http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/01/21/online-university-education-in-canada/

Includes a link to a report, sponsored by the federal government entitled Online University Education in Canada: Challenges and Opportunities. Updates in Jan 2012.

OpenStudy (openstudy.com) makes it easy for groups of students who are studying the same material at the same time to find each other, set up collaboration spaces, and both create and spend social capital as they learn and help others to learn.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS - Do you use new technologies and social media to teach in higher education? Please consider submitting a chapter (by January 15, 2012) to the upcoming book "The Plugged-In Professor". Details, contact information and an easy-to-use template are all available at http://nova.wpunj.edu/wilderh/Plugged-in_Professor_Call.html.

We have had pencils in our school now for some time, and we were one of the first to adopt them, but it has been an uphill struggle. There aren't enough to go around, and often several of the children have to crowd around to use the pencils at the same time. But we are better off than many schools. We have a well equipped pencil suite where the chained desktop pencils are used in special sessions, and often, as a reward for good behaviour children are allowed to come into the suite (under teacher supervision of course) to use the pencils to draw fun things.

Pencils were resisted by some of the teachers at first, because they complained they would have to change their practice if they adopted them. And they were right, pencils are in fact a game changer. Others were worried that they would not have enough time to learn to use them properly.


I have a wider vision than a pencil suite for our school. I'm considered a bit of a maverick and many of my staff look at me and shake their heads sadly. You see, I have a vision for pencils that I think will transform our school and enhance learning for all our students. Wait for it - I am advocating one pencil for every child in the school! And even more radical than that, I want to introduce pencils that can be used by students while they are on the move. Yes, I know it sounds absurd, but I think it will work. Needless to say, I have had many objections and lots of opposition from all quarters.

Some teachers, led by our school pencil co-ordinator, have complained that we made a considerable investment on the pencil suite, and it's being used regularly for very important teaching. OK, so there is only one pencil between every four children, but at least the pencils are being used consistently, she argues. Some occasionally break and have to be sent away to be fixed, but we also have a parent who is familiar with pencils, and has one at home. He comes in occasionally to fix them, which saves us some money.


My idea is for the school to invest more money so that each child can walk around while using their pencils, and that they can even take them home with them! Yes, I know it's an extremely radical idea, and that's the very reason I am receiving so much opposition. Some of my teaching staff are arguing that we could better spend the money on more chalk for the blackboards. Others are warning that children will either damage the pencils or worse, lose them if they take them out of the school. Pencils are meant to be used for education, they say, not for fun.

Even the parents are complaining. Some have written a very strong letter to the governors, suggesting that if we give a pencil to each of the children to bring home, they will need to revise their home contents insurance, in case any disaster occurs, and the child damages the pencil in some way. Some of the richer families don't seem to mind, as they have better pencils at home than we could possibly buy for the school. It's a kind of pencil envy I suppose. There does seem to be a pencil divide across the local community. I am confident though that giving one pencil to each student will address this problem.

Then there are the objections from the Tax Payers Alliance, and other pressure groups who have even gone on to the local TV station to complain that we are being irresponsible, and are wasting valuable tax payers money on purchasing a pencil for every child. 'In my day', said the TPA spokeperson, 'we used slates and styluses, and shared them around, and we were happy. One pencil per child is simply a gimmick'. To be blunt, I think they are missing the point. I strongly believe that pencils are the future of learning, and the more untethered they are, the greater will be the flexibility of learning for all subjects across the curriculum.

One of the strongest arguments from some of my teaching staff though is that they claim to be pencil immigrants, while the children are pencil natives. The kids seem to have such an affinity with the pencils, whilst the staff struggle to use them and get embarrassed when they accidentally use the wrong end, or the point is blunt, and they don't know how to sharpen it. Some teacher have warned that increased use of the pencil can be addictive, and will cause all sorts of problems such as writer's cramp, eye strain, raised incidences of graffiti in the school toilets and rude cartoons of teachers passed around the room. Such dangers though, are far outweighed by the benefits of mobile, personalised pencils.

So we will forge on with my new one child, one pencil scheme, and as a school, we will make it work. We will actually purchase the new second generation (2G) pencils, which have erasers attached, and in so doing, these multi-functional tools will offer a revolutionary approach to learning. They are also much faster and last longer than the old pencils. I will close with this inspirational quote: 'Any teacher who can be replaced by a pencil... should be! - Arthur C. Chalk.

To start, my plea is for you to stop doing e-learning the old way. That is, rewriting PowerPoint files and PDFs into online text (whether "gussied up" with graphics, photos, videos, or not) and multiple-choice knowledge tests (whether jazzed up with drag-and-drop or not). Or putting narrated slide pre- sentations up on the Web. Yes, you can do that, and sometimes you have to (because of cost or time pressures). But stop first, and consider the alterna- tives. Understand that making things interesting can make them more effec- tive, if you know how (and can interfere with learning if you don't), and that there are low roads that give you a lot of benefit for low investment as well as the high road. Then you can make an informed choice.
We are not, cannot be, about designing content. A fundamental perspec- tive I want you to take away is that we are designing experiences. If nothing else, start thinking not about creating content but about designing learner environments and architecting experiences. It has become clear to me that this is a fundamental point. You have to start thinking about putting the learners into a context where they have to make decisions, understand why those decisions are important, want to make those decisions, and know that there are consequences of those decisions.

