Group items tagged

"Most Significant Metatrends for the Next 10 Years 1. The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative. 2. People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to. 3. The internet is becoming a global mobile network--and already is at its edges. 4. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media. 5. Openness--concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information--is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world. 6. Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society. 7. Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success. 8. The internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy. 9. There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training. 10. Business models across the education ecosystem are changing. Excerpts of the 10 top metatrends identified in A Communiqué from the Horizon Project Retreat, January 2012, an NMC Horizon Project publication under Creative Commons attribution license. "

"At a recent retreat to mark the tenth anniversary of the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project, which produces an annual report on technology trends affecting higher education, participants identified 28 important metatrends. The 10 most significant are: the world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative; people expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to; the Internet is becoming a global mobile network -- and already is at its edges; the technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media; openness is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world; legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society; real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success; the Internet is consta ntly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy; there is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training; and business models across the education ecosystem are changing"

"Social networking tools aren't going away any time soon, they appear to be here for the long term. But do these kinds of applications really belong in the classroom? I think they do, and here's a few reasons why:"

Discussion about networks and social media in PD

"The applications tested by the university encompassed: * Blackboard Mobile Learn, on which all clients simultaneously accessed course curriculum and viewed on-demand streaming video; * Video-based curriculum, video delivered by Distribution Access, a Canadian educational video provider; * Apple Facetime for video conferencing; * Apple AirPlay for wireless streaming of multimedia content to an Apple TV connected to a classroom projector; * Live, local video content streamed through Haivision Network Video gear; * ResponseWare real-time polling from Turning Technologies. The university used VeriWave WaveInsite to set up and run the test and to measure performance. Each application was delivered simultaneously to all 100 devices. According to a statement issued by Aruba, the applications performed "with the highest quality and without any noticeable jitter, delay, or frame loss.""

"Colleges themselves are also finding a need to craft multiple identities online, setting up a different Facebook page and Twitter account for every department or research lab. The University of Virginia's library has 14 Facebook accounts. (One focuses on the science-and-engineering library, another on the fine-arts library, and so on.) Many colleges now count dozens of official Twitter accounts, plus a tangle of pages on Facebook, channels on YouTube, and photo collections on sites like Flickr. In the past year, more colleges have tried to get a handle on their many online identities, crafting social-networking policies and creating a new job position-social-media strategist-to try to bring some sort of order to the chatter."

"A study by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project confirms the idea that young adults-particularly undergraduate and graduate students-are more likely to use the Internet and own tech devices than is the rest of the general population. But nonstudents ages 18 to 24 were more active on social networks than were college students, sending more updates to Facebook and Twitter."

"It found that more structured on-boarding tactics made employees happier and more confident, and more likely to believe they fit both the job and organization. In turn, those who went through a structured program were significantly more likely to feel engaged and loyal to their employer than those that didn't the researchers estimate "In most organizations, they think of the on-boarding process as primarily imparting information, which is necessary, but that's not enough," Prof. Gruman said. Additionally they need to create opportunities for employees to quickly develop a social network, establish where to get information and support, provide work that's engaging enough to make them feel they are making a contribution and feedback that they are valued, the researchers found."

"The wait is almost over. A weeklong exercise in withdrawal from social media usage will end for the campus community at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology shortly. The Pennsylvania university, which performed a similar move last year, has been blocking network access to 10 popular sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, Hi5, Twitxr, and Plurk, as well as texting outlets. This year's activity has been dubbed, "Back to Blackout." The intent of the blackout is to inspire thinking about how, when, and where people use and abuse social media, according to Eric Darr, executive vice president and provost. "We believe that technology is not inherently good or bad. Rather, technology becomes useful or destructive in the hands of users. This exercise is an attempt to better understand an important technology, social media, that clearly impacts how we live and work. It might inspire students, faculty, and staff to think more about their social media habits and to further raise awareness about the impact that social media has on daily life and work.""

"The Utah Education Network is a case in point. It left Blackboard, the market leader, for Instructure, a year old Utah-based developer with an open source product called Canvas. Consider the way messages are sent and received on Instructure's Canvas: The receiver has a choice between traditional university E-mail, gmail, Facebook and text messaging; Blackboard's system uses traditional E-mail and was designed before Facebook was created. For a student body that uses social media the way earlier generations used pencil and paper, the differences between the two competitors are profound."

"Four major textbook providers-Cengage, Macmillan, Pearson, and John Wiley & Sons-today announced that they will build tighter links between their advanced e-textbook platforms and Blackboard's popular course-management system. Blackboard announced a similar deal with McGraw-Hill last year. So the company now has partnerships with the five dominant textbook publishers. For students, a major benefit will be the ability to get to the publishers' e-textbooks and online assignments through the campus network without having to create new logins and passwords. For professors, the new links will make it easier to push students' grades on online quizzes from the publishers' e-textbook systems to the gradebook they use on the Blackboard system."

This is a real plus for BB.

An easy way to create a widget for any social media you use

What's interesting about this tool is not so much that it is an online learning environment for teachers and their students, but that it can also be used to make connections between teachers.  This could be useful for instructors who may feel isolated at their particular school and a chance to branch out.

A search tool for finding Open Access Resources. Includes courses, texts, pdfs, video, images and more for secondary and post-secondary.