Group items tagged

Information technologies are having a significant impact on how people work, play, gain information, and collaborate. Increasingly, those who use technology in ways that expand their global connections are more likely to advance, while those who do not will find themselves on the sidelines. With the growing availability of tools to connect learners and scholars all over the world - online collaborative workspaces, social networking tools, mobiles, voice-over-IP, and more - teaching and scholarship are transcending traditional borders more and more all the time. (Emphasis mine.)

CJR's Russ Juskalian recently spoke with Shirky about knowledge, the Internet, and why we shouldn't worry about information overload.

Ever wanted to learn a foreign language? Need to memorize facts for your biology and chemistry classes? Or maybe you're a history buff or a trivia fiend who just wants to know everything. We've got tools for creating whatever gets your mind excited, and also for getting this information into your head. You can search the Lists area for something you want to learn. Or even better, just make your own list for yourself and for sharing with others.

Isaacson argued that online information shouldn't be exclusively ad supported, and that journalists should consider a small charge for articles, similar to the iTunes payment system for songs.

Mapping potential processes of informal learning through social media

The International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments provides readers with a comprehensive coverage of developments in learning technologies for an international readership of educators and trainers. The journal is a primary source for academics, professionals, corporate trainers and policy makers in information and communications technologies. The journal publishes work of a high standard on a range of fields associated with Course Management Systems (CMS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), Personalized Learning Environments (PLE), Social Networking Software (SNS), and 3D virtual worlds, including for example Second Life (SL).

Educators have been searching for ways to modularize and share educational content since the inception of online learning. However, for reasons both cultural and technological, the academic community has been slow to accept past attempts to support learning through the use of reusable, stand-alone, digital assets. With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, widgets, along with a new generation of web-based and mobile content aggregators, provide the key to successfully packaging and delivering web-based educational content. In this Webinar, Marino will share how the production of portable course content in widgets has opened his writing course, and Metros will discuss ways to work with information technology leaders and university administration to deploy and promote widgets as an innovative and supportable learning technology.

University of Delaware Information Technologies has announced that faculty and staff can now create "project" sites on Sakai@UD -- the UD-supported learning management system.

Students use technology in natural ways that allow them to do what they want: communicate with anyone they want, in the time and space that suits them best. Easily accessible and user-friendly, collaboration tools allow students to explore, share, engage, and connect with people and content in meaningful ways that help them learn. By relying on the familiar ways students use these tools, faculty can enable new forms of communication and engagement in the classroom, permitting extensions and variations of the informal interactions already occurring in classrooms and hallways, and creating new frontiers for collaboration across geographic boundaries.

Through a set of tools users can annotate, modify, and shift the content of a page. Shifts can be shared and can be mapped into Trails (contextual information maps).

The Fair Use Network was created because of the many questions that artists, writers, and others have about "IP" issues. Whether you are trying to understand your own copyright or trademark rights, or are a "user" of materials created by others, the information here will help you understand the system - and especially its free-expression safeguards.

Citizen journalism refers to a wide range of activities in which everyday people contribute information or commentary about news events. With the birth of digital technologies, people now have unprecedented access to the tools of production and dissemination. Citizen journalism epitomizes the belief that the experiences of people personally involved with an issue present a different -- and often more complete -- picture of events than can be derived from the perspective of an outsider. Citizen journalism encompasses content ranging from user-submitted reviews on a Web site about movies to wiki-based news. It forces contributors to think objectively, asking probing questions and working to understand the context -- the kinds of activities that lead to deeper learning.

Opening up the institution may seem like a counter-intuitive way of protecting it, but in an era where tremendous value is being created by informal and self-organized groups, sharing becomes the simplest and most powerful way of connecting with external learning opportunities.

You get out of Twitter what you put into Twitter. When you come to Twitter, come prepared to share something. It doesn't have to be earth-shattering information. Just something, anything, that someone, somewhere, might want to see. Here's a novel approach to getting started with Twitter: expect nothing in return.

We are researching without having an impact, speaking without being heard and writing without being read. Furthermore, our tenure and promotion procedures reward publication more than they do awareness of the field, thus pushing up conference attendance, and journal and book submissions.

Wiki use calls for a simple trade-off of control for content, perfection for timeliness. The more the members of an organization can contribute freely, the more contribution will happen. In return, employees will feel safe contributing, and the wiki will be more likely to serve its purpose.

An example of a course made open by default in Sakai.

SI 182 is an introductory programming course designed to be useful to a wide range of students in all concentrations. Built as a web site that uses Sakai as a repository.