extensive surveys of many mobile web designers and developers. The Table of Contents looks like this...

News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media -- from CBC News, original link from Stephen Downes
A look at where the News business is going, now that it's everybody's business

To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world. B. Snyder -- from Teaching & Learning Online's Quote of the Day

10/27/09

100 Best Higher Education Blogs -- from Online Degrees Hub

• News and Trends
• Admissions and Rankings
• Professor Blogs
• Academic Librarians
• Administrators and Departments
• International and Study Abroad
• Athletics and Campus Life
• Continuing Education and Distance Learning
• Innovation and Technology
• Miscellaneous

101 Book Blogs You Need to Read -- from OnlineUniversities.com

-- by Lamar Alexander, now a U.S. senator; was U.S. education secretary for George H.W. Bush, president of The University of Tennessee, and governor of Tennessee.Alexander,

Excert of misc quotes:

• "You won't be given credit for seat time -- you're gonna get credit for actually being able to do it. The faculty are going to be people who are ready to talk to you because you are ready to talk to them." -- Professor Robert Zemsky (see video) of the Penn Graduate School of Education
  
  
• Yet, as with the auto industry in the 1960s, there are signs of peril within American higher education.
  
  
• But as I discovered myself during my four-year tenure as president of the University of Tennessee in the late 1980s, in some ways, many colleges and universities are stuck in the past. For instance, the idea of the fall-to-spring "school year" hasn't changed much since before the American Revolution, when we were a nation of farmers and students put their books away to work the soil during the summer. That long summer stretch no longer makes sense. Former George Washington University president Stephen J. Trachtenberg estimates that a typical college uses its facilities for academic purposes a little more than half the calendar year. "While college facilities sit idle, they continue to generate maintenance, energy, and debt-service expenses that contribute to the high cost of running a college," he has written.
  
  
• "There is nothing more vulnerable than entrenched success." -- George Romney, President American Motors
  
  
• Meanwhile, tuition has soared, leaving graduating students with unprecedented loan debt.

E-Learning's 'Third Phase' -- from InsideHigherEd.com
Though Blackboard's critics have worried the company might monopolize the market for e-learning tools, competition continues to surface -- notably from companies that once were more focused on the administrative side of campus computing.

Hebrews 4:12
“For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

Multi-touch – Is it the Future of Human Computer Interaction? -- by Abhijit Kadle

How Does Online Education Work? -- from blog.edvisors.com

10/26/09

Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education -- -- September 22, 2009 | The Committee for Economic Development Digital Connections Council -- original resource from Stephen Downes

...colleges and universities have been faced in the last decade with significant trends: the rapid increase in globalization, the arrival of students who were “born digital” and who may never have experienced an educational institution without the Internet, and a transformation of the Internet itself from a curiosity to a means for gaining access to information and now to being a fundamental element of a more “participatory” culture that encourages everyone to make their own contribution. "e research function of the university, which aims to produce and disseminate new knowledge, has become so intertwined with the Internet that it is almost difficult to recall what research was like before the World Wide Web.

For hundreds of years, personal interactions between teachers and students and printed texts have been at the heart of teaching in colleges and universities. But changes in the openness of the educational materials being used and in the vehicles for the delivery of these materials have the potential to fundamentally reshape teaching and learning.

But the development of more open digital materials known as “open educational resources” (OER), combined with our growing experience with digital materials suggest the possibility of far greater gains in the future.

With the extraordinary connectivity provided by the Internet, we can, using OER, provide free digital educational materials to millions of people in institutions of higher education and to the many millions more unable to attend such institutions. Everyone has the opportunity to participate in a global effort to improve and extend these materials, to customize, even personalize, them.

Proverbs 9:10 -- from Bible Gateway's Verse of the Day
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Google to launch site for selling books online -- eSchool News; link and quote below from Ray Schroeder
Google Inc. is launching a new online service that will let readers buy electronic versions of books and read them on such gadgets as cell phones, laptops, and possibly e-book devices. Google Editions, the company said, marks its first effort to earn revenue from its ambitious Google Books scanning project, which attempts to make millions of printed books available online. Although the scanning program has faced complaints from authors and publishers over copyright, Google Editions will cover only books submitted and approved by the copyright holders when it launches next year.

