Skip to main content

Home/ beyondwebct/ Group items tagged self

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Barbara Lindsey

Cheater Cheater by Michael Erard - The Morning News - 0 views

www.themorningnews.org/...cheater_cheater.php

plagiarism highered stduents

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 08 Jun 10 - Cached
  • To me it meant that there were contradictions about what we did and what we said in our culture about who we looked up to and who we made pay for our sins. It also meant that authorship and authoring were far more complicated than could be taught—I myself was about to see this, live it.
  • Because she had a disciplinary file in the dean’s office, she decided against graduate school and didn’t take the GRE, though she was thinking about graduate school in business. More importantly, though, her self-image as a good girl had been crushed.
  • I told Haley a bit about how her plagiarism had affected me. How I took it personally, and trusted students a little less; I made sure that assignments were plagiarism-proof. But what she couldn’t know was how I became more confident in spotting an opportunity to instruct, and less interested in policing boundaries—which were, after all, mine to teach. She also couldn’t know that at one point, I’d considered designing a course that would focus on rewriting, rephrasing, riffing, and appropriation as real tools of the writer’s trade. It wouldn’t teach anything that would get anyone in trouble, but unlike other writing courses, it would be honest about where ideas and language come from: well, who knows where they come from, but not from angelic transmissions into our minds.
Barbara Lindsey

Calhoun School: Steve's Blog Is it Learning or Training? - 0 views

www.calhoun.org/page.cfm

progressive education calhoun NYC blog

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 28 May 10 - Cached
  • proponents claim, the methods “work,” as represented by higher test scores.   Because, they add, the methods are efficient, meaning you can produce results with brutal economic efficiency and large classes.  And, in ed policy-speak, the systematized, highly structured methodologies are “scaleable,” easily replicated and exported to other schools. 
  • Anyone intensely “drilled” in facts or simple algorithms will demonstrate superior performance when tested on short-term retention.   The students in programs like that at Williamsburg Collegiate are being trained to give the “right” answers, but they are learning little or nothing.   Other evidence exposes the folly of these practices, as test score gains among younger students are not holding as the same students move into older grades. But the policy response in most places is reflexive, not reflective.   Drill them more and test ‘em again! 
  • Perhaps the greatest tragedy of this approach to education is that it disregards, often punishes, the qualities that most characterize real learning.  Children are discouraged from expressing a point of view – no time for that and it isn’t on the test.  Creativity is irrelevant.  Children who are sensitive and poetic are devalued, forced into quick, aggressive responses by a drill sergeant teacher.   Critical thinking is not welcome.  Where is the space for empathy and imagination?  What about the child whose unique intelligence is the ability to visualize something beautiful, to see another possible way to solve a problem, to turn a history assignment into a song?
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Most highly regimented urban charter schools are largely for the “other” –the underclass children of color whom powerful people talk about but seldom meet.    I wonder if Mssrs. Gates, Broad, Dell, Walton or Bloomberg would subject their own children to such a school environment, where they would march in tight formation and eagerly parrot the “right” answers required by the training manual?    I would guess not.  Of course I didn’t see many of those guys at Fort Benning either.         
  • There is little evidence outside of the short term, self-fulfilling cycle of call and response, that these schools are educating students at all
Barbara Lindsey

Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice - 1 views

www.infed.org/...communities_of_practice.htm

CoP community education wenger collaboration practice learning communities mafla09 actfl09 blended learning

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 17 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Supposing learning is social and comes largely from of our experience of participating in daily life? It was this thought that formed the basis of a significant rethinking of learning theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s by two researchers from very different disciplines - Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Their model of situated learning proposed that learning involved a process of engagement in a 'community of practice'. 
  • When looking closely at everyday activity, she has argued, it is clear that 'learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often unrecognized as such' (Lave 1993: 5).
  • Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. (Wenger circa 2007)
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 02 Sep 10
       
      How many courses have you yourself taken that incorporate this definition of CoP as one of its goals? 
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Over time, this collective learning results in practices that reflect both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise. It makes sense, therefore to call these kinds of communities communities of practice. (Wenger 1998: 45)
  • Rather than looking to learning as the acquisition of certain forms of knowledge, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger have tried to place it in social relationships – situations of co-participation.
  • The fact that they are organizing around some particular area of knowledge and activity gives members a sense of joint enterprise and identity. For a community of practice to function it needs to generate and appropriate a shared repertoire of ideas, commitments and memories. It also needs to develop various resources such as tools, documents, routines, vocabulary and symbols that in some way carry the accumulated knowledge of the community.
  • The interactions involved, and the ability to undertake larger or more complex activities and projects though cooperation, bind people together and help to facilitate relationship and trust
  • The characteristics of communities of practice According to Etienne Wenger (c 2007), three elements are crucial in distinguishing a community of practice from other groups and communities: The domain. A community of practice is is something more than a club of friends or a network of connections between people. 'It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people' (op. cit.). The community. 'In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other' (op. cit.). The practice. 'Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction' (op. cit.).
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 02 Sep 10
       
