EET Learns

"Blended learning is a hybrid of classroom and online learning that includes some of the conveniences of online courses without the complete loss of face-to-face contact. The present study used a causal-comparative design to examine the relationship of sense of community between traditional classroom, blended, and fully online higher education learning environments. Evidence is provided to suggest that blended courses produce a stronger sense of community among students than either traditional or fully online courses."

Article is not research based but is an interesting narrative on both strengths and weaknesses

"Explore the conference program: * Keynote Speakers * Monday Seminar Intensives * Track 1: Digital Tools and Instructional Designs * Track 2: Technology Infrastructure and Mobile Learning * Track 3: Information Technology Leadership and Institutional Intelligence * Track 4: Industry Directions"

Looks like a very relevant conference - bad timing around Refresh Conference

5+ min video talking about Finland's education system. Obviously a little biased but I would like to hear what others think about it.

This is a great clip! It's amazing that working towards a cooperative society has achieved more than striving for excellence. A lot of great lessons here.

"Blackboard is buying out two major players in the open source services space: Moodlerooms and NetSpot. Blackboard has also brought onboard Sakai Project founding architect Charles Severance. With these additions, the company is also launching its own open source division: Blackboard Education Open Source Services. Moving into Open Source Services Teams from both Moodlerooms and NetSpot will make up Blackboard's new open source group. Both of those companies provide commercial services for institutions that use Moodle, including support, consulting, installation, and hosting services."

"Millennials, the generation of young Americans born after 1982, may not be the caring, socially conscious environmentalists some have portrayed them to be, according to a study described in the new issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology."

free - open access textbooks in Business, Science, Math, Professional and Applied Sciences, and Humanities and Social Sciences

"Thinking developmentally is one of those instructional design issues that we don't do often enough. We understand that different learning experiences are appropriate for students at different levels. We expect a higher caliber of work from seniors than from those just starting college. But how often do we purposefully design a progression of learning experiences? "

I heard a great interview with the founder of The Noun Project on CBC's The Spark. This project offers some excellent simple, clean icons for easy use. Food for thought!