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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Heather Kurto

Heather Kurto

BBC NEWS | Health | Internet use 'good for the brain' - 0 views

  • A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulated centres in the brain that controlled decision-making and complex reasoning
  • "Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function."
  • The researchers said that, compared to simple reading, the internet's wealth of choices required people to make decisions about what to click on in order to get the relevant informat
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  • "A simple, everyday task like searching the web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older."
Heather Kurto

Technology And The Way We Think [eScholarship] - 0 views

  • Publication Info:
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    You need to download this article to read it. This article talks about how technology is increasing our cognitive abilities. 
Heather Kurto

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley - YouTube - 0 views

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    A MUST WATCH!!
Heather Kurto

http://biglearningevent.wisc.edu/study-groups/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/group-docume... - 0 views

    • Heather Kurto
       
      The first, based on flow theory, predicts that experience will be most positive when a person perceives that the environment contains high enough opportunities for action (or challenges), which are matched with the person's own capacities to act (or skills). When both challenges and skills are high, the person is not only enjoying the moment, but is also stretching his or her capabilities with the likelihood of learning new skills and increasing self-esteem and personal complexity. This process of optimal experience has been called flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1982; Inghilleri, 1986b)
    • Heather Kurto
       
      Needless to say, such a blindness to the real state of affairs is likely to have unfortunate consequences for both individual well-being and the health of society. Following the cue of their motivation, people will try to do more of those activities that provide the least positive experiences and avoid the activities that are the source of their most positive and intense feelings. At the societal level, this trend will add up to a continuing exodus from productive activities in favor of leisure.
    • Heather Kurto
       
      It is highly probable that if people admitted to themselves that work can be very enjoyable-or at least, more enjoyable than most of their leisure time is-they might work more effectively, achieve greater material success, and in the process also improve the quality of their own lives.
Heather Kurto

Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility | Daniel | Jo... - 0 views

  • The first course carrying the name MOOC was offered in 2008, so this is new phenomenon. Second, the pedagogical style of the early courses, which we shall call cMOOCs, was based on a philosophy of connectivism and networking. This is quite distinct from the xMOOCs now being developed by elite US institutions that follow a more behaviourist approach. Third, the few academic studies of MOOCs are about the earlier offerings because there has been no time for systematic research on the crop of 2012 xMOOCs. Analysis of the latter has to be based on a large volume of press articles and blogs. Fourth, commentary on MOOCs includes thinly disguised promotional material by commercial interests (e.g. Koller, 2012) and articles by practitioners whose perspective is their own MOOC courses.
  • The term MOOC originated in Canada. Dave Cormier and Bryan Alexander coined the acronym to describe an open online course at the University of Manitoba designed by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. The course, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, was presented to 25 fee-paying students on campus and 2,300 other students from the general public who took the online class free of charge (Wikipedia, 2012a).
  • Can xMOOCs make money?
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  • In 1841 the 'inventor of the blackboard was ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not among the greatest benefactors to mankind'. A century later, in 1940, the motion picture was hailed the most revolutionary instrument introduced into education since the printing press. Television was the educational revolution in 1957. In 1962 it was programmed learning and in 1967 computers. Each was labelled the most important development since Gutenberg's printing press.
  • technology has been about to transform education for a long time
  • But first, we agree with Bates (2012) that what MOOCs will not do is address the challenge of expanding higher education in the developing world. It may encourage universities there, both public and private, to develop online learning more deliberately, and OER from MOOC courses may find their way, alongside OER from other sources, into the teaching of local institutions.
  • With such support MOOCs provide a great opportunity to develop new pedagogy. In a world of abundant content, courses can draw from a pool of open educational resources (OER) and provide their students with better and more varied teaching than individual instructors could develop by themselves. The University of Michigan (2012) (which made history by using OER from Africa in its medical school) uses OER extensively in its Coursera course Internet History, Technology and Security. UC Berkeley (2012) draws extensively on OER in its course on Quantum Computing.
  • teaching methods 'are based on very old and out-dated behaviourist pedagogy, relying primarily on information transmission, computer-marked assignments and peer assessment'.
  • Another myth is that computers personalise learning. Bates (2012) again: 'No, they don't. They allow students alternative routes through material and they allow automated feedback but they do not provide a sense of being treated as an individual.
  • He notes (Siemens, 2012) that 'MOOCs are really a platform' and that the platforms for the two types of MOOC that we described at the beginning of the paper are substantially different because they serve different purposes. In Siemens' words 'our cMOOC model emphasises creation, creativity, autonomy and social networking learning.
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