PSU TLT

My sense, from my marketing experience, is that those providing some product or service too often wish to be the ones defining what a product is or how it is used. They forget that it's the user, and it can only be the user, each individual independent user, that defines a product's value. Therefore, whatever products, services, means, TLT hopes to provide to students and faculty is, to a great extent, out of our control. The final use, the final value, can only exist in the mind of the person served. Likewise the resulting network isn't something that's defined in advance, but one that develops from each person participating in conversation.

While certain metrics are valuable and have their place, number of workstations, number of log-ins, number of postings and comments on blogs, those things are and will remain items that are only important to TLT itself. What is more important, and much more difficult to define and measure, is how value in the mind of faculty and students is satisfied.

What is Banana TV? Banana TV lets you use AirPlay (and now AirTunes!) for your Mac as well - play video or images from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch running iOS 4.2 or higher directly onto any networked Mac.

Language specialists at Indiana University have developed a new application for the iPad that will help people working in strategic areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan to read and write in Pashto, one of the region's primary languages.

Invention is in our DNA and technology is the fundamental tool we wield to evolve and improve every aspect of the experience we provide our customers. We still have a lot to learn, and I expect and hope we’ll continue to have so much fun learning it. I take great pride in being part of this team.

nvention is in our DNA and technology is the fundamental tool we wield to evolve and improve every aspect of the experience we provide our customers. We still have a lot to learn, and I expect and hope we’ll continue to have so much fun learning it. I take great pride in being part of this team.

If kids can get the lectures, can get the content delivery and skill modeling as well (or often better) by computer lecture than in person, why do we have use precious class-time for this purpose?  Why do we, in the status quo,  replicate in person in our classrooms what is easily available elsewhere, the content delivery/skill modeling, and then have kids apply their learning to difficult problems at home, without us there to help? Increasingly,  education’s value-add is and will be in the coaching and troubleshooting when students are applying their learning, and in challenging students to apply their thinking to hands-on learning by doing and teaming:  so let’s have them do these things in class, not sit and listen.   We know that collaboration is a critical skill set which can’t be developed easily either on-line or at home alone– let’s have students learn it with us in our classrooms.   Let every classroom be a collaborative problem solving laboratory or studio.

One founder of the site, David Adewumi, said the idea was spurred by the features Penn State’s current ANGEL course management system lacks. “Everyone knows ANGEL is terrible for students,” Adewumi (senior-Spanish) said. “It’s about managing courses for faculty and staff. We’re making a solution that is perfect for what students need to do group things.”

The question now is whether (or how) gamification can be used in education. Are there ways in which it can be used to similar ends, to help students feel more involved and engaged in their learning?

Even without the new rewards system for helping, plenty of users on OpenStudy already offer each other help. Some of the most loyal users of the site happen to also be some of the most active with offering their assistance. The gamification elements will recognize these helpful users, and encourage the behavior to spread.

“Students are totally shameless about how they use their computers in class,’’ said David Jones, an MIT professor. “I fantasize about having a Wi-Fi jammer in my lecture halls to block access to distractions.’’While MIT has yet to unwire a single lecture hall, some law schools, including the University of Chicago’s, have in recent years blocked wireless access in classrooms to keep students engaged in Socratic discussions instead of their classmates’ Groupon and eBay activitie

Flat World Knowledge, the largest publisher of free and open college textbooks for students worldwide, today announced the release of a new platform called MIYO (Make It Your Own) (http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/miyo). The fully-automated system gives professors greater control over textbook content, and the ability, with one click, to make their modified book available to students free online or in multiple, low-cost digital and print formats.

The new system uses familiar drag-and-drop and click features that allow instructors to easily move or delete chapters and sections; upload Word and PDF documents; add notes and exercises; insert video and hyperlinks; edit sentences; and incorporate other content that is free to reuse under a Creative Commons open license.

The learning commons, sometimes called an “information commons,” has evolved from a combination library and computer lab into a full-service learning, research, and project space. As a place where students can meet, talk, study, and use “borrowed” equipment, the learning commons brings together the functions of libraries, labs, lounges, and seminar areas in a single community gathering place. The cost of a learning commons can be an obstacle, but for institutions that invest in a sophisticated learning commons, the new and expanded partnerships across disciplines facilitate and promote greater levels of collaboration. The commons invites students to devise their own approaches to their work and to transfer what they learn in one course to the work they do for another.

Some of the key takeaways are: 38% of respondents agree or strongly agree that educators should use social media to reach students where they are, while 24% disagree or strongly disagree.  To me, the fact that 39% rated this item as "neutral" says that many faculty are still trying to figure this out.  58% agree or strongly agree that social media can be a valuable tool for collaborative learning, and 70% believe video, podcasts, blogs and wikis are valuable tools for teaching.80% of faculty reported that they were using social media in some aspect of a course that they are teaching.  A smaller number of respondents felt Facebook and Twitter had value in the classroom, though it was interesting to see that they rated Facebook as a tool that they use personally (57%) and professionally (45%) outside of class.  The statistic that really blew me away was the fact that 91% of faculty use social media either for professional purposes or in their classes, or both, and a similar study conducted by McKinsey of workplaces showed only 47% used it.  Are faculty in higher education more cutting edge than they are given credit for?  This statistic seems to indicate that. 

The decision by the MIT faculty in 2001 to allow anyone to use their course content was a seminal move,  one that had a profound effect on democratizing education.

ALLOWING CUSTOMIZATION. MIT OCW is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike-Non-Commercial License. That means that teachers and learners are able to share and remix the content that’s available.

ENCOURAGING SHARING. Do educators have an ethical responsibility to share? Open CourseWare reminds us that a large part of our role as educators is to share knowledge, and we should work to remove the barriers that make that possible.