      What are your thoughts on the importance of these three domains? Are they important in a course? In a degree program? As part of your professional practice?
  • Initially people have to join communities and learn at the periphery. The things they are involved in, the tasks they do may be less key to the community than others.
  • One of the implications for schools, as Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues suggest is that they must prioritize 'instruction that builds on children's interests in a collaborative way'. Such schools need also to be places where 'learning activities are planned by children as well as adults, and where parents and teachers not only foster children's learning but also learn from their own involvement with children' (2001: 3). Their example in this area have particular force as they are derived from actual school practice.
  • Learning is, thus, not seen as the acquisition of knowledge by individuals so much as a process of social participation. The nature of the situation impacts significantly on the process.
  • What is more, and in contrast with learning as internalization, ‘learning as increasing participation in communities of practice concerns the whole person acting in the world’ (Lave and Wenger 1991: 49). The focus is on the ways in which learning is ‘an evolving, continuously renewed set of relations’ (ibid.: 50). In other words, this is a relational view of the person and learning (see the discussion of selfhood).
  • 'the purpose is not to learn from talk as a substitute for legitimate peripheral participation; it is to learn to talk as a key to legitimate peripheral participation'. This orientation has the definite advantage of drawing attention to the need to understand knowledge and learning in context. However, situated learning depends on two claims: It makes no sense to talk of knowledge that is decontextualized, abstract or general. New knowledge and learning are properly conceived as being located in communities of practice (Tennant 1997: 77).
  • There is a risk, as Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger acknowledge, of romanticizing communities of practice.
  • 'In their eagerness to debunk testing, formal education and formal accreditation, they do not analyse how their omission [of a range of questions and issues] affects power relations, access, public knowledge and public accountability' (Tennant 1997: 79).
  • Perhaps the most helpful of these explorations is that of Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues (2001). They examine the work of an innovative school in Salt Lake City and how teachers, students and parents were able to work together to develop an approach to schooling based around the principle that learning 'occurs through interested participation with other learners'.
  • Learning is in the relationships between people. As McDermott (in Murphy 1999:17) puts it: Learning traditionally gets measured as on the assumption that it is a possession of individuals that can be found inside their heads… [Here] learning is in the relationships between people. Learning is in the conditions that bring people together and organize a point of contact that allows for particular pieces of information to take on a relevance; without the points of contact, without the system of relevancies, there is not learning, and there is little memory. Learning does not belong to individual persons, but to the various conversations of which they are a part.
  • It not so much that learners acquire structures or models to understand the world, but they participate in frameworks that that have structure. Learning involves participation in a community of practice. And that participation 'refers not just to local events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but to a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities' (Wenger 1999: 4).
  • learning involves a deepening process of participation in a community of practice
  • Acknowledging that communities of practice affect performance is important in part because of their potential to overcome the inherent problems of a slow-moving traditional hierarchy in a fast-moving virtual economy. Communities also appear to be an effective way for organizations to handle unstructured problems and to share knowledge outside of the traditional structural boundaries. In addition, the community concept is acknowledged to be a means of developing and maintaining long-term organizational memory. These outcomes are an important, yet often unrecognized, supplement to the value that individual members of a community obtain in the form of enriched learning and higher motivation to apply what they learn. (Lesser and Storck 2001)
  • Educators need to reflect on their understanding of what constitutes knowledge and practice. Perhaps one of the most important things to grasp here is the extent to which education involves informed and committed action.
Barbara Lindsey

News: The Evidence on Online Education - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...online

research online learning meta-analysis usgov ed

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 30 Sep 10 - Cached
  • The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took "blended" courses -- those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction -- appeared to do best of all. That finding could be significant as many colleges report that blended instruction is among the fastest-growing types of enrollment.
  • While the new study provides a strong endorsement of online learning, it also notes findings about the relative success (or lack thereof) of various teaching techniques used in online courses. The use of video or online quizzes -- frequently encouraged for online education -- "does not appear to enhance learning," the report says.
  • But noting the caveats in the report about factors other than medium of instruction, he said that "we should not take the report as saying it is simply better to move to online learning. These results demonstrate why more research is needed -- broadly based research that moves well beyond case studies conducted by distance education practitioners, research focused on student retention in online environments and especially research that looks behind the instructional medium to isolate the characteristics of instruction that produce positive results. Successful education has always been about engaging students whether it is in an online environment, face to face or in a blended setting. And fundamental to that is having faculty who are fully supported and engaged in that process as well."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • "Despite what appears to be strong support for online learning applications, the studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium," the report says. "In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages. At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction."
  • Using technology to give students "control of their interactions" has a positive effect on student learning, however. "Studies indicate that manipulations that trigger learner activity or learner reflection and self-monitoring of understanding are effective when students pursue online learning as individuals," the report says.Notably, the report attributes much of the success in learning online (blended or entirely) not to technology but to time. "Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning," the report says.
Barbara Lindsey

