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jenleighc

Let's Talk about MOOC (online) Education--And Also About Massively Outdated Traditional... - 0 views

hastac.org/...and-also-about-massively-outda

MOOC Highered

shared by jenleighc on 22 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • jenleighc on 22 Jul 12
     
    Cathy Davidson blog, raises the issue of old pedagogy in new technology.
djplaner

The World of Massive Open Online Courses - Online Colleges - 1 views

www.onlinecolleges.net/...of-massive-open-online-courses

xMooc mooc highered

shared by djplaner on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • djplaner on 18 Jul 12
     
    Infographic giving a summary of MOOCs
djplaner

Invited Topics - L@S: Fourth Annual ACM Conference on Learning at Scale - 1 views

learningatscale.acm.org/...invited-topics

examples

shared by djplaner on 25 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Large-scale learning environments are incredibly diverse: massive open online courses, intelligent tutoring systems, open learning courseware, learning games, citizen science communities, collaborative programming communities, community tutorial systems, and the countless informal communities of learners are all examples of learning at scale.
    • djplaner
      djplaner on 28 Jul 16
       
      An example of "NGL" learning environments that are not necessarily based on formal education. Good example for looking beyond MOOCs and other formal education to what you might do "as learner"
  • djplaner on 25 Jul 16
     
    Call for papers for the "Learning @ Scale" conference, which focuses on one type of NGL (large-scale environments). It offers some interesting concrete examples of different types of large-scale environments - moving beyond the traditional formal education conception.
djplaner

The challenges to connectivist learning on open online networks: Learning experiences d... - 2 views

www.irrodl.org/...1689

issues connectivism

shared by djplaner on 01 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • This paper raises questions on levels of learner autonomy, presence, and critical literacies required in active connectivist learning.
  • In e-learning, two major traditions have been prevalent: one where connections are made with people and the other where they are made with resources (Weller, 2007)
  • since the emergence and proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their increasing encroachment on everyday life, boundaries between settings in which people learn and in which they use technology for other activities have blurred, and perspectives such as connectivism have emerged
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • From observations on PLENK it seems that for networked learning to be successful, people need to have the ability to direct their own learning and to have a level of critical literacies that will ensure they are confident at negotiating the Web in order to engage, participate, and get involved with learning activities.
  • People also have to be confident and competent in using the different tools in order to engage in meaningful interaction. It takes time for people to feel competent and comfortable to learn in an autonomous fashion, and there are critical literacies, such as collaboration, creativity, and a flexible mindset, that are prerequisites for active learning in a changing and complex learning environment without the provision of too much organized guidance by facilitators
  • djplaner on 01 Sep 15
     
    A journal article that gives a more formal treatment of issues in a connectivist context.
thaleia66

The Role of the Educator | Stephen Downes - 1 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...-of-the-educator_b_790937.html

