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Dean Mantz

100 Web Tools to Enhance Collaboration (Part 2) by Ozge Karaoglu - 7 views

www.techlearning.com/26976

web2.0 collaboration webtools ozge tools resources technology

shared by Dean Mantz on 01 Feb 10 - No Cached
  • Voxopop is a message board system which lets you create talk groups that you can talk, discuss and collaborate using your own voice.
  • EtherPad is a web based word processor that lets you work with others at the same time
  • Survs lets you create your online surveys collaborating with others in multi user accounts
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • Mindmeister is an online collaborative mind mapping tool that you can brainstorm with others real-time.
  • TextFlow is a way to review document versions instantly to produce a final draft
  • Tgether allows you to communicate in small groups by emails.
  • StoryBirds are short and simple stories that connect you with others.
  • WebCanvas is a collaborative painting project.
  • AwesomeHighlighter
  • Protagonize is a community that writes collaborative, interactive fiction.
  • Mixbook is a site that lets you create picture books with others.
  • Thinkature places an instant message inside a visual workspace with voice chat.
  • Voicethread.
  • LucidChart is another way to collaborate on a document simultaneously.
  • built-in group chat that makes it easier for you to collaborate.
  • Wikispaces is the best way to create collaborative web pages that you can edit and share together
  • Senduit lets you upload your files and share them with private links with your team.
  • Stintio, you can create your own chat in seconds
  • invite
  • don't download or install
  • Yuuguu is an instant screen sharing and video conferencing
  • Voxli allows you to hold voice conferences online. You can have a voice chat up to 200 people.
  • Wridea is an online idea management service and a collection of brainstorming tools
  • store, manage,organize and share
  • Dean Mantz on 01 Feb 10
     
    Part 2 of 100 Web Tools to enhance collaboration
Dean Mantz

100 Web Tools to Enhance Collaboration (Part 1) by Ozge Karaoglu - 18 views

www.techlearning.com/26378

web2.0 collaboration webtools tools resources technology whiteboards techlearning education teaching learning interactive

shared by Dean Mantz on 01 Feb 10 - Cached
  • DabbleBoard is a whiteboard that enables you to visualize, explore and collaborate.
  • CoSketch is another whiteboard that you can collaborate to visualize your ideas and share them as images.
  • Stixy lets you create online bulletin board to collaborate with family, friends, colleagues.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • Grou.ps lets you create your own social network.
  • create your forum, mailing list, share documents,files and your agenda to organize events, have your own YouTube, share links, bookmarks, photos
  • ImaginationCubed is a multi user drawing tool.
  •  GroupTweet. It lets you create your Twitter account into a group communication tool where everyone in the group uses direct messages
  • Wallwisher is an online notice board maker
  • Nik Peachey's Wallwisher as a great example.
  • PageFlakes is a social personalized homepage
  • WriteBoard is a-web based text documents
  • Wiggio is an online toolkit
  • emails, text messages,voice mails.
  • eep shared calendar,
  • WeToku is an interview tool that automatically records
  • share your notes
  •  Webnote is a tool for taking notes on your computer
  • PalBee is a free online service that allows you to set up online video meetings
  • Phuser is a tool for groups to discuss or work together and privately
  • WikiDot is wiki builder to share content, documents and collaborate with your students, colleagues, friends
  • Creately lets you create professional looking online diagrams with your colleagues
  • DoingText is a web based text editor for collaborative writing.
  •  SpringNote is an online notebook for collaboration.
  • MeBeam is a place where you can create your chat room
  • Dean Mantz on 01 Feb 10
     
