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Barbara Lindsey

The Tempered Radical: New Opportunities to Connect and Create. . . - 1 views

teacherleaders.typepad.com/...new-opportuniti.html

beyondwebct

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 30 Aug 08 - Cached
  • Our students will buy and sell from countries across the world and work for international companies. They will manage employees from other cultures, work with people from different continents in joint ventures and solve global problems such as AIDS and avian flu together.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Aug 08
       
      As language educators, if we don't make use of thes networked environments we are guilty of malfeasance.
  • But what I've grown to realize is that very few people have really embraced the changing nature of a tomorrow that remains poorly defined. We know that the Internet today is far more powerful than ever before---and have heard about companies that are capitalizing on these changes---but we haven't figured out what that means for us. We're jazzed to have access to information and geeked by interactive content providers, but our digital experiences remain somewhat self-centered.
  • the new National Educational Technology Standards for Students being developed by the International Society for Technology in Education. These standards reflect an increased need to teach children how to use the Internet in new and different ways. Perhaps the most challenging---and important standard---for educators to embrace will this one:Communication and Collaboration: Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students: A. Interact, collaborate and publish with peers, experts or others employing a variety of digital environments and media. B. Communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats. C. Develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures. D. Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.Does that sound like the digital work being done in your classroom, school, district or state?!
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Together with the Center for International Understanding, North Carolina in the World is developing partnerships based on digital collaboration between schools in North Carolina and nations ranging from China to Mexico. Teachers and students in partnering schools are learning to use Web 2.0 tools like web-conferencing and wikis to connect kids across continents. Not only do these efforts help to build a general knowledge of other countries in our children, they are providing concrete opportunities to use technology in new ways.
Barbara Lindsey

Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles: Implications for Investments in Technology ... - 0 views

www.educause.edu/...6069

learning students styles

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07 - Cached
  • Research indicates that each of these media, when designed for education, fosters particular types of interactions that enable—and undercut—various learning styles.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      How much do we know about our students' learning styles? How do we know this?
  • Over the next decade, three complementary interfaces will shape how people learn
  • But what is so special about the egocentric perspectives and situated learning now enabled by emerging media? After all, each of us lives with an egocentric perspective in the real world and has many opportunities for situated learning without using technology. One attribute that makes mediated immersion different and powerful is the ability to access information resources and psychosocial community distributed across distance and time, broadening and deepening experience. A second important attribute is the ability to create interactions and activities in mediated experience not possible in the real world, such as teleporting within a virtual environment, enabling a distant person to see a real-time image of your local environment, or interacting with a (simulated) chemical spill in a busy public setting. Both of these attributes are actualized in the Alice-in-Wonderland interface.
  • ...48 more annotations...
  • This immersion in virtual environments and augmented realities shapes participants' learning styles beyond what using sophisticated computers and telecommunications has fostered thus far, with multiple implications for higher education.
  • Beyond actional and symbolic immersion, advances in interface technology are now creating virtual environments and augmented realities that induce a psychological sense of sensory and physical immersion.
  • The research on virtual reality Salzman and I conducted on frames of reference found that the exocentric and the egocentric FORs have different strengths for learning. Our studies established that learning ideally involves a "bicentric" perspective alternating between egocentric and exocentric FORs.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 10 Nov 08
       