shared by thaleia66 on 11 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The problem with focusing on the role of the teacher, from my perspective, is that it misses the point.
  • We continue to expect educators to play an active role in learning, but it has become more difficult to characterize exactly what that role may be.
  • students need prototypes on which to model their own work
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • We begin by copying successful practice, and then begin to modify that practice to satisfy our own particular circumstances and needs
  • In addition to being expert in the discipline of teaching and pedagogy, the educator is now expected to have up-to-date and relevant knowledge and experience in it. Even a teacher of basic disciplines such as science, history or mathematics must remain grounded, as no discipline has remained stable for very long, and all disciplines require a deeper insight in order to be taught effectively.
  • What's significant about these examples is not so much the new opportunities they offer students, though there is that. It's that all of them redefine the educator's role in some significant way. They create entirely new categories of educator, such as "online lecturer" or "scientist studying polar bears". Entire disciplines, far removed from traditional "instructional design", are being created and populated by people who direct online videos, design learning communities, program massive games like Evoke. And they create new categories of roles and responsibilities for in-person educators.
  • Historically, it has been impractical to break up the roles of the teacher. You need a certain scale even to have a separate person assigned as a librarian or an audio-visual coordinator. You need a much greater scale, not to mention much better coordination, to have separate people assigned as lecturers, coaches, theorizers and evaluators. Yet relatively few of these roles need to be performed in person, and most of them scale pretty well.
  • what I find as I offer more and more types and instances of learning, both online and in person, is that we can achieve much more efficient, effective and rewarding learning by organizing the educational system according to the sorts of educational services people might want and need, rather than by predefined collections of students assigned, almost randomly, to individual teachers
  • one thing I have been observing is that educators have been gravitating toward one or another of these 23 roles. Some of them, presumably the more extroverted, have taken on the role of lecturer or demonstrator. Others, who were perhaps more technically inclined, have become programmers or bureaucrats. Still others, those perhaps work best with presence or human contact, prefer to function as coaches or mentors. Not everybody can perform every role; not everybody wants to perform every role.
  • it is frustrating when people identify the role of the teacher as the central factor influencing the success or failure of a student's education. Leaving aside any influence of external factors, such a statement begs us to question what aspect of the educator's role it is that is so vitally important. And while the likely answer may be that they all are, or that it depends on the individual student, it seems clear that continuing to treat them as a single role, to be performed by a single person, increasingly defies the reality that is today's educational system
  • Though there may still be thousands of people employed today with the job title of "teacher" or "educator", it is misleading to suggests that all, or even most, aspects of providing an education should, or could, be placed into the hands of these individuals.
  • not every student wants or needs the services of every role
djplaner

European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning - 3 views

www.eurodl.org/?p=archives&year=2012&halfyear=2&article=523

distance bad set dejavu

shared by djplaner on 09 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The three generations of technology enhanced teaching are cognitive/behaviourist, social constructivist and connectivist.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 09 Aug 14
       
      Note: 3 Generations of technology enhanced teaching 1. cognitive/behaviouralist 2. social constructivist 3. connectivist
    • djplaner
      djplaner on 06 Aug 15
       
      That prior note is not a great example of value adding - just repeating what was in the text.
  • tools can be used and optimized to enhance the different types of learning that are the focus of distance education theory and practice.
  • pedagogy and the technology must create an engaging and compelling dance
  • ...97 more annotations...
  • postal correspondence
  • three (or more) overlapping generations
  • mass media including television, radio and film.
  • interactive
  • Indeed, though the authors of this paper are not in complete agreement about this, it is possible to think of pedagogies (considered as the processes and methods used in an attempt to bring about learning) as technologies, integral parts of a technological assembly that must work together with all of the other technologies to bring about a successful outcome
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Aug 14
       