    Part 1 of 100 Web Tools to enhance Collaboration
Michael Johnson

Teaching in Social and Technological Networks « Connectivism - 9 views

www.connectivism.ca/?p=220

teaching Learning Social Media social networks George Siemens

shared by Michael Johnson on 17 Feb 10 - Cached
  • The model falls apart when we distribute content and extend the activities of the teacher to include multiple educator inputs and peer-driven learning.
  • Skype brings anyone, from anywhere, into a classroom. Students are not confined to interacting with only the ideas of a researcher or theorist. Instead, a student can interact directly with researchers through Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and listservs. The largely unitary voice of the traditional teacher is fragmented by the limitless conversation opportunities available in networks. When learners have control of the tools of conversation, they also control the conversations in which they choose to engage. Course content is similarly fragmented. The textbook is now augmented with YouTube videos, online articles, simulations, Second Life builds, virtual museums, Diigo content trails, StumpleUpon reflections, and so on.
  • Traditional courses provide a coherent view of a subject. This view is shaped by “learning outcomes” (or objectives). These outcomes drive the selection of content and the design of learning activities. Ideally, outcomes and content/curriculum/instruction are then aligned with the assessment. It’s all very logical: we teach what we say we are going to teach, and then we assess what we said we would teach. This cozy comfortable world of outcomes-instruction-assessment alignment exists only in education. In all other areas of life, ambiguity, uncertainty, and unkowns reign. Fragmentation of content and conversation is about to disrupt this well-ordered view of learning. Educators and universities are beginning to realize that they no longer have the control they once (thought they) did
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • I’ve come to view teaching as a critical and needed activity in the chaotic and ambiguous information climate created by networks.
  • In networks, teachers are one node among many. Learners will, however, likely be somewhat selective of which nodes they follow and listen to. Most likely, a teacher will be one of the more prominent nodes in a learner’s network. Thoughts, ideas, or messages that the teacher amplifies will generally have a greater probability of being seen by course participants. The network of information is shaped by the actions of the teacher in drawing attention to signals (content elements) that are particularly important in a given subject area.
  • While “curator” carries the stigma of dusty museums, the metaphor is appropriate for teaching and learning. The curator, in a learning context, arranges key elements of a subject in such a manner that learners will “bump into” them throughout the course. Instead of explicitly stating “you must know this”, the curator includes critical course concepts in her dialogue with learners, her comments on blog posts, her in-class discussions, and in her personal reflections. As learners grow their own networks of understanding, frequent encounters with conceptual artifacts shared by the teacher will begin to resonate.
  • Today’s social web is no different – we find our way through active exploration. Designers can aid the wayfinding process through consistency of design and functionality across various tools, but ultimately, it is the responsibility of the individual to click/fail/recoup and continue. Fortunately, the experience of wayfinding is now augmented by social systems. Social structures are filters. As a learner grows (and prunes) her personal networks, she also develops an effective means to filter abundance. The network becomes a cognitive agent in this instance – helping the learner to make sense of complex subject areas by relying not only on her own reading and resource exploration, but by permitting her social network to filter resources and draw attention to important topics. In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • Aggregation should do the same – reveal the content and conversation structure of the course as it unfolds, rather than defining it in advance.
  • Filtering resources is an important educator role, but as noted already, effective filtering can be done through a combination of wayfinding, social sensemaking, and aggregation. But expertise still matters. Educators often have years or decades of experience in a field. As such, they are familiar with many of the concepts, pitfalls, confusions, and distractions that learners are likely to encounter. As should be evident by now, the educator is an important agent in networked learning. Instead of being the sole or dominant filter of information, he now shares this task with other methods and individuals.
  • Filtering can be done in explicit ways – such as selecting readings around course topics – or in less obvious ways – such as writing summary blog posts around topics. Learning is an eliminative process. By determining what doesn’t belong, a learner develops and focuses his understanding of a topic. The teacher assists in the process by providing one stream of filtered information. The student is then faced with making nuanced selections based on the multiple information streams he encounters
  • Stephen’s statements that resonated with many learners centers on modelling as a teaching practice: “To teach is to model and to demonstrate. To learn is to practice and to reflect.” (As far as I can tell, he first made the statement during OCC in 2007).
  • Modelling has its roots in apprenticeship. Learning is a multi-faceted process, involving cognitive, social, and emotional dimensions. Knowledge is similarly multi-faceted, involving declarative, procedural, and academic dimensions. It is unreasonable to expect a class environment to capture the richness of these dimensions. Apprenticeship learning models are among the most effective in attending to the full breadth of learning. Apprenticeship is concerned with more than cognition and knowledge (to know about) – it also addresses the process of becoming a carpenter, plumber, or physician.
  • Without an online identity, you can’t connect with others – to know and be known. I don’t think I’m overstating the importance of have a presence in order to participate in networks. To teach well in networks – to weave a narrative of coherence with learners – requires a point of presence. As a course progresses, the teacher provides summary comments, synthesizes discussions, provides critical perspectives, and directs learners to resources they may not have encountered before.
  • Persistent presence in the learning network is needed for the teacher to amplify, curate, aggregate, and filter content and to model critical thinking and cognitive attributes that reflect the needs of a discipline.
  • Teaching and learning in social and technological networks is similarly surprising – it’s hard to imagine that many of the tools we’re using are less than a decade old (the methods of learning in networks are not new, however. People have always learned in social networks).
  • We’re still early in many of these trends. Many questions remain unanswered about privacy, ethics in networks, and assessment.
  • We’re still early in many of these trends. Many questions remain unanswered about privacy, ethics in networks, and assessment.
  • The tools for controlling both content and conversation have shifted from the educator to the learner. We require a system that acknowledges this reality.
  • In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.
  • Michael Johnson on 17 Feb 10
     
    Discusses the role of teachers in the learning  process through social networks: He gives seven roles 1. Amplifying, 2. Curating, 3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking, 4. Aggregating, 5. Filtering, 6. Modelling, 7. Persistent presence. He ends with this provocative thought: "My view is that change in education needs to be systemic and substantial. Education is concerned with content and conversations. The tools for controlling both content and conversation have shifted from the educator to the learner. We require a system that acknowledges this reality."
jwcurlin