      Could we make the argument that this is one of the main goals of language programs?
  • The familiar "world to the desktop." Provides access to distant experts and archives and enables collaborations, mentoring relationships, and virtual communities of practice. This interface is evolving through initiatives such as Internet2. "Alice in Wonderland" multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs). Participants' avatars (self-created digital characters) interact with computer-based agents and digital artifacts in virtual contexts. The initial stages of studies on shared virtual environments are characterized by advances in Internet games and work in virtual reality. Ubiquitous computing. Mobile wireless devices infuse virtual resources as we move through the real world. The early stages of "augmented reality" interfaces are characterized by research on the role of "smart objects" and "intelligent contexts" in learning and doing.
  • Notion of place is layered/blended/multiple; mobility and nomadicity prevalent among dispersed, fragmented, fluctuating habitats (for example, coffeehouses near campus)
  • Guided social constructivism and situated learning as major forms of pedagogy
  • he defining quality of a learning community is that there is a culture of learning, in which everyone is involved in a collective effort of understanding. There are four characteristics that such a culture must have: (1) diversity of expertise among its members, who are valued for their contributions and given support to develop, (2) a shared objective of continually advancing the collective knowledge and skills, (3) an emphasis on learning how to learn, and (4) mechanisms for sharing what is learned. If a learning community is presented with a problem, then the learning community can bring its collective knowledge to bear on the problem. It is not necessary that each member assimilate everything that the community knows, but each should know who within the community has relevant expertise to address any problem. This is a radical departure from the traditional view of schooling, with its emphasis on individual knowledge and performance, and the expectation that students will acquire the same body of knowledge at the same time.26
  • Peer-developed and peer-rated forms of assessment complement faculty grading, which is often based on individual accomplishment in a team performance context  Assessments provide formative feedback on instructional effectiveness
  • Multipurpose habitats—creating layered/blended/personalizable places rather than specialized locations (such as computer labs)
  • o the extent that some of these ideas about neomillennial learning styles are accurate, campuses that make strategic investments in physical plant, technical infrastructure, and professional development along the dimensions suggested will gain a considerable competitive advantage in both recruiting top students and teaching them effectively.
  • Net Generation learning styles stem primarily from the world-to-the-desktop interface; however, the growing prevalence of interfaces to virtual environments and augmented realities is beginning to foster so-called neomillennial learning styles in users of all ages.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      What is the timeline?
  • Immersion is the subjective impression that one is participating in a comprehensive, realistic experience.
  • Inducing a participant's symbolic immersion involves triggering powerful semantic associations via the content of an experience.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      Felice's Utopian City
  • The capability of computer interfaces to foster psychological immersion enables technology-intensive educational experiences that draw on a powerful pedagogy: situated learning.
  • The major schools of thought cited are behaviorist theories of learning (presentational instruction), cognitivist theories of learning (tutoring and guided learning by doing), and situated theories of learning (mentoring and apprenticeships in communities of practice).
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      What kinds of learning environments do you prefer and what kinds do you create for your students?
  • Situated learning requires authentic contexts, activities, and assessment coupled with guidance from expert modeling, mentoring, and "legitimate peripheral participation."8 As an example of legitimate peripheral participation, graduate students work within the laboratories of expert researchers, who model the practice of scholarship. These students interact with experts in research as well as with other members of the research team who understand the complex processes of scholarship to varying degrees. While in these laboratories, students gradually move from novice researchers to more advanced roles, with the skills and expectations for them evolving.
  • Potentially quite powerful, situated learning is much less used for instruction than behaviorist or cognitivist approaches. This is largely because creating tacit, relatively unstructured learning in complex real-world settings is difficult.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      Not too far in the future!
  • However, virtual environments and ubiquitous computing can draw on the power of situated learning by creating immersive, extended experiences with problems and contexts similar to the real world.9 In particular, MUVEs and real-world settings augmented with virtual information provide the capability to create problem-solving communities in which participants can gain knowledge and skills through interacting with other participants who have varied levels of skills, enabling legitimate peripheral participation driven by intrinsic sociocultural forces.
  • Situated learning is important in part because of the crucial issue of transfer. Transfer is defined as the application of knowledge learned in one situation to another situation and is demonstrated if instruction on a learning task leads to improved performance on a transfer task, typically a skilled performance in a real-world setting
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      One of the most difficult skills to master.
  • Moreover, the evolution of an individual's or group's identity is an important type of learning for which simulated experiences situated in virtual environments or augmented realities are well suited. Reflecting on and refining an individual identity is often a significant issue for higher education students of all ages, and learning to evolve group and organizational identity is a crucial skill in enabling innovation and in adapting to shifting contexts.
  • Immersion is important in this process of identity exploration because virtual identity is unfettered by physical attributes such as gender, race, and disabilities.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      Don't agree with this. We come to any environment with our own baggage and we do not interact in a neutral social context.
  • Thanks to out-of-game trading of in-game items, Norrath, the virtual setting of the MMOG EverQuest, is the seventy-seventh largest economy in the real world, with a GNP per capita between that of Russia and Bulgaria. One platinum piece, the unit of currency in Norrath, trades on real world exchange markets higher than both the Yen and the Lira (Castronova, 2001).14
  • Multiple teams of students can access the MUVE simultaneously, each individual manipulating an avatar which is "sent back in time" to this virtual environment. Students must collaborate to share the data each team collects. Beyond textual conversation, students can project to each other "snapshots" of their current individual point of view (when someone has discovered an item of general interest) and also can "teleport" to join anyone on their team for joint investigation. Each time a team reenters the world, several months of time have passed in River City, so learners can track the dynamic evolution of local problems.
  • In our research on this educational MUVE based on situated learning, we are studying usability, student motivation, student learning, and classroom implementation issues. The results thus far are promising: All learners are highly motivated, including students typically unengaged in classroom settings. All students build fluency in distributed modes of communication and expression and value using multiple media because each empowers different types of communication, activities, experiences, and expressions. Even typically low-performing students can master complex inquiry skills and sophisticated content. Shifts in the pedagogy within the MUVE alter the pattern of student performance.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      Would like to see research on this.
  • Research shows that many participants value this functionality and choose to access the Web page after leaving the museum.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      More could be done with this.
  • Participants in these distributed simulations use location-aware handheld computers (with GPS technology), allowing users to physically move throughout a real-world location while collecting place-dependent simulated field data, interviewing virtual characters, and collaboratively investigating simulated scenarios.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      Much better
  • Initial research on Environmental Detectives and other AR-based educational simulations demonstrates that this type of immersive, situated learning can effectively engage students in critical thinking about authentic scenarios.
  • Students were most effective in learning and problem-solving when they collectively sought, sieved, and synthesized experiences rather than individually locating and absorbing information from some single best source.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      How does this 'fit' learning goals and teaching styles in our program?
  • Rheingold's forecasts draw on lifestyles seen at present among young people who are high-end users of new media
  • Rather than having core identities defined through a primarily local set of roles and relationships, people would express varied aspects of their multifaceted identities through alternate extended experiences in distributed virtual environments and augmented realities.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      How is this different from current experiences for individuals working within/across different social groups and boundaries?
  • one-third of U.S. households now have broadband access to the Internet. In the past three years, 14 million U.S. families have linked their computers with wireless home networks. Some 55 percent of Americans now carry cell phones
  • Mitchell's forecasts25 are similar to Rheingold's in many respects. He too envisions largely tribal lifestyles distributed across dispersed, fragmented, fluctuating habitats: electronic nomads wandering among virtual campfires. People's senses and physical agency are extended outward and into the intangible, at considerable cost to individual privacy. Individual identity is continuously reformed via an ever-shifting series of networking with others and with tools. People express themselves through nonlinear, associational webs of representations rather than linear "stories" and co-design services rather than selecting a precustomized variant from a menu of possibilities.
  • More and more, though, people of all ages will have lifestyles involving frequent immersion in both virtual and augmented reality. How might distributed, immersive media be designed specifically for education, and what neomillennial learning styles might they induce?
  • Mediated immersion creates distributed learning communities, which have different strengths and limits than location-bound learning communities confined to classroom settings and centered on the teacher and archival materials.27
  • Neomillenial Versus Millennial Learning Styles
  • Emphasis is placed on implications for strategic investments in physical plant, technology infrastructure, and professional development.
  • such as textbooks linked to course ratings by students)
  • Mirroring": Immersive virtual environments provide replicas of distant physical settings
  • Middleware, interoperability, open content, and open source
  • Finding information Sequential assimilation of linear information stream
  • Student products generally tests or papers Grading centers on individual performance
  • These ideas are admittedly speculative rather than based on detailed evidence and are presented to stimulate reaction and dialogue about these trends.
  • f we accept much of the analysis above
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 30 Oct 07
       
      But have they made the case for its educational value?
  • students of all ages with increasingly neomillennial learning styles will be drawn to colleges and universities that have these capabilities. Four implications for investments in professional development also are apparent. Faculty will increasingly need capabilities in:
  • Some of these shifts are controversial for many faculty; all involve "unlearning" almost unconscious beliefs, assumptions, and values about the nature of teaching, learning, and the academy. Professional development that requires unlearning necessitates high levels of emotional/social support in addition to mastering the intellectual/technical dimensions involved. The ideal form for this type of professional development is distributed learning communities so that the learning process is consistent with the knowledge and culture to be acquired. In other words, faculty must themselves experience mediated immersion and develop neomillennial learning styles to continue teaching effectively as the nature of students alters.
  • Differences among individuals are greater than dissimilarities between groups, so students in any age cohort will present a mixture of neomillennial, millennial, and traditional learning styles
  • The technologies discussed are emerging rather than mature, so their final form and influences on users are not fully understood. A substantial number of faculty and administrators will likely dismiss and resist some of the ideas and recommendations presented here.
Barbara Lindsey

Curricula Designed to Meet 21st-Century Expectations | Resources | EDUCAUSE - 0 views

www.educause.edu/...6065

expectations implementation student technology

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 21 Oct 07 - Cached
  • W here students had once called a large number of their classes "death by lecture," she noted they were now calling them "death by PowerPoint." >
  • here students had once called a large number of their classes "death by lecture," she noted they were now calling them "death by PowerPoint."
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 21 Oct 07
       