createthefuture - The Future of Learning 10 Years On - 0 views

createthefuture.wikispaces.com/Future+of+Learning+10+Years+On

downes futureofed future learning

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 02 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • The purpose of educational institutions, therefore, is not merely to create and distribute learning opportunities and resources, but also to facilitate a student’s participation in a learning environment…
  • The purpose of educational institutions, therefore, is not merely to create and distribute learning opportunities and resources, but also to facilitate a student’s participation in a learning environment – a game, a community, a profession – through the provision of the materials that will assist him or her to, in a sense, see the world in the same way as an accomplished expert; and this is accomplished not merely by presenting learning materials to the learner, but by facilitating the engagement of the learner in conversations with members of that community of experts.
  • In the end, what will be evaluated is a complex portfolio of a student’s online activities.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • … it is important to understand that place independence means that real learning will occur in real environments, with the contributions of the students not being some artifice designed strictly for practice, but an actual contribution to the business or enterprise in question.
  • Current online learning efforts are based on the idea that learning will occur in a certain online place – a learning management system, say – or will be conducted using certain software tools.
  • … a field trip to a local stream or forest would be seen as a once-a-semester activity, because it would otherwise consume too much class time, it could now become (for some students) a once-a-day activity, with what used to be classroom activities designed around the field trips.
  • as Wenger says, “... the school is not the privileged locus of learning. It is not a self-contained, closed world in which students acquire knowledge to be applied outside, but a part of a broader learning system. The class is not the primary learning event. It is life itself that is the main learning event.”
  • education is fundamentally a process of communication; learning, by contrast, is fundamentally a process of growth
  • Traditional learning composed of classes and cohorts operates more as a group than as a network … Classes are closed; there is a clear barrier between members and non-members. … In the case of informal learning, however, the structure is much looser. People pursue their own objectives in their own way, while at the same time initiating and sustaining an ongoing dialogue with others pursuing similar objectives.
  • In traditional learning, success is achieved not merely by passing the test but in some way being recognized as having achieved expertise. A test-only system is a coarse system of measurement for a complex achievement. (NOTE: See Frank Smith's The Book of Learning and Forgetting)
  • Despite the efforts of educators and individuals to create (often lavish and complex) learning environments for students, this will in the long run not be necessary. Learners will create their own communities, their own environments. At most, the educator needs to ensure that the tools are there for students to use, and that the channels of communication, from student to student, from community to community, are open.
  • … it is probably inevitable that the domains of ‘learning’ and ‘testing’ will separate. In the future it may even be thought of as quaint that those responsible for the fostering of learning were also those responsible for evaluating whether or not learning actually happened. People who are in some way able to demonstrate their ability – through a portfolio system, for example, are able to circumvent the need for testing altogether.
Barbara Lindsey

Modeling Social Media in Groups, Communities, and Networks - 0 views

www.tesl-ej.org/...ej51int

socialmedia cop communitiesofpractice networking

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 06 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • the evolution of what was initially a group into a community of practice is illustrated, as well as how social media enables one CoP to interact with others to become part of a distributed learning network. Participants in the networked communities continually leverage each other’s professional development, and what is modeled and practiced in transactions there is applied later in their teaching practices
  • Teachers can be shown how to use social media, but unless they use it themselves they are unlikely to change their practices. There is evidence that teachers trained in programs where their instructors used social media (modeled it) are more comfortable with technology than if their instructors did not themselves use these tools. This article suggests how teachers can interact with numerous communities of practice and distributed learning networks where other participants are modeling to and learning from one another optimal ways of using social media in teaching. This strongly suggests that teachers must be trained not only in the use of social media, but through its use.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 06 Dec 10
       
      "Through its use" is key here!
  • “To teach is to model and demonstrate. To learn is to practice and reflect.”
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • Networks are ideal as enhancements for all four of these essential activities of lifelong learners, and they enable us to model, demonstrate, practice, and reflect constantly and effectively.
  • “teachers who practice autonomy in their own professional development formulate heuristics for harvesting knowledge within their personal learning spaces, and thus stand a better chance of inculcating the desired behaviors in their students, thus increasing the likelihood of producing potentially autonomous and lifelong learners. But it is a percolative process.
  • The wiki allowed anyone (anyone could write on it, not just Webheads) to leave an email address if they needed an invitation, and those who had spare invitations would give one to someone in need. The system worked to organize a quick and robust Webheads Wave, a sandbox for teachers to try out the tool and to model and demonstrate and practice with one another.
  • Networks provide the framework for this to happen.
  • Pedagogy
  • Networking
  • Literacy
  • Paradigm shift results when many people in a community or network follow the same process of seeing things modeled and demonstrated for one another in such a way that after considered reflection and weighing of the old and new ways of addressing a problem, they gradually alter their practice.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 06 Dec 10
       