Science for Kids - Fun Experiments, Cool Facts, Online Games, Activities, Projects, Ide... - 1 views

www.sciencekids.co.nz

education teaching resources learning

shared by jwcurlin on 10 Feb 19 - Cached
  • Science facts Enjoy a wide range of information and fun science facts that are sure to surprise and amaze you. Technology facts Check out our cool technology facts featuring robots, cell phones, computers, the Internet and more. Animal facts Animals are an endless source of amazing facts. Find out what makes sharks, dogs and other animals so special. Chemistry facts Learn more about metals, atoms, elements, solids, liquids and gases with our range of interesting chemistry facts. Earth facts Our earth is a fascinating place that is home to such wonders as volcanoes, rivers, deserts and more. Scientist facts Find out more about the scientists who changed the world we live in thanks to their research and discoveries. Space facts Enjoy our space facts and learn the truth behind some of the mysteries that relate to distant stars and galaxies. Planet facts Focus on the planets that share our solar system, read amazing facts about Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and more. Funny facts Relax and enjoy the funny side of science with some crazy facts and information that will bring a smile to your face.   Experiments are an awesome part of science that allow students of all ages to engage in fun and exciting hands on learning experiences that they are sure to enjoy. Experiment with different things an
  • jwcurlin on 10 Feb 19
     
    Fun for all ages not just kids/students.
Tony Searl

Twitter / Home - 0 views

twitter.com/home

shared by Tony Searl on 21 Feb 08 - Cached
Clif Mims liked it
  • dougpete @JoHart It's going to be a skill to learn, to be sure. #beatcancer
  • Fifikins No, I wouldn't steal a car, but geez, if I could download one for free on the internet I damn sure would!
  • melhutch RT @MaryKayG It will be wonderful when cancer is something we teach students about in History class. #beatcancer
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • annehodg RT @GeekTown Every tweet that has #beatcancer today raises money for cancer research - they're going for world record today. Please RT
  • annehodg RT @ GeekTown Every tweet that has #beatcancer today raises money for cancer research - they're going for world record today. Please RT
  • annehodg RT @ GeekTown Every tweet that has #beatcancer today raises money for cancer research - they're going for world record today. Please RT
  • raises money for cancer research - they're going for world record today. Please RT
  • annehodg RT @ GeekTown Every tweet that has #beatcancer today raises money for cancer research - they're going for world record today. Please RT
Barbara Lindsey

From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments | Academic Commons - 0 views

www.academiccommons.org/...knowledgable-knowledge-able

wesch social media web2.0 education teaching academic commons

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 31 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The message of Wikipedia is not “trust authority” but “explore authority.” Authorized information is not beyond discussion on Wikipedia, information is authorized through discussion, and this discussion is available for the world to see and even participate in. This culture of discussion and participation is now available on any website with the emerging “second layer” of the web through applications like Diigo which allow you to add notes and tags to any website anywhere.
  • Many faculty may hope to subvert the system, but a variety of social structures work against them.
  • Our physical structures were built prior to an age of infinite information, our social structures formed to serve different purposes than those needed now, and the cognitive structures we have developed along the way now struggle to grapple with the emerging possibilities.
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  • The physical structures are easiest to see, and are on prominent display in any large “state of the art” classroom. Rows of fixed chairs often face a stage or podium housing a computer from which the professor controls at least 786,432 points of light on a massive screen. Stadium seating, sound-absorbing panels and other acoustic technologies are designed to draw maximum attention to the professor at the front of the room. The “message” of this environment is that to learn is to acquire information, that information is scarce and hard to find (that's why you have to come to this room to get it), that you should trust authority for good information, and that good information is beyond discussion (that's why the chairs don't move or turn toward one another). In short, it tells students to trust authority and follow along.
  • at the base of this “information revolution” are new ways of relating to one another, new forms of discourse, new ways of interacting, new kinds of groups, and new ways of sharing, trading, and collaborating. Wikis, blogs, tagging, social networking and other developments that fall under the “Web 2.0” buzz are especially promising in this regard because they are inspired by a spirit of interactivity, participation, and collaboration. It is this “spirit” of Web 2.0 which is important to education. The technology is secondary. This is a social revolution, not a technological one, and its most revolutionary aspect may be the ways in which it empowers us to rethink education and the teacher-student relationship in an almost limitless variety of ways.
  • Even in situations in which a spirit of exploration and freedom exist, where faculty are free to experiment to work beyond physical and social constraints, our cognitive habits often get in the way
  • Most of our assumptions about information are based on characteristics of information on paper.
  • Even something as simple as the hyperlink taught us that information can be in more than one place at one time
  • Blogging came along and taught us that anybody can be a creator of information.
  • Our old assumption that information is hard to find, is trumped by the realization that if we set up our hyper-personalized digital network effectively, information can find us.
  • Taken together, this new media environment demonstrates to us that the idea of learning as acquiring information is no longer a message we can afford to send to our students, and that we need to start redesigning our learning environments to address, leverage, and harness the new media environment now permeating our classrooms.
  • Nothing good will come of these technologies if we do not first confront the crisis of significance and bring relevance back into education. In some ways these technologies act as magnifiers.
  • Usually our courses are arranged around “subjects.” Postman and Weingartner note that the notion of “subjects” has the unwelcome effect of teaching our students that “English is not History and History is not Science and Science is not Art . . . and a subject is something you 'take' and, when you have taken it, you have 'had' it.” Always aware of the hidden metaphors underlying our most basic assumptions, they suggest calling this “the Vaccination Theory of Education” as students are led to believe that once they have “had” a subject they are immune to it and need not take it again.5
  • As an alternative, I like to think that we are not teaching subjects but subjectivities: ways of approaching, understanding, and interacting with the world. Subjectivities cannot be taught. They involve an introspective intellectual throw-down in the minds of students. Learning a new subjectivity is often painful because it almost always involves what psychologist Thomas Szasz referred to as “an injury to one's self-esteem.”6 You have to unlearn perspectives that may have become central to your sense of self.
  • We can only create environments in which the practices and perspectives are nourished, encouraged, or inspired (and therefore continually practiced).
  • So while the course is set up much like a typical cultural anthropology course, moving through the same readings and topics, all of these learnings are ultimately focused around one big question, “How does the world work?”
  • Students are co-creators of every aspect of the simulation, and are asked to harness and leverage the new media environment to find information, theories, and tools we can use to answer our big question. Each student has a specific role and expertise to develop. A world map is superimposed on the class and each student is asked to become an expert on a specific aspect of the region in which they find themselves. Using this knowledge, they work in 15-20 small groups to create realistic cultures, step-by-step, as we go through each aspect of culture in class. This allows them to apply the knowledge they learn in the course and to recognize the ways different aspects of culture--economic, social, political, and religious practices and institutions--are integrated in a cultural system.
  • The World Simulation itself only takes 75-100 minutes and moves through 650 metaphorical years, 1450-2100. It is recorded by students on twenty digital video cameras and edited into one final "world history" video using clips from real world history to illustrate the correspondences. We watch the video together in the final weeks of the class, using it as a discussion starter for contemplating our world and our role in its future. By then it seems as if we have the whole world right before our eyes in one single classroom - profound cultural differences, profound economic differences, profound challenges for the future, and one humanity. We find ourselves not just as co-creators of a simulation, but as co-creators of the world itself, and the future is up to us.
  • I have often found myself writing content-based multiple-choice questions in a way that I hope will indicate that the student has mastered a new subjectivity or perspective. Of course, the results are not satisfactory. More importantly, these questions ask students to waste great amounts of mental energy memorizing content instead of exercising a new perspective in the pursuit of real and relevant questions.
  • When you watch somebody who is truly “in it,” somebody who has totally given themselves over to the learning process, or if you simply imagine those moments in which you were “in it” yourself, you immediately recognize that learning expands far beyond the mere cognitive dimension. Many of these dimensions were mentioned in the issue precis, “such as emotional and affective dimensions, capacities for risk-taking and uncertainty, creativity and invention,” and the list goes on. How will we assess these? I do not have the answers, but a renewed and spirited dedication to the creation of authentic learning environments that leverage the new media environment demands that we address it.
  • The new media environment provides new opportunities for us to create a community of learners with our students seeking important and meaningful questions.
  • This is what I have called elsewhere, “anti-teaching,” in which the focus is not on providing answers to be memorized, but on creating a learning environment more conducive to producing the types of questions that ask students to challenge their taken-for-granted assumptions and see their own underlying biases.
Ben Rimes

