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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.

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.

Book Cover\nabout THE BOOK\nThe first generation of "Digital Natives" - children who were born into and raised in the digital world - are coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our politics, our culture and even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed. But who are these Digital Natives? More

Digital Research Tools (DiRT)\n\n \n\nThis wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively. Whether you need software to help you manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts, Digital Research Tools will help you find what you're looking for. We provide a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools in which we not only describe the tool's features, but also explore how it might be employed most effectively by researchers.\n\n

This Directory contains over 2,700 tools for learning in two main sections:\n\n 1. for creating, delivering and managing learning and performance support solutions\n 2. for personal learning and productivity, for sharing resources, as well as group collaboration (also includes some enterprise tools)\n\nThe tools in this Directory are both freeware/open source and commercial.

george siemens blog on connectivism, social and networked learning

Highlight and Share the Web! Diigo is a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community Research and Collaborate * Don't just bookmark! Highlight the web! Add sticky notes too! * Access and search your findings from any PC or iphone! * Create groups to pool resources for specific projects. Connect and Discover * You are what you annotate, creating a presence for you in the community. * Connect with friends effortlessly and non-intrusively through content. * Discover quality resources on any subject or get personalized recommendations. * Learn More » Play Demo Video

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.

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.

from Educators' eZine Introduction and Background: Bloom's Taxonomy Bloom's Taxonomy In the 1950's Benjamin Bloom developed his taxonomy of cognitive objectives, Bloom's Taxonomy. This categorized and ordered thinking skills and objectives. His taxonomy follows the thinking process. You can not understand a concept if you do not first remember it, similarly you can not apply knowledge and concepts if you do not understand them. It is a continuum from Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) to Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). Bloom labels each category with a gerund.

Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering Minds. "My life is in teaching. To have a chance to do that with a world audience is just wonderful." * Gilbert Strang MIT Mathematics professor United States Read more Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT. No registration required.

Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering Minds. "My life is in teaching. To have a chance to do that with a world audience is just wonderful." * Gilbert Strang MIT Mathematics professor United States Read more Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT. No registration required.

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.

Turning a College Lecture into a Conversation with CoverItLive Alfred Hermida by Alfred Hermida, April 13, 2009 Tagged: coveritlive, journalism school, social media, twitter, university of british columbia Journalists who also teach will know that one of the challenges of teaching a large, undergraduate class is the sheer number of students. It can be hard to foster a discussion in a lecture hall, where many students may be too intimidated to speak up. So instead the lesson often becomes a lecture, as the professor stands up in front of the class and talks at them for the best part of an hour. In this instructor-centered model, knowledge is a commodity to be transmitted from the instructor to the student's empty vessel. There is a place for the traditional, one-to-many transmission. This is the way the mass media worked for much of the 20th century and continues to operate today. But the emergence of participatory journalism is changing this. Most news outlets, at the very least, solicit comments from their online readers. Others, such as Canada's Globe and Mail, use the live-blogging tool CoveritLive both for real-time reporting and for engaging readers in a discussion, such as in its coverage of the Mesh conference in Toronto. Tools such as CoveritLive or Twitter can turn the one-to-many model of journalism on its head, offering instead a many-to-many experience. The same tools may also have a use in the classroom, as a way of turning the traditional university lecture into a conversation.

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?

T&L blogger Ryan Bretag recently sat down with his students and asked them about 21st-Century Learning strategies. Their suggestions are amazing. Read the whole piece here: http://www.techlearning.com/blogs.aspx?id=15776 Some snippets: Each discussion point started and ended with the focus on learning. For example, the students talked about creating a learning environment that was about learning not just memorization. To do this, they wanted to seek out partnerships both locally and globally in order to build connections that would foster a "learning to learn" movement where students are learning for learning, open to learning, and innovative. Clearly, textbooks were not fast enough nor diverse enough in their eyes. They longed for ways to interact with materials that were updated frequently and offered a wealth of perspectives. In fact, a good portion felt there was a need to move beyond the textbook because "information changes to rapidly" for textbooks to be the main source in the classroom. Along with this, information and resources needed to come in a variety of formats if the curriculum was going to remain progressive and current: narrative, fiction, digital, multimedia, and non-fiction.