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"The National Education Data Model is a conceptual but detailed representation of the education information domain focused at the student, instructor and course/class levels. It delineates the relationships and interdependencies between the data elements necessary to document, operate, track, evaluate, and improve key aspects of an education system. The NEDM strives to be a shared understanding among all education stakeholders as to what information needs to be collected and managed at the local level in order to enable effective instruction of students and superior leadership of schools. It is a comprehensive, non-proprietary inventory and a map of education information that can be used by schools, LEAs, states, vendors, and researchers to identify the information required for teaching, learning, administrative systems, and evaluation of education programs and approaches. "

Our goal is to make it easier for people to collect, organize, find, visualize, and share their information. One of the biggest obstacles to such information management is the rigid, centrally-planned information models and user interfaces of existing applications and web sites. The data people use in the real world is rarely so well-formed. It is full of exceptions and idiosyncrasies. Our group develops tools for the web and desktop that can flex to hold and present whatever information a user considers important, in whatever way the user considers most effective.

To make sense of it all, we have compiled key information, definitions, and links related to the launch of Google Wave. This in-depth guide provides an overview of Google Wave, discusses the terminology associated with it, details information on Google Wave applications

You can define a robots behavior in the google wave chat... From Mashable: "Robots are the other type of Google Wave extension. Robots are like having another person within a Google Wave conversation, except that they're automated. They're a lot like the old IM bots of the past, although far more robust. Robots can modify information in waves, interact with users, communicate with others waves, and pull information from outside sources. Because it acts like a user, you can define its behavior based on what happens in the chat. You could build one as simple as "change the word dog to the word cat" or one as complex as a fully-functional debugger. We'll probably start seeming some very advanced robots in the near future."

You can define a robots behavior in the google wave chat... hmmm... From Mashable: "Robots are the other type of Google Wave extension. Robots are like having another person within a Google Wave conversation, except that they're automated. They're a lot like the old IM bots of the past, although far more robust. Robots can modify information in waves, interact with users, communicate with others waves, and pull information from outside sources. Because it acts like a user, you can define its behavior based on what happens in the chat. You could build one as simple as "change the word dog to the word cat" or one as complex as a fully-functional debugger. We'll probably start seeming some very advanced robots in the near future."

Perhaps the most important piece I've read recently. Yes must be our answer to Adelman's last challenge: It is time for us to disseminate what and why we do what we do.

More of the same and the discussion is familiar--our challenge is to bring this topic to the attention of our points.

This is a great list of core competencies. Should use (cite) in forming the participatory learning strategies.

Hey Jayme, Nice list. Another skill you talked about earlier was translation. Where does that fit? Is it a subskill of Negotiation?

good podcast about roles of internet and other personal technologies. just about mid-way talks about information scarcity (1.0) vs information abundance (2.0). near the end it talks about the tech proclivities of various ethnic groups

the alternate universe, a small step away...

"Over the past two decades, the way we learn has changed dramatically. We have new sources of information and new ways to exchange and to interact with information. But our schools and the way we teach have remained largely the same for years, even centuries. What happens to traditional educational institutions when learning also takes place on a vast range of Internet sites, from Pokemon Web pages to Wikipedia? This report investigates how traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. The authors propose an alternative definition of "institution" as a "mobilizing network"-emphasizing its flexibility, the permeability of its boundaries, its interactive productivity, and its potential as a catalyst for change-and explore the implications for higher education."

A new book by Cathy Davidson.

"Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. We tried to step back and design an interaction model that accommodates the complexity and scale of information rather than the traditional structure of the Web."

"One vision for the school of the future comes from the United Nations. Founded this year by the UN's Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID), the University of the People is a not-for-profit institution that aims to offer higher education opportunities to people who generally couldn't afford it by leveraging social media technologies and ideas. All fees are set on a sliding scale based on the student's country of origin, and never exceed $100. "

The shared nature of ecological intelligence makes it synergistic with social intelligence, which gives us the capacity to coordinate and harmonize our efforts. The art of working together effectively, as mastered by a star performing team, combines abilities like empathy and perspective taking, candor and cooperation, to create person-to-person links that let information gain added value as it travels. Collaboration and the exchange of information are vital to amassing the essential ecological insights and necessary database that allow us to act for the greater good.

