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interesting history of employee education at IBM including an early commitment to train college educated women in the 1920s

From undercoverrecruiter.com: Indeed and Monster have more candidates without a college education, Careerbuilder has more candidates with a college education and degrees. Indeed and Monster cater to teenagers, temporary job seekers, those only with a high school education and those freshly out of college. Careerbuilder weeds out some of the less serious applicants and is used more by high-scale employers. Entry-level hiring employers use Monster. For employers, Indeed is cheapest to use, then Monster, with Careerbuilder being the most expensive. Employers still use Careerbuilder because it weeds out unqualified and less serious applicants.

Doug Levin, EdTech Strategies, March 10, 2016 writes about blockchains in education.  Puts the brake on using blockchain technology for student enhanced records and informal learning because of other issues that need to be resolved first.  Good overview of issues.

I like this term "free-range learning" and believe it might be part of the Studio language. "Ms. Morgan borrows the phrase "free-range learning" to describe students' behavior, and she finds that they generally shop around for content in places educators would endorse. Students seem most favorably inclined to materials from other universities. They mention lecture videos from Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology far more than the widely publicized Khan Academy, she says. If they're on a pre-med or health-science track, they prefer recognized "brands" like the Mayo Clinic. Students often seek this outside content due to dissatisfaction with their own professors, Ms. Morgan says." Also this comment: I don't think academe has really come to grips with the very large role peer-to-peer sharing plays in the way students learn. We proved this interesting phenomenon this year in a very large online course that we were in the process of redesigning. One section of the course piloted the redesign, which had dropped the former textbook in favor of all online content, cut out 1/3 of the subject areas covered in the old version of the course and changed the assignment instructions and interaction modalities radically. Despite the fact that all students in the pilot section were fully informed that they were in a different and new course, and were required to go though an extensive introductory module covering all aspects of the new version of the course, including the syllabus, and were required to pass a test covering the course requirements and structure, we still had something like 5% of the students turn in work that was based on the old course assignments and old course structure. Some of them had apparently not read any of the assignment instructions from their own section, and were relying entirely on peers in other sections for information on how to complete assignments.

Emerging Ed Tech site with blog on how MOOCs will impact the future of college education, K. Walsh, April 25, 2012

Connected Learning, a new research-driven initiative was introduced at the Digital Media and Learning Conference 2012. This blog post by Jackie Gerstein discusses its essence and includes TED video of Henry Jenkins and separate video of Mimi Ito. See excerpt on core values and principals of connected learning: At the core of connected learning are three values: Equity - when educational opportunity is available and accessible to all young people, it elevates the world we all live in. Full Participation - learning environments, communities, and civic life thrive when all members actively engage and contribute. Social connection - learning is meaningful when it is part of valued social relationships and shared practice, culture, and identity (http://connectedlearning.tv/connected-learning-principles). This initiative is being driven by the following design principles: Shared purpose - Connected learning environments are populated with adults and peers who share interests and are contributing to a common purpose. Today's social media and web-based communities provide exceptional opportunities for learners, parents, caring adults, teachers, and peers in diverse and specialized areas of interest to engage in shared projects and inquiry. Cross-generational learning and connection thrives when centered on common interests and goals. Production-centered - Connected learning environments are designed around production, providing tools and opportunities for learners to produce, circulate, curate, and comment on media. Learning that comes from actively creating, making, producing, experimenting, remixing, decoding, and designing, fosters skills and dispositions for lifelong learning and productive contributions to today's rapidly changing work and political conditions. Openly networked - Connected learning environments are designed around networks that link together institutions and groups across various sectors, including popula

Excellent infograph on the Connected Educator. Great visual for building a how-to map for adult learners

article by Steven Mintz for the Chronicle of HE, July 22, 2013 Excerpt: "But the most important challenge involves a shift in the way students consume higher education. Instead of attending a single institution, students receive credit in multiple ways, including from early-college/dual-degree programs, community colleges, online providers, and multiple universities. Students are voting with their feet, embracing online courses and undermining core curricula, which served as a cash cow, by turning to alternate providers, and pursuing fewer majors that require study of a foreign language." Fifteen innovations: 1. e-advising 2. evidence-based pedagogy 3. decline of lone eagle teaching 4. optimized class time 5. earlier educational transitions 6. fewer large lecture classes 7. new frontiers for e-learning 8. personalized adaptive learning 9. increased competency based and prior learning results; 10. data driven instructions 11. aggressive pursuit of new revenue 12. online and low-residency degrees at flagships 13. more certificates and badges 14. free and open textbooks 15. public-private partnerships

Was just thinking about our LeanIn group and the Studio offering a Book Club and here is this invite from PLP for a connected educators book club

Research brief that looks at online learning in higher education from the perspectives of employers and community college students. 2013. Notes that community colleges serve nearly 1/2 the nation's undergraduate students. Overwhelming majority is first-generation college students. Online educ is flexible and opens up study options. But many cc students are underprepared for college.