The first chapter of his new book can be found at http://www.engaginglearning.com/

Here is the link to his book...
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27077549/Designing Sims the Clark Aldrich Way.pdf

Within the major conference theme of Evidence-Based Teaching and Learning, there are again four major subthemes to focus our discussions: Advancing Active Learning; Creating Communities of Learners; Preparing Future Faculty; Teaching Responsibly with Technology.

http://lillyconferences.com/dc/theme.shtml

Doesn't this sound delicious!


Check out their main webpage
http://www.complexityandeducation.ualberta.ca/

It looks like they have an annual conference and it might be in Canada this year.

This is a new product from Michael Allen from Allen Interactions Inc. They were the makers of Authorware for anyone who remembers that far back.

It is described as...

ZebraZapps is a cloud-based authoring and publishing platform used to create rich interactive media applications easily and quickly, as well as share, publish, and sell inventions. Wildly interactive and shockingly fast.

It looks interesting...but then I'm a fan of Michael Allen...I've always found their products to be top-rate.

https://www.zebrazapps.com/#/list?visitor&zapp

This is intended for k-12 but has some great ideas.

http://asp-uk.secure-zone.net/v2/index.jsp?id=639/684/1625&lng=en

The idea of customized textbooks has been around for years, but until recently use of the option was rare. But these days more professors appear to be taking a Frankensteinian approach to their textbooks-making something new from spare parts, thanks to new digital tools, rather than simply assigning an existing tome.

http://chronicle.com/article/New-Digital-Tools-Let/129309/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

http://www.tonybates.ca/2011/10/05/introducing-the-oeru-and-some-questions/

The OERu (the Open Educational Resources University) aims to provide a route to formal accreditation through study of free open educational resources in the form of free courses and materials developed by accredited universities. To quote (Q&A: 5 Things You Should Know About The OER University Network Plan):

It does not confer degrees, but works in partnership with accredited educational institutions who provide assessment and credentialisation services on a fee-for-service basis

There are two aspects here: the provision of free open educational resources specifically designed for independent study by institutions offering accredited online programs; and the provision of assessment for qualification from one of the accredited partner institutions, or from the Network itself, presumably through a challenge exam or possibly through some process of prior learning assessment.

Thus while access to study materials is free, you have to pay an exam fee or fees in order to get the accreditation. What you don't get is the online academic support you would get if you enrolled in the partner institutions and paid full fee. Thus while not completely free, the OERu would lead to substantially lower costs for learners (provided the exam fees are set at a reasonable level).

The House Appropriations Committee has just released the draft of the bill that would fund the Departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services for the 2012 fiscal year. There's a lot to wade through, but tucked into a paragraph on page 37 is wording that appears to prevent the Department of Labor from supporting any further funding in open educational resources (OER).

"SEC. 124. None of the funds made available by this Act for the Department of Labor may be used to develop new courses, modules, learning materials, or projects in carrying out education or career job training grant programs unless the Secretary of Labor certifies, after a comprehensive market-based analysis, that such courses, modules, learning materials, or projects are not otherwise available for purchase or licensing in the marketplace or under development for students who require them to participate in such education or career job training grant programs."


http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/10/05/appropriations-bill-may-strip-federal-funding-for-open-educational-resources

It promises to summarize the document you load into short easy sentences.
I'm hearing that it actually works quite well.

It's free - in beta

http://topicmarks.com/

Being connected changes learning. When those connections are global, the experience of knowledge development is dramatically altered as well. Over the past four years, a growing number of educators have started experimenting with the teaching and learning process in order to answer critical questions: "How does learning change when formal boundaries are reduced? What is the future of learning? What role with educators play in this future? What types of institutions does society need to respond to hyper-growth of knowledge and rapid dissemination of information? How do the roles of learners and educators change when knowledge is ubiquitous?"

Experimenting with answers to these questions has produced what is now called "massive open online courses" or MOOCs. Three of us - George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and Dave Cormier - have had over 10,000 participants in the various courses we've run since 2008. The learning experience has been terrific. We've refined our pedagogical approaches, improved the software (well, actually, just Stephen did that), and developed a research agenda around learning in networks in open online courses.

We've always been a bit uncomfortable being the sole facilitators of open courses - knowledge, after all, is networked. To grow knowledge is to grow connectedness and diversity.

So we decided to lean on a few colleagues to help run a unique course experience. End result: a MOOC with each week being facilitated by an innovative thinker, researcher, and scholar. Over 30 of them. From 11 different countries. We're excited about the prospect of a global learning experience. We encourage participants to "write themselves into the course" by setting up sub-group, networks, and personal spaces for interaction and dialogue.

If you are interested in joining, please register for the course. We will be posting more information over the next few months.

http://change.mooc.ca/