Group items tagged

Posted by Melissa Terras in her eponymous blog, April 3 2012. Terras, a scholar in the Digital Humanities in the UK first uploaded her published papers to her school's digital repository and then blogged and tweeted about the papers. She has seen great growth in the download rate for these papers, though not across the board. To wit, she's increased her prominence (and that of her papers), but some of her papers are of greater interest than others. In future, she hopes to track her citation index over time, though it's too soon to measure at present.

This nicely summarizes Terras's lessons learned: "If (social media interaction is often) then (Open access + social media = increased downloads)."

By Ryan Tracey on the blog E-Learning Provocateur, May 14 2012. Tracey, a blogger and corporate e-learning manager, puts forth some in-depth thoughts on why digital influence might be more significant than "traditional" influence, and what one might do to garner digital influence. At the bottom of the post, he summarizes with three "determinants."

By Michael Feldstein on the blog e-Literate, May 13 2012. In the context of last year's NERCOMP LMS Unconference, Feldstein first explains the concept of an unconference and then describes his own (successful) strategy to giving the keynote. Along the way, he defines a third way of teaching (or conducting a conference), in opposition to "guide on the side" or "sage on the stage," he suggests "guide on the stage," while acknowledging that each of these methods is correct and has its proper place/time/audience.

Many of Feldstein's ideas about "priming the pump," unconferences, and "guide on the stage" might be useful in Jams as well.

Posted by Clay Johnson, 10/25/2011 on ExpertLabs In the context of experts' conversations with government, the author of this post argues that tools such as IdeaScale, Google Moderator and UserVoice are useful for brainstorming but not the best method for a true dialog. These tools give government an excuse to "not" participate with people where they are. The comments on a government site, i.e. the dialogue on evolving data.gov (via IdeaScale) shouldn't replace "participating with practicitioners," which should happen where they are. (i.e. in a Jam, I.F.) Expert Labs aims to get more people involved in order to make policy better. Expert Labs publishes reports, constantly updates their blog and has developed a tool, ThinkUp, that enables users to automatically archive data and communications across Facebook, Twitter and Google+, encouraging engagement on these networks.

By Seth Godin, February 26, 2012. A manifesto to inspire a transformation in our education system.

By Lanwitches on Langwitches blog, March 29, 2010. This blog post includes a slideshow that describes 70 web-based tools that might be of interest to educators. The tools are only roughly categorized. As the author notes, "It is not about the tools, it's about the skills." That said, there are some interesting tools here.

By Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, June 7 2010. This article explains the whys and hows of wireframing, and includes descriptions of 10 free web-based tools that can help.

Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on June 29th, 2009. This guide offers some of the advantages of self-publishing, along with reviews of 15 companies that produce self-published books.

By Chuck Frey, posted to Mind Mapping Software Blog October 21 2008. This blog concentrates on mind mapping software. In this post, they make recommendations about software that will be useful in project management, though presumably some PM tools will also include such mapping features.

By Sarah Gooding, posted to WPMU.ORG (WordPress-Multisite-BuddyPress) on Feb 1st 2010. Gooding interviews Kyle Jones, a Knowledge and Learning Services Librarian at Darien Library (known to be "ahead of the curve" on technology). Jones has created several LMS course sites, with links provided.

By Kyle Jones on his blog, The Corkboard, May 28 2010. Jones, a librarian at Darien Library, creates LMS courses using WordPress/BuddyPress. Here, he outlines his "wishlist" of a "real" WP as LMS site.

By Caralee Adams in the College Bound section of Education Week, October 5 2010. Adams reports on the White House Summit on Community Colleges, held on October 5.

By Dawn Foster in Web Worker Daily, Jan 30 2009. This is a nice article (with slides) outlining what an online community manager does.

Published in Spectrum > Mobile Learning, Libraries, And Technologies, March 12, 2009. "MLE-Moodle is an out-of-the-box mobile Learning (mLearning) system, designed for mobile phones." With MCNC in particular, we've discussed how it might be helpful to be able to engage students/faculty/administrators in Polilogue via mobile phone in addition to computer.

From Joshua Kim's Blog U, Technology and Learning blog, part of Inside Higher Ed. In this post, Kim lists 10 multimedia competencies that all new college grads should have, cribbed from Mindy McAdams' Reporter's Guide to Multimedia Proficiency.

Posted by Gerry in Spectrum > Mobile Learning, Libraries, and Technologies (blog), June 17 2010. Cites Kelly Truong in Chronicle of Higher Ed (June 17 2010) on a study by Ball State University indicating smartphone use among college students has almost doubled in one year.

By Lloyd Armstrong, Jr., in his blog Changing Higher Education, June 15 2010. This post refers to a Georgetown University report titled Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements through 2010, which argues that there will not be enough people in the workforce with Associate's degrees (or better) to fill the job needs of 2018.

By Will Richardson, on his blog "weblogg-ed: learning from the read/write web," posted 22 June 2010. Richardson's main focus seems to be K-12 (as is the focus of many of the very interesting comments that this post has received), but the questions he asks are relevant to students of all ages and at all levels: how do we measure more esoteric qualities like the ability to follow "passion," how to "earn...a living solving problems and helping to make the world a better place." It's as much about the quality of education as of assessment.

By Ian Quillen of the Digital Education (blog) in Education Week, September 2 2010. This study suggests that "Algebra I teachers who were trained in and used a program that allowed them to monitor students' progress on graphing calculators led to significantly improved achievement by their students on a researcher-designed test." This blog post (and the video link) both stress that it is the combination of technology AND professional development that has provided these positive results. \nNOTE: First link to Summary of Findings is a Texas Instruments report (TI produces the graphing calculator that is part of the study). However, the study was conducted with outside consultants, including SRI.

By Katie Ash in the Digital Education blog of Education Week, Sept 1 2010. Ash quotes a study by e-Learning for Educators that finds online PD improved teachers' "instruction and subject knowledge" and "produced gains in student achievement."