      Note: Connection between technology and pedagogy
  • technologies evolve not through adaptation but by assembly, incorporating pieces of earlier designs
  • We will see that the ubiquitous capacity of the Internet is creating very profound opportunities for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of all three pedagogical models.
  • instructional designer
  • positivist research paradigms and methodologies.
  • From behaviourist pedagogy emerged the cognitive learning theories that focus on how processing within the individual brain effects comprehension, understanding, storage and retrieval of information. Cognitive pedagogies arose partially in response to a growing need to account for motivation, attitudes and mental barriers that may only be partially associated or demonstrated through observable behaviours – yet they are directly linked to learning effectiveness and efficiency.
  • empirical testing
  • Methods that relied on one-to-many and one-to-one communication were really the only sensible options because of the constraints of the surrounding technologies.
  • “scientific models”
  • that guided the development, application and assessment of learning.
  • CB-based distance education is often developed in the suggested order
  • The model begins with designers selecting instructional goals. Instructional designers identify goals in discussion with subject matter experts with an eye to finding deficiencies in learners’ behaviour that can be rectified by new learning.
  • This is particularly salient when applied to a new generation of large scale MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)
  • ext and usually multi-media learning content. The effort and cost of “developing and selecting instructional
  • creation of brainstorming lists of possible goals, documentation of subject matter priorities, flow charts, gathering of lists
  • Today each of the instructional design activities (see figure Figure 1) is enhanced by a host of Web 2.0 tools.
  • f primary use are distributed text tools such as Google Docs, DropBox and wikis
  • As importantly, collaborative work and negotiation is not confined to text. Collaborative graphic tools, concept and mind mapping tools allow graphic representations of ideas and processes.
  • Low cost distributed project management tools allow teams to design, create, produce and distribute content at costs much lower than in pre internet days.
  • gh quality content defines CB models of distance education, its effective management and control is extremely important
  • the capacity to re-use content created by others is compelling – if not without its challenges.
  • multiple ways of sharing content
  • blogs to Facebook to YouTube and content management systems
  • Perhaps of deeper concern is the reluctance of distance educators to consume and customize content already created by others.
  • Many content developers define and pride themselves on the production of quality content – not by the consumption and customization of works that they did not produce.
  • The final affordance of the net – with tremendous, if as yet little demonstrated capacity to improve CB distance education pedagogy – is learning analytics.
  • mining information about patterns of behaviour in order to extract useful information about learning which can then be applied to improve the experience.
  • In this model, CB pedagogy may be adapted to service the unique learning needs, style, capacity, motivation and goals of the individual learner.
  • strive to create instructional designs that change and morph in response to individual learner’s needs and behaviours.
  • Open Learning Models (Bull & Kay, 2010; Kay & Kummerfeld, 2006) increase learner control and understanding of the system. Open models can also be used by teachers and other support staff to better understand and respond to individual learner needs, although there are potential and as yet unresolved issues with making such models intuitive to understand and control effectivel
  • important source of data to constructing the model is the user’s current and past activities with content in the learning context.
  • data minin
  • data mining
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Aug 14
       
      Note: Data mining provides an opportunity to identify patterns of student behaviour. This can be used to help teachers better tailor learning and resources to the student. I can see that online tools providing access to metadata, tools for running site-access reports, and and even tagging, might be relevant in this context.
  • From the brief examples above we can see how technologies and especially the Net afford multiple ways in which CB pedagogies and related instructional designs are enabled, enhanced and made more cost effective.
  • MOOCs
  • CB models are inherently focused on the individual learner. While there is a tradition of cognitive-constructivist thinking that hinges on personal construction of knowledge, largely developed by Piaget and his followers (Piaget, 1970), the roots of the constructivist model most commonly applied today spring from the work of Vygotsky (1978) and Dewey (1897), generally lumped together in the broad category of social constructivism.
  • groups of learners, learning together with and from one another.
  • Social-constructivism does not provide the detailed and prescriptive instructional design models and methodologies of CB driven distance education.
  • efines social constructivist learning contexts as places “where learners may work together and support each other as they use a variety of tools and information resources in their guided pursuit of learning goals and problem-solving activities
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Aug 14
       
      "social constructivist learning contexts...places 'where learners may work together and support each other as they use a variety of tools and information resources in their guided pursuit of learning goals and problem-solving activities" Sounds a lot like the NGL course!
  • eachers do not merely transmit knowledge to be passively consumed by learners; rather, each learner constructs the means by which new knowledge is both created and integrated with existing knowledge.
  • New knowledge as building upon the foundation of previous learning Context in shaping learners’ knowledge development Learning as an active rather than passive process, Language and other social tools in constructing knowledge Metacognition and evaluation as a means to develop learners’ capacity to assess their own learning A learning environment that is learner-centred and recognises the importance of multiple perspectives Knowledge needing to be subject to social discussion, validation, and application in real world contexts (Honebein, 1996; Jonassen, 1991; Kanuka & Anderson, 1999).
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Aug 14
       
