Here are six ways you might use Google+ Hangouts for online education:

If you haven't tried out Google+ Hangouts yet, take the time to learn more about it and consider some of these amazing ways you can use it to add to your existing curriculum and make class time easier, more fun, and a more rewarding experience for you and your students alike.

The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today's fast-changing job market. Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of "badges" to certify skills and abilities.

The goals of the course are (1) to give you a firm grounding in the current state of the field of open education, including related topics like copyright, licensing, and sustainability, (2) to help you locate open education in the context of mainstream instructional technologies like learning objects, and (3) to get you thinking, writing, and dialoguing creatively and critically about current practices and possible alternative practices in open education