Vander Ark was the first Executive Director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. From his post: "There are plenty of theories about how to improve education. Most focus on what appear to be big levers--a point of entry and system intervention that appears to provide some improvement leverage. These theories usually involve 'if-then' statements: 'if we improve this, then other good stuff will happen.'" "One problem not addressed by these theories is the lack of innovation diffusion in education--a good idea won't cross the street. Weak improvement incentives and strong bureaucracy have created a lousy marketplace for products and ideas." "Key assumption: teacher effectiveness is the key variable; more good teachers will improve student achievement" "I'm betting on social learning platforms as a lever for improvement at scale in education. Instead of a classroom as the primary organizing principle, social networks will become the primary building block of learning communities (both formal and informal). Smart recommendation engines will queue personalized content. Tutoring, training, and collaboration tools will be applications that run on social networks. New schools will be formed around these capabilities. Teachers in existing schools will adopt free tools yielding viral, bureaucracy-cutting productivity improvement."

"Key assumption: teacher effectiveness is the key variable; more good teachers will improve student achievement" Vander Ark was the first Executive Director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. From his post:"There are plenty of theories about how to improve education. Most focus on what appear to be big levers--a point of entry and system intervention that appears to provide some improvement leverage. These theories usually involve 'if-then' statements: 'if we improve this, then other good stuff will happen.'" "One problem not addressed by these theories is the lack of innovation diffusion in education--a good idea won't cross the street. Weak improvement incentives and strong bureaucracy have created a lousy marketplace for products and ideas." "I'm betting on social learning platforms as a lever for improvement at scale in education. Instead of a classroom as the primary organizing principle, social networks will become the primary building block of learning communities (both formal and informal). Smart recommendation engines will queue personalized content. Tutoring, training, and collaboration tools will be applications that run on social networks. New schools will be formed around these capabilities. Teachers in existing schools will adopt free tools yielding viral, bureaucracy-cutting productivity improvement."\n\n\n

Framework for Program Evaluation by the CDC This is a good resource for program evaluation. Click through "Steps and Standards" for information on collecting credible evidence and engaging stakeholders.

"Dr Ebbinghaus' experiment revealed we suffer an exponential 'forgetting curve' and that about 50% of context-free information is lost in the first hour after acquisition if there is no opportunity to reinforce it with practice."

"When the CLA results arrived eight months later, the UC team compared the outcomes of the two assessments. "We found no statistically significant correlation between the CLA scores and the portfolio scores," Escoe says. "In some ways, it's a disappointing finding. If we'd found a correlation, we could tell faculty that the CLA, as an instrument, is measuring the same things that we value and that the CLA can be embedded in a course. But that didn't happen." There were many factors that may have contributed to the lack of correlation, she says, including the fact that the CLA is timed, while the rubric assignments are not; and that the rubric scores were diagnostic and included specific feedback, while the CLA awarded points "in a black box": if a student referred to a specific piece of evidence in a critical-thinking question, he or she simply received one point. In addition, she says, faculty members may have had exceptionally high expectations of their honors students and assessed the e-portfolios with those high expectations in mind-leading to results that would not correlate to a computer-scored test. In the end, Escoe says, the two assessments are both useful, but for different things. The CLA can provide broad institutional data that satisfies VSA requirements, while rubric-based assessment provides better information to facilitate continuous program improvement. "

Another institution trying to make sense of the CLA. This study compared student's CLA scores with criteria-based scores of their eportfolios. The study used a modified version of the VALUE rubrics developed by the AACU. Our own Gary Brown was on the team that developed the critical thinking rubric for the VALUE project.

"The CLA can provide broad institutional data that satisfies VSA requirements, while rubric-based assessment provides better information to facilitate continuous program improvement. " This begs some questions: what meaning can we attach to these two non-correlated measures? What VSA requirements can rubric-based assessment NOT satisfy? Are those "requirements" really useful?

Yes, this article resonnated with me too. Especially connecting assessment to teaching and learning. The most important purpose of assessment should be not improvement or accountability but their common aim: everyone wants students to get the best possible education.... today we seem to be devoting more time, money, thought, and effort to assessment than to helping faculty help students learn as effectively as possible. When our colleagues have disappointing assessment results, and they don't know what to do to improve them, I wonder how many have been made aware that, in some respects, we are living in a golden age of higher education, coming off a quarter-century of solid research on practices that promote deep, lasting learning. I wonder how many are pointed to the many excellent resources we now have on good teaching practices, including books, journals, conferences and, increasingly, teaching-learning centers right on campus. I wonder how many of the graduate programs they attended include the study and practice of contemporary research on effective higher education pedagogies. No wonder so many of us are struggling to make sense of our assessment results! Too many of us are separating work on assessment from work on improving teaching and learning, when they should be two sides of the same coin. We need to bring our work on teaching, learning, and assessment together.