      Note: Characteristics of Social Constructivism
  • learning is located in contexts and relationships rather than merely in the minds of individuals.
  • leave more room for negotiation about learning goals and activities among teachers and students.
  • less prescriptive
  • Social-constructivist models only began to gain a foothold in distance education when the technologies of many-to-many communication became widely available,
  • that being the loss of freedom associated with a commitment to meeting at a common time.
  • Time constraint issues are especially important to distance students, most of whom are juggling employment and family concerns in addition to their formal course work.
  • ata mining and learning analytics are not only used to support independent study based on CB models but are being utilized to support and enhance group work.
  • extract patterns and other information from the group logs and present it together with desired patterns to the people involved, so that they can interpret it, making use of their own knowledge of the group tasks and activities” (Perera et al., 2009).
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Aug 14
       
      Example of using data mining and learning analytics with the group.
  • LMS Moodle
  • Standard Moodle analytics allow teachers to view contributions or activities of individual learners
  • Google Analytics
  • Constructivist pedagogies use the diversity of viewpoints, cultural experiences and the potential for divergent opinion that is best realized through interactions with group members from other cultures, languages and geographies.
  • Naturally, technological affordances of most relevance to constructivist pedagogies focus on tools to support effective establishment, operation and trust building within groups. The technologies that support rich social presence, including full range of audio, video and gestures, are associated with enhanced trust development and increasing sense of group commitment
  • connectivism
  • learning is the process of building networks of information, contacts, and resources that are applied to real problems.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Aug 14
       
      connectivism = learning is the process of building networks of information, contacts, and resources that are applied to real problems.
  • communities of practice
  • Connectivist learning focuses on building and maintaining networked connections that are current and flexible enough to be applied to existing and emergent problems.
  • capacity to find, filter and apply knowledge when and where it is needed
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Aug 14
       
      role of the learner is to have "capacity to find, filter and apply knowledge when and where it is needed"
  • The crowd can be a source of wisdom (Surowiecki, 2005) but can equally be a source of stupidity
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Aug 14
       
      "The crowd can be a source of wisdom (Surowiecki, 2005) but can equally be a source of stupidity"....a nice reminder
  • iticism of connectivism as being merely an extension constructivist pedagogy and those who argue that it is not really a complete theory of learning nor of instruction
  • gain high levels of skill using personal learning networks that provide ubiquitous and on demand access to resources, individuals and groups of potential information and knowledge servers. The second is the focus on creation, as opposed to consumption, of information and knowledge resources.
  • Bloom’s (1956) cognitive taxonomy place creation at the highest level of cognitive processing
  • elies on the ubiquity of networked connections – between people, digital artefacts, and content, and thus can be described as a network centric pedagogy and thus may be the first native distance education pedagogy, without previous instantiation in classrooms.
  • Effective connectivist learning experiences demand that learners have the tools and the competencies necessary to effectively find, sort, evaluate, filter, reformat and publish content on the net.
  • hese capacities rely on effective tools, high skill levels and a developed sense of network efficacy.
  • individuals and groups are helped to create and continuously augment, adapt and use a personal learning environment (PLE)
  • second key defining characteristic of connectivist pedagogy is the import placed on creating, sharing and publishing learner artefacts.
  • Connectivist learning designs, like constructivist ones, often involve collaborative or cooperative work between many learners. However, contribution often grows beyond the group to further encourage collaboration across time and space.
  • eyond the tools of creation instantiated within a PLE is an understanding of the technical and legal means to distribute work, while maintaining appropriate privacy levels and not infringing on the copyright nor plagiarizing the work of others.
  • The only solution to the privacy dilemma is to let each student and teacher set the level of access that they feel is most appropriate for them and more explicitly for the nature of the content being distributed.
  • Privacy concerns are also being recognised by the social networking giants.
  • Connectivist designs also involve the discovery of and contribution to new learning communities.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Aug 14
       
      connectivist pedagogy encourages contribution to new learning communities - make your work accessible to others!
  • Learners are encouraged to make themselves, their contributions and their personal learning environment accessible to others. T
  • create and rate bookmarked resources t
  • hat others find useful, document their learning accomplishments via blogs, and share their discoveries and insights via micro blog feeds. In this manner they create and sustain learning networks that begin at the course level, but grow and evolve as the course of studies ends.
  • the emphasis is far more on the individual’s connections with others than with group processes designed to enhance or engender learning.
  • arder to apply analytics than in the more contained contexts of CB and social constructivist models.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Aug 14
       