Cost effective ways to prepare your school or classroom for 21st century learning -- from The Innovative Educator

Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training -- from Stephen Downes
This is an entire book available for free download (or, you can order a print version). Even if you don't have time to read the whole book, be sure to see John Traxler's Current State of Mobile Learning, which outlines major categories of mobile learning, discussion of a definition of mobile learning (which excludes the current generation of laptop and Tablet PCs), the case for mobile learning (on grounds of personal, situated and authentic learning), and attributes of an evaluation of mobile learning.

Blogging –The New Model for Building Collaboration in the Classroom -- from AtomicLearning.com For students around the nation, blogs have become far more than the latest technology buzzword. For many, blogging can be a key method of communication on a social level. While many students already blog in their free time, incorporating blogging technology into the classroom can have many benefits through the use of a medium that already interests students and makes learning more interactive and engaging.

Multimedia investment checklist -- from Innovative Interactivity by Tracy Boyer
“Should we present this story as an interactive? ...

Yale Adds New Batch of Free Open Courses -- from OpenCulture.com
A quick update for you. Yale University has added its third batch of courses to its open education initiative, bringing the total number of courses to 25. (Find the complete list here.)

Duncan calls for overhaul of education schools -- from eSchoolNews.com; Teacher colleges are 'cash cows,' he charges, that must shape up their instruction if K-12 education is to improve
Duncan said he has talked to hundreds of great young teachers while serving as Chicago schools chief and later as President Barack Obama's schools chief. The teachers have two complaints about education schools, he said. "First, most of them say they did not get the hands-on teacher training about managing the classroom that they needed, especially for high-needs students," he said in his speech. "And second, they say there were not taught how to use data to improve instruction and boost student learning," Duncan said.

Augmented Reality and The Coming Tsunami of Location Learning Apps -- from electronic papyrus

Data Monday: Digital Video -- from functioning form

My life with a Smartpen? -- by Lisa Dawley, Professor & Chair of the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State University
...I just found about the Pulse Smartpen. This handy little device (ok, not so little for us feminine types who prefer thin pens) allows you to take notes on real paper, and simultaneously record the handwriting and voice for later upload into an organization system called Livescribe. You can create pencasts and share them online…imagine! Please check out their videos, it’s much easier to visualize that I can describe here. As a department chair who attends a lot of meetings and conferences, I’m imagining this little device may have the potential to change how I process information at those events. It’s a toss-up, either I 1) keep carrying my 15″ laptop, 2) buy a netbook (another computer!), 3) write my notes on paper and translate essential facts when I get back to the office, or 4) use a Smartpen!

Who could use a Smartpen? Students who sit in class and need to take notes, teams who work in brainstorming sessions, people who take meeting minutes, folks who may have memory issues such as Alzheimher’s and need a way to record their conversations, artists who want to teach others their drawing techniques, child psychologists who work with kids drawing and discussing their artwork…the list goes on…

The Google Timeline in Video – Brilliant. -- from Digital Inspiration - Technology Blog by Amit

How I create and publish podcasts -- from Wes Fryer; original link from Stephen Downes

10/23/09

Average College Costs on the Rise -- from Education-Portal.com
The College Board's annual report on college pricing trends shows that there has been a substantial increase in average college costs over the last year. The data confirms what many people already knew or suspected: average college prices are rising much faster than the prices of other goods and services.

"So a cheaper price not only revolutionised this market, it decimated the market."

-- from Donald Clark's Future is Free posting

Apple builds a grad school in iTunes -- from Tech.Blorge

Apple is increasing involvement in the education area with a special iTunes project that will put MBA-level lectures from famous universities and professors into the iTunes store at no cost to users. Universities such as Cambridge, Fuqua School of Business, and Yale School of Management and hundreds of others are recording lectures from their business graduate program professors and storing them on iTunes for everyone to listen to. This adds to a trend in which educational material is made available to the public through sites like iTunes and YouTube. More schools are coming on line with these programs every day, according to a CNN story. Although credit cannot be offered for “taking” classes in this manner, the knowledge is still imparted by the content, you don’t have to spend any time in the classroom, and it does not cost a thing.

How a new online learning approach aims to revolutionise language learning - the Independent -- from Online Learning Update by Ray Schroeder
The Open School for Languages (provisionally called MYLO), a £5.4m online learning project, is one of the main initiatives being unveiled next year to support teenagers learning a key language. Aimed at harnessing the best of new technology and the interest that most young people have in online as well as face-to-face learning, the open school is designed to provide 11 to 16-year-olds with a new range of online materials relevant to their world, as well as new resources for teachers. The scheme will begin with French, German, Spanish and Mandarin, but more languages will be added if initial results are positive.