The Test Generation - 11 views

prospect.org/...articles

testing colorado pay teacher performance assessment

shared by Ben Rimes on 11 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 11 Apr 11
       
      How many decades have teacher's experienced this firsthand as students try to cheat, weasel, and otherwise fabricate their way to the reward, whether it's a gold star, a piece of candy, or some extra credit.
  • In 2005, for example, Alabama reported that 83 percent of its fourth-graders were proficient in reading, even though the NAEP found that only 22 percent of these children were proficient readers. The harsh punishments associated with NCLB had encouraged Alabama and most other states to dumb down their tests and then teach directly to them.
  • The letter is a thinly veiled attack on teachers' unions and the job security for which they fight. Mike Stahl, former executive director of the Pikes Peak Education Association, says union membership in Harrison has decreased by half under Miles' leadership, and that teacher turnover, at about 25 percent from year to year, "is the highest in the state among like-sized or larger districts." According to Stahl, Miles "is very anti-union and very prone to retaliation for speaking in opposition to district or superintendent plans. ... There was no collaboration with staff or union in the development of this plan. As a result, district teacher morale is extremely low."
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 11 Apr 11
       
      This is where a lot of the proponents of education and teacher evaluation reform fall. In the area that no longer concerns itself with building effective cooperation, teamwork, and a positive work atmosphere, a shame really.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Since Miles became superintendent, Harrison's scores on state exams in math, reading, and writing have steadily increased. In reading, for example, 54 percent of Harrison students were proficient in 2005, compared to 61 percent in 2010. Critics who chalk those gains up to "drill and kill" teaching might find at least one thing to love about Harrison District 2: Its test score-based teacher-evaluation system is matched by intense professional-development efforts of the sort promoted by education experts from across the political spectrum.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 11 Apr 11
       
      The silver lining of this system.
  • But "really systemic, momentous things are happening right now, and I am at the ideological epicenter of that change," he added. "If nothing else, it's really interesting
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 11 Apr 11
       
      Don't our schools deserve reform and/or experimentation that is better than just "really interesting?"
  • Rival groups of education researchers interpret the reliability of value-added differently but even the technique's defenders have urged caution, as have the Educational Testing Service and the Department of Education's own Institute for Education Sciences. Experts raise a number of powerful objections: that value-added measurements are often based on poorly designed, unsophisticated standardized tests; that the ratings are particularly volatile (a teacher who scores very well or very poorly using value-added has only a one-third chance of getting a similar score the following year, and it takes about 10 years of data to reduce the value-added error rate to 12 percent for any individual teacher); and that the technique gives the impression that the teacher is the only factor in student achievement, ignoring parental involvement, after-school tutoring, and other "inputs" that research shows account for up to 80 percent of a student's achievement outcomes
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 11 Apr 11
       
