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In everyday life we are learning continually from each other. Whatever the situation, most of us draw on the knowledge, skills and experience of our friends and colleagues. Within any educational setting learners naturally engage in informal peer learning to make sense of their course, test their ideas and share their concerns.

Peer learning is engaging, and researches say that people learns most effectively when they are interacting with each other. It creates this network of knowledge when you share and connect with people, it not only benefits the individual, but benefits everyone as a whole. It also relieves the pressure of University funding with teachers having to teach such a large class, which affects the quality of learning as well. With peer learning, students engage with one another, and will eventually find the correct answer. It is not independent learning, this is interdependent learning.

Thank you for your share. I think this is a great article that introduces the potential of peer learning in higher education from the teacher's perspective. I agree that connected learning does a great job in promoting student's interactivity, creativity, motivation and interest in learning a particular topic with peers. In addition, peer learning provides learners with opportunities to collaborate and learn a subject together, which might maximize the productivity if used in a correct way. Peers and collaborative learners can do their own research separately, and meet together to discuss and express different opinions on the issue, which can inspire student's deep thinking. However, peer learning and collaborative learning is not always superior to individual work, or contributing to the learning result of every individual. Sometimes it might decrease the learning productivity if the group members or peer partners over reply on others in the group without doing much themselves, or if they didn't communicate well. Thus it's important to practice students learning ability and teacher's facilitating ability in peer learning or collaborative learning.

The Open Education is one of the most discussed topics on education internationally today. Can be defined as open education practices that characterize the opening of access to knowledge, ways of learning, learning technologies, educational systems, models of educational management, leadership and certification. Integral part of the Open Education are OER (Open Educational Resources), materials of teaching, learning and research, in any format or media, licensed to allow their reuse, adaptation and sharing by others. Since 2006 ABED disseminates OER and Open Education. Prof. Fredric Litto in 2006 wrote about open content and in 2009, the publication of the book 'Distance Education: State of the Art vol.1', ABED - Pearson Education, which won the Premio Tortoise brought the seventh of chapters on concept of openness in ODL open University of Brazil, REA, learning through virtual and digital libraries and digital repositories and virtual, written by Andreia inamorato dos Santos, Ronaldo Mota, Fredric Litto, Ana Paula Leite de Camargo and Ana Cristina Birth , respectively. Since then, in Brazil, have sprouted traces of a theme that would be provided shortly international prominence - Open Education. To expand the discussion of the topic in Brazil and international trends, ABED creates workgroup ABED OPEN. Coordinator for the group, ABED invited Dr. Andreia inamorato, international researcher in the field of open education, OER and ODL. "The group intends to involve the participation of teachers of basic and higher education, researchers, students, educational administrators, publishers, departments of education, nonprofits and private institutions," says Andrea. "The goal is to have the collective and representative participation of various social actors to be a working group with legitimacy, representativeness and goals, and can promote discussions on educational priorities in Brazil with respect to open education", says the researcher.

"Logan Laplante is a 13 year-old boy who was taken out of the education system to be home schooled instead. Not only was he home schooled, but Logan had the ability to tailor his education to his interests and also his style of learning, something traditional education does not offer." I realise this article (and the video on which the article is based) does not fall neatly into any category we've studied yet, though I hope many of you may find it as interesting and inspiring as I have. At core, this is about "hacking" the educational system. As Logan explains, his methods can be applied in mainstream schooling (or indeed for anyone interested in lifelong/lifewide education). There's also the element of "participatory culture" embedded in the production of this video: Logan is sharing his experiences, allowing others to comment and contribute so that he might learn as others are learning from him.