Items from Jeff Cobb at MissionToLearn.com

DailyLit
DailyLit sends books in installments via e-mail or RSS feed. We currently offer over 1000 classic and contemporary books available entirely for free or on a Pay-Per-Read basis (with sample installments available for free). You can read your installments wherever you receive e-mail/RSS feeds, including on your Blackberry and iPhone. Installments arrive in your Inbox according to the schedule you set (e.g. 7:00am every weekday). You can read each installment in under 5 minutes (most folks finish in 2-3 minutes), and, if you have more time to read, you can receive additional installments immediately on demand. Our titles include bestselling and award winning titles, from literary fiction and romance to language learning and science fiction. DailyLit features forums where you can discuss your favorite books and authors.

Top Psych
Top Psych aggregates the best psychology blogs, stories, and news from across the web, and delivers them to you 24x7. We hand select every feed and update them every hour, so the content's always fresh.

From DSC:
This site caught my attention because I come from an athletic background, yet I support this message completely. We should be a nation whereby we have student-athletes.

Five (+ 1) Sources for Free/Royalty-Free Music and Sound Effects -- from Dr. Z Reflects

From DSC: What occurs with television is worth watching -- new channels
for educational content could be coming online. (Sorry for the play on words here!)

10/22/09

FETC Fall Virtual Conference & Expo -- Oct 22, 2009 -- 10:00 am - 6:00 pm ET

From DSC:
What was interesting to me about this virtual conference experience was that there was an auditorium, a showroom, a place to network, etc. Just as in a physical space/conference, I was able to go where I wanted to go and conversations were going on in various areas.

8 Innovative Schools Provide Ideas and Inspiration for 21st Century Education -- from The Innovative Educator

Microsoft introduces Windows 7

Wired takes a first look at Windows 7 -- from Wired.co.uk RSS by Chris Finnamore

100 Best Open Education Sites for the Unemployed -- from online universities.com

The Virtualization of K-12 and Higher Education (PDF of slides) -- by Sam Adkins and Ambient Insight

The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009 -- from ECAR by Shannon D. Smith, Gail Salaway, and Judith Borreson Caruso, Intro by Richard N. Katz.
Since 2004, the annual ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology has sought to shed light on how information technology affects the college experience. We ask students about the technology they own and how they use it in and out of their academic world. We gather information about how skilled students believe they are with technologies; how they perceive technology is affecting their learning experience; and their preferences for IT in courses. The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009 is a longitudinal extension of the 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 studies. It is based on quantitative data from a spring 2009 survey of 30,616 freshmen and seniors at 103 four-year institutions and students at 12 two-year institutions; student focus groups that included input from 62 students at 4 institutions; and review of qualitative data from written responses to open-ended questions. In addition to studying student ownership, experience, behaviors, preferences, and skills with respect to information technologies, the 2009 study also includes a special focus on student ownership and use of Internet-capable handheld devices.

E-Learning Top Tips -- from Kineo

Top Ten Webinar Tips -- from Kineo

[Excerpt from] E-Learning Top Tips -- from Kineo.com

Tip 3: Narrative and e-learning
For the last few weeks we've talked about stories in e-learning and why they're a great way to make your e-learning memorable, authentic and engaging. What else can you do to bring a narrative into e-learning? What are the practical points when it comes to writing dialogue? The bookshelves heave with screenwriting manuals. Save yourself a few quid and start with a few basic tips for good dialogue writing in e-learning.

Tip 2: Getting stories into e-learning
Last time we wrote about the benefits of stories in learning. They're easy to remember, they're compelling, they're great shorthand for real experience, and of course they're authentic, which is maybe the most compelling aspect of all. So how can you bring stories into your e-learning? Here are some practical tips.

Tip 1: Learning starts with a story
Someone once said all learning starts with a story. They probably went on to tell a story about how they realized that. Right idea. If you can hook and engage your audience up front, all the more likely they'll stay the journey. Stories are one of the best ways of doing this. So why are stories effective? What's in a good story for learning?

From DSC:
See this page for more information re: digital storytelling.