      Not representative sample
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  • With such specific applications of technology and the limited use of other forms (for example, multimedia), students' low expectations for the use of technology in the curriculum is not surprising. Such constrained use of technology by the faculty in the curriculum and low student expectations may serve to limit innovation and creativity as well as the faculty's capacity to engage students more deeply in their subject matter. Like all organizations, colleges and universities respond to the demands placed upon them. Students' and institutions' low expectations for the use of technology for learning provide insufficient impetus for faculties to change their behavior and make broader, more innovative use of these tools in the service of learning.
  • Consider this scenario:
  • From the beginning, however, a problem arose in that those middle school students went on to high schools and later to colleges that did not (and do not) provide this type of rich learning experience—a learning experience that can best be achieved when technology is used in the service of learning.
  • Data obtained from these sessions with high school and college seniors in Indiana, Oregon, and Virginia
  • Less attention has been given to how to help students achieve the desired learning outcomes through technology.
  • comparatively little support has been devoted to helping faculty use computers and other technologies in creative and innovative ways to deepen student learning.
  • To develop intentional learners, the curriculum must go beyond helping students gain knowledge for knowledge's sake to engaging students in the construction of knowledge for the sake of addressing the challenges faced by a complex, global society.
  • institutional structures and practices to resolve technical problems that faculty invariably encounter are very limited or are not the type of aid needed. Such lack of support limits the amount of time faculty can spend on what they do best—building a compelling curriculum and integrating technology for more powerful learning.
  • integrating study abroad into courses back on the home campus;
  • Faculty concerns perhaps center less on being "replaceable" and more on worrying that the teaching and learning enterprise will be reduced to students gathering information that can be easily downloaded, causing them to rely too heavily on technology instead of intellect.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 21 Oct 07
       
      Mentioned frequently by our group members.
  • First, traditional age students overwhelmingly prefer face-to-face contact with faculty to mediated communication. Second, technology used in the service of learning will require more—not less—sophistication on the part of students as they engage in processes of integration, translation, audience analysis, and critical judgment.
  • Faculty with expertise in one or more subjects, who have been exposed to what we know about how people learn, can determine how to enhance this learning through the use of technology. But simply understanding how to use technology will not provide the integration needed to reach the desired learning outcomes.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 21 Oct 07
       
      Last sentence here most important.
  • There is a need for integrating technology that is in the service of learning throughout the curriculum. More intentional use of technology to capture what students know and are able to integrate in their learning is needed.
suzanne ondrus

Ending the semester, Lessons Learned (Part 4: Assessment) | Language Lab Unleashed! - 0 views

www.languagelabunleashed.org/...sons-learned-part-4-assessment

assessment student-centered student-created sawhill

shared by suzanne ondrus on 09 Feb 10 - Cached
  • I see teaching as constantly re-tooling, tweaking, re-evaluating, scrapping, starting over.
  • One of my goals for this class (and for me) was to see what student-centered assessment would look like in a conversation class. I took a big leap and gave the reigns over to them. The content of the class and flow of the class was based on their interested and idea. They were there because they had personal goals that needed to be acknowledged and realized… or at least approximated.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 16 Feb 10
       
      What do you think about this?
    • suzanne ondrus
      suzanne ondrus on 21 Feb 10
       
      This is a really cool idea! It resonates with Vance's approach.
  • What would happen if I felt they didn’t merit the grade they said they did? what if they all wanted an A+?
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  • This is what I asked each student to do: 1) create a series of three goals or metas, one progressively more complex than the other, and each building upon the other, that were to be accomplished his term. The first goal was to be done by the end of March, the second by the end of April, the third maybe by the end of the term…but probably not. 2) create a series of tasks that s/he felt would lead to realizing those goals. 3) blog about about his or her progress at least 2 times per week 4) At the end of the term: write up a final self assessment (in English or in Spanish), reflecting upon the progress completed, including the work done in class that would contribute to these goals, and assign a grade for the term. The students needed to evidence of their progress as a way of justifying their chosen grade. CAVEAT: If the grade s/he chose was lower than one than I would have selected, they would get my grade and an explanation. If the grade was higher, we would continue the conversation and try to see what it was that I was missing. I was willing to be (and wanted to be!) swayed, given that this was the student’s assessment of his/her personal learning goals in Spanish.
  • Some (but very few indeed) met ALL of their goals. Almost all acknowledged that they had set up unrealistic expectations for themselves (in terms of how much they could get done in a semester) and many used their self assessment as a way to set up future goals for their language growth. (Exactly the kinda thing you hope to see happen…learning extending beyond the limits imposed by the classroom).
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 16 Feb 10
       
      If I understand correctly, Barbara Sawhill then did not tell them to revise their metagoals?
  • A shy, timid young man, he did not mention in his evaluation the class discussion he led, and managed, and blogged about at the end of the term… nor did he see how any of this was helping him move towards his most lofty goal…to be able to travel with friends in Spain and to be able to communicate with ease and without anxiety.
  • It pains me to read this, but not because of the critiques she makes about me, the tools, or the class. It pains me because Edie passed on an opportunity to try something new, experiment, take a calculated risk…all things she will eventually have to do when she travels in another culture. It’s sad because she was the only student who did not “let go” of something during the semester and instead just held on tight to how she wanted this class to be, vs how it really, truly was. Unstructured to her meant undirected. Allowing the group to decide the flow of the class frustrated her, because the cadence of the class was not one that was controlled by the teacher and therefore predictable
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 16 Feb 10
       
      Do you think this is a fair critique?
    • suzanne ondrus
      suzanne ondrus on 21 Feb 10
       
      I don't see how this problem situation happened. The teachr said that each individual student had to make individual goals and tasks!
  • In the end, she presented me with a chart that logged over 40 hours of Skype conversations with a native speaker she eventually found, and 110 pages (!) of chat transcripts with others with whom she tried to make regular contact. In class, as a result of her out of class experiences, she became more involved and engaged, eventually leading a class discussion about her interests in music, but doing so such that it wove itself in with the topic the class was discussing that week.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 16 Feb 10
       
      Is there anything in Batson's interview, "Beyond Campus Boundaries", that you see reflected here? Could you picture using similar assessments with your students?
Barbara Lindsey

Connectivism & Connective Knowledge » Narratives of coherence - 0 views

ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism

siemens filtering information trust pln

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 20 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Grand narratives – such as provide us with a large umbrella that we can use to make sense of the world – have been besieged over the last several decades. Grand narratives in the form of newspapers, newscasts, and books are now augmented by blogs and YouTube videos.
  • an attempt to provide or create some type of a narrative – namely, a narrative of coherence.
  • In a traditional course, the educator hacks the trails to complex information landscapes. The educator’s bias influences what is included and excluded.
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  • While it is obvious that information shaping approaches such as we find in newspapers and books are fading in prominence, we still need some type of framework to make sense of it all.
  • We all face information abundance. We all face the reality that we will always be missing some key pieces of information.
  • A common concern voiced by many of the active participants: how do we assimilate/makesense of this information?!? There’s just too much of it.
  • Part of the solution is to rely on one’s learning network to filter out nonsense and to draw attention to key ideas. This is particularly effective when we can “plug in” to a network with high levels of diversity and with people we quickly begin to trust.
  • dealing with the concept of self-construal, and the differences that exist among cultures and individuals who are predominantly independent or interdependent. According to those studies, one of these differences is precisely the sense of belonging that you mention. Interdependent self-construals feel more strongly about it than independent self-construals (you can see a more detailed explanation on this and other differences, along with a short literature review in Walker, Deng & Dieser 2005.)
  • four years ago, I conducted a survey among English and Spanish speaking Wikipedians, and the results regarding their motivation to participate in the Wikipedia project were worthy of note: “For Spanish Wikipedia contributors, the sense of building and being part of a large community pays off for the less-rewarding moments of their life as Wikipedians. This is obvious not only by analyzing the answers submitted by the survey respondents but also by taking a look at the large amount of hits that personal pages have in the Spanish version of Wikipedia. English Wikipedia contributors, on the other side, also acknowledge the joys of being part of a community, but, for the most part, they seem more interested in the administrative aspects of Wikipedia, such as creating rules and guidelines, enforcing them and providing for a smooth work with the administrators.” Other differences based on the type of self-construal are very common on our daily interactions on the network.
  • I find my network actually adds to my growing “to read” pile, I’ve read really good stuff because I have seen one or more of my Twitter contacts mentioning an item. I fear more technology will just highlight even more great material.
  • Barbara Lindsey on 20 Feb 10
     
