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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Tai Arnold

Tai Arnold

How Online Innovators Are Disrupting Education - Jason Orgill and Douglas Hervey - Harv... - 4 views

  • In fact, Gates, Khan, and teachers at the academy argue that online education can liberate teachers, allowing them to engage in more creative and influential one-on-one mentoring.
  • teachers can serve as professional coaches and content architects to help students progress in ways that they never could under most current models
  • Targeting non-consumers creates less backlash from teachers' unions and administrators, and could even generate student referrals from incumbents themselves.
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    "teachers can serve as professional coaches and content architects to help students progress in ways that they never could under most current model"
Tai Arnold

change11 position paper | littlebylittlejohn.com - 6 views

  • how social technology tools can impact learning
    • Tai Arnold
       
      Is this not the point of the whole business?
  • Perhaps more importantly, if learning is to become more self-regulated, rather than teacher-regulated, what sorts of mindsets do learners require to take control and self regulate their own learning (Zimmermann & Schunk, 2001).
Tai Arnold

Learning with 'e's: Blogging about - 5 views

  • I know, academic publishing has never really been about how many people read your work, it's usually more to do with the kudos gained from publishing in an elite journal. And that's exactly what is so badly wrong with the current academic publishing system.
  • Blogging is an ideal popularist method for making ideas and research accessible for all.
  • Many a valuable debate has already been had on blogs, with a simple post as the stimulus for valuable dialogue across a community of practice.
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  • Finally, anyone can start a blog, share their ideas and build a community of interest around their subject. It takes a little time, effort and commitment, but the rewards can be extraordinary.
Tai Arnold

The Virtuous Middle Way | iterating toward openness - 2 views

  • The purpose of the machinery of education is to improve the efficiency of learning. The spirit of education should include respecting the agency of learners. It would be just as inappropriate to use coercive torture techniques to improve the efficiency of learning as it would be to eliminate the provision of specific, direct guidance in the name of agency. As with much else in life, our goal here should be to find and walk the virtuous middle way.
Tai Arnold

'Harnessing America's Wasted Talent': You Don't Need a Weatherman….. - 0 views

  • n short, there is activity across the entire spectrum of learning, from pre-engineered and self-paced to open sourced and self-directed with more conventional models in between. All are enhanced and scalable as never before by the web and web-enabled technology.
Tai Arnold

What the Connections Acquisition Means | Getting Smart - 2 views

  • For Pearson, this transaction signals a more rapid move into school management that was anticipated.  Historically, the line between supporting and operating schools has been one they did not want to cross given the special venom for private enterprise when it takes outcome responsibility.  I suspect when they considered accelerating rate (see my forecast) of adoption of learning online, it made the decision easy.
  • One consistent message here at Getting Smart is that the shift to personal digital learning is happening faster than most observers suggest–we’re riding an exponential curve not a straight line.  Pearson gets that and has been very thoughtful about managing the Innovator’s Dilemma. 
Tai Arnold

iterating toward openness - 2 views

  • One of the areas ripest for innovation is alternative certification of informal learning. Hence, the recent excitement about badges. Badges have incredible potential for providing a viable alternative to the traditional system of credits most universities are tied to by accreditors. It seems to me that there is a critical need for someone to demonstrate that badges are a viable alternative to the traditional accreditation process.
  • However, because the gold standard for learning credentials is acceptability by employers, any meaningful badges demonstration project will have to operate in this space.
  • We want to create a collection of badges that a top employer, like Google, will publicly recognize as “equivalent experience.” This goes straight for the jugular, demonstrating that badges are a viable alternative to formal university education.
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  • The bolded items above really represent one version (and certainly not the only one) of the complete package – open content, open learning support, and open badges that help you demonstrate competence to an employer.
  • - An initial list of OER (e.g., OLI courses) and Q/A services (e.g., StackOverflow.com or OpenStudy) which will help individuals develop the skills necessary to obtain the badges
  • • Combine these and other business models to generate enough revenue so that (1) the marking service can be free in addition to all the badge related materials being openly licensed and (2) employers will respect and recognize the badges resulting from the process.
Tai Arnold