Serious Games For Senior Executives -- from elianealhadeff.blogspot.com
Following my prior post Live From GDC: Serious Games Emerging Trends, where I highlight the presentation of Visual Purple’s President, Ed Heinbockel, Visual Purple has now launched the virtual world demo that they partnered with BTS to produce. You may view the trailer comparison of the CBT (Computer-Based Training) transformation to the virtual world training simulation as well as download the demo at the landing page to Visual Purple’s website (www.visualpurple.com).

10/21/09

In many ways, education hasn’t changed much since students sat at the feet of Socrates more than two millenniums ago. Learners still gather each autumn at colleges to listen to and be questioned by professors.

But the Internet has caused sudden shifts in other industries, from the way people read news to the way they buy music or plan travel. Might higher education be nearing such a jolt?

“Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which ‘going to college’ means packing up, getting a dorm room, and listening to tenured professors,” she wrote in The Washington Post. “Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet.”

Can you hear the roar of the engines?! If not, keep reading...

The New, Faster Face of Innovation -- from MIT Sloan Management Review by Erik Brynjolfsson and Michael Schrage. Thanks to technology, change has never been so easy—or so cheap.

Call it innovation on steroids. Or innovation at warp speed. Or just the innovation of rapid innovation.

But the essential point remains: Technology is transforming innovation at its core, allowing companies to test new ideas at speeds—and prices—that were unimaginable even a decade ago. They can stick features on Web sites and tell within hours how customers respond. They can see results from in-store promotions, or efforts to boost process productivity, almost as quickly.

The result? Innovation initiatives that used to take months and megabucks to coordinate and launch can often be started in seconds for cents.

NOTE the SPEED of the changes these days:

See slide #46

See slide #60

Web technology is about to change how we learn -- from VentureBeat.com

The education industry is on the cusp of being massively disrupted by innovation in Web technology. Like other industries prior, it would like to pretend that it can weather the storm and continues business as usual, with only minor tweaking. We all know how that story ends.

A massive advantage Web-based learning applications offer is tools for collaboration. Collaboration tools give students the chance to teach and learn from each other, and they’re going to jump on these tools in the same way they’ve jumped on Facebook and MySpace to construct and interact with their social universe.

Perhaps even more valuable than collaboration is the Web’s ability to bring complete customization to the learning experience. The classroom is by definition an experience of the mean: cut out the outliers at the top and the bottom and deliver the common denominator to those in the middle. It’s hard to do otherwise. Even with a reasonable class size, there’s no way an instructor can be agile enough to teach in different ways simultaneously to students with different backgrounds and interests who learn at different speeds.

Focus: Liberty University Online Academy -- from Online High by Tom Nixon
Today’s focus school is Liberty University Online Academy. Related to Liberty University, the largest Christian evangelical university with the largest Christian online programs in the world. If you are looking for a Christian online high school, this is a particularly good choice because fees paid to LUOA count toward Liberty University (should you elect to attend that college). Liberty University Online Academy is a nationally recognized, online education program for 3rd - 12th graders with an emphasis on individualized learning.

iTunes U evolving into teacher resource -- from eSchoolNews.com by Dennis Carter
Site's free educational content also has become a promotional tool for campuses, showing what researchers are doing with grants.

The rise of the globally connected student -- from eSchoolNews.com by Laurence Peters
Networks such as iEARN and ePals are facilitating youth-to-youth exchanges and breaking down cultural barriers worldwide

Free digital resource centers coming soon -- from eSchoolNews.com by Meris Stansbury
Public broadcasters and state officials team up to create resource centers based on state standards, student data.

Bridging the Gap Between Online and On-ground Teaching -- from The Journal by Ruth Reynard
Increasing numbers of studies are being done that seem to support the notion that blended course delivery or program delivery really captures the best of every possible world and, as such, is an effective way of learning for students.

Students, schools turn to virtual college fairs -- from eSchoolNews.com by Maya Prabhu
Online venues allow students to ask more personal questions, advocates say -- and they broaden the reach of participating colleges As college fair season kicks into high gear, a growing number of students, parents, and colleges will be turning to virtual college fairs as a way to save money and increase exposure.

Action Steps Towards Open Access Higher Education -- from Learning & Teaching at BCIT
The second Open Educational Technology Summit wrapped up yesterday with the adoption of eight action steps or goals that define a vision for open access education. The event brought together 40 participants from around the world with expertise in different areas of education. We we worked in teams of ten to brainstorm around four themes...