      It is harder to apply analytics than with CB and social constructivist models.
  • There is no central course, few common materials, no central binding point where interactions can be observed apart from each individual learner.
  • edagogy is, at heart, entirely focused on the individual learner.
  • The bottom three of Blooms original levels of learning – acquiring knowledge, coming to understand something or some process and applying that knowledge to a context – are clearly within the domain of CB pedagogies.
  • Moving up to the analysis, synthesis and evaluation levels brings us to the need for social perspective. This is often acquired through group and networked interactions characteristic of constructivist and connectivist pedagogical models.
  • Creation can be entirely original or as is more usual, creation involves the building upon, reinterpretation and contextualized application of older ideas to new contexts. Creation, the highest level of cognitive functioning usually requires mastery of the lower levels but, in addition, requires at least a small flame of creativity and insight.
  • Obviously the focus of connectivism with its inherent demand for students to create and distribute for public review and augmentation, fits well with the final creation level of the revised taxonomy.
  • here are many domains of knowledge in which creation of new knowledge is of much less importance than remembering and being able to apply existing knowledge.
  • No single generation has provided all the answers, and each has built on foundations provided by its predecessors rather than replacing the earlier prototype (Ireland, 2007).
  • As new technological affordances open up, it becomes possible to explore and capitalize on different aspects of the learning process.
  • For each mode of engagement, different types of knowledge, learning, and contexts must be applied.
  • students be skilled and informed to select the best mix(es) of both pedagogy and technology.
  • from the student-content interactions of cognitive-behaviourist models to the critical role of student–student interaction in constructivism, and finally, to the deeply networked student–content-teacher interrelationship celebrated in connectivist pedagogie
  • which students become teachers and teachers become students,
  • Connectivism is built to some degree on an assumption of a constructivist model of learning, with the learner at the centre, connecting and constructing knowledge in a context that includes not only external networks and groups but also their own histories and predilections.
  • he late Boston scholar Father Stanley Bezuska assembled a series of humorous quotes (see http://www.slideshare.net/committedsardine/funny-predictions-throughout-history) illustrating the doomsday predictions of teachers as they have been forced to deal with educational technologies.
    • djplaner
      djplaner on 06 Aug 15
       
      This particular set of quotes has since been identified as a hoax - but an illustrative one. http://boston1775.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/the-myth-of-students-today-depend-on.html
  • djplaner on 06 Aug 15
     
    One of the readings from the course. Sharing it now as a little experiment in sharing annotations. In theory, if you view this page, you should be able to see the bits that I've highlighted and shared with the group.
thaleia66

