itcss-instructionalsupport

"But what differentiates them from one another? How can educators determine whether the resources are high quality? Achieve and the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) launched a new tool for users to rate the quality of open education resources. The tool allows educators to rate the quality of these teaching and student learning resources, align these resources to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and evaluate the extent to which the individual resources align to specific standards"

"The Villanova University Technology Expo is an opportunity for the regional education community to see the latest technology from leading vendors, learn from informative keynote speakers and connect with peers to find solutions and best practices. "

Might be worth it, even if it's only to see Michael Welsh.

"The problem is the idea that the price of digital books will be 50 percent of the new price. That's not holding. We're seeing anywhere from 35 to 42 percent off."

Robin is a new faculty at UD, from Penn State.

"CourseHero.com, a Web site that allows students to post exam questions and homework solutions, has raised legal issues for professors and faculty, causing the university's lawyer to take action against the potential misuse of copyrighted intellectual property."

"White said that UD faculty have three basic options for dealing with such situations: Faculty members can contact the UD General Counsel's Office and request assistance in sending a "take-down notice" to the offending website; Faculty members can send a take-down notice on their own; or Faculty members can include in their syllabi a notice to the effect that their lectures and other course materials are copyright protected and that students are not authorized to commercialize the notes they take down in class, the test questions they answer or any other course related materials. Students violating this rule would be subject to discipline under the code of conduct in UD's Student Guide to University Policies."

Courseload's seamlessly integrated platform delivers course materials through any web-enabled device (computers, laptops, iPads and Android devices, smart-phones, etc.) allowing all course material to be located in a single place. With digital tools that enable search, highlighting, annotating, and creating links to online content, the technology is easy-to-access and simple to use. And, it costs one-third the price of traditional textbooks - the same textbooks sourced from the same publishers that you use today.

Carl says that we should familiarize ourselves with Courseload, the digital textbook Indiana uses.

"We have to figure out a way to use it engagingly and teach students when it s appropriate and when it's not appropriate to be doing that.""

"The project is designed to help CSU campuses evaluate, select, and implement eTextbook products that are as accessible as possible for students, staff, and faculty. Emphasis will be placed on developing and disseminating authoritative guidance, information, and resources (e.g. templates, evaluations) so that campuses can successfully tackle the rapidly-growing accessibility challenges associated with eTextbooks. "

"Today we're please to announce that Google Docs has been integrated into Edmodo. This highly requested feature allows you to sync your Google Docs with your Edmodo Library so you can easily access and share your Google Docs with your Edmodo groups."

"Transform your institution to reap the benefits of the digital age. With Adobe's industry-leading portfolio of technologies and services, you can help faculty, students, and staff deliver standout digital experiences that promote excellence campuswide."

I believe there are 3 needs in modern literacy that we cannot ignore as educators. Digital literacy is not an "option" anymore. Most of the texts that we read each day appear on a screen, complete with embedded media, advertisements, and hyperlinks. Navigating these spaces is required to function successfully in modern society. We should immerse our students in these mediums, and provide them guidance to maximize their learning. Digital texts foster curation and recall. When I read texts in hard copy, I often annotate using words and images. This helps me to make meaning of the text in the moment that I'm reading it. However, when I read digital texts, my annotations and sketches are automatically added to my intellectual database in Evernote. My database is fully searchable by content and tag. Therefore, when I need citations, information, or ideas to guide my writing, I most often return to the digital sources, ideas, and phrases captured in my database. In short, texts in hard copy make an impact, but digital texts shape my thinking and writing more often. Teachers need to teach students to digital and hard copy texts equally. Existing resources coupled with teacher comfort levels often reduce the amount of instruction that students receive regarding digital texts. In fact, a teacher recently told me that "you just can't get the same experience from a Kindle as you can from a hardback book." Really? We need to get comfortable with digital texts ourselves and share the process meaningfully with students.

Salon is a high-power web platform where users can read, annotate, and discuss visual media.

Saw this - not sure if we might want to register. I am not sure all would be relevant - but thought this topic interesting: Drive improved student outcomes - with better visibility into student performance and drivers of student behavior.

Collaboration Session at Sakai Conference Los Angeles 2011 on Learning Analytics

Steve Lonn is trying to see if there is interest for the 2012 conference to continue this discussion on learning analytics or in general he is asking "Where are folks in terms of their planning / development / deployment / study of learning analytics utilizing Sakai and/or other data sources?"

There can be no uniform pre-test. There can be no uniform post-test. MOOCs make a loud point about the fact that they don't teach anything in particular. No one is supposed to learn anything in particular. Consequently, there are no broad outcomes to measure. Ergo, it is difficult to say anything about MOOCs from the perspective of whether or not they succeed in facilitating learning, at least under the traditional group "learning gains" paradigm of educational research.

"After all we (as a society not libraries) did not get the first sale doctrine out of the goodness of someone's heart, it came from a court case. Maybe we need to stop asking. It wouldn't be the first time."

A good summary of the state of the ebook business and libraries.

Panel discussion at the HigherEd Tech Summit.

"Emily Furgang, Doctoral Candidate in Occupational Science and CIDD Fellow shares how a traditional Blackboard course was transformed into a problem-based, hybrid Sakai course (part online, part face-to-face instruction). For students, Sakai becomes "a universal meeting place.""

"We just had some hands-on time with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 here at MWC, and it seems it just arrived over at the FCC just recently. This tablet has the same on-screen setup as the 5.3″ version, yet isn't capable of making phone calls. It sports a 1.4GHz dual-core processor and will ship with Google's Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)."

Finally, a tablet with a really precise stylus.

"Through open education resources promoted by these two bills, materials would be free online or for about twenty dollars in hard copy, as stated in the background of each SB 1052 and SB 1053."

Some states, including California and Washington, are passing bills to mandate the use and creation of open textbooks.