metaAcademia

Using Web 2.0 in academia.

Twitter tips for those in academia.

Indiana University's Center for Evaluation & Education Policy released a new survey (PDF) last week on virtual education in Indiana. The center surveyed principals and teachers throughout the state on their thoughts about delivering part or all of a student's education online. The report has severe limitations: It was commissioned by an advocacy group (although CEEP itself and the report are non-partisan) and it had a very low response rate (just 3 percent for principals). Those weaknesses were strong enough that we took a pass on writing a story, but the findings do raise interesting questions.

In our new world of news on the internet, we're going to need lots of smart ways of discovering and making sense of the good stuff without the junk. Why? Because it's a sewer out there. And because there are troves of treasure too. Filters-they're our first job. We're bringing lots of different filters to the news. Visualizations-they're our second job. We're bringing lots of different visualizations to our filters.

Here's a Free PowerPoint Template & How I Made It

Rheingold recounts how the development of communication technology has removed the power top transmit messages from a tiny elite, and had been a force for democratization. Following Benkler's idea of peer production he explains how the diffusion of many-to-many communication technologies enables new forms of collective action.

We've spent a lot of time at my school thinking about the concept of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). We live in an age of information abundance. Our students need to learn how to find, evaluate, organize, synthesize, remix and re-purpose information in order to understand and solve complex problems. A PLN isn't a particularly new idea; learning networks have existed for a long time. What's new is the reach and extent that's now possible for a PLN, with technology and global interconnectedness providing the opportunity for a much wider, richer and more diverse PLN than ever before.

Tools and technologies

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

What are feeds? I see "RSS", "XML", and "Atom" out there, but I don't know how I might use these links when I find them.

Feed 101

Social bookmarking sites.

share scientific workflows

Video about our changing world and shifting the way we think about education.