Group items tagged

"unfriend" has been chosen to be the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary. unfriend = remove someone from your friend list on a social networking site.

This article lists sites with free content and argues they are democratizing education

Ok... maybe the tie in to education is not immediately obvious. Mostly, I just think this is so cool that I had to post it. But think for a moment about carpool, soccer practice, and sports as a starter. No longer does a kid's participation in extracurricular activities require them to get a ride from mom. Go a little further... field trips, classes that are only offered at the charter school across town, on-site science explorations. How many more kids could venture out of their neighborhood for educational opportunities? There was a time 20 years ago I never would have believed that elementary school children would be carrying their own phone, but now will they all get their own car in 2nd grade??

NYU's Steinhardt School partnering with Codeacademy http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercises/0 for online programming class.

This site is a professional development portal in which teachers can upload videos of lessons and get feedback on them.

A new proposal calls for a Consumer Reports-like rating body to evaluate new digital learning tools. Ed tech innovators like the idea in theory but they worry that it won't work in practice.

Funny, I was just talking with someone about this very idea the other day. We absolutely need something like this and my guess is that we will have a few competitors, at least early on, for the top ed tech review site. I think there is space for both an organization that specializes and for a yelp like site that essentially crowd sources the reviews. It will be tough to keep up, but think of how many products and areas Consumer Reports deals with- we can do this, and need to do this, for ed tech to get used wisely in our schools.

With regards to e-learning, I think inevitably some company or organization will provide ratings of the quality of online degree programs and learning tools. Whether this is Consumer Reports or US World & News Report or some new player (investment opportunity?), the need for objective assessments of digital learning tools is definitely needed. The Benchmarking e-learning wiki is interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmarking_e-learning

Site with a lot of links to AR info

This site advertizes that it is the first virtual mentoring site app. It is intended to be a way for educators, parents, students, and/or at-risk youth to stay connected using a single platform. It even has a built in VRM (Virtual Relationship Management) tool.

Just came across this interesting Learning site, so sharing it with the group. Please scroll down a little and checkout the comprehensive list of items in the Categories section.

In this feature, Apple profiles HOW their products are used in a variety of educational settings. It's one of the least 'promotion-based' sites I've seen from Apple in awhile... Typically, I'm cynical when a company "profiles" its own products; however, this one is done fairly well. This site could be a helpful model when attempting to demonstrate functional use of a product, highlighting the ends, not the means...

Thanks for sharing this link! I know that there are some schools which have bought iPads and then didn't know what they were going to do with them. This community obviously had a clear idea of how to use them, what problems they were going to solve and how to assess their outcomes. Nice!

Taking the next step towards credentialing through MOOC's and establishing greater value for these online classes.

Interesting decision to address a number of common criticisms of online learning: the potential for cheating, the failure of enrollees to complete the course and the lack of certification.

In Disrupting Class, one of the predictions that Clay Christenson makes is that classroom content in the future will not come from traditional textbooks, but from students and teachers who contribute user-generated content for learning. Here is an example of a site that allows users to download free textbooks. This is further proof that once the information is out there for all to see, it is going to be more and more difficult to prevent people from spreading ideas and circumventing the charge-for-information model that is currently out there.

oh no, not another one social networking site? but is this one different?

"Skid-e-Kids says it offers children help with homework and parents a dashboard to keep tabs on what their kids are up to. "Skid-e-Kids is the only social network that is truly committed to not only keeping our children safe, but also making sure that they are systematically learning while they are having fun," the site promises."

Discusses the increase of agressive marketing that facilitates cheating that is being coupled with the growing of opportunities for online learning.

A letter to President Obama about MOOCs and higher education, from his council of advisors on science and technology. This was released just a couple of days ago and highlights some of the potential benefits and current issues in the ongoing MOOC debate which we have all discussed. "Although the new technologies introduced by MOOCs are still in their infancy, and many questions and challenges remain, we believe that they hold the possibility of transforming education at all levels by providing better metrics for educational outcomes, and better alignment of incentives for innovation in pedagogy."

An interesting infographic on the future of learning.

Looks like its not too far away...Educators really need to start thinking about how their role will evolve in this scenario.

Online social networks are most useful when they address failures in the real world. Pictures are the killer app of social networks. Women and men use these sites differently. Businesses shouldn't consider SNs as just another channel.