      ACOT showed this in the late 80's with their ten year study.  http://imet.csus.edu/imet1/baeza/PDF%20Files/Upload/10yr.pdf
  • Heuristics
  • hose with knowledge and those seeking it treat each other equally, often reversing roles frequently as seekers and providers of knowledge and content.
  • multiliteracies approaches
  • When the Writing for Webheads group of students and teachers formed in 1998, participants were distrustful of sending their pictures to strangers on the Internet, and even to reveal their real names.
  • Photographs and voice/webcam communications enable group members to see the human behind the text message and enhance bonds leading to a sense of community
  • Scaffolding one another’s practice by modeling to one another and answering each other’s questions
  • the evolution of social media has enabled the Webheads CoP to interact with others to become part of a much wider distributed learning network.
  • Siemens has long espoused the notion of connectivism, famously summarized as “The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe.” (Siemens, 2004, n.p.). Here, Siemens means that it is more important to nurture a system of connections between knowledgeable people (the pipe) than to be concerned with what these knowledgeable people know (the content within the pipe) since this content can be directed as needed to anyone with appropriate connections within the pipe.
  • Communities and networks help us to aggregate, filter, and assimilate this information into some kind of knowledge structure and then disseminate it throughout the community or network.
  • distributed learning networks (DLN’s), or personal or professional learning networks (PLNs), or personal learning environments (PLE’s)–all provide direct (and indirect) contact with many people in one’s network, each possessing a reservoir of knowledge which contributes to the entire pool of knowledge residing in the network. This can be accessed through listservs or sometimes almost instantaneously through Twitter or RSS feeds, or Skype, or instant messaging. Therefore the knowledge possessed by any individual, or node in the network, is the sum total of all aggregated knowledge within that network. It is to this that we ascribe the incredible power inherent in distributed learning networks which often comprise to some extent communities of practice.
  • Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002, p. 6) promote the CoP model as an anecdote to the fact, as he puts it, that “increasing complexity of knowledge requires greater … collaboration; whereas … the half life of knowledge is getting shorter.”
  • the skill of leveraging networks is increasingly important in the 21st century in plumbing and aggregating knowledge when that knowledge base is forever changing at an increasingly accelerated pace.
  • or appropriate use of online social networks to be taught in schools, teachers themselves must be familiar with their impact on learning. One problem is that teacher-trainers without sufficient experience with technology and who are rooted in old-school methodologies are simply not modeling new age learning behaviors for their trainees by showing them how to reach out to networks.
  • research indicates that teachers don’t necessarily activate the knowledge they are exposed to in training curricula. The example he gave was on reverting to traditional methods rather than utilizing knowledge about communicative language teaching (Richards, 2009: 4), but the same applies to knowledge of technology.
  • In order for training in pedagogical affordances of networking to take hold it is crucial that teachers be trained not only in social media, but through its use. Those who use social media in their professional networking find this self-evident, but there is at least annecdotal evidence for the need for modeling by mentors.
  • teachers need to be shown the connections between their use of social media in their personal and professional lives. Glogowski and Sessums pointed out in their presentation at the WiAOC 2007 conference their surprise that student teachers who were already using technology with online acquaintances in their after-hours social networking were not carrying this over into their professional teaching practices.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 06 Dec 10
       