    Grand narratives - such as provide us with a large umbrella that we can use to make sense of the world - have been besieged over the last several decades. Grand narratives in the form of newspapers, newscasts, and books are now augmented by blogs and YouTube videos. As discussed in a previous post, one of our key challenges in this course is to find a way to bring together the numerous ideas and viewpoints in a way that makes sense for participants.
Barbara Lindsey

EC&I 831 - 1 views

eci831.wikispaces.com

opencourseware openeducation open education education2.0 couros

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 20 Feb 10 - No Cached
  • The goals of this course follow. Participants will: better understand the historical role technology and media have played in educational & social change; become knowledgeable of social learning tools & FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) as tools for teaching, facilitating learning, & designing educational environments; become familiar with the wealth of open educational resources (OERs), learning-related content, & media available for teaching & learning; become knowledgeable of relevant social learning theories and philosophies that respond to learning in the digital age; better understand the many social, educational, political, cultural, and administrative issues often associated with technology & media in education and society; become critical consumers and producers of digital media and information; and, build sustainable, personal learning environments and networks.
  • A significant portion of the course learning will happen outside of the scheduled, synchronous sessions. Participants will gain experience in social learning processes such as: writing reflective blog posts, commenting on participant blogs, reading and commenting on educational blogs from outside of the course, microblogging, reading and exploring other educational technology and learning-focused media, exploring social learning tools, and creating educational media.
  • Barbara Lindsey on 20 Feb 10
     
    Couros Course on Social Media & Open Education "Open, Connected, Social" this course is open to credit and not-for-credit' students and features synchronous discussions via Elluminate and asynchronous work via microblogging, blogging, and the creation of digital content.
Barbara Lindsey

After Frustrations in Second Life, Colleges Look to New Virtual Worlds - Technology - T... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...64137

virtual worlds secondlife

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 18 Feb 10 - Cached
  • It turns out that virtual worlds are at their best when they look nothing like a traditional campus. Professors are finding that they can stage medical simulations, guide students through the inside of cell structures, or pre­sent other imaginative teaching exercises that cannot be done in a physical classroom.
  • OpenSimulator, and it is essentially a free knockoff of Second Life
  • The most ambitious attempt to build an education-friendly virtual world is a project called Open Cobalt,
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • led by researchers at Duke University
  • Any college with a spare server and some staff time can use the OpenSimulator software and play God to a virtual world.
  • The main request is the ability to limit access to students in a course, which the group can do.
  • To counter these new options, Linden Lab is testing a product that would let colleges install a world on their own servers and limit access to students and professors. Case Western is among those trying it out for its virtual campus.
  • Maybe 3-D online environments are just one of those technologies that sound cool but never fully materialize, like personal jetpacks. Trying to make the World Wide Web look like the real world misses the new kinds of things the Internet can do.
  • "We don't ­really understand what we can do and what we can't do with this tool for education yet, so it's more exploratory now," said Peter J. Ludlow, a philosophy professor at Northwestern University who studies virtual worlds. "We know there's something here, but we don't know what yet."
  • Barbara Lindsey on 18 Feb 10
     
    It turns out that virtual worlds are at their best when they look nothing like a traditional campus. Professors are finding that they can stage medical simulations, guide students through the inside of cell structures, or pre sent other imaginative teaching exercises that cannot be done in a physical classroom.
Chenwen Hong

YouTube Launches Auto-Captioning for Videos - 0 views

mashable.com/...youtube-auto-captioning

audio captioning video youtube social annotation deaf

shared by Chenwen Hong on 07 Mar 10 - Cached
  • ouTube, Google, Stanford, Berkeley, and the California School for the Deaf (CSD) are about to speak on YouTube and accessibility.
  • Now the Google Speech Technology team is speaking about the challenges they faced to get auto-captioning operational. Their vision was to create accurate captions for all videos in all languages, but had to deal with huge vocabularies, background noise, poor recordings, accent variability, and distinguishing between song and speech.- Google’s approach is to deliver captions from the cloud, given them the ability to rapidly iterate and model at a large scale.
  • You can only caption your own videos — you can’t just caption someone else’s videos.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • You can see the full caption file with timestamps and even download them as a text document. You can also upload your own captions as its own track — useful if auto-captioning isn’t doing the job or to make edits to the auto-captioned text.
  • With auto-captioning, these people can simply use text-based search to find what they need.
    • Chenwen Hong
      Chenwen Hong on 28 Mar 10
       
      This means auto-captioning works well as an index for videos. One of its strengths, particularly for us instructors, can be that it helps us effeciently locate relevant clips of videos. This function should also be helpful to our students because we can add notes into the clips at specific frames. Well, the downside is that one might misinterpret videos or misunderstand creators' intentions when using only parts of the videos to suit one's own purposes.
  • You can specify search only brings up videos with closed captioning (it shows the cc icon in search). In the past, when he was at MIT, he couldn’t understand lectures because he had no sign interpreter. Now he can use the captioning to watch lectures he missed.
  • Now students of the California School for the Deaf are speaking (sign language) on how they feel not excluded anymore from the major phenomenon of web video and are grateful to Google for building this technology.
suzanne ondrus

Social Media in Africa, Part 2: Mobile Innovations - ReadWriteWeb - 1 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...ia_in_africa_part_2_mobile.php

mobile_phones africa social_networking mobile

shared by suzanne ondrus on 05 Apr 10 - Cached
  • social media technology conference PICNIC2008
  • conference featured prolific social entrepreneurs and technology developers from around the world who offered insight into various projects from the African continent.
  • Africa is unique in that it seems to have bypassed the same era of community infrastructure building that has occurred in developed nations around the world.
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  • most of the technologies that currently permeate Africa aren't terrestrial. There are very few telephone lines, but mobile penetration is higher than any other region in the world.
  • Instead, internet connectivity is distributed nearly entirely by satellite.
  • The developers who are coming up with solutions in the continent, the ones who are writing software or hacking hardware, are creating for some of the harshest environments and use-cases in the world. If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere."
    • suzanne ondrus
      suzanne ondrus on 29 Apr 10
       
