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CSALT What is CSALT? CSALT is the Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology. Established in 1992 the Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology (CSALT) at Lancaster University is one of Europe's leading academic research groups in the field of technology enhanced learning (TEL) applied to adult education and training. The Centre carries out basic and applied research with an emphasis on the development of theory that can be used in real settings. Its members are also closely involved in the education and professional development of workers in the e-learning industry, and in consultancy. Our research has a strong focus on adult education especially in higher education and industrial contexts. Our interest is not in the technology per se, but in the social, psychological and organisational issues which are thrown into sharp relief during the design and introduction of new technology-enhanced learning environments. CSALT: * is focused on research into networked learning and the design of advanced learning technology(ALT), * is made up of staff with expertise in eg, online tutoring, computer supported collaborative learning, cognitive psychology, design of learning technology and simulation based training, * runs an innovative Doctoral distance learning programme on the design and use of technology enhanced learning * develops course designs that support e-groups and communities, * is based in the RAE grade 5 Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University, UK. This site reflects primarily the interests of CSALT in the Department of Educational Research. Other members of the university wide CSALT are part of the Department of Management Learning, in particular the Networked Management Learning research group and the Learning Technology Group.

Enhancing Learning through Technology (ELT) We are increasingly aware of how technology can enhance the student learning experience. Our work with institutions indicates a shift towards an overarching approach which uses technology to enhance core activities, e.g. using technology in assessment to improve feedback to students. This shift has been taking place within institutions over the past few years since the release of the original 2005 HEFCE e-learning Strategy, as reflected in the Welsh HEFCW (Higher Education Funding Council for Wales) Enhancement of Learning Strategy. More recently, on 26th March 2009 HEFCE released their Enhancing Learning and Teaching through Technology (ELTT) Policy Statement. This Policy Statement includes an Implementation Framework to support our stakeholder institutions for the development of their own L&T strategies - this Framework was developed through evidence collected from a range of Academy and JISC programmes. To reflect this emphasis, and in line with our remit to support the student learning experience, the Academy has developed an Enhancement of Learning through Technology (ELT) programme. We are in the process of developing this website to reflect this shift and to map our menu structure onto the HEFCE Implementation Framework, i.e. to support institutions on the interpretation of the Framework - to be completed by mid June 09 (JISC are undertaking a similar exercise). We are also developing an additional resource through EvidenceNet. Currently, to support institutions and in collaboration with the JISC we have developed a joint search tool, as below - Academy resources can also be accessed using the menu on the left.

The Knowledge Media Laboratory works to create a future in which communities of teachers, faculty, programs, and institutions collectively advance teaching and learning by exchanging their educational knowledge, experiences, ideas, and reflections by taking advantage of various technologies and resources. The KML is currently working with its partners, including Carnegie Foundation programs, to achieve the following goals: * To develop digital (or electronic) tools and resources that help to make knowledge of effective teaching practices and educational transformation efforts visible, shareable and reusable. * To explore synergy among various technologies to better support the scholarship of teaching and learning. * To build the capacity for faculty and teachers independently to take advantage of information and communications technologies that enable them to re-examine, rethink and represent teaching and student learning, and to share the outcomes in an effective and efficient way. * To sustain communities of practice engaged in collaboratively improving teaching and student learning by building common areas to exchange knowledge and by building repositories for the representation of effective practice.

Technologies of the Self What are technologies of the self in Foucault's work? This was a theme he was working on from about say 1978 or so. Broadly speaking it means: 1. A set of techniques and practices that can be deployed to modify or affect the self. 2. These techniques are historically situated within power relations. 3. They can mix one's own knowledge with that of the rule. 4. As with other writing in F. about power, it has a very productive side (producing the self after all) as well as a constraining side.

The "Google generation" of today's students has grown up in a digital world. Most are completely au fait with the microblogging site Twitter; they organise their social lives through Facebook and MySpace; 75% of students have a profile on at least one social networking site. And they spend up to four hours a day online. Modern students are happy to share and participate but are prone to impatience - being used to quick answers - and are casual about evaluating information and attributing it, and also about legal and copyright issues. With almost weekly developments in technology and research added to increasingly web-savvy students' expectations, how are British universities keeping up? Pretty well, according to Sir David Melville, chair of Lifelong Learning UK and author of a new report into how students' use of new technologies will affect higher education.

In-Class Use of YouTube Videos In connection with the Engaged Classroom professional development opportunity, we would like to share "model" lessons of how technology can be used to teach the curriculum. One particularly powerful piece of technology that can be used for educational purposes is the use of online video for instruction. YouTube is currently the industry standard in user-generated video distribution. Therefore, we think it only reasonable to allow the use of educationally sound YouTube content under controlled circumstances within the classroom. In this brief paper, we will elaborate and show that such behavior is within the confines of current district policy.

