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Dave James

Apply For A Same Day Loans To Acquire Speedy Fiscal Backing At Emergency Time - 0 views

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    In the event that you might want to recuperate your money related misfortune or evacuate the obligations quackery, then same day loans would be reasonable one. You would get the cash around the same time you would apply. Trustful financial services would help you to get advance sum at sensible rate.
rhtomal

Technology - 0 views

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    At a Glance At its special media event, Apple announced the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus. Both devices will launch on September 19 in the first wave of countries, with pre-orders starting on September 12.
rhtomal

Technology - 0 views

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    SanDisk has revealed a 512GB SD card, the highest storage capacity ever seen in this form factor. SanDisk yesterday launched the 512GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I, the world's highest capacity SD card and the first to reach 512GB, or half a terabyte.
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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Barbara Lindsey

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

  • 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.
Dean Mantz

On Intelligence - Welcome - 0 views

  • The first set of links provides information for people who have not yet read the book or have a general interest. It contains: Bios of the authors Reviews of the book, what people are saying The table of contents An excerpt from the book, "The Prologue" A list of venues and dates where the authors will be speaking The second set of links contains resources for people who have read the book and want to learn more about the theory. Here you will find: An online discussion forum Additional resources including an expanded bibliography and source code for simulations Q&A section for asking the authors questions A form for emailing the authors
Michael Johnson

Apprehending the Future: Emerging Technologies, from Science Fiction to Campus Reality... - 8 views

  • environmental scan
  • The environmental scan method offers several advantages, starting with the fact that drawing on multiple sources and perspectives can reduce the chances of bias or sample error. The wider the scan, the better will be the chance of hitting the first trace of items that, although small at the moment, could expand into prominence. A further advantage is pedagogical: trying to keep track of a diverse set of domains requires a wide range of intellectual competencies. As new technologies emerge, more learning is required in subfields or entire disciplines, such as nanotechnology or digital copyright policy.
  • Disadvantages of this method start from its strengths: environmental scanning requires a great deal of sifting, searching, and analyzing. Finding the proverbial needle in the haystack isn't useful if its significance can't be recognized. Furthermore, the large amount of work necessary for both scanning and analyzing can be daunting, especially for smaller schools or enterprises.
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  • That complexity demands non-simple responses. Each of the techniques sketched above offers one way of helping groups to think through these emergent forces and to apprehend the future. Crowdsourcing, scenarios, prediction markets, the Delphi method, and environmental scanning are complementary strategies. Using several of these methods can teach us to learn about the future in more sophisticated, pro-active ways. If the methods appear strange, resembling science fiction, perhaps that is a sign of their aptness for the future, since the future often appears strange just before it becomes ordinary—or, in our case, just before it becomes a campus reality. As higher education budgets clamp down and the future hurtles toward us, we need these methods and techniques as allies that can help us to survive . . . and to learn.
  • Crowdsourcing, scenarios, prediction markets, the Delphi method, and environmental scanning are complementary strategies. Using several of these methods can teach us to learn about the future in more sophisticated, pro-active ways. If the methods appear strange, resembling science fiction, perhaps that is a sign of their aptness for the future, since the future often appears strange just before it becomes ordinary—or, in our case, just before it becomes a campus reality. As higher education budgets clamp down and the future hurtles toward us, we need these methods and techniques as allies that can help us to survive . . . and to learn.
  • to apprehend the future. Crowdsourcing, sce
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    Alexander discusses methods for keeping up with the future of technology and its use in higher education.
Michael Johnson

Teaching in Social and Technological Networks « Connectivism - 9 views

  • 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
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  • 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.
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    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."
Dean Mantz

Intel® Education: Intel Teach Elements: Project-Based Approaches - 8 views

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cecilia marie

Exceptional Online Computer Support Services - 3 views

I was having problems with my computer last week. I have already called a lot of downtown computer shop providers to help me with my concerns but, they just were not able to fix it. So I called On...

online PC repair

started by cecilia marie on 09 Sep 11 no follow-up yet
Kristine Goldhawk

The Electric Educator: 9 Ways to Use Google Wave - 25 views

  • When a school closes, a large percentage of the student body may be sick, but a large percentage is not. A tool such as Wave enables the students who are well enough to collaborate together in an online environment.
  • Whenever I promote a new technology I always remind teachers that the fundamental aspects of effective instruction remain the same. Technology doesn't change the basics, it simply repackages them in a new and exciting way.
  • Another major problem is that the talented teachers are not motivated at all to go to the villages rather be in the big cities to enjoy the benefits that Big cities offer. With web 2.0 technologies we have a chance to solve these problems. I see a great future where for the first time in the history that we can provide education to the poorest people of those remote villages at a very low cost that is affordable
Ben Rimes

The Test Generation - 11 views

  • "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
       
      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
       
      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.
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  • 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
       
      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
       
      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
       
      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
       
      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
       
      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
       
      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
       
      Education ultimately is about navigating the real world, and attempting to make meaning from our daily individual experiences, or building community around shared experiences.
buycashapp11

Buy Verified CashApp Accounts - UK - 0 views

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    There are a lot of people out there who are looking for ways to make money. And one of the most popular ways to do this is through the use of apps. CashApp is one of the most popular money-making apps out there, and it's no surprise that people are looking for ways to get their hands on a verified CashApp accounts. There are a few things you need to know before you can get started with this process. First, you need to have a valid email address so that you can sign up for an account. Once you have an account, you'll be able to choose how much money you want to make and when you want to receive your payments.
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