      The word "developers" could also be "capitalists." Again, I don't see why cell phones are so expensive in Benin & Burkina Faso!!
  • Perhaps this thought is what motivated Google to invest in O3B Networks earlier this month. O3B Networks is an ambitious attempt to bring three billion people in the developing world (mainly in parts of Asia and Africa) online by launching sixteen inexpensive, low-orbit satellites. The potential benefits for Google are obvious. This is three billion new internet users, who will more than likely use Google to search, and who will potentially click-through Adsense links and use other Google products. An indicator that Google may be anticipating as much is their move into Africa last year. They've since opened offices and hired people in both South Africa and Kenya with plans to eventually operate out of all sub-Saharan African countries.
  • At the end of 2007 there were over 280 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, representing a penetration rate of 30.4% Africa has become the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration in the region ranging from 30% to 100% from country to country. Fastest growing markets are in Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt
  • The Democratic Republic of Congo, population 60 million, has 10,000 fixed telephones but more than a million mobile phone subscribers. In Chad, the fifth-least developed country, mobile phone usage jumped from 10,000 to 200,000 in three years.
  • Micro-payments and Mobile Banking
  • Mobile News Reporting
Barbara Lindsey

Learning Spaces | EDUCAUSE - 0 views

www.educause.edu/...6072

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 05 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Net Gen students are facile at multitasking
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 05 Apr 10
       
      The research shows that no one can multitask effectively... See John Medina and Brain Rules, for example.
  • Workers anticipated having a single profession for the duration of their working lives. Education was based on a factory-like, "one size fits all" model. Talent was developed by weeding out those who could not do well in a monochromatic learning environment.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 05 Apr 10
       
      Also part and parcel of hegemonic educational practices which served to reinforce the existing social and economic paradigm.
  • Knowing now means using a well-organized set of facts to find new information and to solve novel problems. In 1900, learning consisted largely of memorization; today it relies chiefly on understanding.
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  • learners construct knowledge by understanding new information building on their current understanding and expertise. Constructivism contradicts the idea that learning is the transmission of content to a passive receiver. Instead, it views learning as an active process, always based on the learner's current understanding or intellectual paradigm. Knowledge is constructed by assimilating new information into the learner's knowledge paradigm. A learner does not come to a classroom or a course Web site with a mind that is a tabula rasa, a blank slate. Each learner arrives at a learning "site" with some preexisting level of understanding.
  • Learning science research also highlights the importance of learner engagement, or as the American Psychological Association describes it, intentional learning.1 This means that learners must have a "metaperspective" from which to view and assess their own learning, which is often referred to as metacognition.2 An active learning environment provides the opportunity to assess one's own learning, enabling learners to make decisions about the course, as well as reflect on and assess their progress. In the past, the measure of learning was the final grade (a summative measure). But a final grade is merely a measure of the student's performance on tests. It does not measure the learning that did—or did not—take place. To encourage learning, summative testing or assessments must be combined with formative assessments. Formative assessment is not directly associated with the final grade; it helps learners understand their learning and make decisions about next steps based on that understanding.
  • research indicating that learning is encouraged when it includes social components such as debate or direct engagement with peers and experts. Learning is strengthened through social interactions, interpersonal relations, and communication with others.
  • Research indicates that learners need to be active with respect to their own learning process and assessment. Net Gen students' goal and achievement orientation comes into play here: that achievement focus can be directed toward quizzes and exercises that assist learners in evaluating their progress toward learning goals.
  • Obviously not all forms of learning must be social or team-based. In a variety of learning contexts, individual work is important. It may well be that Net Gen students' strengths are also their weaknesses. The expectation for fast-paced, rapidly shifting interaction coupled with a relatively short attention span may be counterproductive in many learning contexts. Repetition and steady, patient practice—key to some forms of mastery—may prove difficult for Net Gen students. Designing courses for them necessitates balancing these strengths and weaknesses.
  • We should not neglect the informal for the formal, or assume that Net Gen students somehow will figure out the virtual space on their own. We should connect what happens in the classroom with what happens in informal and virtual spaces.
  • Simply installing wireless access points and fresh carpeting isn't enough if done in isolation; such improvements pay real dividends only if they are in concert with the institution's overall teaching and learning objectives. It is the vision that generates the design principles that will, in turn, be used to make key decisions about how learning spaces are configured.
  • The vision and design principles should emphasize the options students have as active participants in the learning process. Design principles should include terms such as analyze, create, criticize, debate, present, and classify—all directed at what the space enables the students to do. For example, students should be able to present materials to the class. Outside class, they should have access to applications and materials that directly support analysis of data, text, and other media. Forums for discussion and critical debate, both real and virtual, are key to encouraging learning and will be looked for by Net Gen students.
  • Learning spaces should accommodate the use of as many kinds of materials as possible and enable the display of and access to those materials by all participants. Learning space needs to provide the participants—instructors and students alike—with interactive tools that enable exploration, probing, and examination. This might include a robust set of applications installed on the computer that controls the room's displays, as well as a set of communication tools. Since the process of examination and debate leads to discovery and the construction of new knowledge, it could be important to equip spaces with devices that can capture classroom discussion and debate, which can be distributed to all participants for future reference and study.
  • the end of the class meeting marks a transition from one learning mode to another.
  • This lecture hall is of relatively recent vintage; its seats and paired tables make it much easier to deploy and use her "tools," which include printouts of the day's reading, as well as a small laptop computer. Her fellow students are doing likewise. Each of them is using some device to access the course's Web site—some with laptops, others with tablet computers, still others with handheld computers. Using wireless connections, they all access the course's Web site and navigate to the site's "voting" page.
  • a "magic wand," a radio-frequency controller that enables her to operate her computer—as well as many of the classroom's functions—wirelessly, from any point in the room. She can capture anything she writes on the blackboard and make it available to her students on the course Web site. Freed from needing to take extensive notes, the students are able to participate more fully in the class discussion. Finally, the professor is carrying a small recorder that captures her lecture, digitizes the audio, and uploads it to the course Web site for the students to review when they prepare for finals.
  • Sandra launches the classroom's screen sharing application. Within a few seconds, her computer's screen is projected on the room's main screen. The class discussion focuses on this diagram, and the professor, using a virtual pencil, is able to make notes on the diagram. The diagram and notes are captured and placed on the class Web site for review.
  • Soon the debate gets stuck; the students can't resolve the issue. The professor goes to the podium, types briefly, and then asks the students to go to a URL to see a question and to choose the answer they feel is correct. The students access the Web page from laptops, handhelds, or wireless IP-based phones. In two minutes they have completed the poll and submitted their responses. The results are quickly tabulated and displayed. The wide diversity of opinion surprises everyone. The professor reframes the issue, without giving the answer, and the students continue to discuss it. She repeats the poll; this time there is more agreement among the students, enabling her to move the discussion forward.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 05 Apr 10
       
      Could you see being able to do this? Would this work for you?
  • She goes to the podium computer and clicks on a few links, and soon a videoconferencing session is displayed on the right-hand screen. She has arranged to have a colleague of hers "drop in" on the class to discuss a point that is in the colleague's particular area of expertise. The class has a conversation with the expert, who is at large research institution more than 500 miles away. Students listen to the expert's comments and are able to pose questions using one of the three cordless microphones available to the class. On the left-hand screen, the visiting professor shows some images and charts that help explain the concepts under discussion.
  • the other students in her class have signed up for most of the slots, conferring with friends using chat programs to ensure that they sign up for the same lab slots.
  • The discussion pocket is the college's term for a small, curved space with a table and bench to accommodate a meeting of four or five people. Found outside the newer classrooms, they are handy for informal, spontaneous discussions. Sandra's group moves into the pocket and for the next 15 minutes continue their "spill over" discussion of the class.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 05 Apr 10
       