      The same holds true for our students.
Barbara Lindsey

My School, Meet MySpace: Social Networking at School | Edutopia - 0 views

www.edutopia.org/my-school-meet-myspace

21stcentury critical pedagogy education sla technology web2.0

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 11 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Months before the newly hired teachers at Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy (SLA) started their jobs, they began the consuming work of creating the high school of their dreams -- without meeting face to face. They articulated a vision, planned curriculum, designed assessment rubrics, debated discipline policies, and even hammered out daily schedules using the sort of networking tools -- messaging, file swapping, idea sharing, and blogging -- kids love on sites such as MySpace.
  • hen, weeks before the first day of school, the incoming students jumped onboard -- or, more precisely, onto the Science Leadership Academy Web site -- to meet, talk with their teachers, and share their hopes for their education. So began a conversation that still perks along 24/7 in SLA classrooms and cyberspace. It's a bold experiment to redefine learning spaces, the roles and relationships of teachers and students, and the mission of the modern high school.
  • When I hear people say it's our job to create the twenty-first-century workforce, it scares the hell out of me," says Chris Lehmann, SLA's founding principal. "Our job is to create twenty-first-century citizens. We need workers, yes, but we also need scholars, activists, parents -- compassionate, engaged people. We're not reinventing schools to create a new version of a trade school. We're reinventing schools to help kids be adaptable in a world that is changing at a blinding rate."
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • It's the spirit of science rather than hardcore curriculum that permeates SLA. "In science education, inquiry-based learning is the foothold," Lehmann says. "We asked, 'What does it mean to build a school where everything is based on the core values of science: inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection?'"
  • It means the first-year curriculum is built around essential questions: Who am I? What influences my identity? How do I interact with my world? In addition to science, math, and engineering, core courses include African American history, Spanish, English, and a basic how-to class in technology that also covers Internet safety and the ethical use of information and software. Classes focus less on facts to be memorized and more on skills and knowledge for students to master independently and incorporate into their lives. Students rarely take tests; they write reflections and do "culminating" projects. Learning doesn't merely cross disciplines -- it shatters outdated departmental divisions. Recently, for instance, kids studied atomic weights in biochemistry (itself a homegrown interdisciplinary course), did mole calculations in algebra, and created Dalton models (diagrams that illustrate molecular structures) in art.
  • This is Dewey for the digital age, old-fashioned progressive education with a technological twist.
  • computers and networking are central to learning at, and shaping the culture of, SLA. "
  • he zest to experiment -- and the determination to use technology to run a school not better, but altogether differently -- began with Lehmann and the teachers last spring when they planned SLA online. Their use of Moodle, an open source course-management system, proved so easy and inspired such productive collaboration that Lehmann adopted it as the school's platform. It's rare to see a dog-eared textbook or pad of paper at SLA; everybody works on iBooks. Students do research on the Internet, post assignments on class Moodle sites, and share information through forums, chat, bookmarks, and new software they seem to discover every day.
  • Teachers continue to use Moodle to plan, dream, and learn, to log attendance and student performance, and to talk about everything -- from the student who shows up each morning without a winter coat to cool new software for tagging research sources. There's also a schoolwide forum called SLA Talk, a combination bulletin board, assembly, PA system, and rap session.
  • Web technology, of course, can do more than get people talking with those they see every day; people can communicate with anyone anywhere. Students at SLA are learning how to use social-networking tools to forge intellectual connections.
  • In October, Lehmann noticed that students were sorting themselves by race in the lunchroom and some clubs. He felt disturbed and started a passionate thread on self-segregation.
  • "Having the conversation changed the way kids looked at themselves," he says.
  • "What I like best about this school is the sense of community," says student Hannah Feldman. "You're not just here to learn, even though you do learn a lot. It's more like a second home."
  • As part of the study of memoirs, for example, Alexa Dunn's English class read Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas's account of growing up Iranian in the United States -- yes, the students do read books -- and talked with the author in California via Skype. The students also wrote their own memoirs and uploaded them to SLA's network for the teacher and class to read and edit. Then, digital arts teacher Marcie Hull showed the students GarageBand, which they used to turn their memoirs into podcasts. These they posted on the education social-networking site EduSpaces (formerly Elgg); they also posted blogs about the memoirs.
Barbara Lindsey

I'm So Totally, Digitally Close to You - Clive Thompson - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...07awareness-t.html

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 18 Sep 08 - Cached
  • “Facebook has always tried to push the envelope,” he said. “And at times that means stretching people and getting them to be comfortable with things they aren’t yet comfortable with. A lot of this is just social norms catching up with what technology is capable of.”
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 18 Sep 08
       
      Is this perhaps the same concern educators have and thus why they hesitate to adopt these social networks for teaching and research? Are they concerned about opening up their research and teaching and if so, is that, at times, justified?
    • Chenwen Hong
      Chenwen Hong on 26 Apr 10
       
      I would answer with a yes. The emergence of technology, or "new" technology, has always presented threats to what people are accustomed to. Educators are no exceptions. They hesitate to adopt social networks because they know they can never think like before or follow the traditions they feel "safe" with, once they decide to give it a try. They would have to re-define their philosophy and revise teaching approaches. It means "great change" to open up teaching possibilities, and it follows that they are insecure because these networks push them out of their comfort zone. Yet, I would disagree that fear justifies the reluctance to try out new possibilities to teach. Insecurity originates from lack of knowledge. I believe more practical knowledge and training sessions would help a lot to relieve the discomfort. They would know how the networks function and how to benefit from them.
  • when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?
  • Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye. Facebook is no longer alone in offering this sort of interaction online.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.
  • Twitters
  • ad hoc, self-organizing socializing.
  • when they do socialize face to face, it feels oddly as if they’ve never actually been apart. They don’t need to ask, “So, what have you been up to?” because they already know. Instead, they’ll begin discussing something that one of the friends Twittered that afternoon, as if picking up a conversation in the middle.
Barbara Lindsey

2008 Horizon Report » Critical Challenges - 0 views

wp.nmc.org/...critical-challenges

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 09 Sep 08 - Cached
  • This is more than merely an expectation to provide content: this is an opportunity for higher education to reach its constituents wherever they may be.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 09 Sep 08
       
      Not to be overlooked is the purpose for using ubiquitous access--is this a utiliarian approach or a self-realization approach?
  • the challenge faced by the educational community is to seize those opportunities and develop effective ways to measure academic progress as it happens.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 09 Sep 08
       
      What kind of assessment and for what purpose?
  • We need new and expanded definitions of these literacies that are based on mastering underlying concepts rather than on specialized skill sets, and we need to develop and establish methods for teaching and evaluating these critical literacies at all levels of education.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • They are indicative of the changing nature of the way we communicate, access information, and connect with peers and colleagues.
Barbara Lindsey