What it Means to Educate Today's Students February 4th, 2009 Comments The Carnegie Foundation is focusing on where and how technology can add value as we seek to advance more ambitious learning goals for all students, and where we can assist educators as they move toward making these new learning goals universal. The Foundation has enlisted expert advisers to help us look at how technology is transforming how we educate. One of these advisors is Nichole Pinkard, Director of Innovation at the Urban Education Institute, University of Chicago.

There are growing expectations among college students to be able to access and manage their course materials over the World Wide Web. In its early days, faculty would create web pages by hand for posting this information. As Internet technologies and access have matured over the past decade, course and learning management systems such as Blackboard and Web CT have become the norm for distributing such materials. In today's Web 2.0 world, wikis have emerged as a tool that may complement or replace the use of traditional course management systems as a tool for disseminating course information. Because of a wiki's collaborative nature, its use also allows students to participate in the process of course management, information sharing, and content creation. Using examples from an information technology classroom, this paper describes several ways to structure and use a wiki as a course management tool, and shares results of a student survey on the effectiveness of such an approach on student learning.\n\nKeywords: Wiki, Course Management, Collaboration, Web 2.0, Content Creation, Student Learning.

Dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the impact of new media on society and culture. After two years studying the impact of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society. His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over ten languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and he was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. He has also won several teaching awards, including the 2008 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

Yochai Benkler's wealth of nations book online Next Chapter: Part I: The Networked Information Economy » read paragraph Chapter 1: Introduction: A Moment of Opportunity and Challenge 1 Information, knowledge, and culture are central to human freedom and human development. How they are produced and exchanged in our society critically affects the way we see the state of the world as it is and might be; who decides these questions; and how we, as societies and polities, come to understand what can and ought to be done. For more than 150 years, modern complex democracies have depended in large measure on an industrial information economy for these basic functions. In the past decade and a half, we have begun to see a radical change in the organization of information production. Enabled by technological change, we are beginning to see a series of economic, social, and cultural adaptations that make possible a radical transformation of how we make the information environment we occupy as autonomous individuals, citizens, and members of cultural and social groups. It seems passé today to speak of "the Internet revolution." In some academic circles, it is positively naïve. But it should not be. The change brought about by the networked information environment is deep. It is structural. It goes to the very foundations of how liberal markets and liberal democracies have coevolved for almost two centuries.

Revisiting "A Vision of Students Today"\n\nOct 21st, 2008 by Prof Wesch\n\n(originally published on Britannica Blog)\n\nIn spring 2007 I invited the 200 students enrolled in the "small" version of my "Introduction to Cultural Anthropology" class to tell the world what they think of their education by helping me write a script for a video to be posted on YouTube. The result was the disheartening portrayal of disengagement you see below. The video was viewed over one million times in its first month and was the most blogged about video in the blogosphere for several weeks, eliciting thousands of comments. With rare exception, educators around the world expressed the sad sense of profound identification with the scene, sparking a wide-ranging debate about the roles and responsibilities of teachers, students, and technology in the classroom.

Joint declaration of the European Ministers of Education, convened in Bologna on the 19th of June 1999. The European process, thanks to the extraordinary achievements of the last few years, has become an increasingly concrete and relevant reality for the Union and its citizens. Enlargement prospects together with deepening relations with other European countries, provide even wider dimensions to that reality. Meanwhile, we are witnessing a growing awareness in large parts of the political and academic world and in public opinion of the need to establish a more complete and far-reaching Europe, in particular building upon and strengthening its intellectual, cultural, social and scientific and technological dimensions. A Europe of Knowledge is now widely recognised as an irreplaceable factor for social and human growth and as an indispensable component to consolidate and enrich the European citizenship, capable of giving its citizens the necessary competencies to face the challenges of the new millennium, together with an awareness of shared values and belonging to a common social and cultural space. The importance of education and educational co-operation in the development and strengthening of stable, peaceful and democratic societies is universally acknowledged as paramount, the more so in view of the situation in South East Europe. The Sorbonne declaration of 25th of May 1998, which was underpinned by these considerations, stressed the universities' central role in developing European cultural dimensions. It emphasised the creation of the European area of higher education as a key way to promote citizens' mobility and employability and the Continent's overall development.

Videos. Interview recordings. Documents. Photos. Media clips. Music. Podcasts. Whatever your materials, whatever your project, whatever your background - NVivo 8's superior technology lets you explore, analyze and glean insight from your information like never before. If you need to handle very rich information, where deep levels of analysis on both small and large volumes of data are required, NVivo 8 is your solution. It removes many of the manual tasks associated with analysis, like classifying, sorting and arranging information, so you have more time to explore trends, build and test theories and ultimately arrive at answers to questions.

Purpose of the Experience\n\nInnovation continues to occur on the internet at an extremely lively\npace. What was once the realm of email, FTP, Gopher, and the Web is\nbarely recognizable a mere 10 years later. Keeping up with the speed of\ninnovation and maintaining a familiarity with the most recent tools and\ncapabilities is handy in some professions and absolutely critical in\nothers. This course is designed to help you understand and effectively\nuse a variety of "web 2.0″ technologies including blogs, RSS, wikis,\nsocial bookmarking tools, photo sharing tools, mapping tools, audio and\nvideo podcasts, and screencasts.