      How does this change perceptions of when and where learning begins and ends?
  • hey are able to have an audio chat; Sandra's friend is in her dorm room, and Sandra is in a remote corner of the library where conversation will not disturb others. As their discussion progresses, they go to the course's Web site and launch the virtual whiteboard to diagram some concepts. They develop a conceptual diagram—drawing, erasing, and revising it until they agree the diagram is correct. They both download a copy. Sandra volunteers to work on polishing the diagram and will leave a copy of the final diagram in her share folder in her online portfolio "locker
  • The underlying theme remains the same, however: cultivating learning practices consistent with learning theory and aligned with the habits and expectations of Net Gen students
  • For most higher education institutions, the lecture hall will not disappear; the challenge is to develop a new generation of lecture hall, one that enables Net Gen students and faculty to engage in enlivened, more interactive experiences. If the lecture hall is integrated with other spaces—physically as well as virtually—it will enable participants to sustain the momentum from the class session into other learning contexts. The goal is not to do away with the traditional classroom, but rather to reinvent and to integrate it with the other learning spaces, moving toward a single learning environment.
  • Learning theory is central to any consideration of learning spaces; colleges and universities cannot afford to invest in "fads" tailored to the Net Gen student that might not meet the needs of the next generation.
  • For example, start with the Net Gen students' focus on goals and achievement. That achievement orientation ties to learning theory's emphasis on metacognition, where learners assess their progress and make active decisions to achieve learning goals. Learning space design could support this by providing contact with people who can provide feedback: tutors, consultants, and faculty. This could, in turn, be supported in the IT environment by making formative self-tests available, as well as an online portfolio, which would afford students the opportunity to assess their overall academic progress.
  • As institutions create an anywhere, anytime IT infrastructure, opportunities arise to tear down silos and replace them with a more ubiquitous learning environment. Using laptops and other networked devices, students and faculty are increasingly able to carry their entire working environment with them. To capitalize on this, campus organizations must work collaboratively to create a more integrated work environment for the students and faculty, one that better serves the mobile Net Gen students as well as a faculty faced with the initial influx of these students into their ranks
  • One of the key variables is the institution itself. Learning spaces are institutional in scope—their implementation involves the institution's culture, tradition, and mission.
  • The starting point for rethinking learning spaces to support Net Gen students begins with an underlying vision for the learning activities these spaces should support. This vision should be informed by learning theory, as well as by recognition of the characteristics of the students and faculty who use these spaces.
Barbara Lindsey

Higher Education Reimagined With Online Courseware - Education Life - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...18open-t.html

education higher online courses

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 20 Apr 10 - Cached
  • M.I.T. officials like to tell about an unsolicited comment they received one day about the online course “Introduction to Solid State Chemistry.” “I learned a LOT from these lectures and the other course material,” the comment said. “Thank you for having it online.” The officials did a double take. It was from Bill Gates. (Really.)
  • But just 9 percent of those who use M.I.T. OpenCourseWare are educators. Forty-two percent are students enrolled at other institutions, while another 43 percent are independent learners like Mr. Gates. Yale, which began putting free courses online just four years ago, is seeing similar proportions: 25 percent are students, a majority of them enrolled at Yale or prospective students; just 6 percent are educators; and 69 percent are independent learners.
  • Professor Shankar is working on his second semester of recorded videos, and says that the experience has improved his teaching.
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  • So Professor Shankar has begun inserting links to specific portions of Professor Lewin’s course, and, “since any mistake would affect larger numbers of students listening online,” he says, he thinks harder about every topic he teaches in the classroom.
  • His intense, animated ruminations — the title of his course is “Death” — have brought fan mail from Mexico, Iraq, Korea and China. Several months ago, he got a response from somebody suffering from a brain injury and who was using the lectures to exercise his mind. “I don’t think anyone knows what this will do to education 15 years from now,” Professor Kagan says. “But even if it does nothing more than that, that’s enough.”
  • The backers of free courseware acknowledge the benefit of self-enrichment. Still, they say they expect open education not only to expand access to information but also to lead to success in higher education, particularly among low-income students and those who are first in their family to go to college.
  • Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative is working with teams of faculty members, researchers on learning and software engineers to develop e-courses designed to improve the educational experience.
  • Carnegie Mellon is working with community colleges to build four more courses, with the three-year goal of 25 percent more students passing when the class is bolstered by the online instruction.
  • The intended user is the beginning college student, whom Dr. Smith describes as “someone with limited prior knowledge in a college subject and with little or no experience in successfully directing his or her own learning.”
  • . “We now have the technology that enables us to go back to what we all know is the best educational experience: personalized, interactive engagement,” Dr. Smith says.
  • That won’t happen, and in the terms-of-use section of Open Yale Courses, the university makes that clear. Besides not granting degrees or certificates, open courses do not offer direct access to faculty. They, in other words, are strictly “for those who wish to learn,” as the Web site says. “Its purpose is not to duplicate a Yale education.”
  • Open courseware is a classic example of disruptive technology, which, loosely defined, is an innovation that comes along one day to change a product or service, often standing an industry on its head. Craigslist did this to newspapers by posting classified ads for free. And the music industry got blindsided when iTunes started unbundling songs from albums and selling them for 99 cents apiece.
  • Mr. Schonfeld sees still more potential in “unbundling” the four elements of educating: design of a course, delivery of that course, delivery of credit and delivery of a degree. “Traditionally, they’ve all lived in the same institutional setting.” Must all four continue to live together, or can one or more be outsourced?
  • P2PU’s mission isn’t to develop a model and stick with it. It is to “experiment and iterate,” says Ms. Paharia, the former executive director of Creative Commons. She likes to talk about signals, a concept borrowed from economics. “Having a degree is a signal,” she says. “It’s a signal to employers that you’ve passed a certain bar.” Here’s the radical part: Ms. Paharia doesn’t think degrees are necessary. P2PU is working to come up with alternative signals that indicate to potential employers that an individual is a good thinker and has the skills he or she claims to have — maybe a written report or an online portfolio.
  • David Wiley, associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, is an adviser to P2PU. For the past several years, he has been referring to “the disaggregation of higher education,” the breaking apart of university functions. Dr. Wiley says that models like P2PU address an important component missing from open courseware: human support. That is, when you have a question, whom can you ask? “No one gets all the way through a textbook without a dozen questions,” he says. “Who’s the T.A.? Where’s your study group?” “If you go to M.I.T. OpenCourseWare, there’s no way to find out who else is studying the same material and ask them for help,” he says. At P2PU, a “course organizer” leads the discussion but “you are working together with others, so when you have a question you can ask any of your peers. The core idea of P2PU is putting people together around these open courses.”
  • Mr. Reshef’s plan is to “take anyone, anyone whatsoever,” as long as they can pass an English orientation course and a course in basic computer skills, and have a high school diploma or equivalent. The nonprofit venture has accepted, and enrolled, 380 of 3,000 applicants, and is trying to raise funds through microphilanthropy — “$80 will send one student to UoPeople for a term” — through social networking.
  • Mr. Reshef has used $1 million of his own money to start the University of the People, which taps open courses that other universities have put online and relies on student interaction to guide learning; students even grade one another’s papers.
Barbara Lindsey