100 notable multimedia professionals -- from InnovativeInteractivity.com by Tracy Boyer

A Visual Guide to Computer Cables and Connectors -- from digital inspiration

10/20/09

Technologically Externalized Knowledge and Learning -- from Connectivism by George Siemens
Introducing [something that I haven't named yet]
Here’s the basic concept: technological advances in how content is created and how individuals interact are at a sufficient stage to serve as a replacement to traditional classrooms. Enter Technologically Externalized Knowledge and Learning (TEKL). Or Connector. Or Learnometer. Or learnalyzer. Or Learnabler. Or future learning approach. I have no idea what to call it without evoking the cheesy Batman “pow” images and shark repellant from the 70’s. For know, I’ll stick with the acronym TEKL.

What is TEKL? TEKL is a physical, wearable device that captures our physical and virtual interactions and assist us in recognizing and forming knowledge connections based on our past interactions, our social network, and our current work or personal interest needs. The image below expresses the elements of TEKL and provides additional detail on the function of various agents.

From DSC: Here's an example of hybrid learning (i.e. bridging the online and face-to-face worlds)

Aspiring journalists must specialise, says Malcolm Gladwell. Try stats or accounting… -- from Hackademic.net

100 Best Professors Who Blog -- from Zaidlearn.com

Interning from your sofa becomes virtual reality -- from CNN.com
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Technologies that let employees work remotely have given rise to a growing phenomenon -- virtual internships. Businesses are realizing that commonplace Internet technologies like email, instant messaging -- which can also enable video chats -- and social media can be used to free interns from the confines of the office.

-- my thanks to William Overbeeke, T&L Digital Studio for this resource

The tech catastrophe you're ignoring -- from CNN.com
Backed up your hard drive lately? Here's why it still matters.

These PowerPoint Experts Can Make You a Star -- from The Rapid eLearning Blog

Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know.

Since prayer is at the bottom of all this, what I want mostly is for men to pray -- not shaking angry fists at enemies but raising holy hands to God. And I want women to get in there with the men in humility before God...

-- 2 brief passages from The Message (Eugene Peterson), from 1 Timothy

Learning with Digital Games is Nicola Whitton's first book and is based on practical lessons learned from the research carried out during her PhD. It is designed as an introduction to the use of games-based learning in universities for lecturers, learning technologies, researchers and anyone else who is interested really. There is also a website to support the book, and any feedback or comments would be most appreciated. According to the website:

"Written for Higher Education teaching and learning professionals, Learning with Digital Games provides an accessible and straightforward introduction to the field of computer game-based learning.""Up-to-date with current trends and the changing learning needs of today’s students, this text offers friendly guidance, and is unique in its focus on post-school education and its pragmatic view of the use of computer games with adults."

10/19/09

Apple’s Steve Jobs: Choose what you do with your life and make it count -- from CNN.com
“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. [...] So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it [emphasis DSC]. And we think it is.”

4th quarter results from Apple:

• Apple Celebrates Record Quarter, Nets $1.67B Profit -- by Brian Chen
  Apple on Monday reported its most profitable quarter ever, with record sales of its Macs and iPhones blowing away analysts’ estimates. Overall, the company’s profits rose 46 percent compared to a year ago.
• Apple iPhone sales in recent quarter: 7.4 Million Units! -- from TechWhack
• Apple Kills Recession -- from Forbes.com by Brian Caulfield
• Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results -- from Apple.com
  Most Profitable Quarter Ever; Record Mac and iPhone Sales
  CUPERTINO, California—October 19, 2009—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2009 fourth quarter ended September 26, 2009. The Company posted revenue of $9.87 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.14 billion, or $1.26 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.6 percent, up from 34.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Online Programs: Profits are There, Technological Innovation Is Not -- from The Chronicle by Marc Parry

From DSC:
We need more "outside the box" thinking here. Also, my recommendation for online courses would be to provide the same content in 3-5 different ways and let the students select what works best for them.

Time to Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Success -- from Carnegie.org

Universities - recorded lectures better than live -- from Donald Clark
Simple enough, video lectures with ratings and details of number of downloads, from over 320 Universities such as; Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford,, and so on. Cambridge, Coventry, Edinburgh, Leeds, Nottingham, OU, The top lecture has received 10.5 million views! [emphasis DSC] But even physics lectures are beating the 350,000 mark. Compare this with the once a year, lecture from a typical living academic – let’s say 100 students once a year for 15 years (and that’s really pushing it). You’re effectively extending the life of a good physics lecturer by thousand of years!