The Cape Town Open Education Declaration - 0 views

www.capetowndeclaration.org/faq

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 21 Mar 08 - Cached
  • The Internet provides a platform for collaborative learning and knowledge creation across long distances, which is central to the long term promise of open education. It also offers a channel for the creation and distribution of knowledge from a diversity of places and cultures around the world, and not just from major publishing centres like New York, London, and Paris.
  • we believe that open education and open educational resources are very much compatible with the business of commercial publishing. The Declaration clearly states that the open education movement should "...engage entrepreneurs and publishers who are developing innovative business models that are both open and financially sustainable."
  • here is likely to be some upheaval in formal educational systems as teachers and students engage in the new pedagogies that are enabled by openness. There might also be concerns that some of the deeper goals of the open education movement could backfire. For example, instead of enhancing locally relevant educational practices and rewarding those with regional expertise, it is possible that a flood of foreign-produced open educational resources will actually undermine the capacity for regional expertise to form or thrive.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • First, this is not actually a philanthropic endeavor in the classic sense of "donating" something to those with less. Instead, the open education movement promotes conditions for self-empowerment, and one of the central premises of the movement focuses on the freedom to be educated in the manner of one's choosing. Second, the permissions granted in defining an open educational resource explicitly enable the localization and adaptation of materials to be more locally appropriate. Every person should have the right to be educated in his/her native language, and in a manner that is most suitable to the personal and cultural contexts in which they reside. Third, we have good reason to believe that the contributions to the global open educational enterprise from those in resource-limited settings are at least as valuable as contributions from anyone else. While we have much to do to enable truly equitably participation among all of the citizens of the globe, there is widespread agreement that the ultimate goal is some type of open educational network, not a unidirectional pipeline.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 21 Mar 08
       
      Key component of a critical pedagogical approach.
  • educational resources commissioned and paid for directly by the public sector should be released as open educational resources. This ensures that the taxpayers who financed these resources can benefit from them fully. Of course, this principle cannot extend to resources paid for indirectly with public funds, such as materials written by professors at public universities. The Declaration does strongly encourage these professors and institutions to make all of their resources open. However, in the end, this is their choice.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 21 Mar 08
       
      Wow! Wonder how many critical pedagogists would embrace this idea.
  • resources should be licensed to facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone
  • many of the participants advocated for inclusion of language that indicates that the license should ideally impose no legal constraints other than a requirement by the creator for appropriate attribution or the sharing of derivative works. This degree of openness represents the 'gold standard' in open educational resource licensing. However, it is also recognized that some authors and publishers may wish to disallow commercial uses (non-commercial). Resources licensed with this additional restriction are still open educational resources, but do come with risks and costs.
  • we suggest that you use one of the Creative Commons (CC) licenses, for several reasons: The licenses have human-readable deeds, which is (generally) easier for people to understand.The licenses have a computer-readable component which enables search and filtering by license status, an increasingly important consideration in an era of exploding online content.The licenses have been ported to many countries around the world, with more being added every year, which guarantees their worldwide application and enforcement.The licenses are already the most frequently used licenses for open educational resources, which will make it easier for users to learn about their rights, as well as use the materials in interesting ways.
  • If an author's primary purpose in creating open educational resources is for it to be used as widely, freely, and creatively as possible, then using CC-BY is the better choice
  • n most cases, the NC term is likely to have undesired repercussions for your work. If you are thinking of restricting commercial activity, ask yourself the following questions: What is the goal of doing so? Is it that the creators wish to make money from their contributions? Is this likely? Is it assumed that all for-profit activity is somehow inimical to education? What are the costs of restricting commercial use of open educational resources and do you wish to incur them? For example, is it your goal to forbid a for-profit publisher in a developing country from printing copies of your materials and distributing them there?
  • Open educational resources licensed using CC-BY have no restrictions on use beyond attribution for the original creator. Open educational resources licensed using CC-BY-SA also require attribution, but have the additional restriction of requiring that the derived material be licensed in the same manner as the original(s), thus ensuring their continued availability as open educational resources.
  • CC-BY allows for a variety of motivations, including the possibility of commercial success, to drive users to adapt and re-purpose their materials.
  • f an author's primary purpose in creating open educational resources is for that material to never leave the educational commons, such as it is, then you may want to apply the SA term. In this case, the possibilities for viable commercial derivatives, though not disallowed, are diminished, and so users motivated to adapt materials for that purpose are unlikely to participate. In addition, open educational resources licensed with an SA term are only interoperable with other SA materials, which seriously limits their capacity for re-mixing.
  • There are two key points we would ask you to consider prior to applying the ND term. First, are you willing to prevent all of the wonderful ways in which your work might be improved upon just for the sake of preventing a few derivatives that you would consider inferior? It is worth remembering that it is the granting of freedoms to share, reprint, translate, combine, or adapt that makes open educational resources educationally different from those that can merely be read online for free.
  • you must remember that digital resources are not consumable goods, in the sense that they can be shared infinitely without any loss of value for the original. As such, if inferior derivatives are created, those creations have done nothing to diminish the quality of your original work, which will remain available for others to use or improve upon as they wish.
  • there is absolutely no restriction on use of public domain materials. In addition to being able to freely use such materials, you are free to adapt public domain materials and then license the derivative works in any way you choose, including standard all-rights-reserved copyright. You have to apply an open license if you want your contribution to add to the pool of open educational resources.
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