t r u t h o u t | Dumbing Down Teachers: Attacking Colleges of Education in the Name of... - 0 views

www.truthout.org/ges-education-name-reform59820

giroux criticalpedagogy schoolofed

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 26 May 10 - Cached
  • the Obama administration's educational policy under the leadership of Arne Duncan lacks a democratic vision and sense of moral direction
  • Almost all of Duncan's polices are indebted to the codes of a market-driven business culture, legitimated through discourses of measurement, efficiency and utility. This is a discourse that values hedge fund managers over teachers, privatization over the public good, management over leadership and training over education. Duncan's fervent support of neoliberal values are well-known and are evident in his support for high-stakes testing, charter schools, school-business alliances, merit pay, linking teacher pay to higher test scores, offering students monetary rewards for higher grades, CEO-type management, abolishing tenure, defining the purpose of schooling as largely job training, the weakening of teacher unions and blaming teachers exclusively for the failure of public schooling.[4]
  • Duncan has expanded the reach of his educational reform policies and is now attempting to rewrite curricular mandates. Emphasizing the practical and experiential, he seeks to gut the critical nature of theory, pedagogy and knowledge taught in colleges of education. This is an important issue to more than just teachers who are denied a voice in curricular development; it also affects whole generations of youth. Such a bold initiative reveals in very clear terms the political project that drives his reforms and what he fears about both public schooling and the teachers who labor in classrooms every day.
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  • According to Duncan, the great sin these colleges have committed in the past few decades is that they have focused too much on theory and not enough on clinical practice; and by theory he means critical pedagogy, or those theories that enable prospective teachers to situate school knowledges, practices and modes of governance within wider critical, historical, social, cultural, economic and political contexts. Duncan wants such colleges to focus on practical methods in order to prepare teachers for an outcome-based education system, which is code for pedagogical methods that are as anti-intellectual as they are politically conservative.
  • Rather than provide the best means for confronting "difficult truths about the inequality of America's political economy," such a pedagogy produces the swindle of "blaming inequalities on individuals and groups with low test scores."[7] This is a pedagogy that sabotages any attempt at self-reflection and quality education, all the while providing an excuse for producing moral comas and a flight from responsibility.
  • Duncan's insistence on banishing theory from teacher education programs in favor of promoting narrowly defined skills and practices foreshadows the preparation of teachers as a subaltern class who believe that the purpose of education is only to train students to compete successfully in a global economy. This model of teaching being celebrated here is one in which teachers are constructed as clerks and technicians who have no need for a public vision in which to imagine the democratic role and social responsibility that schools, teachers or pedagogy might assume for the world and future they offer to young people.
  • Duncan then goes on to praise Louisiana as a model for building longitudinal data systems that track the impact of new teachers on student achievement. For Duncan, Louisiana represents a beacon for how schools should be redefined, largely as sites of management and data collection, and advances the notion that teachers should be trained to operate proficiently in such sites.
  • the overuse of harsh discipline disproportionately affects some Louisiana school children over others. African American students make up 44% of the statewide public school population, but 68% of suspensions and 72.5% of expulsions. And in school districts with a larger percentage of African American and low-income students, there are higher rates of suspension and expulsion. These districts tend to have fewer resources for positive interventions.
  • Duncan's collusion with the growing corporatization and militarizing of public schools, along with the increased use of harsh disciplinary modes of punishment, surveillance, control and containment, especially in schools inhabited largely by poor minorities of color, reveals his unwillingness to address the degree to which many schools are dominated by a politics of fear, containment and authoritarianism, even as he advances reform as a civil rights issue.[12] Schools are not merely places where potential workers learn the marketable skills and abilities necessary to secure a decent job, they are also, as Martha C. Nussbaum pointed out, key institutions of the public good and are "crucial to both the health of democracy and to the creation of a decent world culture and a robust type of global citizenship."[13]
  • The diverse range of political, economic, racial and social forces that influence all aspects of schooling need to be critically engaged and rearticulated in the interest of justice, human development, freedom and equal opportunity. These are not merely political issues, they are also pedagogical concerns and the former cannot be separated from the latter, just as equity cannot be separated from matters of excellence. Defining schools exclusively in terms of mathematical coordinates and statistical formulas suggests that Duncan has no language for addressing schools as sites or teachers as engaged intellectuals that mediate, accommodate, reproduce and sometimes challenge the diverse and often anti-democratic forces that bear down on them.
  • What does it mean to ignore the increasing corporatization, privatization and militarization of schools at a time when all aspects of public life are under siege by corporate and market-driven forces? How can schools fulfill their democratic mission when they are shaped by a social order characterized by massive inequalities in wealth and power?
Barbara Lindsey

How Social Media is Changing Government Agencies - 0 views

mashable.com/...vernment-agencies-social-media

social media government twitter facebook

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 24 May 10 - Cached
  • Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Twitter Earthquake Detector (@USGSTed) is a prototype that gathers real-time Twitter updates during seismic activities faster than scientific equipment can be tapped for more precise measurements and alerts. It examines earthquakes at an anecdotal level, and complements scientific analysis, according to the project’s overseer, Paul Earle.
  • At the most basic level, social media is about community building. Government agencies have adopted this mindset to varying degrees as a way to foster trust and dialogue with people. “It is truly a national town hall that has never been attempted during a disaster,” said Commander James Hoeft of the U.S. Navy, who oversees the cleanup effort’s social media team.
Barbara Lindsey

ID and Other Reflections: 21st Century Workplace Challenges - 0 views

idreflections.blogspot.com/...tury-workplace-challenges.html

learning 21stcenturylearning collaboration cop communitiesofpractice

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 29 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Given this situation, it is clear that some of the following are needed to build a workplace that innovates—in other words—a learning organization:
  • Barbara Lindsey on 29 Dec 10
     
    Thx 2 Thomas Sauer for posting this link. (An absolutely critical means for me to find information about topics I am passionate about and that promote my deepening understanding of issues key to my ongoing professional development is allowing those with similar passions to curate findings for me and to likewise do the same for others.) "My understanding of today's workplace: Predictable, routine tasks are being either automated or outsourced, or soon will be. Knowledge workers are increasingly taking more responsibility for their work as well as personal growth. Hierarchy is being replaced by wirearchy. Managers are being replaced by leaders, coaches, and facilitators, or will be. The kinds of work being done are those that defy being codified into step-lists or guidelines. The problems are complex-often chaotic-and resist solving using best practices or yore. Ambiguity, complexity and chaos are replacing the predictable, known, and simple. The competitive edge is the ability to problem solve quickly and innovatively. The day of individual stars are past; it is time for collaborative team work. Routine expertise, based on set skills and crystallized intelligence, is being superseded by a need for more adaptive expertise and fluid intelligence." 
Barbara Lindsey

