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This paper raises serious doubts regarding the success of our educational system in preparing students for the knowledge society. According to the author the knowledge economy "...holds the promise of changing, to our benefit, some of the most deep-seated and universal regularities of economic life and of dramatically enhancing productivity and growth. Its effects, however, have so far proved modest." The disruption brought by the new technologies can cause an even bigger inequality in societies. Worth thinking about it.

Great easy to use.

You can develop your own questions, use their test bank, or import your existing quizzes. You can select the order of the questions, indicate scores for passing, will show you their score at the completion of the quiz and reveal the correct answer to the questions. Very easy to follow. Almost no learning curve. I would definitely use this in an online class to assess students understanding of concepts covered. I would offer it either as a review or as a quiz itself.

ProProfs - Knowledge Management Software for Quizzes, Tests, Training, Flashcards, Knowledge Base. Get started with our knowledge management softwares.

The Nature of Knowing One of the most important innovations that an educator can embrace is not a software program or particular technological tool, but rather a philosophy of teaching. In the 20th Century, the theory behind learning and the very nature of knowledge has changed several times.

Report on recent Berlin 9 Open Access Meeting.

This gives you everything you need to know about Moocs and where they're headed.

Sometime in June Sandy McAuley, Bonnie Stewart, George Siemens and I decided to apply to SSHRC for funding for researching the place of MOOCs in the digital economy. We did a little work creating videos to allow people to understand what was going on in a MOOC and decide if it was something they might want to do.

Abstract: As more and more instructors enter the world of online teaching and learning, a body of knowledge is emerging around the challenge of facilitating online interaction and fostering online collaboration. This paper draws from the literature on asynchronous learning and the authors' own experiences with online discussion and collaborative online projects. We identify a variety of techniques for focusing student dialogue, fostering an online learning community, and promoting successful collaboration. Instructors who are teaching wholly online courses or simply integrating online components into face-to-face classes will benefit from the observations and discussion.

Flat World Knowledge: "We are the world's largest publisher of free and open college textbooks. With our ever-expanding catalog of top quality books by expert authors, now is your chance to be a hero and help your students save thousands of dollars. Get started today and join the textbook affordability movement."

Below is a great idea from a science teacher who posted this on an NSTA listserv. This is a creative idea to promote student learning of basic foundation knowledge in an introductory level course. This technique promotes "students interacting, thinking, creating, communicating, and applying content/subject knowledge"!

I have used this in my classes and love it! The free Poll Everywhere mobile app is perfect for responding to polls, presenting polls, and clicking through PowerPoint presentations. Use it to... 1.) Respond to polls: Audience members can use the app to respond to the presenter's questions live. 2.) Poll an audience: Presenters can ask the audience questions and display poll responses live. 3.) Navigate in Powerpoint: Presenters can control the flow of Powerpoint presentations using a smartphone as a wireless remote. Participants Audience members or students can easily respond to polls or vote using the app on a smartphone or tablet. Aside from the app, they can respond via web browser, text message, or Twitter. Presenters Professors, teachers and presenters can create and display questions on the fly, including Q&A and multiple choice polls. Questions can be presented directly from the web or embedded in a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. Audience responses are displayed in real-time. Great for classroom participation, or gathering opinions from the audience. PowerPoint Remote Presenters using PowerPoint can use the Poll Everywhere mobile app as a presentation clicker, to navigate through your PowerPoint presentation with ease. It has a slick, streamlined design and a set of polling controls built-in. Key Features: * Create or answer multiple choice, true/false, open ended, ranking poll, and clickable image questions. * Participants are automatically shown the presenter's current question, for quick and easy participation. * Watch results update live. * Click through a PowerPoint presentation with the included Presenter Remote feature.

What a great way to be able to asynchronously poll students and still allow them to remain anonymous. This also gives students to see how well their knowledge compares to other students. It also allows them to see if their way of thinking is similar to other students.

You can lead a student to knowledge, according to an old academic saying, but you can't make him or her think. I recently wrote about the possibility of testing and certification for what I called a "college-level GED."