      Although "value-added" seems great on the surface, having to wait around for 10 years to get a 12 percent error rate and then deal with all of the uncontrolable factors, makes student performance assessments seem like a joke almost.
  • A consensus is emerging on what those best practices are, and they have little to do with test-driven instruction. Research by Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University teaching expert and former Obama adviser, has found that in Finland, South Korea, and other high-performing nations, teachers spend just 50 percent of their workday in the classroom with students, compared to about 80 percent for American teachers. During the rest of their day, Finnish and South Korean teachers work with other adults to plan lessons, observe one another's classrooms, and evaluate student work. This balance is especially important for beginning teachers; powerful evidence suggests that the single most helpful teacher-training exercise is to spend time inside a master teacher's classroom and to get feedback from that master teacher on one's own practice.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 11 Apr 11
       
      Reflective practitioning through blogging as a systemic model for teacher PD would be one way to encourage growth in this area.
  • The teachers are grouped to maximize the sharing of best practices; one team includes a second-year teacher struggling with classroom management, a veteran teacher who is excellent at discipline but behind the curve on technology, and a third teacher who is an innovator on using technology in the classroom.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 11 Apr 11
       
      Interesting group composition, and would be easy to put together in any school with proper surveys and cooperation among teaching "families".
  • When I visited MSLA in November, the halls were bright and orderly, the students warm and polite, and the teachers enthusiastic -- in other words, MSLA has many of the characteristics of high-performing schools around the world. What sets MSLA apart is its commitment to teaching as a shared endeavor to raise student achievement -- not a competition. During the 2009-2010 school year, all of the school's teachers together pursued the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' Take One! program, which focuses on using curriculum standards to improve teaching and evaluate student outcomes. This year, the staff-wide initiative is to include literacy skills-building in each and every lesson, whether the subject area is science, art, or social studies.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 12 Apr 11
       
      This is what schools should be doing. Foster community, cooperation, and collaboration among the teachers, not isolating them in content area groups, and separating them based on department. Inter-disciplinary teaching teams is a first start, but having everyone in a district adopt the same goal, and work together would be huge.
  • As Nazareno walked me through MSLA's hallways, introducing me to kids and teachers, she reflected on how her profession is changing. "I'm not afraid of being held accountable. I haven't dedicated a career to have kids unable to read or do science," she said. "But people need to understand that teaching and learning are very complex processes, and any time you try to measure anything that's highly complex, you can miss the nuances." Nazareno paused outside a classroom door and lowered her voice. "We had a girl in the second grade whose mother died. At the school next door, a girl was brutally murdered. That's all they've been talking about there for two weeks; they lost a lot of instruction time." She raised her eyebrows. "How do you factor that into value-added?"
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 12 Apr 11
       
      Education ultimately is about navigating the real world, and attempting to make meaning from our daily individual experiences, or building community around shared experiences.
Barbara Lindsey