This is a truly amazing talk, I was especially pleased to discover your post since I was just about to share a talk that speaks to many of the same issues! My shared video talks about how schools simply aren't made for boys - for many reasons - and what should be done to reengage them in education. (You can check it out here, if you're interested - https://groups.diigo.com/group/okmooc/content/gaming-could-the-ultimate-tools-to-re-engage-boys-in-education-12782090) The part about "writing about butterflies and rainbows" quite literally made me chuckle, here's why: (from my video) "Boy comes home from school, and he says, "I hate writing." "Why do you hate writing, son? What's wrong with writing?" "Now I have to write what she tells me to write." "Okay, what is she telling you to write?" "Poems. I have to write poems. And little moments in my life. I don't want to write that stuff." :) The boy then goes on to saying "I want to write about video games. I want to write about leveling-up. I want to write about this really interesting world. I want to write about a tornado that comes into our house and blows all the windows out and ruins all the furniture and kills everybody." ...which is one of the main points of "hackschooling" -writing through experiences & interests. Also, speaking from personal experience as someone who also left a diploma behind, I can confirm that leaving a rigid non-functional study environment for an open world of possibility can be the best thing you can ever do. All in all - thumbs up for sharing the talk!

Thanks for sharing - what an inspiring talk. Many of his lessons are just as valuable for adults, who often seem to lose any sense of creativity after settling in to their lives, careers, and relationships. FYI - my wife and I have done some limited homeschooling with one of our kids who really doesn't thrive in traditional school settings. I wish we could have done more, but at the very least I encourage each of our kids to explore other ways to learn to either supplement (or question) what they are learning in school. Traditional education just isn't supportive of creative thinking and creative thinkers.

Community Colleges for Open Education Resources I chose this resource since I work at a community college and The mission is expanding access to education by promoting awareness and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). Over 250 colleges have joined the consortium and many more participate in our activities and use resources posted here. The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER)is a joint effort by individual community colleges, regional and statewide consortia, the Open Courseware Consortium, the American Association for Community Colleges, the League for Innovation in the Community Colleges, and many other educational partners to develop and use open educational resources, open textbooks, and open courseware to expand access to higher education and improve teaching and learning.

Open education information and group resources

Open education information and group resources

A hundred years ago, higher education seemed on the verge of a technological revolution. The spread of a powerful new communication network-the modern postal system-had made it possible for universities to distribute their lessons beyond the bounds of their campuses. Anyone with a mailbox could enroll in a class.

This article provides a clear overview of the evolution of higher education along with the rapid development of technology during the past 100 year, and raises the issue whether today's networked education model has posted threat to higher education. Today's the rapid development of Internet and social networks have changed the way we learn, access information and connect with others. The emergence and popularity of MOOCs and various social media have brought a new learning model, connected learning, which is largely used in university and college courses. It expands learners' opportunities of learning, and brings them huge convenience to access information, share thoughts, and communicated with learners from world wide on the same topic. Learning in the current information age subverted the way we learn in traditional learning models, and sometimes caused problems. But I think it's normal for a new thing to cause problems, but as long as we figure out ways to overcome the problems and best utilize the new learning model and resource, it will bring us huge opportunities.

While we are talking about (open) education, let us look for the handbook. Part I, Chapter 7: "E-learning - an introduction"

It is an essential document for educators and librarians. The Handbook focuses on issues of knowledge and learning and teaching and leading its readers to a mode of considering education as revisiting learners' prior knowledge into the mode of thinking and understanding through the study of primary sources. After Biggs and Moore, the authors of the Handbook view students as individuals who actively construct their knowledge and learning as a process that involves a process of individual transformation. The document touches all the essential questions of education including motivation and deep approach to studying. curriculum design, the use of technologies in learning opportunities and other.

Places the popular concept of the makerspace within the theoretical context of experiential education.

I have a 11-year old daughter, so a lot of the readings and activities we do in this course usually lead me to compare between how they apply to k-12 "fundamental" education and professional development. We are lucky in that some of her teachers are experimenting with flipped classroom and project-based learning. However, as a parent on the sideline, sometimes I wonder about their activities. How do I or anyone evaluate an activity to know that it is "educational"? This article gives a great definition, "...an experience is educative if it lead to further growth, intellectually or morally..." Another quote I like a lot is "learner to take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for the results."

Good article on the Maker Movement, and references to the thinking of John Dewey. I hadn't realized some of the Maker Movement extends back to the 1970's. I had the chance to meet Sylvia Libow Martinez a couple of years ago (of Invent to Learn - http://www.inventtolearn.com/) and got a deeper insight into the power of the Maker Movement, Maker Fairs, and how sharing knowledge and collaboration is producing some amazing things in the realm of 3D printing, wearable technology, and changing paradigms for education.