From DSC:
When I was at NU, I would have preferred recorded lectures -- knowing that I could go through the lecture at my own pace, without madly scambling to write down everything before the professor erased the board. I would have been more at ease...more able to cognitively interact w/ the content. But again, that was in lecture halls with 100-300 people in them...not 10-20 people in them as is the case here at Calvin College.

Google Wave in a Sentence -- from Mark Smithers
Google Wave is a tool that allows asynchronous communication (similar to email or discussion boards), semi-synchronous communications (similar to Twitter or FriendFeed) and synchronous communications (similar to instant messaging) all wrapped up with wiki-like capabilities for collaboration.

Is Google Wave the Future of Online Learning? -- from Jamie's Distance Learning Blog
Google Wave won't be released to the public until 2010. But, online instructors are already excited about its potential for online learning. Here are a few ways Google Wave may be used in coming months:

• Online students may be able to collaborate from various websites, at different times and places.
• Applications could allow Google Wave to connect multiple distance learning platforms, allowing schools to combine the features of several websites.
• New distance learning platforms may be created entirely as Google Wave applications, providing the option for no-cost online education software.

Items re: Google Wave from Ray Schroeder

Innovation: The psychology of Google Wave - New Scientist
Innovation is our regular column that highlights emerging technological ideas and where they may lead. Over the past week Google has been rolling out the first invitations to its latest service, a complex "real-time communication and collaboration" system dubbed Google Wave. Instead of sending messages back and forth, users create web-page-like documents called waves that others can modify or comment on, using a combination of features more usually seen separately in email, wikis, instant messaging and social networking.

A week using Google Wave: the early verdict: Google's new IM and email hybrid is all about the platform - Dan Grabham, TechRadar
It's a collaboration tool for all, then. But an even more essential thing to note is that Google is thinking as Wave in terms of a platform – that was clear from our recent interview with Google's Communications Manager Anthony House: "The goal is to create new platforms and to see whether new platforms will flourish or not rather than just building a product." Certainly Twitter is a great example of such a service – the website has become relatively inconsequential to the process of tweeting and keeping up with those you follow. Google will make APIs available for anybody that wants to develop for the platform. Also key to Wave's success is the advancement of the number of plug-ins. Google says the service is designed to "communicate and collaborate in real time". At the moment though that's hardly possible – only a handful of plug-ins are currently available. You can put a "yes, no, maybe" poll into your Wave, a Map and a TripAdvisor app.

Google Wave: A Music Industry Primer - Music Ally
Google Wave! It’s The Future! Convergent Communication 3.0! The bleeding zeitgesty edge of real-time innovation! But, er, what exactly IS it, and what potential does it have – if any – for artists, labels and the music industry? In a nutshell, it’s like email meets instant messaging meets social networking meets document editing meets online collaboration. Sort of. Or, to relate it specifically to Google products, it’s like Gmail, Google Talk and Google Docs all mashed up into one service, with Facebook-style applications thrown in for customisation.

Google Wave: first impressions - Will Cooper, New Media Age
First impressions are mixed: it looks like a glorified instant messaging service with an interface that isn’t exactly instinctive, but when you’re in full conversational flow with multiple people you can see where Google is going with this. The main Wave interface is pretty similar to Gmail, with your inbox, folders, contacts and so on in the left-hand column and a central column, when in inbox mode, with all your active conversations or ‘waves’. On the right-hand side is a column in which all the interactions take place.

Videoconferencing -- from Digitally Speaking
Videoconferencing---connecting students to content area experts and classrooms from different continents through the use of synchronous discussion tools like Skype (http://www.skype.com)---is becoming an increasingly common feature in the 21st Century classroom.  To make the most of videoconferences, teachers must introduce students to a set of skills that are not always necessary in traditional classrooms.  The tools and resources on this page can help teachers to structure meaningful learning experiences with videoconferences.

European Union launches digital library -- from CNN.com
The European Union has launched a digital library that offers documents dating to nearly 60 years ago, in 23 languages.

