Educational Technology and Change Journal

"Rupert Murdoch uses eG8 to talk up net's power to transform education News Corp chairman claims 'Victorian' schools are 'last holdout from digital revolution' Kim Willsher in Paris guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 May 2011 18.10 BST Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation founder and chairman, used his address to the eG8 Forum in Paris on Tuesday to call for more investment in education and "unlocking the potential" of the world's children. Murdoch said it was not a question of putting a computer in every school, but concentrating on opening up opportunities for youngsters to flourish by using targeted and tailored software. News Corp moved into the $500bn (£310bn) US education sector in late 2010, paying about $360m in cash for 90% of technology company Wireless Generation, which provides mobile and web software to enable teachers to use data to assess student progress and deliver personalised learning."

"Would it not be better to train teachers in adapting whatever software is generally available, be it desktop or on the cloud, to fit their and their specific students' needs?' I disagree with this analysis. Software not created for educational purposes will only adapt so far. It is, for example, word processing substituting for paper and pencil. That's worthy of doing but really makes no difference in instruction. When software is created specifically for learning, it can reach much more deeply into the learning processes. It's not just peripheral but central to learning. You can adapt lots of software to education in lots of ways, and I've read of many very clever adaptations. Almost all could be done without the use of a computer, albeit somewhat less efficiently but nonetheless effectively. I read Murdoch's call, which echoes something I've been saying for many years, as meaning that we have to build software that answers the necessities of learning. We don't have much today.

Taking up your example of word processing as substitute for pen and pencil , Harry: true, and that's what I retorted in the late 1990's to a digitalophobe academic, when we met about the Italian translation of one of his books, and he boasted of having got a letter from a publisher saying he was their last author to deliver typescripts on paper and not as a digital file. I pointed out that cut and paste, copy and paste (the things he particularly hated the ease of in digital media) existed in the real world looooooong before computers, let alone PCs, let alone the Web. And yet... in 2007 I was asked to set up at very short notice an intensive preliminary French workshop for participants in a master course in intercultural studies: though in Lugano, the course was to be in French and English. I asked for access to the Moodle for the course, to store course materials there etc. The organizers refused: "The Moodle will only be explained to the students in the first week of the course proper". The idea that graduate students needed to have a Moodle explained to them in 2007 seemed peregrine, but rather than arguing, I set up a for-free wiki instead. At our first meeting, the students asked why we weren't using the Moodle, I repeated the official explanation, they laughed and got the hang of the wiki immediately. Then, for reading comprehension, they chose one of the assigned texts for the course: a longish book chapter they had received by e-mail as a grayish PDF based on a low-resolution scan, based on a reduced photocopy to make 2 pages fit on an A4 sheet: i.e. with no margin to take notes on. So we printed the PDF, separated the pages with scissors, pasted the separate pages with glue sticks on new A4 sheets, to get wider margins to write in. And then we made a wiki page for it, copied in it the subheadings, between which the students, added the notes they were taking, working in groups on the new paper version. Result: http://micusif.wikispaces.com/Vinsonneau

INTERNATIONAL BUREAU RELEASES SECOND INTERNATIONAL BROADBAND DATA REPORT Federal Communications Commission May 20, 2011

Results of a debate in the UK about formal and informal learning. The question was, Is informal learning more style than substance?

Great graphic

For a textual version, see the original post: http://blog.nj.com/njv_kelly_heyboer/2010/01/digital_divide_the_internets_h.html

While checking final edits on their new book, two media-studies scholars are informed by their publisher that they must secure permission to use a magazine cover as an illustration of one of their assertions. Instead of dropping the graphic or making cold calls to the magazine, the scholars explain their fair-use rights under copyright-and the publisher's general counsel agrees.

Letters from Walton to his sister, opening the book, frontispiece or front bookend framing the story. 

A paper by George Siemens and Kathleen Matheos

Updated : May 31, 2011 Tablet PCs Change Korea's Educational Environment Tablet PCs are taking the world's IT market by storm. Korea is no exception to the trend, with tablet PC users roaming its streets everywhere. Now, tablet PCs are transforming not just the way we live but also the way we learn. We're now at an elementary school in Incheon, where students are taking lessons at a whole new level. On their desks are tablet PCs and electronic pens instead of the usual paper and pencils. This is a classroom of the digital age. This school is currently conducting digital textbook lessons for 4th and 5th graders. [Interview : Han Gyeong-su, Vice Principal Incheon Samsan Elementary School] "The digital textbook is a technology combining reference books, exercise books and other resources into one device. It could totally change our educational paradigm." These lessons are conducted using digital textbooks, which are tablet PCs with a touch screen and keyboard.

Posted on Mon, May. 30, 2011 Teachers give a gold star to a free-for-all education camp By Adrienne Lu Inquirer Staff Writer For many teachers, the phrase professional development conjures up mandatory, snooze-inducing, school-sponsored lectures. EdCamp, an "unconference" for educators that was conceived in the Philadelphia region last year, was designed to be the exact opposite: the free events are participant-driven and attendance is strictly voluntary.

A prominent robotics professor and a Google executive are opening up admission to their popular Stanford University course on artificial intelligence this fall to anyone online, and they have even promised to issue grades and certificates to those auditing virtually.

Excellent video--what state couldn't use this? The Did You Know? (Shift Happens) videos have been seen by at least 40 million people online and perhaps that many again during face-to-face conferences, workshops, etc. This week saw the release of the latest version, this one focused on the state of Iowa.

Terry Anderson and Jon Dron Athabasca University, Canada This paper defines and examines three generations of distance education pedagogy. Unlike earlier classifications of distance education based on the technology used, this analysis focuses on the pedagogy that defines the learning experiences encapsulated in the learning design.

Will the FCC stay committed to rural America? The Hill Op-Ed By Former Senator Byron Dorgan Almost every month, a new telecommunications innovation is launched that has a profound impact on our lives. Lately we've seen the impact of these telecommunication changes in ways we never could have imagined. In past months we've witnessed the Egyptian government being toppled by citizens using their cell phones to organize mass rallies and send videos of shocking violence against the demonstrators around the world. And in just recent days we learned it was through sophisticated tracking of a cell phone that led our soldiers to Osama bin Laden's doorstep in Pakistan. In both cases, a broadband wireline network infrastructure transported these important communications and changed history. http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/164691-will-the-fcc-stay-committed-to-rural-america