How can open educational practices empower less used and minority languages? - Webinar series (part of the European project LangOER) that aims at enhancing the teaching and learning of less used languages through open educational resources and practices

How can open educational practices empower less used and minority languages? - Webinar series (part of the European project LangOER) that aims at enhancing the teaching and learning of less used languages through open educational resources and practices

A really interesting course (also from Stanford Online) that has just started and I believe will be of interest to many doing Open Knowledge! "This interdisciplinary course features talks from thought leaders and innovators from medical education, instructional design, cognitive science, online learning, and emerging technology. Over the course of eleven weeks, we'll consider how to build educational experiences that address the unique learning preferences of today's Millennial medical students and residents. As the volume of new medical knowledge outpaces our ability to organize and retain it, how might educators disrupt outdated practices through thoughtful use of technology and learning design? How might MOOCs, social media, simulation and virtual reality change the face of medical education? How might we make learning continuous, engaging, and scalable in the age of increasing clinical demands and limited work hours? Joining the conversation will be experts from all health care and education stakeholder domains, including patients, and students from nursing, medicine and engineering sciences."

You sold me and I signed up, this is exactly what I was looking for when I signed up for this course. Hoping to bring this into clinical research and improve the perceptions, understanding and participation to forward medical innovation.

"MOOCs offer opportunities but are also pose the danger of further exacerbating existing educational divisions and deepening the homogeneity of global knowledge systems."

Very interesting! Thanks. "MOOCs and MOOC-type courses have added a new dimension to the educational landscape by strengthening the non-formal educational space and providing opportunities to experiment with the disaggregated components of the educational experience"

After watching the Willinsky video, this hit home even more. I think the value of quality education is extremely important, and creating a "global village" of learning is still in its growing pains. Having a face-to-face instructor/professor/facilitator lets you ask the questions that pop to mind and being in a classroom setting allows an idea to flow and develop into other ideas. There are a lot of social media tools that are familiar to a lot of students living in a Western culture, but those social tools are not always available to developing countries; many do not have access to schools or even have a computer - as this article indicates, MOOCs are certainly a venue that opens learning opportunities for those who do not have access to learning in a formal environment, but may have access to the internet. What I particularly found interesting were the various MOOC categories - Gateway: MOOCs for prepping to get into higher learning; Research showcase: promote an institute's research areas; Professional skills: MOOCs for those who need to "upskill" or specialize…and there are others. The main reason for taking this course was to improve my knowledge of what social media is out there (MOOCs are part of it), how it is being used, and how useful is this "new" media is within the publishing realm. It is a challenge.

"Who will attend to the skills gap and create stronger linkages to the workforce? This book illuminates the great disruptive potential of online competency- based education. Workforce training, competency-based learning, and online learning are clearly not new phenomena, but online competency-based education is revolutionary because it marks the critical convergence of multiple vectors: the right learning model, the right technologies, the right customers, and the right business model."

Education situation around the world.When we talk about open education,we always focus on high level education such as college or graduate education.But, out of the U.S, such as Asia, Africa, there are many children who don't have chance to get better education, eager to learn more to change their fate.So, I hope open education can also concerning these edge people

Argues that increasing corporate control is undermining the foundational values of higher education.

Here in Spain we have a similar evolution of higher education; private postgraduate private schools give masters that guarantee the access to top jobposts, but they are not focused on analysis, creativity and critical minds, but on pure business. What you need to be on your future job post is what you learn. Public institutions are still on air, but they are struggling with less and less public resources to survive. So I guess this is not only going on in USA.

Italy is going even worse...i'm an Adjunct Professor for maybe 1000 euro per year ... surviving by scholarships, call center mid term contracts, collaborations where i'm asked to pay for taxes the university should pay, all levels teaching.. I like "Some of the basic principles underlying effective pedagogy, such as small class size, individual attention and the importance of mentoring, are being sacrificed in order to increase head count, limit labor costs and create a one-size-fits-all educational experience." The problem is that universities are to make profits from fees (that's why they hire me instead of employing me) and offer any kind of courses, masters to increase their income! The problem is: how can we expect to increase the quality of learning as far as decisions are taking by political, business, organizational sides instead of scientific and educational ones?

