Great blog post by Bill Ferriter (The Tempered Radical) on the five essential Twitter hashtags that will help ed leaders access quality content efficiently.
Presentation by Vermont superintendent Dan French (@danfrench on Twitter) for the Palmetto Open Source Conference (posscon.org).
Dan describes an alternative vision for ed organizational change utilizing "lateral innovation networks" based on the concepts described by David Hargreaves (http://www.demos.co.uk/people/davidhargreaves) in "Education Epidemic."
give state regulators a new option to either act as accreditors or create their own accreditation systems.
“States could accredit online courses, or hybrid models with elements on- and off-campus.”
any new money for those emerging models would likely come out of the coffers of traditional colleges.
cut back on red tape that prevents colleges from experimenting with ways to cut prices and boost student learning.
decentralized, more streamlined form of accreditation.
regional accreditors are doing a fairly good job. They are under enormous pressure to keep “bad actors” at bay while also encouraging experimentation. And he said accreditors usually get it right.
Andrew Kelly, however, likes Lee’s idea. Kelly, who is director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Center on Higher Education Reform, said it would create a credible alternative to the existing accreditation system, which the bill would leave intact.
eliminating bureaucracy in higher education regulation is a top priority
“Accreditation could also be available to specialized programs, individual courses, apprenticeships, professional credentialing and even competency-based tests,”
“The gateway to education reform is education oversight reform,”
broad, bipartisan agreement that federal aid policies have not kept pace with new approaches to higher education.
expansion of competency-based education. And he said the federal rules governing financial aid make it hard for colleges to go big with those programs.
accreditors is that they favor the status quo, in part because they are membership organizations of academics that essentially practice self-regulation.
“The technology has reached the point where it really can improve learning,” he said, adding that “it can lower the costs.”
changes to the existing accreditation system that might make it easier for competency-based and other emerging forms of online education to spread.
offering competency-based degrees through a process called direct assessment, which is completely de-coupled from the credit-hour standard.
Satire. In the article, the author proposes MOOAs (massive open online administrations) and posits that "By having one experienced group of administrators make decisions for hundreds of campuses simultaneously, MOOA would help address these problems expeditiously and economically. Since MOOA would allow colleges to dispense with most of their own administrators, it would generate substantial cost savings in higher education."
The rest of the broader six-point policy was adopted, including a clause saying professors must maintain a five-day presence on the physical campus
. His college is in the midst of transitioning to a faculty-based advising system in which students will have to meet with an instructor before registering for classes
“What gets missed in the conversation is that my face-to-face instructors, if they’re teaching five classes, they’re seeing students for 12-and-a-half hours. That needs to be demonstrated in the online instruction before we talk about office hours.”
McCrary sees moving formal office hours to the Web as the next natural step in that digital evolution.
“I think this is the way of the future,” she said. “I think it will be coming one way or another.”
"Teachers never have enough time. We have curriculum to cover, skills to teach, reports to write and meetings to attend. The demands are endless, both in and outside the classroom. 10 ways to save time, both in and out of the classroom."
I once held a department meeting when I was out of the building using this. I have also used it while showing a movie to classes; students can comment and get questions answered right away.
I've used it during a video in class. Kids are able to pose questions to each other, provide comments, state their opinions and express themself. Worked great.
Recently I had 9th graders talking to each other and me while they read a selection from their text. A couple of students did not like it, but most said it was helpful in understanding the material they were reading.
I use this often during my PBL activities. As students are researching, they post links to websites that are helpful for others and they post their ideas. At the end of the lesson, we look over the list one last time and make our whole-class decision based on our findings. My 5th graders love it and it has made their problem solving much better since it is based on research and collaboration.
4th graders used Today's Meet during Social Studies. They provided details related to a topic's main idea while studying a region of the United States. Worked great!