Digitally Speaking / Social Bookmarking and Annotating - 0 views

digitallyspeaking.pbworks.com/ial-Bookmarking-and-Annotating

diigo del.icio.us social bookmarking Ferriter actfl09

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 15 Feb 10 - Cached
  • intellectual philanthropy and collective intelligence
  • While these early interactions are simplistic processes that by themselves aren't enough to drive meaningful change in teaching and learning, they are essential because they provide team members with low risk opportunities to interact with one another around the topics, materials and instructional practices that should form the foundation of classroom learning experiences.
  • A tagging language is nothing more than a set of categories that all members of a group agree to use when bookmarking websites for shared projects.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In Shirky's terms, teams that embrace social bookmarking decrease the "cost" of  group transactions.  No longer do members resist sharing because it's too time consuming or difficult to be valuable. Instead, with a little bit of thought and careful planning, groups can make sharing resources---a key process that all learning teams have to learn to manage---remarkably easy and instant.
  • Imagine the collective power of an army of readers engaged in ongoing conversation about provocative ideas, challenging one another's thought, publicly debating, and polishing personal beliefs.  Imagine the cultural understandings that could develop between readers from opposite sides of the earth sharing thought together.  Imagine the potential for brainstorming global solutions, for holding government agencies accountable, or for gathering feedback from disparate stakeholder groups when reading moves from a "fundamentally private activity" to a "community event."
  • Understanding that there are times when users want their shared reading experiences to be more focused, however, Diigo makes it possible to keep highlights and annotations private or available to members of predetermined and self-selected groups.  For professional learning teams exploring instructional practices or for student research groups exploring content for classroom projects, this provides a measure of targeted exploration between likeminded thinkers.
  • Diigo takes the idea of collective exploration of content one step further by providing groups with the opportunity to create shared discussion forums
  • Many of today's teachers make a critical mistake when introducing digital tools by assuming that armed with a username and a password, students will automatically find meaningful ways to learn together.  The results can be disastrous.  Motivation wanes when groups using new services fail to meet reasonable standards of performance.  "Why did I bother to plug my students in for this project?" teachers wonder.  "They could have done better work with a piece of paper and a pencil!"
  • With shared annotation services like Diigo, powerful learning depends on much more than understanding the technical details behind adding highlights and comments for other members of a group to see.  Instead, powerful learning depends on the quality of the conversation that develops around the content being studied together.  That means teachers must systematically introduce students to a set of collaborative dialogue behaviors that can be easily implemented online.
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.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • 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

Stanford University prepares for an amazing "bookless library" - San Jose Mercury News - 0 views

www.mercurynews.com/...ci_15112885

library digital scholarship

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 20 May 10 - No Cached
  • "The role of this new library is less to do with shelving and checking out books — and much more about research and discovery," said Andrew Herkovic, director of communications and development at Stanford Libraries.
  • It is only half the size of the current Engineering Library, but saves its space for people, not things. It features soft seating, "brainstorm islands," a digital bulletin board, and group event space. There are few shelves and it will feature a self-checkout system.
  • The sciences are the perfect place to test bookless libraries, librarians say. In math, online books tend to render formulas badly. And those in the humanities, arts and social sciences still embrace the serendipitous discoveries made while browsing. Johanna Drucker, UCLA professor of information studies, moreover asks: "What version of a work should be digitized as representative? Leo Tolstoy's original Russian text? Or the Maude translation? Should we digitize the sanitized version of Mark Twain's classics, or the originals?"
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.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • 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

The New Gold Mine: Your Personal Information & Tracking Data Online - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3940904575395073512989404.html

privacy online rights onlinerights onlineprivacy tracking datamining

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 29 Dec 10 - Cached
  • the tracking of consumers has grown both far more pervasive and far more intrusive than is realized by all but a handful of people in the vanguard of the industry. • The study found that the nation's 50 top websites on average installed 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of visitors, usually with no warning. A dozen sites each installed more than a hundred. The nonprofit Wikipedia installed none.
  • the Journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then instantly assess location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions. Some tools surreptitiously re-spawn themselves even after users try to delete them. • These profiles of individuals, constantly refreshed, are bought and sold on stock-market-like exchanges that have sprung up in the past 18 months.
  • Advertisers once primarily bought ads on specific Web pages—a car ad on a car site. Now, advertisers are paying a premium to follow people around the Internet, wherever they go, with highly specific marketing messages.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • "It is a sea change in the way the industry works," says Omar Tawakol, CEO of BlueKai. "Advertisers want to buy access to people, not Web pages."
  • The Journal found that Microsoft Corp.'s popular Web portal, MSN.com, planted a tracking file packed with data: It had a prediction of a surfer's age, ZIP Code and gender, plus a code containing estimates of income, marital status, presence of children and home ownership, according to the tracking company that created the file, Targus Information Corp.
  • Tracking is done by tiny files and programs known as "cookies," "Flash cookies" and "beacons." They are placed on a computer when a user visits a website. U.S. courts have ruled that it is legal to deploy the simplest type, cookies, just as someone using a telephone might allow a friend to listen in on a conversation. Courts haven't ruled on the more complex trackers.
  • tracking companies sometimes hide their files within free software offered to websites, or hide them within other tracking files or ads. When this happens, websites aren't always aware that they're installing the files on visitors' computers.
  • Often staffed by "quants," or math gurus with expertise in quantitative analysis, some tracking companies use probability algorithms to try to pair what they know about a person's online behavior with data from offline sources about household income, geography and education, among other things. The goal is to make sophisticated assumptions in real time—plans for a summer vacation, the likelihood of repaying a loan—and sell those conclusions.
  • Consumer tracking is the foundation of an online advertising economy that racked up $23 billion in ad spending last year. Tracking activity is exploding. Researchers at AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute last fall found tracking technology on 80% of 1,000 popular sites, up from 40% of those sites in 2005.
  • The Journal found tracking files that collect sensitive health and financial data. On Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.'s dictionary website Merriam-Webster.com, one tracking file from Healthline Networks Inc., an ad network, scans the page a user is viewing and targets ads related to what it sees there.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 09 Nov 11
       