With these resources, you can create or participate in collaborative efforts to develop tools and methods for online education.

Many Open Education Resources (OER) have been introduced by governments, universities, and individuals within the past few years. OERs provide teaching and learning materials that are freely available and offered online for anyone to use. Whether you're an instructor, student, or self-learner, you have access to full courses, modules, syllabi, lectures, assignments, quizzes, activities, games, simulations, and tools to create these components.

Thanks. An extensive list of resources. It may have been easier to use the list if it wasn't categorised only alphabetically but also further grouped into categories. It's still a valuable collection.

"Emergency and conflict in countries such as Syria, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan have made us more aware of the long-term serial disruption and psychosocial damage faced by people caught up in emergency and conflict areas. Open, distance and flexible learning (ODFL) has sometimes been employed in these regions to maintain a degree of continuity in education. For the most part, however, this role has been ad hoc, short-term and often bearing limited relation to the psychosocial and educational needs of the displaced or traumatised populations it serves."

Dr Jane McGonigal (a professional game developer) talks about the time spent playing video games (which approximates to the span of human evolution), and that this time has to increase to make any major changes to the world. I have selected this resource partially in relation to week 3's Clarke's lecture (and others), which talks about using our idle time to do something meaningful - participate in citizen science games, for example. Dr McGonigal's talk very much illustrates this point - except that it talks about solving global issues through indirect games, e.g. a World Without Oil online game simulates a world in which you have to survive oil shortage. Creator's research shows, that people maintain the skills and habits they have taken up after playing this intense game, which include making better choices for our changing environment. The only difference here from actual citizen science games is that Dr McGonigal's games are fictional (rather than providing direct data / input for actual scientific research), however, they empower people to influence global change, which is the topic of the other lectures this week, especially Morozov's thoughts about the power of internet and connectiveness to create "revolutions". Although Morozov has taken up a rather critical view, suggesting only those who want it, take the best from the Internet, Dr McGonigal's ideas might be what bridges the two - taking games, which are integral part of many people's lives, especially in the younger generation, and turning them into real "life schools" may help more people get the idea and the essential skills to "fix" their environments. In all honesty, this is a video I would watch again and again, and recommend it to anyone who would listen (and that doesn't happen often for me).

Gamification for learning - using game elements - sounds very promising. Prior to the internet, technology, there were board games or hands on projects - all with the intent to engage and interact with each other. So it is no surprise to me given the appropriate design/project that students can learn and solve real world problems. Letting students choose their persona and role also allows them to make their own future and take ownership for how they want to participate. Just like the original promise of multimedia training that was purported to replace the traditional classroom events and enable getting the "best" teacher recorded for all to have the same experience...I believe it was then thought that the learning experience needs o be "blended". Different techniques - online, face to face, etc.. This is not my field of expertise so these are just personal opinions. If the online game approach can be combined with face to face and tactile/outdoor activities, aka a blended approach - I think that might be very useful. I do also believe that design solutions should be encouraging win win situations to reinforce collaboration and the feeling that all can succeed. One question I might have is how do you measure success in learning?

Gaming promoters unfortunately for me have a commercial agenda and its always difficult to make that balance of pure learning and commercialization aspect

This is an excellent article which explains how Sugata Mitra's teaching models helped to transform a failing school in Mexico. It's a story which completely changed my attitude to learning and education and inspired me to discover as much as possible about cloud-based and student-centred learning.

Thanks for posting. I have heard of similar ideas from my girlfriend who works with learning disabled people, helping them make goals and follow through with them. The way the criticized traditional 'top down' eduction system is set-up, learning disabled people end up with the impression that they are failures and burdens. This goes beyond learning disabled people though, anyone who finds no inspiration for math, English and the sciences is bound to under perform at school, fail at the competitive aspect of it and get told their failures as a result, implicitly or explicitly. I also found that at design school when I realized that math and English were important for the projects I was working on I started to learn effectively and enjoy doing so. This is after failing my secondary education (pre university in New Zealand). You say this changed your attitude towards cloud learning, have you done much else as a result?