Online pivot & the absence of a magic button - The Ed Techie - 1 views
-
Now we’re getting into the online pivot more substantially, higher education institutions are coming to terms it may not be a short-term emergency shift. It looks like the first semester of the 2020-21 year may be online, and if Covid-19 flares up again, who knows how long it may continue. While you could get away with “sticking classes on Zoom” for the immediate emergency, that won’t cut it in the medium term.
-
I’m sorry to tell you – there is no Go Online button
-
The good news is that it is entirely possible to create good, online courses in just about any subject, and students will do well in them and their performance and long term understanding of the topics will be as good, if not better, than those taught face to face. So that’s the good news, higher education isn’t going to die.
- ...3 more annotations...
Stephen's Web ~ First data on the shift to emergency online learning ~ Stephen Downes - 0 views
-
The short version: pretty much everyone went online; professors with the least online experience had to make the most adjustments, had the most to learn, and were most likely to just jump into giving lectures by videoconference.
Guest Post: The Complexities of Certainty | Just Visiting - 0 views
-
Privileges abound in academia, but so do experiences of loss, instability and fear. And into this situation we were called to respond to a pandemic.
-
It is tempting to reach for certainties when everything around us is in chaos, and for a vast swath of higher ed instructors, the rapid shift from face-to-face teaching to emergency distance learning has been chaos. Small wonder, then, that people have offered -- and clung to -- advice that seeks to bring order to disorder. Many people have advised instructors to prioritize professionalism, ditching the sweatpants and putting away the visible clutter in our homes before making a Zoom call, upholding concepts like "rigor" so that our standards do not slip. To some, these appeals to universal principles are right-minded and heartening, a bulwark against confusion and disarray. But to others they have felt oppressive, even dangerously out of touch with the world in which we and our students live.
-
certainties can be dangerous; their very power is based upon reifying well-worn inequities dressed up as tradition
- ...3 more annotations...
Google's Buzz Kill | TechTicker - 0 views
Business as Unusual: The New Normal for Online Learning - BCcampus - 0 views
-
One of the most interesting changes that I saw in terms of online learning was the use of WhatsApp, a text and voice messaging app that is very popular in South Africa. Through the app’s group chat feature, instructors can moderate the discussion and students can leave voice notes, which gives them the ability to have their voices heard asynchronously
-
I’ve imagined a north–south dialogue. Now, due to COVID-19, it’s happening organically, and I’m in the process of reimagining the course I would have been teaching in Vancouver this summer as an online course. I need to factor in which apps to use, how to prepare for students who only have cellphones, and the reality that many students come from other countries to study at Emily Carr, and now they’ll be learning remotely. It’s fascinating that the forced global aspect of the classroom will influence the way I design the educational technology for my program
-
In the past, some educators might have been excited to tear everything apart and build it back up with a goal of helping students learn in a better way, but the institutions wouldn’t be able to support it. Not because they didn’t want to, but because it was difficult for them to do it. Now there’s an opportunity for institutions to let the reins go and encourage creative and new approaches. It’s scary, but it’s also inspiring for educators to have that freedom. The research is available, the interest is there, and the resources are open, so now is the time to make it happen
- ...9 more annotations...
Videoconferencing Alternatives: How Low-Bandwidth Teaching Will Save Us All | IDDblog: ... - 0 views
-
The Green Zone: Underappreciated Workhorses Starting with the green zone in the lower left, we have readings with text and images. These types of assignments may not seem exciting, but sharing readings with students in a consistent and organized way provides your online course with a very practical, solid foundation. Email and discussion boards also belong in this quadrant. Online instructors have been using these three tools—file sharing (for readings and such), email, and discussion boards—for decades. And while that might make them sound boring, you can create some fantastic instructional experiences with just these three tools.
-
The Blue Zone: Practical Immediacy Moving over to the lower right, we have low-bandwidth tools that can add immediacy to student interactions. If you’ve used Microsoft Office 365 or Google Drive, you’re probably already familiar with some of the features and benefits of collaborative document editors. These tools allow multiple people to edit and comment on the same document, spreadsheet, or presentation slides. Depending on how you structure your assignments, students could collaborate over an extended period of time, or they could go online at the exact same time and write and edit each other’s work simultaneously. When it comes to group chat/messaging, there are lots of free apps that can be useful in an educational setting. Slack and GroupMe are two popular examples. These mobile-friendly apps allow students to post text-based messages and images without requiring anyone in the group (including you!) to share their phone numbers. These tools allow students to communicate quickly and easily without scheduling an entire day around a formal video conference.
-
Screencasting adds a human element to online courses because your voice creates a sense of presence that plain text can’t.
- ...4 more annotations...
ChatGPT Is Nothing Like a Human, Says Linguist Emily Bender - 0 views
-
Please do not conflate word form and meaning. Mind your own credulity.
-
We’ve learned to make “machines that can mindlessly generate text,” Bender told me when we met this winter. “But we haven’t learned how to stop imagining the mind behind it.”
-
A handful of companies control what PricewaterhouseCoopers called a “$15.7 trillion game changer of an industry.” Those companies employ or finance the work of a huge chunk of the academics who understand how to make LLMs. This leaves few people with the expertise and authority to say, “Wait, why are these companies blurring the distinction between what is human and what’s a language model? Is this what we want?”
- ...16 more annotations...
« First
‹ Previous
161 - 180
Next ›
Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page