      Tracking you an targeting ads to you on a popular dictionary site!
  • Beacons, also known as "Web bugs" and "pixels," are small pieces of software that run on a Web page. They can track what a user is doing on the page, including what is being typed or where the mouse is moving.
  • The majority of sites examined by the Journal placed at least seven beacons from outside companies. Dictionary.com had the most, 41, including several from companies that track health conditions and one that says it can target consumers by dozens of factors, including zip code and race.
  • After the Journal contacted the company, it cut the number of networks it uses and beefed up its privacy policy to more fully disclose its practices.
  • Flash cookies can also be used by data collectors to re-install regular cookies that a user has deleted. This can circumvent a user's attempt to avoid being tracked online. Adobe condemns the practice.
  • Most sites examined by the Journal installed no Flash cookies. Comcast.net installed 55.
  • Wittingly or not, people pay a price in reduced privacy for the information and services they receive online. Dictionary.com, the site with the most tracking files, is a case study.
  • Think about how these technologies and the associated analytics can be used in other industries and social settings (e.g. education) for real beneficial impacts. This is nothing new for the web, the now that it has matured, it can be a positive game-changer.
  • Media6Degrees Inc., whose technology was found on three sites by the Journal, is pitching banks to use its data to size up consumers based on their social connections. The idea is that the creditworthy tend to hang out with the creditworthy, and deadbeats with deadbeats.
  • "There are applications of this technology that can be very powerful," says Tom Phillips, CEO of Media6Degrees. "Who knows how far we'd take it?"
  • Hidden inside Ashley Hayes-Beaty's computer, a tiny file helps gather personal details about her, all to be put up for sale for a tenth of a penny.
  • "We can segment it all the way down to one person," says Eric Porres, Lotame's chief marketing officer.
  • One of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found, is the business of spying on Internet users.
  • Yahoo Inc.'s ad network,
  • "Every time I go on the Internet," she says, she sees weight-loss ads. "I'm self-conscious about my weight," says Ms. Reid, whose father asked that her hometown not be given. "I try not to think about it…. Then [the ads] make me start thinking about it."
  • Information about people's moment-to-moment thoughts and actions, as revealed by their online activity, can change hands quickly. Within seconds of visiting eBay.com or Expedia.com, information detailing a Web surfer's activity there is likely to be auctioned on the data exchange run by BlueKai, the Seattle startup.
  • Barbara Lindsey on 29 Dec 10
     
    a New York company that uses sophisticated software called a "beacon" to capture what people are typing on a website
Barbara Lindsey

The Case for the Virtual Classroom - 0 views

mashable.com/...virtual-classroom

learning2.0 online highered virtual

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 03 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • “If you take a class, in our case, you’re very likely to meet 20 students from 20 countries,” Reshef says about University of the People. “We believe, by the way, that being exposed to 20 people from 20 cultures — the way they think, the way they function in the class — is as important, if not more, than the subject area itself.”
  • “We re-teach the same concepts again and again,” he said. “The teacher has no sense of who in his classroom is getting it, not getting it…and when you look at all of the successful innovations, it’s where you let the student assess his knowledge, understand where they are, and proceed at a pace where they’re actually seeing that they know something before they move on.”The Department of Education’s meta-analysis, which focused on older learners, supports this. Online learners who self-monitored understanding — by, for example, deciding when to move on to the next lesson — performed better.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 03 Jan 11
       
      Is this a skill we need to be explicitly teaching?
  • The modest difference in performance between online and physical classroom learners in the meta-analysis, for instance, was larger for those students who learned through a blend of online and physical classroom conditions.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The report warned that the results might not be caused by the medium itself because the students in blended learning conditions often had extra learning time and instructional elements.
  • Right now class time is typically used by a lecture. But if teachers move the lecture online for students to watch on their own time, they can use the class time to work on activities and interact with students.
    • Barbara Lindsey
      Barbara Lindsey on 03 Jan 11
       
      Bingo!
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 44 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page