Twitter 101: Social Media's Move to College Classrooms

As schools shift to 21st century learning in a time of budget crunches, digital textbooks in classrooms are on the rise. To help educators and administrators efficiently implement digital texts, two diverse districts share their motivations, tactics, and goals for their textbook programs.

A guide to 21st century learning space design

Delivering 'Anytime, anywhere computing' was identified as the top concern in the UCISA Top Concerns survey of 2005. Delivery is a difficult balancing act - staff and students require access to office tools and applications, filestore and business applications from a variety of devices and locations (mobile phones, PDAs, laptops as well as home desktops). Service heads have to try and provide this securely to protect their institutions' assets, but in a way where authentication does not compromise ease of access and where managing connectivity does not come at the cost of a heavy demand on resources. Governance and security issues require appropriate policies for remote use of corporate information and applications, particularly on systems that may not be owned by the institution, and maintenance of security patches and antivirus software on remote systems add to the complexity. The growing use of mobile devices, increasing student ownership of 'cutting edge' devices, growth in the use of online learning and demographic changes in the student body have all contributed to systems resilience and availability becoming the major new concern for IT Directors. The expectation that services, particularly e-learning, are available 24x7 brings new demands - achieving this is a significant investment in infrastructure and maintenance and operational resource. Network security continues to be a concern - although many institutions have external antivirus and spam filter mechanisms in place, there is often a threat from within from poorly maintained systems.

StudyNet - University of Hertfordshire's Learning Environment

Special Theme: Social Network Sites

Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together scholarship on these emergent phenomena. In this introductory article, we describe features of SNSs and propose a comprehensive definition. We then present one perspective on the history of such sites, discussing key changes and developments. After briefly summarizing existing scholarship concerning SNSs, we discuss the articles in this special section and conclude with considerations for future research.

What This Blog is About In one phrase: Building Engaging Learning Experiences through Instructional Design and E-Learning I'm an instructional designer developing online learning, so that's primarily what I write about. * Instructional Design: This is what I do all day, and I'm always trying to learn how to do it better. * Higher Ed: The courses I create are graduate courses, so I'm interested in higher education. * K-12 Education: The participants in those courses are mostly K-12 educators, so I'm interested in what's important to my audience too. * Corporate E-Learning: Even though I'm in education, I know I can learn a lot from corporate e-learning. Besides, I'm employed by a for-profit company. * Lifelong Learning: It didn't start out to be a goal for my blog, but I've discovered that these tools help my own lifelong learning. I write about my discoveries: what works, what doesn't, what I'm thinking. * Technology: I write about technology, especially as it overlaps with any of the above areas. * Bookmarks: The Daily Bookmarks Posts are resources I find interesting or useful. You can view and search the complete list of bookmarks on Diigo or del.icio.us. On my Post Series and Recurring Themes page, I've collected some popular topics. This includes my liveblogged posts from the TCC 2008 conference and my series on instructional design careers. The top posts in the sidebar to the right are another great place to start reading.

What This Blog is About In one phrase: Building Engaging Learning Experiences through Instructional Design and E-Learning I'm an instructional designer developing online learning, so that's primarily what I write about. * Instructional Design: This is what I do all day, and I'm always trying to learn how to do it better. * Higher Ed: The courses I create are graduate courses, so I'm interested in higher education. * K-12 Education: The participants in those courses are mostly K-12 educators, so I'm interested in what's important to my audience too. * Corporate E-Learning: Even though I'm in education, I know I can learn a lot from corporate e-learning. Besides, I'm employed by a for-profit company. * Lifelong Learning: It didn't start out to be a goal for my blog, but I've discovered that these tools help my own lifelong learning. I write about my discoveries: what works, what doesn't, what I'm thinking. * Technology: I write about technology, especially as it overlaps with any of the above areas. * Bookmarks: The Daily Bookmarks Posts are resources I find interesting or useful. You can view and search the complete list of bookmarks on Diigo or del.icio.us. On my Post Series and Recurring Themes page, I've collected some popular topics. This includes my liveblogged posts from the TCC 2008 conference and my series on instructional design careers. The top posts in the sidebar to the right are another great place to start reading.

Tools and technologies

Tools and technologies for those who are a bit more techno-savvy