Fluid Learning | the human network - 0 views

blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=94

mark pesce higher ed technology learning control

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 26 Dec 08 - Cached
  • There must be a point to the exercise, some reason that makes all the technology worthwhile. That search for a point – a search we are still mostly engaged in – will determine whether these computers are meaningful to the educational process, or if they are an impediment to learning.
  • What’s most interesting about the computer is how it puts paid to all of our cherished fantasies of control. The computer – or, most specifically, the global Internet connected to it – is ultimately disruptive, not just to the classroom learning experience, but to the entire rationale of the classroom, the school, the institution of learning. And if you believe this to be hyperbolic, this story will help to convince you.
  • A student about to attend university in the United States can check out all of her potential instructors before she signs up for a single class. She can choose to take classes only with those instructors who have received the best ratings – or, rather more perversely, only with those instructors known to be easy graders. The student is now wholly in control of her educational opportunities, going in eyes wide open, fully cognizant of what to expect before the first day of class.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • it has made the work of educational administrators exponentially more difficult. Students now talk, up and down the years, via the recorded ratings on the site. It isn’t possible for an institution of higher education to disguise an individual who happens to be a world-class researcher but a rather ordinary lecturer. In earlier times, schools could foist these instructors on students, who’d be stuck for a semester. This no longer happens, because RateMyProfessors.com effectively warns students away from the poor-quality teachers.
  • If we are smart enough, we can learn a lesson here and now that we will eventually learn – rather more expensively – if we wait. The lesson is simple: control is over. This is not about control anymore. This is about finding a way to survive and thrive in chaos.
  • The battle for control over who stands in front of the classroom has now been decisively lost by the administration in favor of the students.
  • That knowledge, once pooled, takes on a life of its own, and finds itself in places where it has uses that its makers never intended.
  • This one site has undone all of the neat work of tenure boards and department chairs throughout the entire world of academia.
  • When broken down to its atomic components, the classroom is an agreement between an instructor and a set of students. The instructor agrees to offer expertise and mentorship, while the students offer their attention and dedication. The question now becomes what role, if any, the educational institution plays in coordinating any of these components. Students can share their ratings online – why wouldn’t they also share their educational goals? Once they’ve pooled their goals, what keeps them from recruiting their own instructor, booking their own classroom, indeed, just doing it all themselves?
  • the possibility that some individuals or group of individuals might create their own context around the lectures. And this is where the future seems to be pointing.
  • the shape of things to come. But there are some other trends which are also becoming visible. The first and most significant of these is the trend toward sharing lecture material online, so that it reaches a very large audience.
  • Why not create a new kind of “Open University”, a website that offers nothing but the kinds of scheduling and coordination tools students might need to organize their own courses?
  • In this near future world, students are the administrators.
  • Now since most education is funded by the government, there will obviously be other forces at play; it may be that “administration”, such as it is, represents the government oversight function which ensures standards are being met. In any case, this does not look much like the educational institution of the 20th century – though it does look quite a bit like the university of the 13th century, where students would find and hire instructors to teach them subjects.
  • The lecturer now helps the students find the material available online, and helps them to make sense of it, contextualizing and informing their understanding. even as the students continue to work their way through the ever-growing set of information. The instructor can not know everything available online on any subject, but will be aware of the best (or at least, favorite) resources, and will pass along these resources as a key outcome of the educational process. The instructor facilitates and mentors, as they have always done, but they are no longer the gatekeepers, because there are no gatekeepers,
  • The classroom in this fungible future of student administrators and evolved lecturers is any place where learning happens.
  • At one end of the scale, students will be able work online with each other and with an lecturer to master material; at the other end, students will work closely with a mentor in a specialist classroom. This entire range of possibilities can be accommodated without much of the infrastructure we presently associate with educational institutions. The classroom will both implode – vanishing online – and explode – the world will become the classroom.
  • Flexibility and fluidity are the hallmark qualities of the 21st century educational institution. An analysis of the atomic features of the educational process shows that the course is a series of readings, assignments and lectures that happen in a given room on a given schedule over a specific duration. In our drive to flexibility how can we reduce the class into to essential, indivisible elements? How can we capture those elements? Once captured, how can we get these elements to the students? And how can the students share elements which they’ve found in their own studies?
  • This is the basic idea that’s guiding Stanford and MIT: recording is cheap, lecturers are expensive, and students are forgetful. Somewhere in the middle these three trends meet around recorded media. Yes, a student at Stanford who misses a lecture can download and watch it later, and that’s a good thing. But it also means that any student, anywhere, can download the same lecture.
  • Every one of these recordings has value, and the more recordings you have, the larger the horde you’re sitting upon. If you think of it like that – banking your work – the logic of capturing everything becomes immediately clear.
Mark Cruthers

WiZiQ free Virtual Classroom - 58 views

video

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started by Mark Cruthers on 11 May 08 no follow-up yet
Pat Wagner

IS 339 Presents Dot-to-Dot, a Global Learning Reception - 0 views

339dottodot.com

shared by Pat Wagner on 25 May 09 - Cached
  • Pat Wagner on 25 May 09
     
    This event is for everyone - and there's something in it for everyone. As the date gets closer, the site will be FILLED with projects, lesson plans, resources, student documentaries, and much, much more. Just RSVP for more info. Dot-to-Dot will be hosted by IS 339 on June 9, 2009." /> This is a cached version of http://339dottodot.com. Diigo.com has no relation to the site.x   0
Jennifer Lamkins

The New Heroes . Engage | PBS - 5 views

www.pbs.org/...engage

resources teaching heroes business

shared by Jennifer Lamkins on 18 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Jennifer Lamkins on 18 Jan 13
     
    Becoming a social entrepreneur takes both a vision for revolutionary change and the gumption to do something about it. Students can try the games and activities on The New Heroes website to learn about the characteristics of a successful social entrepreneur and find out if they might have what it takes to transform a vision into reality. They can play a game that requires them to tackle the challenges of building a business with a social conscience. They can determine how they can make a difference by taking a quiz to find out which issues and problems most inspire them. And if they have an inspirational story or great idea for changing the world, they can share it with others on the site.
Clif Mims

effective practices using blogs and wikis at the college level - 123 views

We begin a new semester today and this will be the first time that I'll be using a wiki with one of my classes. It is a special topics seminar for graduate students. My intent is to provide them w...

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started by alexandra m. pickett on 03 Jun 08 2 follow-ups, last by Clif Mims on 15 Jul 08
Clif Mims

Setup Your Own Drop Box in Google Drive - 8 views

www.bettercloud.com/...d-files-directly-to-your-drive

EdTech Educational-Technology Organizing

shared by Clif Mims on 28 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Clif Mims on 28 Aug 16
     
    Allow Anyone to Upload Files Directly to Your Drive "Have you ever been in the situation when you needed someone to share a digital file with you but the file is too large to send as an email attachment? Sharing that file with you in Google Drive is a great alternative, but what happens if the person does not have a Gmail or GAFE account? Well, it turns out there is a script that automatically provides you with a URL that allows any user to upload a file to a designated folder in your Google Drive. The beauty of this script is that anyone can send the file to your Google Drive without signing in to a Google account! Here is how to set it up (no scripting ability required)."
BlackBeltHelp Admin