Constructive alignment Constructive alignment of learning outcomes to assessment methods The following resources are available: Overview paper Professor Mike Osborne, University of Stirling and Workshop Director Report on the event and areas for future development and enhancement Professor Mike Osborne Keynote address: Aligning assessment with long-term learning needs Professor David Boud, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Powerpoint slides | PDF version Case study 1: Assessment on the TQFE program- a case study of constructive alignment Dr Iddo Oberski, University of Stirling Powerpoint slides | PDF version Draft paper - Word version | PDF version Keynote address: Developing aligned courses Sue Drew, Sheffield Hallam University Powerpoint slides | PDF version Draft paper - Word version | PDF version

Mark Bullen (BCIT) blog post linking to their report on digital learners in HE... concludes no significant difference in different generations' preferences when it comes to use of technology in learning.

Reschooling Society and the Promise of ee-Learning: An Interview with Steve Eskow Chad Trevitte and Steve Eskow more » « Synopsis » Article » Discuss » E-Mail » Print:HTML » Print:PDF » Related Articles » Also In This Issue In this article, Chad Trevitte interviews Innovate guest editor Steve Eskow about the concept of ee-learning and the promise it holds for revitalizing higher education. Eskow defines ee-learning as a combination of the electronic technologies employed in online learning ("e-learning 1") and a pedagogy of experiential learning rooted in real-life settings in the world outside the university classroom ("e-learning 2"). As he discusses ee-learning in the context of previous philosophies of educational reform, Eskow argues that this mode of pedagogical practice seeks to bridge the gap between theory-based instruction on the one hand and practical application on the other. Eskow also addresses the ways in which ee-learning offers an alternative to the traditional view of the university as a self-enclosed space of learning, while still supporting the development of conceptual and propositional knowledge that educators typically value in the setting of the campus classroom. By allowing students to pursue their work in specific, authentic, contextualized settings while consulting with instructors and peers online, ee-learning offers a pedagogical approach that aligns knowledge and experience in a reciprocal, mutually enhancing fashion.

NCSS Position Statement on Media Literacy Media Literacy A Position Statement of National Council for the Social Studies © 2009 National Council for the Social Studies. All rights reserved This position statement was prepared by a task force of the Technology Community of National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), and was approved by the NCSS Board of Directors in February 2009. "In the twenty-first century, participatory media education and civic education are inextricable" (Rheingold, 2008, p. 103) This position statement focuses on the critical role of media literacy in the social studies curriculum. The statement addresses the following questions. First, why and how has media literacy taken on a significantly more important role in preparing citizens for democratic life? Second, how is media literacy defined, and what are some of its essential concepts? Finally, what is required to teach media literacy and what are some examples of classroom activities?

Enhancing Learning Using Generic and Specific Aspects of Knowledge Formation Peter Petocz University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Peter.Petocz@uts.edu.au Anna Reid Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia Anna.Reid@mq.edu.au Abstract: Recognising and understanding the diverse ways that students learn is an important step in setting up effective environments for learning. A traditional way of getting this information is to observe the quality of assessed work and classroom interactions. An alternative and more direct method is to actually ask students to tell you about their own learning. While some students will be less successful than others in articulating their ideas, an overall picture will emerge of the variety of ways in which students understand what it means to learn. Such an approach has been used to investigate students' experience of learning in a variety of contexts. One practical effect of this line of enquiry has been the discovery of the dichotomy between teacher focused, content orientations to learning associated with a surface approach to learning and student focused, learning orientations associated with a deep approach to learning. These qualitatively different conceptions of learning result in discernible differences in learning outcomes. While some aspects of learning seem to be universal, others depend on the context of learning. In this paper, we look at two parallel studies of students' conceptions of learning in statistics and in music, areas quite different both in content and traditional methods of pedagogy. Research in these and other academic disciplines suggests that there is a strong relation between students' (and teachers') perception of professional work and their conceptions of their discipline and learning within that discipline. We discuss how this 'Professional Entity' is apparent in statistics and music, and how an appreciation of the Professional Entity can help teachers enhance their students' learning in other

Yung Tae Kim, aka Dr. Tae, is a skateboarder, videographer, scientist, and teacher. He earned his bachelor's degree in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has held faculty positions Lake Forest College, DePaul University, and Northwestern University. As a skateboarder, he's best known for his consistent 360 flips, which admirers have nicknamed "Tae flips." His most recent video project is The Physics of Skateboarding with Dr. Tae, a series which combines his interests in science, skepticism, skateboarding, and education. When the Los Angeles Times needed someone to explain the physics behind Jake Brown's slam on the MegaRamp at X Games XIII, they called Dr. Tae. His unique background also caught the attention of Robomodo, a video game studio that hired him as a consultant for the development of Tony Hawk: RIDE for Activision (read about it in Time Out Chicago).