The End of the University as We Know It - The American Interest - 0 views

www.the-american-interest.com/...f-the-university-as-we-know-it

shared by thaleia66 on 09 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • People will not continue to pay tens of thousands of dollars for what technology allows them to get for free.
  • Power is shifting away from selective university admissions officers into the hands of educational consumers, who will soon have their choice of attending virtually any university in the world online.
  • Now anyone in the world with an internet connection can access the kind of high-level teaching and scholarship previously available only to a select group of the best and most privileged students.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, who’ve been experimenting with computer-based learning for years, have found that when machine-guided learning is combined with traditional classroom instruction, students can learn material in half the time.
  • Top schools like Yale, MIT and Stanford have been making streaming videos and podcasts of their courses available online for years, but MOOCs go beyond this to offer a full-blown interactive experience.
  • Teens now approaching college age are members of the first generation to have grown up conducting a major part of their social lives online. They are prepared to engage with professors and students online in a way their predecessors weren’t
  • What is emerging is a global marketplace where courses from numerous universities are available on a single website. Students can pick and choose the best offerings from each school; the university simply uploads the content.
  • The era of online education presents universities with a conflict of interests—the goal of educating the public on one hand, and the goal of making money on the other.
  • One potential source of cost savings for lower-rung colleges would be to draw from open-source courses offered by elite universities. Community colleges, for instance, could effectively outsource many of their courses via MOOCs, becoming, in effect, partial downstream aggregators of others’ creations, more or less like newspapers have used wire services to make up for a decline in the number of reporters.
  • To borrow an analogy from the music industry, universities have previously sold education in an “album” package—the four-year bachelor’s degree in a certain major, usually coupled with a core curriculum. The trend for the future will be more compact, targeted educational certificates and credits, which students will be able to pick and choose from to create their own academic portfolios.
  • The open-source educational marketplace will give everyone access to the best universities in the world. This will inevitably spell disaster for colleges and universities that are perceived as second rate.
  • Likewise, the most popular professors will enjoy massive influence as they teach vast global courses with registrants numbering in the hundreds of thousands (even though “most popular” may well equate to most entertaining rather than to most rigorous).
  • Because much of the teaching work can be scaled, automated or even duplicated by recording and replaying the same lecture over and over again on video, demand for instructors will decline. 
  • Large numbers of very intelligent and well-trained people may be freed up from teaching to do more of their own research and writing. A lot of top-notch research scientists and mathematicians are terrible teachers anyway.
  • Big changes are coming, and old attitudes and business models are set to collapse as new ones rise.
  • if our goal is educating as many students as possible, as well as possible, as affordably as possible, then the end of the university as we know it is nothing to fear. Indeed, it’s something to celebrate. 
  • thaleia66 on 09 Aug 15
     
    I came across this piece looking for connectivism at TED after reading the Downes piece. I remembered a talk I watched last semester that spoke of connectivism historically - as something very old, not necessarily connected to the digital revolution. This was such a provocative piece, though, I thought I would share it, and will post more reflections on my blog. Lisa
anonymous

FuturistSpeaker.com - A Study of Future Trends and Predictions by Futurist Th... - 0 views

www.futuristspeaker.com/...ro-college-model-for-education

future education learning predictions

shared by anonymous on 31 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • how much training should be required prior to taking a job, and whether the investment of time and money spent on training should be optimized around the company or the employee, knowing there will always be some in-house training required.
  • When we look at the bigger picture of retraining for this and many other professions, knowing that people will be rebooting their careers far more often in the future, with time being such a precious commodity, how do we create the leanest possible educational model for jobs in the future?
  • On the other side of the equation are people who go through all the work of getting bachelor and master degrees and still not having the skills necessary to gain employment. Traditional colleges, for the most part, do a great job, but they are all oriented around seat time. They also come with the overarching philosophy that nothing of value can be learned in less than four years, a timeframe woefully out of sync with someone needing to change career paths. So at what point is education “too lean,” and conversely, when is it “too fat?”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Micro-Colleges are any form of concentrated post-secondary education oriented around the minimum entry point into a particular profession. With literally millions of people needing to shift careers every year, and the long drawn out cycles of traditional colleges being a poor solution for time-crunched rank-and-file displaced workers, we are seeing a massive new opportunity arising for short-term, pre-apprenticeship training.  Many Micro-Colleges will fall into the category we often refer to as vocational training, a term poorly suited for the professional craftsmen, artisans, and technicians they will be producing. Since status and credentialing are critical elements of every career choice, any training producing specialized experts will need to come with industry-recognized certifications and titles.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 31 Aug 14
       
      We will always need some kind of industry-recognised certifications and titles. I think so as it would be ridiculous if someone could label themself as an engineer without showing that they have completed some kind of certificate outlining their skills. An individual could claim anything but would need social validation that they do indeed have the skills.
  • The Micro-College approach to training brewmasters would be an intense 2-4 month training program with a designated apprenticeship period learning on the job.
  • Since my coursework happened in the pre-computer era, most of the skills I needed after computers were introduced were primarily self-taught.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 31 Aug 14
       
