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Definitely worthwhile to keep a pulse on Dr. Bror Saxberg's work, esp. if you are interested in learning science. He is the Chief Learning Office at Kaplan and has a unique academic background (a Rhodes Scholar with MD from Harvard, PhD from MIT, Masters from Oxford, etc.) Professor Dede had also mentioned him in one of our previous lectures. Your's truly had the honor of having breakfast, one-on-one, with Dr. Bror Saxberg at his office in DC. :-) This posting talks about a beta course at Kaplan to train "learning architects" on how to build learning environments.

Omosa is a virtual learning environment which helps students to learn ecology and biology. It aims at the current condition that students are having fewer opportunities to go on real field trips and work with real animals. It's cool in helping students learn the biological circle of animals and the environment.

Principles of networked learning, constructivism, and connectivism inform the design of a test case through which secondary students construct personal learning environments for the purpose of independent inquiry. Emerging web applications and open educational resources are integrated to support a Networked Student Model that promotes inquiry-based learning and digital literacy, empowers the learner, and offers flexibility as new technologies emerge. The Networked Student Model and a test case are described in detail along with implications and considerations for additional research. The article is meant to facilitate further discussion about K-12 student construction of personal learning environments and offer the practitioner a foundation on which to facilitate a networked learning experience. It seeks to determine how a teacher can scaffold a networked learning approach while providing a foundation on which students take more control of the learning process.

MOOCs, or "Massive Open Online Courses", are a relatively new model of distance e-learning where hundreds and sometimes thousands of participants all take an online course together. The instructional mode of the courses is fairly decentralized; since there are so many participants in the course, the individual students cannot typically expect to have much individual interaction with the professors running the course. As a result, individual members of the MOOCs take on roles of peer teachers, and these roles are assumed organically (i.e. nobody invites them to become teachers in the course, they simply step up and take the reins). The assessment of MOOCs is extremely flexible; there are no grades and people only participate in what they want to participate in. The theory is that the MOOC creators put the learning environment into place, and the participants learn what they want to learn; less participation simply means that they will not learn as much. Thought this was a though-provoking model of eLearning and the changing role of the instructor in an eLearning environment.

A 3D multi-user environment that immerses children in real-world, socially and academically meaningful activities. Ran across this doing some research for the VPA. It's the richest example on an online learning environment that I've seen, and similar to something I'd envisioned but dismissed as not currently realistic--apparently I was wrong! I would love to give this a test drive.

This article describes a virtual environment, which has hypergridding as a feature. Students can teleport from one community to the next. This was the first platform to do that.

I wonder how popular environments like this are right now, and how they are being implemented into classrooms. This is fairly recent.

RIT hosts a school within a school- the National Technical Institute for the Deaf makes it a unique environment to study this question. I wonder though if this passes Prof. Dede's predictable outcome test.

A student's step by step guide to structuring her own personal learning environment. It demands more responsibility from students.

The Personal Learning Network is a concept that has some overlap with the concept of Digital Teaching Platforms.

Students around the world join together to solve global issues, such as the environment, energy, and the global recession, via Webcasts, the Internet, and VChat.

AR experiment by Georgia Inst. of Tech. superimposing Second Life Characters in a real life office environment.

AR experiment by Georgia Inst. of Tech. superimposing Second Life characters in a real life office environment.

An article on strategies for developing the right environment for blended learning.

Stanford's new online course on blended learning environments.

I think this is a really important experiment. Venturelab is a MOOC that is using a teams based model. Participants fill out assessments which are used to "build" teams. Team members rate each other's work. Interesting to see how they progress.

Great group at the University of Chile developing educational software for the visually impaired using virtual environments.

One way business industry is trying to overcome the 'safety' issue related to ''ubiquitous'' environment. This is about making automobiles 'smart' and use it as a mean to collect data. 

The SPINNER project from the Responsive Environments Group at MIT Media Lab is the first research platform designed to investigate the world of ubiquitous video devices. The Spinner can automatically edit video to fit a narrative structure. It uses video from cameras installed at the Media Lab and sensor data from people generated by wearable smart badges to track their activity and location. The system then creates a video using the characteristics detected from the sensor data with the video captured by the cameras.

Article discusses remaining barriers to broadband access in schools and its effect on blended learning environments.

This is a great snapshot of the direction that curriculum design can move in with the availability of mobile technology in classrooms. The article discusses the ability to mix and match objectives and choose content that is relevant to the particular students in the class by creating digital content and eBooks. This is great for differentiation. One concern mentioned is the availability of the digital content to all students as not all schools have implemented mobile learning environments, where all students have access.

Call for research proposals!  Connected Learning has very interesting educational, research, and design principles; this study asks from group of participants who are engaged in connected learning environments.

An estimated 250,000 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools where their instruction and interaction is completely online. There are many benefits to this model: lower overhead, anywhere/anytime learning, meeting students where they are...yet the students in these full-time online schools consistently fall short of their peers in traditional schools. Gives us pause to consider what is lost in the online learning environment and what are the essential parts of face to face learning that cannot be replicated online..

This article contradicts one of my favorite quotes from ISTE 2011 - "The Killer App for 2011? The Teacher" I agree Steve, while it seems to be more and more the norm, economics shouldn't be a major determinant in alternatives to good education. Would they do the same for health care? Perhaps Siri can diagnose and prescribe treatment based on patient symptom input into an app?

It includes technologies the size of atoms, that will be present in all area of our environment-- similar to the Microsoft Future Vision videos we've seen in T561. But we'll be able power our devices using our own bodies?