Group items tagged

By Virginia Heffernan in Opinionator in the New York Times. A review of Cathy Davidson's new book,Now You See It. Heffernan's review suggests that Davidson's new book argues that we not hold current students to out of date standards for education. Educators must not just embrace new technologies, but understand the position of these technologies in the changing world. Follow the davidson tag for her blog.

Posted by George Siemens on his blog elearnspace, September 5 2011. Siemens argues that instructors can't provide "coherence" for knowledge just by "broadcasting" a course. He suggests that coherence is about how "*we* connect information elements and how we use artifacts and narratives to share that coherence." I am interested in the idea of "information foraging," especially in the context of content curation.

Posted by Kristen Winkler in the ESL Library Blog, August 23 2011. For more on this topic, follow tag ed_curation

New Media Consortium Campus blog publishes latest news related to the NMC Campus in Second Life.

Blog by Harold Jarche on how social networks and social media will keep companies who use them alive and prospering and those who don't use them will die of knowledge deprivation and inability to meet clients' expectations.

Blog by Alchemy, Chris Chopyak, Lois Todd on twists and turns of collaboration and our behaviors and choices as our futures are challenged.

By Geoff Cain on his blog, Brainstorm in Progress, October 27 2012. Cain looks at the instructional design of MOOCs -- and what instructional designers can borrow from MOOCs and apply to more traditional courses. His big take-aways are to provide paths toward community for the students (ideally even open the model to students from previous cohorts who may now be actively using these acquired skills in the field) and to model the behaviors (e.g. technologies) that you are teaching.

By Audrey Watters in Hack Education (blog), Oct 25 2012. Watters has conducted informal surveys on why teachers do NOT use OER (open educational resources). Reasons are: difficulty of discoverability, lack of supplementary materials, and confusion over licensing. In her Discoverability section, she has a link called "What's available" that directs readers to more specifics about OERs, including which are most popular.

Posted by Kelly Tenkely on her blog, Dreams of Education. In this post (n.d.), Tenkeley describes (and seeks funding for) her Learning Genome Project. Based on behind Pandora, this project would apply recommender data to curriculum based (K-12) lessons. The project also seeks deep analysis of the students (learning styles, etc.) and the teachers (called "lead learners"). Any time a lesson is used, both teacher and student are to rate it.

With a presence both on the internet and on TV (PBS), Teaching Channel calls itself a "showcase" of "inspiring and effective teaching practices in America's schools." The organization's mission "is to revolutionize how teachers learn, connect, and inspire each other to improve the outcomes for all K-12 students across America." Browse videos by subject, grade level or topic (all from the left-hand navigation). In addition, there is a blog. Users are encouraged to subscribe, and the Teachers space is also organized by subject and grade-level, as well as by roles. The site also provides a workspace.

This is free software that you can download in order to tag images (or elements in images) on your website/blog. The tool was created as a merchandising/marketing tool (e.g. visitors can find out where to buy all of the cool things in your image), but it seems ripe for other more scholarly purposes as well. Downside: unclear whether others can tag your images.

Website for the PBS Frontline documentary, originally aired September 2012. According the blog post, Introducing "Dropout Nation" (March 23 2012), this Frontline episode is part of the American Graduate: Let's Make It Happen campaign. The story follows a group of students in Houston Texas.

By Angela Alcorn on the blog MakeUseOf, October 8 2010; shared by IdealWare in their Best of the Web email, May 8 2012. The post offers some tips, links to tutorials, and then 10 free tools, with brief annotation to describe what each is good at.

"This collaborative blog and curated collection of free and open resources is produced by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, which is dedicated to analyzing and interpreting the impact of the Internet and digital media on education, civic engagement, and youth."

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.

Identified by HubSpot--first one is on how outbound marketing has been eliminated by people's preferences for inbound marketing

From the blog Connectivism by George Siemens, December 14 2011. Siemens argues the importance of artifacts to help students make sense of their experiences in MOOCs and other online learning experiences.

Thinking about the critical nature of artifacts to learners making sense of their e-experience makes me wonder how to encourage submission of such "sensemaking" artifacts to our Jams and e-communities.

Published by Rita Kop on her blog, Jan 5 2012. Kop is working as a researcher looking at Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Personal Learning Environments (PLEs).  In this bibliography, she shared her recent research on the MOOC PLENK2012 (a MOOC about PLEs).