Reach, Engage and Retain Your Students with Financial Aid Help Desk Support! - 0 views

blog.blackbelthelp.com/inancial-aid-help-desk-support

Financial Aid Help Desk Support Financial Aid Support Financial Aid Help Desk Higher education US Higher Education Highered Higher Ed Student Success Student Services Student Support Student Help desk Student experience Student Engagement

shared by BlackBeltHelp Admin on 24 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • BlackBeltHelp Admin on 24 Sep 19
     
    Scene 1, Financial aid office of a college: Two phones ringing incessantly, an inbox flooded with emails from prospective students, a pile of financial aid applications lying unprocessed, and a clock announcing the end of office hours. Scene 2, Somewhere in the US: A student, exasperated with the rising cost of getting a college degree, calls the financial aid office continuously, sends his 4th email since morning, resolves to visit the office in person next day. What might appear like two scenes out of a modern-day tragicomedy belonging to The Theatre of Absurd, are a routine during the enrollment season in universities. Increasingly expensive degrees make financial aid help desk support imperative to get in and stay in- college. As if it isn't already difficult enough, steps in the complicated process of getting the required financial aid. That's when Financial Aid Help Desk Services come to your rescue.
Dean Mantz

ALA | AASL Best Web sites for Teaching and Learning Top 25 Award - 0 views

www.ala.org/...bestwebsitestop25.cfm

web2.0 websites learning teaching aasl edtech resources networking

shared by Dean Mantz on 22 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Diigo  Need help in organizing your favorite websites? Diigo is a social bookmarking site that allows users to save websites, as well as tag them, add sticky notes and annotations, and share them with other users in various groups. Tip: Sticky notes are an effective way to start a virtual conversation among teams of students on the merits of a website.
  • Our Story  Create your story! Our Story permits users to develop and save collaborative timelines that can be personalized with annotations, photos, and videos. Stories (timelines) can be printed in book format, archived on DVD, or even sent as postcards. Tip: Teach your students to develop content-specific timelines that are linked to the teaching of research and information literacy skills.
  • Primary Access  Capture your students' imagination with movie narratives based on primary sources. Primary Access is an online tool that allows students and teachers to combine text, visual, and sound elements, which are then combined to convey information about their chosen historical event or time frame. A library of Primary Access movies is available through a catalog by historical time period. Tip: Encourage active learning: have students choose a historical event or time frame to research and synthesize their information through a Primary Access movie.
Dean Mantz

Internet Archive: Wayback Machine - 4 views

www.archive.org/web.php

archive web history reference search wayback tools archives

shared by Dean Mantz on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • The Internet Archive, the Library of Congress and California Digital Library collaborated on a pilot in the spring of 2008 and a full-year program for the 2008/2009 school year, working with a total of 10 elementary, middle and high schools. We are looking to expand this program to new schools in the coming year. You can explore the collections created during the 2008/2009 school year on the Archive-It website here.
  • Dean Mantz on 25 Feb 10
     
    Use this resource to search the web and go back to items posted long ago that are no longer available.
afisher5

Getting Started with Diigolet - Diigo help - 0 views

help.diigo.com/...ting-started-with-the-diigolet

Diigo diigolet

shared by afisher5 on 22 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Tags help you find and organize your bookmarks by letting you select all of your bookmarks with a certain tag or combination of tags. Quickly add relevant tags to a bookmark by clicking on any of the recommended tags that appear under the description field on the “Save Bookmark” pop-up. When you are satisfied with the information in the “Save Bookmark” pop-up, click the “Save Bookmark” button. Now a link to the page is stored in your Diigo library, and the information you entered is stored with it.
  • Highlight Highlighting lets you denote important information on a page, just like highlighting in a book, but with Diigo, the highlighted text will be conveniently saved to your library as well. There are some important things for me to denote on my recipe. My wife doesn’t like pineapple, my grandfather can’t have eggs or chocolate, and I don’t like coconut very much, so I highlight those items on the recipe to let me know I need to deal with them. Highlight by clicking “Highlight” on the Diigolet. Then select the text you want to highlight. The text will be visually highlighted and the text is now stored in your library. It’s that easy. Click the button again to exit highlighter mode. You can also change the color of a highlight by clicking the downward-pointing arrow next to “Highlight” and choosing a color. Colors are useful for differentiating different types of highlights. I will use a different color for each of the different people I need to consider.
  • To add a sticky note to a highlight, simply move your mouse cursor over a highlight. When the little pop-up tab with the pencil on it appears, move the cursor to it and a menu will appear. Choose “Add Sticky Notes”. Now you can type and post a sticky note just like before, but this time it will be tied to the highlighted text.
Ben Rimes

Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy. - By Chris Wilson - Slate Magazine - 4 views

www.slate.com/2184487

web2.0 wikipedia digg democracy

shared by Ben Rimes on 29 Sep 09 - Cached
  • The same undemocratic underpinnings of Web 2.0 are on display at Digg.com. Digg is a social-bookmarking hub where people submit stories and rate others' submissions; the most popular links gravitate to the site's front page.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 29 Sep 09
       