      This is an example of situational learning. He is learning in other contexts, not just formally.
  • Perhaps the most valuable courses with long-term relevance were classes in writing, English, speech, art, design, and the special research projects that forced me to find my own answers and write a final report. The art helped me understand that engineering was a form of creative expression.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 31 Aug 14
       
      Creative expression is essential for understanding.
  • If the school were tied to an industry-specific apprenticeship program with a near-perfect handoff between academia and real-world work happening inside the industry, what would a super-lean engineering program like this look like?
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 31 Aug 14
       
      I remember in my first year of teaching saying to myself "this is what I have spent four years training for." I though something is seriously wrong when I was trained to be more of an academic than someone to manage a classroom.
  • It’s easy to imagine that as traditional colleges see their student base decline, many will begin to partner, merge, and purchase fledgling Micro-Colleges and begin incorporating these new areas of study into their own catalog of course offerings. 
  • Since existing colleges bring with them credit-granting accreditation, along with status, credibility, and the ability to offer student loans, in-house Micro-Colleges will likely become a rapidly growing part of campus life. Many colleges will find the Micro-College niche they take on to be the key differentiator between them and other schools.  Using the school-within-a-school approach, core Micro-College programs will become feeder mechanisms for additional types of credentialing.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 31 Aug 14
       
      Very interesting idea. Judging by what I have heard from students this would be preferable. 
  • anonymous on 31 Aug 14
     
    The concept of "micro colleges" - colleges that offer qualifications at a fraction of the time and cost. What do others think about this? I'm certainly interested as I think the teaching degree of four years is way to long.
Anne Trethewey

Educational Leadership:For Each to Excel:Preparing Students to Learn Without Us - 3 views

www.ascd.org/...dents-to-Learn-Without-Us.aspx

shared by Anne Trethewey on 12 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The reality is that despite having talked about personalized learning for more than a decade, most schools and teachers have been slow to discover its potential through the use of the social web, interactive games, and mobile devices.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 12 Aug 14
       
      Comments like this make teachers appear lazy. Using the word "slow" implies that teachers are ignorant and not proactive. I have seen many teachers wanting to integrate these technologies but finding the curriculum and day to day life of being a teacher as exhausting.
    • mari marincowitz
      mari marincowitz on 16 Aug 14
       
      I totally agree on this, Annelise. The problem is that the whole school system has not kept up the way technology has changed our daily lives and ways we interact and learn. For example, I'm teaching the IB Visual Art curriculum, a rigorous 2-year course for grade 11 and 12 learners. The sheer amount of work that need to be achieved in a very short period, makes it impossible to spend hours integrating new technologies that are not directly related to achieving the objectives set out by the IB to pass this exam. My husband teaches IB Psychology and the final examination is a traditional written exam, mostly based on students' ability to memorize large amounts of work. This means that students need to practice writing traditional pen and paper tests. This leaves little space for interactive games or application of new technologies. The curriculum will need to change before teachers can effectively discover the potential of these new technologies and consequently redefine their teaching.
  • schools see the eruption of technologies and environments that allow for personalized learning as a "disruptive innovation
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 12 Aug 14
       
      Not in the schools I have been in.
  • we need to fundamentally rethink what we do in the classroom with kids
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 12 Aug 14
       
      True, we do need to rethink but I think the model is fundamentally flawed.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • are we preparing students to learn without us? How can we shift curriculum and pedagogy to more effectively help students form and answer their own questions, develop patience with uncertainty and ambiguity, appreciate and learn from failure, and develop the ability to go deeply into the subjects about which they have a passion to learn
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 12 Aug 14
       
