About Teaching & Learning Online

Social Media is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content. (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010: 61)

"Thousands of educators across the country use the Understanding by Design framework, created by the late Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, to get a handle on standards, align programs to assessments, and guide teachers in implementing a standards-based curriculum that leads to student understanding and achievement. "

McTighe & Seif Teaching for Meaning

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS UbD™ FRAMEWORK? The Understanding by Design® framework (UbD™ framework) offers a planning process and structure to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction. Its two key ideas are contained in the title: 1) focus on teaching and assessing for understanding and learning transfer, and 2) design curriculum "backward" from hose ends.

Example VBQ with G Forms

"HyFlex is a course design model that presents the components of hybrid learning in a flexible course structure that gives students the option of attending sessions in the classroom, participating online, or doing both. Students can change their mode of attendance weekly or by topic, according to need or preference. Models like HyFlex, which present multiple paths through course content, may work well for courses where students arrive with varying levels of expertise or background in the subject matter. Courses built on the HyFlex model help to break down the boundary between the virtual classroom and the physical one. By allowing students access to both platforms, the design encourages discussion threads to move from one platform to the other."

"Key Takeaways Large lecture courses are often required of an institution's newest learners, who lack skills to help them succeed. To open alternative paths through these courses, a team at Ohio State University redesigned an intro-level econ course that typically serves more than 600 students at a time. Part of the redesign includes offering these students a hybrid flexible (HyFlex) lecture option that lets them choose to experience lectures in the classroom or online through a live stream at a location of their choosing. Other technologies reduce logistical overhead, letting instructors spend more time teaching and helping students, and less time dealing with basic questions about course rules, schedules, and so on."

Connectivism and the Use of Technology?Media in Collaborative T&L

K-12 Education Technology Conferences and links

"When did Technology become a tool in our lives? A quick synopsis of technology as adopted throughout history."

Personalized Web Learning: In this paper, educational and technical challenges for applying learning pathways in Massive(ly) Open Online Courses in higher education are outlined. We argue that quality issues and didactical concerns may be overcome by (1) reverting to small Open Educational Resources that are (2) adaptively joined into concise courses by considering (3) predefined learning pathways with proper semantic annotations and (4) the observation of learner behaviour. Such a merger does not only require conceptual work and corresponding support tools, but also a new meta data format and an engine which interprets the semantic annotations as well as the measures of learner's actions. These factors are then turned into didactically meaningful recommendations for the next learning steps, thereby creating a personalized learning pathway for each learner. The EU FP7 project INTUITEL is introduced, which has already contributed to the conceptual work and is currently developing the software to achieve these tasks

The framework consists of four parts: Collect, Relate, Create, and Donate. In Schneiderman's framework, projects begin with a chance to Collect knowledge, and students research the factual building blocks of their learning project. From there students Relate with one another - since collaboration and cross-cultural communication skills play essential roles in our economic and civic spheres. Based on the collection of building blocks and relating their knowledge to one another, students the Createsome kind of tangible demonstration of their understanding. The final part of an activity is to find a forum to Donate the student work so that students can enjoy the opportunity to publish their work and be of service to others.