This paper addresses the faculty's awareness of the benefits of Web 2.0 to supplement in-class learning and assess faculty's decisions to adopt these tools using the decomposed theory of planned behavior. In my experience, all assignments in our courses are taught and completed in computer labs, we are supposed to attend several hours or more of professional development, teaching assistants and faculty are encouraged to pursue a certificate in teaching with technology, and in addition, more experienced teaching assistants routinely share their knowledge and experience in working with different types of technology with their colleagues who are just starting. The attitude of faculty and their perceived behavioral control are the main concern to their intention to use the technology tools.

This is a very interesting article regarding the lack of internet skills of students. Students still lack fundamental knowledge regarding privacy issues and the risk for their future career.

February 2009 | Volume 66 | Number 5 How Teachers Learn Pages 34-38 Learning with Blogs and Wikis Bill Ferriter Technology has made it easy for educators to embrace continual professional development. Few ideas about teachers' professional growth resonate with me more than those of Richard Elmore, professor of educational leadership at Harvard, who has gone as far as to argue that school structures make learning for adults unlikely at best and nothing short of impossible at worst. In a 2002 report for the Albert Shanker Institute, Elmore wrote, As expectations for increased student performance mount and the measurement and publication of evidence about performance becomes part of the public discourse about schools, there are few portals through which new knowledge about teaching and learning can enter schools; few structures or processes in which teachers and administrators can assimilate, adapt, and polish new ideas and practices; and few sources of assistance for those who are struggling to understand the connection between the academic performance of their students and the practices in which they engage. So the brutal irony of our present circumstance is that schools are hostile and inhospitable places for learning. They are hostile to the learning of adults and, because of this, they are necessarily hostile to the learning of students. (pp. 4-5)

Technology has made it easy for educators to embrace continual professional development. Few ideas about teachers' professional growth resonate with me more than those of Richard Elmore, professor of educational leadership at Harvard, who has gone as far as to argue that school structures make learning for adults unlikely at best and nothing short of impossible at worst.

Founded in 1943, ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) is an educational leadership organization dedicated to advancing best practices and policies for the success of each learner. Our 175,000 members in 119 countries are professional educators from all levels and subject areas--superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members.

tools and constructivism

Love that the "practical descriptions of constructivist learning" listed in the article "[C]onstructivist learning should engage students in meaningful learning and ... the critical features are that the learning should be ... * Active and manipulative, engaging students in interactions and explorations with learning materials and provid[ing] opportunities for them to observe the results of their manipulations * Constructive and reflective, enabling students to integrate new ideas with prior knowledge to make meaning and enable learning through reflection * Intentional, providing opportunities for students to articulate their learning goals and monitor their progress in achieving them * Authentic, challenging and real-world (or simulated), facilitating better understanding and transfer of learning to new situations * Cooperative, collaborative, and conversational, providing students with opportunities to interact with each other to clarify and share ideas, to seek assistance, to negotiate problems, and discuss solutions."

This is a wonderful, cutting edge tool on the web for using the power of Mathematica to computer along with the endless databases of facts and figures that can be found on the internet at large. It can be a great resource for students, but it could also be something they use to cheat in certain situations so be aware. "Wolfram|Alpha is more than a search engine. It gives you access to the world's facts and data and calculates answers across a range of topics, including science, nutrition, history, geography, engineering, mathematics, linguistics, sports, finance, music..."

Review of Extracting Information From the Social Web for Health Personalization Luis Fernandez-Luque1, MSc; Randi Karlsen1,2, PhD; Jason Bonander3, MA 1Northern Research Institute, Tromsø, Norway2Computer Science Department, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway3Division of Knowledge Management, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, United States Luis Fernandez-Luque, MScNorthern Research InstitutePostboks 6434 ForskningsparkenTromsø, 9294NorwayPhone: 47 93421287Fax: 47 77629401Email: In recent years the Web has come into its own as a social platform where health consumers are actively creating and consuming Web content.

Free interactive website for music students who wish to learn and then test their knowledge of music theory; also has specific exercises for students learning keyboard and various fretted string instruments. The webpage also features various interactive tools and calculators, and printables (e.g. staff paper). What makes it useful for teachers is the ability to customize exercises in great detail. The site then produces permanent links to these exercises that you send to students. To make it even better, students can submit reports with results of their drills. Great for mastery learning approach. They also make paid iOS apps, Tenuto and Theory Lessons