Forbes, August 17, 2015 by George Anders on how Slack and other successful tech start-ups rely on those with a broader-based, or liberal arts education, to humanize and make apps and plug-ins more user-friendly and just plain friendly. The rebirth of the liberal arts education??

blog post by Sean Cavanagh, 6/19/15, EdWeek, with very interesting Prezi with sources for momentum in school districts to adopt Open Educational Resources (OERs) and how long it takes to make the shift. It doesn't save much money--they project $500,000 in savings over a ten year period if the district doesn't regularize and buy textbooks--in districts with $200 million annual budgets; need to do more research on why they choose OER. Do know that two huge OER interests are driving development of these resources but aside from that?

blistering review of Stanford Education Conference by Jay Cross, including a LMS vendor's confiscation of "informal learning"--it's funny yet very serious. May 31, 2015

ALISON MOOC--"With more than 1.2 million unique visitors per month and 250,000 graduates worldwide, Advance Learning Interactive Systems Online (ALISON), founded in 2007, is considered by some the first massive online open course (MOOC). " blog by Ellis Booker, Information Week Education, Excerpt: "Our focus is workplace skills," company CEO Mike Feerick told InformationWeek in a phone interview. Indeed, ALISON started with two globally in-demand skills: English and IT literacy, the latter in the form of ABC IT, a 15- to 20-hour training suite that remains the site's most popular course." Excerpt: "Employers don't care where you found those skills or how much you paid for them," he insists. Rather, employers want one thing: Verified competency. One service ALISON offers is tests for prospective hires that employers can administer to check the competence of job applicants who come with ALISON certificates. For a small fee, students can purchase an ALISON certificate after successfully completing a course, as a PDF, paper parchment or framed parchment."

Brian Williams Nightly News NBC, July 1, 2013, news segment on YouTube's benefit as an educational channel

Maryellen Weimer writes for faculty in educational settings and is focused on when collaboration crosses into cheating and how to know when students have really learned vs. mimic answers they had to real part in developing. Raises questions for me about the mindset that people carry from education into the workplace...wasn't there research on how research papers get credited with the most senior or male person first and those that followed (graduate students, less experienced faculty, women) did not get the same respect?

Article in MindShift, KQED, April 24, 2012 by Nathan Miton. Fabulous because it recognizes that content is one leg of learning stool. Excerpt: But at such a huge scale, what are the digital methods of teaching that work best? Philipp Schmidt, founder of the free online university P2PU, preaches three building blocks: community, recognition and content. Endorsement of peer learning potential Excerpt: The Stanford professors readily admit that some of the students who participated in their online courses provided their peers with deeper, more comprehensive answers than they were able to. The exponential explosion in opportunities for learning. Excerpt: in the past 10 years I've heard people say campus-based education better look out, that this will be threatening to their business model, and I've never really felt that until the last six months. The pace of change in open education is qualitatively different than it was even a few months ago." A new breed of digital pedagogy/andragogy/heutagogy Excerpt: "We probably haven't fully made the transition to digitally native pedagogies and learning approaches," Carson said. "The first generation of distance learning is basically an attempt to move the classroom online, and I think that part of the scalable learning of these massive courses is the breakdown of that model."

article in Academic Matters, the Journal of Higher Education, by Stephen Carson and Jan Philipp Schmidt, May 2012 issue. Excerpt: "Expertise will be earned and maintained through ongoing lifelong education, not conferred once and good for life. Open learning systems offer the possibility for the kind of continuous lifelong learning that will be necessary as the pace of technological and scientific knowledge development increases. Like athletes, learners will not just learn once, but will maintain a level of performance ability in their chosen field through ongoing study and participation in learning communities."

Facilitating life long learning should be the goal of every teacher. I think that sometimes it is so cumbersome - passing tests, etc., that the fun part of learning is lost.

Blog post by Jenny Mackness on April 24, 2012 announcing a MOOC on First Steps into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, #fslt12, running from 5/21 to 6/22. Raises issues of how to engage with learners who may not be well-grounded in technology yet who might want to participate because of content, finding the right balance. Will offer certificate for "assessed" learners. Excerpt: "This is an exciting but rather daunting process. We have had lots of interest, with people from all over the world expressing interest in different aspects of learning and teaching in Higher Education. I am beginning to realize the amount of work that must go on behind the scenes in the other MOOCs I have attended. We have deliberately chosen to distribute the course across different platforms - WordPress (for the Home site), Moodle (for the course), Blackboard Collaborate (for the live synchronous sessions) and we are still discussing whether or not to have a separate wiki site, or to go with the wiki in Moodle. The reason for this decision (i.e. the different platforms) is that we hope to introduce participants new to teaching in HE to the idea that learning can take place in a variety of online spaces. Access to our WordPress site has been open pretty much from the word go, and now access to the Moodle site has been opened, despite the fact that neither of these is yet ready. For me, this is a new way of working and takes a bit of getting used to (heart in your mouth stuff!). Finally, we are conscious that the course has been designed to attract people for whom this way of working and the technology involved might be completely new -so we have to achieve the right balance between providing enough structure and support and encouraging open academic practice and independent learning - one of the many tensions involved in designing a MOOC."

Another excellent resource from PLP for Connected Educators (available through Dropbox) to kick off Connected Educators Month. What if August were also Women's e-Quality month? or Women's Webquality Month? August 26 is Women's Equality Day . . . something to think about for next year? Wonder which women's organizations might bite and support such an event.