"Or Equivalent" | iterating toward openness - 2 views

  • The point is that there isn’t currently a very good way to show you know what you’re doing other than to have a branded piece of paper that claims you do.
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    Badges as alternative to sheepskin -- will employers go there?
Tai Arnold

Learner Weblog | Education and Learning weblog - 2 views

    • Tai Arnold
       
      Re Emotional Intelligence
  • I am also unsure whether the affective domains are addressed in the theory, or included in George proposed principles of Connectivism or Stephen’s proposed properties of networks.
Tai Arnold

digital digs: Welcome to badge world - 5 views

  • Colleges are filled with students who could give a damn about learning but desperately need that credential.
  • Then it's all about the badges. My kids can just give up on ever having a single moment of joy in their lives. Even if they were going to enjoy something, how can they when they've already committed to this transactional experience instead?
  • The commodification of learning was already quite clear in the Reagan era when we stopped thinking of higher education as a social good and instead defined it as an individual's investment in his/her human capital. 
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  • Anyone can open their own diploma mill, err I mean badge-selling operation? Of course not. Badges would have to be accredited by someone.
  • If you want to get a badge though, that's going to cost.
  • I think the presence of a badge could actually be a detriment to an otherwise genuine learning experience.
  • ]The whole point of education organisations adopting elearning is to cut costs. They are not doing it to improve education standards. They say it's to educate more. But we know this is a smoke screen. Bean-counters run universities and colleges just like they run commercial companies.For example, The Briish Council is planning to move into distance learning big time. 10,000s of new students. Their reasons (am I #cynic) won't be to improve educational outcomes (mostly English language teaching) but to get more qualifed teachers for for their bucks.
Tai Arnold

Systemic Changes in Higher Education | in education - 9 views

  • When control over information shifts from organizations to individuals, considerations of new models in universities is required, as evidenced by historical transitions of information-based institutions. As an industry fundamentally concerned with “creating and communicating information” (Carey, 2009,
    • Tai Arnold
       
      This is probably the most important element; control=power and the other changes are expanding individual control of content
  • Recognition of only formal learning is a needlessly limiting mindset currently held by higher education.
    • Tai Arnold
       
      Yes!!!
  • Many of the assumptions that inform higher education today – such as classrooms, textbooks, physical space, co-location of educators and learners, pairing of research and teaching, bounded curriculum – are called into question by emerging learning theories and technologies.
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  • However as education in the developed world moves in new directions, we must be cognizant of how this move impacts the learners in the developing world. How will learners in these areas access, explore and contribute to the creation of knowledge? Will social networking technologies, and the emergence of next generation technologies further exclude the greatest number of undergraduate learners. Will this new reality result in too few voices connecting and validating knowledge? How can non-Eurocentric voices be heard? One must ensure that there is some democracy in this new model.
  • Educators and leaders in academia are confronted with important questions. How should institutions of learning be designed to serve the needs participative, social, and global information cycle? What assumptions about the system of higher education need to be abandoned due to technological advancements? How can the vital roles of research and teaching and learning be addressed through distributed means? How can accreditation be broadened to include the full spectrum of formal and informal learning activities?
  • Failure to recognize the pivotal role of digital technologies will result in institutions at odds with the world in which they operate.
  • The American Faculty: The Restructuring of Academic Work and Careers (Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006) propose that universities are experiencing a revolution—with tremendous consequences. They write, Everything is in play, as nearly every aspect of academic life is being driven by a host of inter-related developments: dazzling technological advances, globalization that permeates academic boundaries, rapid increase of tertiary students worldwide, expansion of proprietary higher education, a blurring of (the) public/private distinction, and entrepreneurial initiatives on and off campus. (p. xvii)
  • Technological innovations in bandwidth, storage, processing speed, and software directly impact education (Downes, 2009), creating new opportunities for learner-learner/educator and learner-information interactions.
  • ome researchers have turned to complexity theory to advance education, suggesting that emphasis be placed on the whole system rather than reductionist views often found in "mainstream science" (Mason, 2008). Increased collaboration in a model of "interlocking partnerships among researchers, among universities, and across international borders” (McFadden Allen, 2007, p. 3) promises a new model of not only what it means to be an academic, but also what it means to be an academic institution.
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