      This is what the subject NGL is encouraging. We learn without teachers, where we answer our own questions, develop patience with uncertainty and ambiguity, appreciate and learn from our "mistakes," and follow our passion.
  • writing blog posts
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 12 Aug 14
       
      A very good idea and something I was doing with my year 11s and 12s. Some loved it and others wanted the "paper and pen" approach. I found female students were more resistant as they were not as active in online forums as the males, but this is only my experience. I had many females complain, even some to their parents saying that they wanted to receive everything I did in hard copy, despite even the parents having access to all the online materials.
  • model the learning process together
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 12 Aug 14
       
      A great idea, modelling active learning.
  • Assessment changes as well. Donhauser says that the emphasis moves to assessing in the moment rather than at the end of a book or unit. "Rather than having a defined product that I receive from 25 students," she says, "I receive 25 individual assignments with their own unique content, insights, and styles." Using Google Docs, students continually update their progress, and she provides regular feedback. Students also give one another feedback on their plans as they go. Everyone follows a rubric that covers such areas as standards, learning outcomes, artifact explanation, blog posts, learning activities, work ethic, and research. Personalized learning like this requires students to reflect deeply on their effort and assess their work and progress, a fundamental part of developing the skills and dispositions to continue learning after the class ends.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 12 Aug 14
       
      I can see how it will take very brave souls to implement this approach in the current schooling model. I have seen massive resistance, and mostly because it is seen as "extra" on top of everything else. Education is like a "black hole" - never ending and constantly growing. :0
  • the truly personal, self-directed learning that we can now pursue in online networks and communities differs substantially from the "personalized" opportunities that some schools are opening up to students. Although it might be an important first step in putting students on a path to a more self-directed, passionate, relevant learning life, it may not bring about the true transformation that many see as the potential of this moment.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 12 Aug 14
       
      I think the demand for personal learning is increasing, particularly amongst male students. The proliferation of information on the web and the active engagement. Argghh, I just found out that Robin Williams has died. I'm heartbroken, i loved him.
    • djplaner
      djplaner on 12 Aug 14
       
      You're not alone in that feeling.
    • djplaner
      djplaner on 12 Aug 14
       
      On a less important topic, how would personal learning fit within a school setting with set curriculum etc? I can see a distinct difference with what is possible in NGL and what could be done in my undergraduate course.
  • By pairing personalized learning and technology, a teacher can help students learn what they need to learn through the topics that interest them most.
    • Anne Trethewey
      Anne Trethewey on 16 Aug 14
       
      An interesting statement - especially in light of many of the restrictions now placed on teachers in Australia with the new national curriculum, especially P-6.  Over the last few years, the explicit teaching focuses and prescriptive nature of many subject outcomes has seen my teaching change fundamentally, and I do not believe for the better. I know longer have the same scope and professional leeway to tailor learning to needs and interests of my students.  One-size DOES NOT FIT ALL!
  • Finding Their Passion
    • Anne Trethewey
      Anne Trethewey on 16 Aug 14
       
      Have explored 'Genius Hour' with my students in an attempt to introduce more opportunity for my students to engage in learning that is more in turn with their interests and passions.  Find time in a very hectic curriculum and timetable is the greatest hurdle!
  • It requires a totally different skill set on the teacher's part," Stutzman says. "We have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, because we don't know the exact direction that a class will go when we walk in.
  • Personal and autonomous learning is self-directed and self-selected according to the learner's own needs, preferences, and learning arrangements … Truly autonomous and personal learning means making our own choices about what we wish to play or learn with, whom we wish to learn with or from, where we want to do this learning, when we prefer to learn or play, and how we want to learn. (personal communication, October 3, 2011).
  • anonymous on 12 Aug 14
     
    A very good article on encouraging students to personalise their learning to their personal interests, just as NGL is doing. It illustrates how learning should be self-directed.
  • djplaner on 12 Aug 14
     
    A very good article on encouraging students to personalise their learning to their personal interests, just as NGL is doing. It illustrates how learning should be self-directed.
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