      Interesting that the word "undemocratic" be used for the discription of the Web 2.0 underbelly. While true, the whiz-bang magic of scripts, bots, and other technological "gatekeepers" are constantly altering what flesh and blood individuals have contributed, the programs meant to serve as custodians are themselves written by humans. The tools that we choose to employ do not make the process of web 2.0 any more undemocratic, rather just that much easier to engage and maintain as relevant. The term democracy itself is difficult to define narrowly (http://www.democracy-building.info/definition-democracy.html). There is no clear determination of how a democracy should be run, but rather a system of democratic beliefs, values, and fundamental rights. Provided that any system meets the needs of a democratic group's values and freedoms (liberties), then one could argue that it is indeed a full fledged democracy. There is more importance on the groups' rules and processes possessing a quality of fluidity and malleability in order to meet a changing environment.
  • at Digg.com. Digg is a social-bookmarking hub where people submit stories and rate others' submissions; the most popular links gravitate to the site's front page.
  • While both sites effectively function as oligarchies, they are still democratic in one important sense. Digg and Wikipedia's elite users aren't chosen by a corporate board of directors or by divine right. They're the people who participate the most. Despite the fairy tales about the participatory culture of Web 2.0, direct democracy isn't feasible at the scale on which these sites operate. Still, it's curious to note that these sites seem to have the hierarchical structure of the old-guard institutions they've sought to supplant.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 29 Sep 09
       
      Perhaps the problem of disenfranchised and disengaged youth that exists in Europe and the U.S. today isn't that they aren't participating in a healthy way within our democracies, but rather they've found more engaging democracies to participate in online.
  • Ben Rimes on 29 Sep 09
     
    Observing and comparing the "democratic" practices that constitute major web 2.0 sites.
Jeff Johnson

Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech » Inside Learning - 0 views

ideasandthoughts.org/...inside-learning

edtech ideasandthoughts.org shareski technology education student learning

shared by Jeff Johnson on 04 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Jeff Johnson on 04 Apr 09
     
    "I'm currently teaching first year university students and require them to blog. There are many benefits for having them blog but I've found it to be one of the greatest ways I've been able to get into the thinking and process of my their learning. Asking them to describe their learning and thought process provides me with insight not only to appreciate their efforts but to inform my instruction and decide on what further supports I can provide to take them to the next level. This technology remains a powerful way for learners to reflect and share their thinking on a variety of endeavors. As much as teachers and schools say that process is as important as product, this often is more lip service than practice. Process takes time and talking about learning can be tiresome. The transparency of blogs make this a shared experience that no doubt can provide all students a greater opportunity to learn from each other. The advent of blogs in schools often is deployed as a way to bring technology into schools. That's the wrong reason. I recently read this quote on Doug Johnson's blog: At a conference last week, Mark Weston from Dell computing stated that asking the question, "Does technology improve student learning?" is the wrong question. The question should be, "Does technology support the practices that improve student learning?"
J Black

The Three-E Strategy for Overcoming Resistance to Technological Change (EDUCAUSE Quarte... - 0 views

www.educause.edu/...163448

technology adotion education web2.0

shared by J Black on 03 Apr 09 - Cached
  • According to a 2007 Pew/Internet study,1 49 percent of Americans only occasionally use information and communication technology. Of the remaining 51 percent, only 8 percent are what Pew calls omnivores, “deep users of the participatory Web and mobile applications.”
  • Shaping user behavior is a “soft” problem that has more to do with psychological and social barriers to technology adoption. Academia has its own cultural mores, which often conflict with experimenting with new ways of doing things. Gardner Campbell put it nicely last year when he wrote, “For an academic to risk ‘failure’ is often synonymous with ‘looking stupid in front of someone’.”2 The safe option for most users is to avoid trying something as risky as new technology.
  • The first instinct is thus to graft technology onto preexisting modes of behavior.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • First, a technology must be evident to the user as potentially useful in making his or her life easier (or more enjoyable). Second, a technology must be easy to use to avoid rousing feelings of inadequacy. Third, the technology must become essential to the user in going about his or her business. This “Three-E Strategy,” if applied properly, has been at the core of every successful technology adoption throughout history.
  • Technology must be easy and intuitive to use for the majority of the user audience—or they won’t use it.
  • Complexity, however, remains a potent obstacle to realizing the goal of making technology easy. Omnivores (the top 8 percent of users) revel in complexity. Consider for a moment how much time some people spend creating clothes for their avatars in Second Life or the intricacies of gameplay in World of Warcraft. This complexity gives the expert users a type of power, but is also a turnoff for the majority of potential users.
  • Web 2.0 and open source present another interesting solution to this problem. The user community quickly abandons those applications they consider too complicated.
  • any new technology must become essential to users
  • Finally, we have to show them how the enhanced communication made possible through technologies such as Web 2.0 will enhance their efficiency, productivity, and ability to teach and learn.
  • J Black on 03 Apr 09
     
    First, a technology must be evident to the user as potentially useful in making his or her life easier (or more enjoyable). Second, a technology must be easy to use to avoid rousing feelings of inadequacy. Third, the technology must become essential to the user in going about his or her business. This "Three-E Strategy," if applied properly, has been at the core of every successful technology adoption throughout history.
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