PSU TLT

This short article outlines some ideas about an open source, online platform for making books, based on WordPress. My thoughts here come out of our experience building Book Oven

At Penn State University, Director of Education Technology Services Allan Gyorke said the former student staple is now rarely spotted in dorm rooms. "The desktop PC is dead," Gyorke said, estimating that 95 percent of students now bring a laptop or tablet media device to campus instead of using a traditional PC in their dorm room. Those newer devices, he said, are easier to store and easier to set up.

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.

As I was looking through my feeds this morning, I noticed a post from Karl Kapp in which he mentions a presentation by the Chapman Alliance, which talks about development costs for an hour of Elearning based on a survey.

Announcing AWS GovCloud, a new AWS Region designed to allow U.S. government agencies and contractors to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. Previously, government agencies with data subject to compliance regulations such as the International Trade and Arms Regulation (ITAR), which governs how organizations manage and store defense-related data, were unable to process and store data in the cloud that the federal government mandated be accessible only by U.S. persons. Because AWS GovCloud is physically and logically accessible by U.S. persons only, government agencies can now manage more heavily regulated data in AWS while remaining compliant with strict federal requirements. The new Region offers the same high level of security as other AWS Regions and supports existing AWS security controls and certifications such as FISMA, SAS-70, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS Level 1. AWS also provides an environment that enables agencies to comply with HIPAA regulations. AWS resources deployed from AWS GovCloud such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) are available on-demand and agencies pay only for what they use, allowing the U.S. government to benefit from the flexibility, scalability and low pay-as-you-go pricing of AWS. Customers who are interested in learning more about the AWS GovCloud should contact their government sales representative by filling out the Contact Us form on the AWS GovCloud website.

To record and share case studies for faculty development purposes To interview students about how they learn or their reactions to different kinds of course activities To create audio and video content for hybrid and online courses To create just-in-time video tutorials for things like solving difficult math equations To document the design of learning spaces and reactions of faculty and students who use those spaces To capture guest speakers so their presentations can be seen by future students To record the stories about diversity from LGBT and minority students To collect evidence of the impact of a campus on its local community through efforts like service learning projects To record student presentations in ESL and foreign language courses so students can hear their speech I am impressed with the breadth of proposed projects and the creativity of these designers. I’m also hoping

To record and share case studies for faculty development purposes To interview students about how they learn or their reactions to different kinds of course activities To create audio and video content for hybrid and online courses To create just-in-time video tutorials for things like solving difficult math equations To document the design of learning spaces and reactions of faculty and students who use those spaces To capture guest speakers so their presentations can be seen by future students To record the stories about diversity from LGBT and minority students To collect evidence of the impact of a campus on its local community through efforts like service learning projects To record student presentations in ESL and foreign language courses so students can hear their speech I am impressed with the breadth of proposed projects and the creativity of these designers. I’m also hoping

To record and share case studies for faculty development purposes To interview students about how they learn or their reactions to different kinds of course activities To create audio and video content for hybrid and online courses To create just-in-time video tutorials for things like solving difficult math equations To document the design of learning spaces and reactions of faculty and students who use those spaces To capture guest speakers so their presentations can be seen by future students To record the stories about diversity from LGBT and minority students To collect evidence of the impact of a campus on its local community through efforts like service learning projects To record student presentations in ESL and foreign language courses so students can hear their speech

Google has announced a new initiative to increase accessibility for visually challenged users on its major Web services. In advance of the upcoming school year, Google is rolling out accessibility improvements to Docs, Sites and Calendars. Google is hosting a live webinar for enterprise customers - which include educational institutions - on Wednesday, September 21 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific time.

What would you say if I told you that there's a new introductory biology textbook being published that is affordable, lightweight and never goes out of date?

“The key thing is to use existing architecture where possible. Institutions develop institutionalized approaches. Like locking themselves into inefficient, inappropriate and expensive software systems,” says Worth “Twitter granted me access to the discourses that I wanted to listen to, learn from, and engage with.”

“That ideological program is pushing an out-moded model of learning, where more time in the classroom listening to a teacher’s broadcast is the goal. Thinking creatively about teaching demands an emphasis on engagement. Leveraging social media technologies to extend learning beyond the classroom is central to engagement.”

The classes are centered around experimentation with – and use of – social media tools, because Worth believes them essential to his students’ future career. In the internet age, the photographer is not only a producer, they are also distributor and publisher. Getting the University to adopt services like Flickr, Soundcloud, Audioboo, Twitter and Google Docs was essential to eliminate any barriers to entry, but it was a difficult battle to wage.

I thought my husband was a little crazy the day he bought bags and bags of emergency preparedness items for our home. We’re talking flashlights, a solar/battery/wind-up weather radio, bandages, blankets…you name it…all tucked into the closet under our stairs.

I tell that story because I think it’s applicable to new faculty. New faculty get thrown into the day-to-day course prep, research, advising, working with students, committee work, etc. and they don’t have time to prepare for the unexpected. Whether the unexpected is a minor flesh wound or a storm that damages nearby neighborhoods, new faculty may not be ready for those circumstances.

Students are allocated 110 subsidized sheets each semester, paid for by the Information Technology fee. You may purchase more sheets at any time.

Here is a chart of how many sheets we charge for different types of print jobs.

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.

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. 

Textcast turns any text — documents, web pages and entire blog feeds — into personal podcasts you can listen to right on your iPod and iPhone.