Visualize your GPS tracks with Breadcrumbs | Google Earth Blog - 0 views

www.gearthblog.com/...your_gps_tracks_with_brea.html

gps socialannotation 3d trail video googleearth googelmaps

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 02 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Our users can log their ski trip, hiking trip or sightseeing trip, upload it to Breadcrumbs with their photos and videos, and send it to all their friends, who can relive the adventure in 3D. And this is only the start, as we plan to provide our users with a platform to not only edit and maintain tracks, but also to find new places to explore and interact within a social network.
  • Breadcrumbs is the first web application of its kind, where users can manage GPS tracks, photos and videos in one place - it can be thought of as 'Flickr for GPS tracks'.
  • The key features of Breadcrumbs include:Relive your adventure: Breadcrumbs brings together photos, videos and GPS tracks in one quick and easy process and our 3D playback function brings the track alive. Edit and manage: Breadcrumbs comes with a suite of tools which let users edit and manage their GPS tracks, photos and videos. These include:- Automated geotagging of photos.- Track editing tool to correct GPS points.- Add information to your adventure to help tell the story, such as show where you ate your lunch or spotted some wildlife.- Organize: Breadcrumbs offers a rich set of tools to help users to manage adventures.- Share: Breadcrumbs makes it easy to share adventures, with options including a public page for each track and direct integration with Facebook.
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  • Our utilization and heavy integration with the Google Earth plugin is also a big bonus for the user. Garmin allows you to look at your data in Google Maps and indeed Google Earth. However, Breadcrumbs builds on this as we have built a track playback feature on top of the plugin which allows you to hit play and replay your trip step by step. It's like watching a movie of your day out! This really does bring the users' GPS data to life especially when sharing with friends and family.
  • We are already integrated with one smartphone application allowing the user to push their tracks directly to Breadcrumbs from their phone.
Barbara Lindsey

ACTFL Submission Guidelines 2011 - 0 views

convention2.allacademic.com/...lines_and_Recommendations.html

actfl actfl11 submission guidelines

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 27 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • A focus of ACTFL 2011 will be on how language educators can prepare students for living, working, and learning in a global environment.
  • While technology is embedded in all 21st century classroom activities, this strand focuses on specific cutting edge technologies that promote language development and cultural understanding including social networking and global communities.
  • Building the language capacity of the U.S. is an ongoing challenge that requires effective policies, local and national advocacy efforts, and matching U.S. student performance against international benchmarks. Developing effective teachers and effective teacher leaders and mentors is also a critical component of our profession.
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  • Effective instructional practice leads to increased language development and cultural understanding and meets the needs of all students in the language classroom. Integrating technology innovations into instruction is vital to a 21st century learning environment. Various program models and curriculum designs are featured in this category from elementary program dual language, immersion, and FLES, to higher education programs that focus on advanced language proficiency.
  • If you are a presenter as well as the person submitting the proposal, you must still list yourself as a presenter. As the submitter your name will be included as the “session organizer”, but you must also add your name as a presenter. This is very important otherwise your name will not show as being a presenter on the submission and your proposal may not be considered. Be sure that your presenter information is current – email address, affiliation (school/company), address, etc – in the database.
Barbara Lindsey

Educational Leadership:Teaching Screenagers:Publishers, Participants All - 0 views

www.ascd.org/...lishers,-Participants-All.aspx

privacy onlinerights onlinesafety publishing2.0 digital footprint willrichardson

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 14 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Building and maintaining a compelling, creative, connected, positive online presence is a literacy for the times, one that we teachers must model and help students develop.
  • This is a world in which public is the new default. Thought leader Michael Schrage (2010) notes that "the traditional two-page résumé has been turned into a 'personal productivity portal' that empowers prospective employers to quite literally interact with their candidate's work."
  • In addition to teaching safe publishing habits, we must also teach connection, the idea that the "publish" button is no longer the end of the process but a midpoint, an opportunity to learn from those who take the time to read and respond. In essence, we want students to talk to strangers, to have the wherewithal not only to discern good strangers from bad ones, but also to appreciate the huge learning opportunity that online strangers represent.
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  • At the end of the day, high school graduates need a clear sense of both the potentials and the pitfalls of interacting online. They should be able to create their own connections in safe, effective, and ethical ways. For schools, this means far more than just doing an information literacy unit. Rather, we must envision a K–12 curriculum that seamlessly integrates these new skills and literacies in age-appropriate ways and gradually moves students into more public interactions online. Not doing so would be akin to handing teenagers the keys to the car without having taught them to drive.
Barbara Lindsey

Learning Reimagined: Participatory, Peer, Global, Online | DMLcentral - 1 views

www.dmlcentral.net/...rticipatory-peer-global-online

learning2.0 cop communitiesofpractice rheingold

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 02 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • I have found that in both my traditional physical classrooms and online environments, the chances of successful outcomes are multiplied when every person in the group makes a commitment to active participation in helping others learn.
  • When a sufficient number of people jump in and start contributing and building on one another's contributions, it becomes clear to all that it's not just about the teacher's performance and the student's ability to complete assignments. It's about our joint effort to make the whole of our encounter more valuable than just the sum of our individual learning.
  • I type roles on the whiteboard and show how to use the whiteboard tools to enter, format and move around elements. Roles include searchers, chat summarizers, session summarizers, mindmap leaders, session bloggers. I ask co-learners to write their own names on the whiteboard next to the roles they want to take, show them how to create break-out rooms to coordinate their collaborations, and ask the summarizers to feed their output to the bloggers, who take responsibility for posting a reflective summary of the session later
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 25 Sep 11
       
      How about we try this out in our online sessions?
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  • It's confusing at first, but it is also flowing.
  • Yes, we're a collective intelligence, which is exhilarating, but we're a toddler collective intelligence, stumbling around learning to walk and trying to figure out where we're going at the same time. A number of new skills are required in short order. Information and communication flow through multiple simultaneous channels. The enterprise is challenging - that's part of the exercise. Taking my direction from George Siemens' ideas about networked learning ("we emphasize that early course experiences tend to be overwhelming and chaotic") I assure co-learners early and often that we can relax, accept and even embrace the chaos, and regard our networked attempts to make sense of it as the scaffold for our co-learning. 
  • Instead of seeking to put every fact in its place in an existing well-ordered taxonomy, why not seek to learn together by asking questions about what puzzles us, then organizing our discussions and mining them for knowledge?
  • Sometimes, I get into predicaments and don't know how to quit a webtour or place people in breakout rooms. So I calmly start exploring possible solutions, talking about it as I try to recover. While doing so, I also talk about the importance of exploring close enough to the edge to fall over it frequently. I model tolerance for error, learning from error, pushing the envelope of tech. Indeed, I've found that the earlier I can break something and fix it in public, the better. We talk about what works and what doesn't, discard what doesn't suit our purposes, push a tool further if it helps us learn together. It requires regular doses of humility to abandon what seemed like a bright idea at the time.
  • The objective is a culture of conversation that troubleshoots practical skills, explores theoretical underpinnings, dissects social implications.
  • Our internal social bookmarks enable us to create a mini-collective-intelligence by gathering resources about our discussion topics, selecting or writing descriptive snippets, assigning tags. The emerging tag-cloud serves as an index to the resources.
  • Wiki-work is about collaborative authoring.
  • In the process of using these tools to try to make sense together, we co-construct our learning. The last week of the course is about re-examining our learning process, reiterating the most important things we've learned, and redesigning the parts of the process that didn't work so well.
  • Barbara Lindsey on 02 Aug 11
     
    fall 2011 syllabus
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