This is a natural progression for MOOC's. But I have to wonder, if the wave of the future is a MOOC higher education, then how will our young adults develop, socially? developmentally? psychologically? Will we create a society of socially incompetent adults who are not able to work intereactively, or in groups with co-workers, or lacking negotiation skills, or many of the 21st c. skills needed in many workplaces.
A growing number of kids at increasingly younger ages are engaging in online social networking today-a development that is leading to a surge of news stories, media attention, and economic investment. In this paper, produced with the generous support of Cisco Systems and the Digital Media and Learning Hub at the University of California, Irvine, scholars Sara Grimes and Deborah Fields argue that these shifts in usage and public discussion demand a better understanding of the ways that social networking sites mediate kids' socializing and the opportunities and limits they place on kids' participation, particularly for young children.
Must see webinar.
>>Dr. Glenn Kleiman, Executive Director of the Friday Institute of Educational Innovation in the College of Education at North Carolina State University moderated this discussion with Chris Dede and David Rose held on November 15, 2012.
The intersection of mobile computing, social software, and augmented realities enhances and increases opportunities for personalized learning. How do we capitalize on the rich array of technologies to not only engage students, but to provide multiple pathways for expression by all students? David and Chris, both members of the working group that developed the National Education Technology Plan in 2010, discussed future directions for digital learning, including universal design for learning, augmented realities, and social and mobile technologies.
This is a website created by Burlington High School students that are taking a class called Help Desk. In the class they run a help desk to help teachers learn and integrate current technology into classrooms. This was administration's response at Burlington to teachers needing support in incorporating web 2.0 tools into curriculum when they started a one to one device system.
MIT just appointed a new Director of Digital Learning. I guess edX and the impact of educational technology at MIT has become official and institutionalized--and probably not just a fad.
Hats off to MIT. I think they will reap huge benefits from putting an accomplished leader in charge of this endeavor. Not only does this appointment communicate how much value they place on digital learning, but it will likely lead to the development of a coherent vision, comprehensive strategy, and stream-lined effort to push MIT forward in the edtech scene. I haven't seen this same kind of commitment to edtech from Harvard.
As HBS professor and author Clay Christensen so eloquently wrote, "you can talk all you want about having a strategy...but ultimately, this means nothing if you do not align those [strategies] with where you actually expend your time, money, and energy. In other words, how you allocate your resources is where the rubber meets the road."
"The personal essays, which first appeared in the Voices from the Learning Revolution group blog, include images, clickable links and videos - plus selected comments by readers of the original posts."
You may have heard of Will Richardson or seen a TED talk of his. He is the co-founder of Powerful Learning Practice, an organization which does online and blended teacher development. As they launch Powerful Learning Press, they are giving away their first e-book.
In an effort to increase meaningful engagement in class, The Center for Physics Education Research (CPER) at the Air Force Academy is developing a "technology based system for monitoring student participation in all classroom activities on a daily basis and providing real-time scoring data to instructors through a mobile device such as an iPad TM, iPod TouchTM, or AndroidTM based device. Students will be rewarded for showing evidence of classroom engagement."
BizKids -- same producers as Bill Nye, using media to develop kids into young businessmen and women. Media fosters entrepreneurship and financial responsibility. Interesting conceptual approach to using theories of motivation and engagement.
Georgetown University has been accepted by the leadership of EdX : "The addition of Georgetown to edX, which officials plan to announce Monday, marks the latest development in a fast-growing movement that aspires to connect the ivory tower to the world."
This is an interesting talk which shares techniques that journalists use to determine fact from fiction. Could be very useful for teaching critical thinking skills.
Really interesting and definitely related to developing critical thinking skills. However, the idea that someone can crosscheck sources using Google maps to identify locations makes me wonder about how journalism in a web 2.0 ecology impacts privacy.
Opinion article from Reynol Junco at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society on why most educational technology startups aren't that great...they don't base their products on research, proven pedagogy, or work with educators.
It does seem like there is a shift going on right now- more educators on start up teams and more interest in developing innovations from the educators themselves. That being said, the market continues to get flooded. I think in the long run this will be very good for teaching and learning, but I would not want to be an investor in this space.
I think that is great that more educators are getting on the teams...but yeah, there are a lot of very fragmented / disperse initiatives that make it hard to tell what will succeed or catch on.