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Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We've written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students' progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don't perform well on the learning experiences we've designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it's important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance.

Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We've written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students' progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don't perform well on the learning experiences we've designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it's important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance.

The readings this week have begun to make me think about the role of the teacher as a curator and collector of resources and "teachable moments" for inclusion into the blended classroom. I thought that I might post this as a resource for others. I have personally used a number of these, but Storify is a personal favorite for putting together resources for a lesson plan.

"Metta (www.metta.io) is a digital storytelling tool that allows you to create lessons using audio, videos, and images from your computer or from the web. It is a great online app for creating short flipped or blended lessons for students to help them learn outside of the classroom. With this outstanding web application, teachers can easily create a digital content based story, supplemented with images and text. Teachers can also include poll questions in order to test the knowledge of students. So, with Metta, you can easily combine multimedia elements together to produce an awesome digital lesson." (Source: http://www.emergingedtech.com/2013/10/create-digital-learning-content-easily-combining-parts-one-more-videos-with-images-text-audio-using-metta/)

March 09, 2016 at 04:45AM How much Online Content in Blended Learning? http://bit.ly/1M6bSGq via @pen63

danah body (she prefers lowercase.) is a highly regarded thinker on all things internet. In this piece she addresses the dynamics involved in being connected to a "flow" or stream of networked information.

EDUCAUSE Review Online - Tales from the Canary | EDUCAUSE.edu - The Future of Course Materials and Content Delivery

Working on the DIY task on formulating assignments, I was looking for some writing tips that could be helpful for students. Here are four from Hemingway.

Onother list from content marketing... Ask yourself 5 questions when you create valuable content: : Is it ... - Findable - Readable - Understandable - Actionable - Shareable Link the checklist (pdf-file): http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/leibtag_content_checklist.pdf

This article outlines the key components of blended learning. It also explains the different taxonomies of learning content.

This brief article provides an overview of Creative Commons relevant to educators. While copyright laws provide some provision for educational uses, materials (e.g., texts, videos, audio, images, etc.) released under one of the Creative Commons licenses are actually much easier to incorporate into course content. Rather than just linking to a source, you may have the licensed right to incorporate and edit the material directly.

A hybrid course is much more than just an online course with a face-to-face class session thrown in for good measure. It involves asking, "What is the best way for students to interact with course content, construct knowledge, engage in critical thinking and problem solving?"

Lengthy report, but an excellent read, on interactions in online coursework specifically within LMS. Reported from Australian IHE.

The Rise of K-12 Blended learning By Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker

Since we are talking about content during week 4, I want to share some OER sites. SLCC is moving toward open textbook and other open resources.

this is an amazing treasure trove!

" ...a number of educators living in the world of online learning who took some time out to share these thoughts on practices and challenges associated with creating and conducting compelling online courses and course content."

Nice break down of flipped vs hybrid on facultyfocus.

Today, blended learning has become a more mature market. Many traditional classes have blended elements integrated into their structure, and we now have concepts like "the flipped classroom," indicating a strategy in which delivery of informational content occurs outside of class instead of during in-class lecture, freeing the face-to-face time for interactive activities.