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Here is the course trailer I prepared for the new course that I will offer at METU in Spring. 

I wish we could add our contents in ocw@metu.edu.tr to their database. For education, the website has only 3 courses. I signed up for the course "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application" and "E-learning and Digital Cultures" which will be held on Jan 28th 2013 :). I will write here what I have learned from the courses. I think it will be an interesting experience to reach knowledge about "online education" via online education :)

Erdem, great to hear that you are signed up for MOOCs. I will be curious to hear from your learning experiences in these courses.

Massive Open Online Courses might seem like best way to use the Internet to open up education, but you're thinking too small. Technology can turn our entire lives into learning experiences.

Dincer, interesting! While I am in favor of open education and massive open online courses, I recently started thinking about the cultural and social impact of such initiatives. For instance, the Moocs are recently being offered from the west because we assume or accept that they have the high quality content and courses. One might say that this could cause a kind of cultural imperialism, countries importing ideas from the west that may not necessarily fit to their context.

There must be a balance between private & government schools!

Since I started my school education,I have witnessed this problem. Unfortunately it is getting worse. How come a government cannot provide satisfactory education and instruction to its people and children? How dare to push them to pay more and fulfill their own education? Turning the private courses into private schools do not change anything. And as usual, teachers and the students are worst affected from th situation.

Changing dershanes to private schools is not a solution to provide better education to society for free. The only change is that you can go to private schools with bursary or half-bursary. It means that they just moderated the money transaction. In addition, they will make teachers take exams throughout their careers which is actually not related to the conversion process. Therefore, the attempt to make dershanes extinct is a starting move that can be supported but these private schools should be converted to public schools in order to provide a high-quality education to all children for free. That is one of the most primary duties of the governments.

Science fields do not seem famous any more.

The important point in this case is that only girls who study for A-level physics are the ones who came from Girls' schools. It means that as the text stated, mix schools have a kind of characteristic that stereotype the physics as if it was boys' area. However, in my opinion, that's not true. Unless a job does not require so much muscles, it can be handled by both males and females. In physics, the brain, intelligence, and the disciplined work is necessary which are highly available in human beings, not just only in males.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9609566/Girls-put-off-studying-science-in-mixed-gender-schools-says-headmistress.html Another news related to this!

Updated (7/19/2013, 12:13 a.m.) with additional material on the trial courses and analysis of the news.] After two semesters of experimentation, San Jose State University has decided to take a "breather" in a project aimed at determining whether Udacity, a Silicon Valley-based company that specializes in massive open online courses, can help the university deliver credit-bearing online courses. **ALSO read the comments section.**

Aa nice platform for sharing questions and answers in the classes. I plan to use this in my undergrad courses.

This a new course that will be offered freely by UK's Open University. 

Constructivist teacher and her behaviors accordingly are presented in the article.

For those who are interested in integrating programming into their courses.

Why we need good teachers? Why "EDS-536 Research and Practice on Technology in Teacher Education" course is important? From the site: "Good teachers are essential and need respect: There is no substitute for good teachers. The impact of good teachers extends beyond positive educational outcomes and can be linked to positive societal factors, such as lower levels of teenage pregnancy and a greater tendency to save for retirement. Creating the best teachers is about more than paying a good salary. The best performing countries attract top talent, train teachers throughout their careers and allow them freedom too."

Dincer, thanks for making a connection to the course. A reform in teacher education is a must in our country. The research indicates the quality of preservice teacher education is one of the biggest predictors of the student success. This finding by itself seems to explain this urgent need for a reform!

"if students can receive similar or better outcomes by taking courses online for free, why step foot into a classroom at all?"

Since the beginning of the trend, one of the most controversial issues is the question of whether free online courses by the Ivy league universities will cause the decline of "other" universities and how will this affect students' choice and higher education in the next years.

This for sure giving us some indications about where higher education is going and how should universities respond to this change. Perhaps, new accreditation systems, different degree forms. As a country with a very big number of young population, we better act on it fast, instead of being the observers of these trends around us.

We will be using this group extensively this semester for the grad course that i will be teaching. I am inviting you to join this group, Your insights on learning and instruction will be valuable for the class.

This is great! I can use some of these resources in my educational psychology course. Thanks for sharing.

This is a website where online lectures from universities such as Stanford and Harvard can be found and watched for free. there are lectures on different courses., I find it really useful):

I found this website while looking at Dr. Ana Paula Correia's several work. The website includes lots of technologies that can be used for educational purposes. It looks like an inventory that you can use for enriching your education with technology. One suggestion is that explanation for each technology should be increased, and the website might have several links for tutorials and etc.

Erdem, Thanks for sharing. We are going to do a similar website (wiki) in the class that I will be teaching next semester, with your suggestions taken into considerations of course.

This is a lesson plan I prepared during my last year of college while I was taking school experience course and attending a public school as an intern. My proffessor Jale Çakıroğlu also liked this lesson plan very much and published it in her book named "Bilimin Doğası ve Öğretimi". Moreover, I also implemented it this semester with preservice teachers at METU. I took activity from http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/gr.fs.fd.html and adapted it into Turkish. I also made some changes to make it more appropriate for 6th graders. In this activity, students are active all the time. The teacher only provides them the required materials and answer their quesions to guide them. The students work in small groups to learn the nature of science aspects with an acitivity where they act as they are scientists. The evaluation is process based not product based and this is clearly explained to the students. Since I prepared this lesson plan, actually implemented it and saw that it worked perfectly I would not change anything, but I always welcome your suggestions. :))

Gamze, thanks for sharing the lesson plan. This is an exemplary lesson plan and let's talk about it in class.

"We are reinventing education," declares Agarwal. "This will change the world."

Dinçer, thanks for sharing. I support the idea that traditional schools should be supported by technology. However, in my opinion, technology should not be used as a total substitute of traditional campus-based education. By stating that, I do not support idea that technology can not offer the effectiveness of content transfer to students. Rather, it offers a wide range of opportunities to enhance learning. However, in my opinion, we should not separate people from each other anywhere in the world. The long term effects of technology and mass city life is not clear yet. At least, we know about depressions and diseases because of long term stress crises. Thus, today's schools should also reteach people to be together. To put it differently, we should use technology for "better learning together".

Recently I came across with this paper. According to authors Learning Science has at least 4 dimensions: Education, Neuroscience, Psychology and Machine Learning. By the way, just a fresh news: Next semester we may have a "Learning Science" course offered by Evrim Hoca ;)

Dincer, thanks a lot. I will definitely check this out.