Education & Policy

Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are the three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments. These theories, however, were developed in a time when learning was not impacted through technology. Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn. Learning needs and theories that describe learning principles and processes, should be reflective of underlying social environments. Vaill emphasizes that "learning must be a way of being - an ongoing set of attitudes and actions by individuals and groups that they employ to try to keep abreast o the surprising, novel, messy, obtrusive, recurring events…" (1996, p.42).

Anders Norberg F d filosofilärare, rektor på gymnasiet, utbildningsutvecklare på Campus Skellefteå. Nu arbetar jag i ett projekt om omvärldsbevakning gällande utbildningsfrågor för Umeå universitet.

Presents the elements of a scaffolding model in early childhood teacher preparation programs. Describes the theoretical foundations provided by Piaget, Vygotsky, and Dewey. Discusses supports in the scaffold for preservice teachers including child development knowledge and national standards, the role of technology, modeling appropriate instructional practices, field experiences to apply skills, and opportunities for reflection.

Funding Web Sites - University of Wisconsin

Russell T. Osguthorpe Center for Teaching and Learning Brigham Young University

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Information technology has been an important part of higher education since the development of the lantern slide in the mid-1800s. However, occasions in which the academy has been transformed by technology are rare. Viewed in a historical perspective, these occasions can be considered as a series of three epochs: the online public-access catalog epoch; the personal computer, Internet, and web epoch; and the enterprise systems (ERP, CMS) epoch. Certainly, developments are continuing, but for most colleges and universities, these three epochs no longer represent technological frontiers. Looking forward, those of us in higher education are now focusing our attention on technology applications for teaching, learning, and research-or what can be viewed as the epochs of teaching and learning with technology, and cyberinfrastructure. In this commentary, I'll be confining my comments to teaching and learning.

The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® resulted from an intensive research project to determine the leadership competencies that are essential to getting extraordinary things done in organizations. To conduct the research, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner collected thousands of "Personal Best" stories-the experiences people recalled when asked to think of a peak leadership experience.

McCain and Obama on Education - Sept. 2008

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National cultures can be described according to the analysis of Geert Hofstede. These ideas were first based on a large research project into national culture differences across subsidiaries of a multinational corporation (IBM) in 64 countries. Subsequent studies by others covered students in 23 countries, elites in 19 countries, commercial airline pilots in 23 countries, up-market consumers in 15 countries, and civil service managers in 14 countries. Together these studies identified and validated four independent dimensions of national culture differences, with a fifth dimension added later.

Reversing the dire hope of the future is in our hands - excellent utube vid

Action research is any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers to gather information about the ways that their particular school operates, how they teach, and how well their students learn. The information is gathered with the goals of gaining insight, developing reflective practice, effecting positive changes in the school environment and on educational practices in general, and improving student outcomes.

There are literally hundreds of ways to use technology to implement Chickering and Gamson's seven principles of good practice (e.g., improving faculty-student contact, supporting collaboration among students, enriching active learning, etc.). These subscriber materials can help faculty improve teaching and learning with technology (TLT) in their own courses.

"The tenth annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States.  Based on responses from over 2,800 academic leaders, the complete survey report, "Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States" can be downloaded here. Read the press release"

How California's Online Education Pilot Will End College As We Know It GREGORY FERENSTEIN posted yesterday (Jan 15, 2013) Today, the largest university system in the world, the California State University system, announced a pilot for $150 lower-division online courses at one of its campuses - a move that spells the end of higher education as we know it. Lower-division courses are the financial backbone of many part-time faculty and departments (especially the humanities). As someone who has taught large courses at a University of California, I can assure readers that my job could have easily been automated. Most of college-the expansive campuses and large lecture halls-will crumble into ghost towns as budget-strapped schools herd students online.

Calling for Success: Online Retention Rates Get Boost From Personal Outreach BY MANDY ZATYNSKI »By mid-term summer semester 2012, Gina Cannell was struggling with her online statistics course. After failing a few quizzes and an exam, she worried her C grade would get worse. She asked her professor for extra help, but couldn't work through sample problems alone online. She needed live instruction. For two years, Cannell, a 43-year-old senior test engineer for Delta Air Lines, had excelled as an online student, but now she was facing failure or having to drop out. Her full-time job, family responsibilities, and a side business in interior design put on-campus classes-as well as tutoring-out of reach. Cannell wasn't sure what to do. Then Julili Fowler rang.

"Informal/Social learning is one of the major revolutions happening around us that demands a shift in the mere thinking of 'learning'. It requires us to unlearn and relearn some of the traditional notions related to the learning style/preference, and the dimensions and the elements of learning design. In this article, we'll take a quick look at the top 9 essential competencies that a learning designer is required to possess for designing effective informal/social learning interventions for today's workplaces."

"Why Google Captions Video Google's mission is to make all information universally accessible. Ellis and his team have embraced this directive by attempting to remove barriers to video captioning. Whether using captions to assist those with hearing disabilities, or because translated captions help international audiences, video accessibility is a priority to YouTube from the top down. Building Accessibility into YouTube YouTube has more than 1 billion unique visitors each month. So how does YouTube approach captioning on such a mind-numbingly large scale? "The captions team at YouTube doesn't actually go in and type in captions for anything. But we build a platform that allows anybody to upload captions in 20-plus different formats and then display those captions on all YouTube players," says Ellis. "We also build tools for people who are creating captions for their content on their own to easily and quickly create captions for their videos. Our goal is simply to make every video understandable to every user. A very long-term goal, but that's what we're aspiring to.""