Open Courses: Free, but Oh, So Costly -- from The Chronicle
Online students want credit; colleges want a working business model
Colleges, too, are grappling with the limits of this global online movement. Enthusiasts think open courses have the potential to uplift a nation of Zieglers by helping them piece together cheaper degrees from multiple institutions. But some worry that universities' projects may stall, because the recession and disappearing grant money are forcing colleges to confront a difficult question: What business model can support the high cost of giving away your "free" content?

From DSC:
For anyone who knows me, they know I support online learning and I believe heartily in it. They would also know that I've been raising some flags about various trends...asking us to think about how institutions of higher education should take steps to NOT become a commodity. We need to keep an eye on -- and learn from -- the journalism industry.

10/17/09

Psalm 25:14-15 -- from Bible Gateway's Verse of the Day
“The LORD confides in those who fear him; He makes his covenant known to them. My eyes are ever on the LORD, for only He will release my feet from the snare.”

Use Cases for Mobile Apps -- from Functioning Form by Luke Wroblewski
Apple’s App Store recently surpassed 85,000 applications, 2 billion total app downloads, and over 6 million app downloads per day. These numbers make it pretty clear people are interested in using mobile applications. But what are they primarily using all those apps for?

From DSC: For a great look at what goes into interface and interaction design (in a point/counter-point sort of way), check out:

10/GUI – re-thinking the multi-touch desktop -- from -- Engage by Dave Malouf, pointing to the incredible video "10/GUI" on Vimeo by Clayton Miller:

The Stanford Study of Writing -- from BizDeansTalk - business management education blog by Santiago Iniguez

What is SoLEARN? -- from Jane Hart

SoLearn is our social learning environment - ie a place for individuals to come together and share resources, ideas and experiences for formal courses or for informal learning and working. SoLearn is powered by Elgg, the leading open source social engine. Our customised installation of Elgg at SoLearn provides a number of social media tools that we believe are key for personal and group learning and working: It includes the following functionality

• Social networking - to establish and build online relationships with others
• Social bookmarking - storing and sharing links to web resources
• File-sharing - to create, store and/or share files in all formats: pictures, videos, presentations, documents, etc
• Communication - to connect with others both in real time and asynchronously via email
• Collaboration -  synchronously or asynchronously to work together and co-create documents,
• Blogging - to read, comment  on and write blog posts
• Podcasting - to share and listen to audio (MP3) files
• RSS feeds - to subscribe to and read blog and web news feeds
• Micro-blogging - to send, receive and reply to short messages with others
• Tagging content -  to bind related content together from across the site

10/16/09

Welcome to the University of iTunes -- from CNN.com
The wisdom of business professors, once only available to MBAs and business students, can now be accessed by anybody with an Internet connection. Hundreds of universities and business schools are making recordings of lectures and conferences available to the public via iTunes and YouTube.

HEC and iTunes U expand access to information [June 2009] -- published by HEC / edited by WordAppeal

With the upcoming launch on iTunes U, HEC is reinventing how business schools deliver course content and interact with Internet users. More than 200 universities around the world have embraced Apple's mobile learning platform since its debut in 2007. HEC is the first business school to participate in the project [emphasis DSC], joining the ranks of leading universities such as Stanford, Oxford and MIT.
...
She says one teacher noticed that each year his MBA students would ask the same questions after his end-of-course summary, so he made a podcast of recurring questions and answers. After encouraging students to come up with new questions, he is now recording responses to those in an effort to compile a video archive of questions and answers.

Technology and the Rise of the For-profit University -- from jnd.org

Take for example the courses we are developing. They are problem-based, high-touch, interactive courses, Students are asked to solve problems from day one, long before they have the requisite knowledge. Why? As motivation. As goal-directed reading. As tools for understanding. Are these low-quality training courses? No, they are high quality courses, developed with our consortium universities: Stanford, Columbia, Chicago, CMU, London School of Economics.

Note: we have separated the development of the course from the instruction. We use the best professors in the land to develop the course. The instructional staff then teaches them without deviation. No favorite lecture (no lectures). No re-ordering the textbook chapters. No skipping sections. The knowledge experts prepare, the teaching experts teach. Will education change in 2010? You bet.

Wimba Solutions Expand Capacity, Improve the Student Experience, and Increase Revenue for Almost 200 Community Colleges -- from B2E and Wimba Inc.

Increasing Capacity and Revenue - Brick and Mortar Not Required
Since the fall of 2008, both individual community colleges and state systems have experienced substantial increases in e