Group items tagged

"LeBlanc and College for America are calling it a "learning relationship management system," a composite term to describe a learning management system build on top of Salesforce, the popular customer relationship management software. LeBlanc said the system aims to strike a balance between "lots of things that CIOs love" -- such as software as a service and cloud hosting -- with "what educators love.""

"ISOTYPE, the vintage visual language pioneered by Austrian sociologist, philosopher and curator Otto Neurath and his wife Marie in the 1930s, shaped modern information graphics and visual storytelling. America and Britain: Three Volumes in One, also known as Only an Ocean Between, is a wonderful 1946 out-of-print book by P. Sargant Florence and Lella Secor Florence from the golden age of ISOTYPE, kindly digitized by Michael Stoll, presenting a series of minimalist infographics that compare and contrast various aspects of life in Britain and the United States, a-la Paris vs. New York."

This is a facilitated course that will run for 6 weeks, initially from 19 March - 23 April 2013. Webinars are held Tuesday morning (Americas)/ late afternoon (Europe, Africa). There is an optional weekly lab session on Fridays at the same time of day. To sign up, click 'Start Course' at bottom left.

"America is shifting from a national, analog, industrial economy to a global, digital, information economy. Our social institutions, colleges and universities included, were created for the former. Today they all seem to be broken. They work less well than they once did. Through either repair or replacement - more likely a combination - they need to be refitted for a new age."

"Game-based learning is still little understood and underutilized within the Scottish Educational system. Minecraft is a sandbox game similar to Lego that allows the user to create a world using blocks. Minecraft is being used in America and around the world to enhance pupils learning[i]. This study will aim to show that Minecraft corresponds to many of the learning outcomes within the Scottish national performance framework Curriculum for Excellence"

The proficiency-based approach university officials described shares much in common with competency-based programs offered by institutions like Western Governors University, Southern New Hampshire's College for America and the new "Flexible Option" from the University of Wisconsin System.

"And honestly, given three things-that, according to what a school administrator told me, Colorado law allows parents to refuse the testing on behalf of their children; that the testing enrollment forms include an option to "refuse testing"; and that we currently live in Boulder, one of the most liberal, individualistic towns in America-we truly didn't think this would be a big deal. Boy, were we wrong."

"But from 1960 to 2060, our pyramid will turn into a rectangle. We'll have almost as many Americans over age 85 as under age 5. This is the result of longer life spans and lower birthrates. It's uncharted territory, not just for us, but for all of humanity. And while it's certainly good news over the long haul for the sustainability of the earth's resources, it will create political and economic stress in the shorter term, as smaller cohorts of working age adults will be hard-pressed to finance the retirements of larger cohorts of older ones."

What if learning to code weren't actually the most important thing? It turns out that rather than increasing the number of kids who can crank out thousands of lines of JavaScript, we first need to boost the number who understand what code can do. As the cities that have hosted Code for America teams will tell you, the greatest contribution the young programmers bring isn't the software they write. It's the way they think. It's a principle called "computational thinking," and knowing all of the Java syntax in the world won't help if you can't think of good ways to apply it.

" wellspring of fresh faith has surged up around so-called SPOCs. Small and Private, not Massive and Open, SPOCs are boasting better completion rates and better vibes than their highly scalable predecessors."

"Labeling colleges as the "worst" is controversial of course. But with more and more Americans feeling like they've been priced out of college or are not getting bang for their buck, questions of value and return on investment are getting lots of attention, especially from the Obama administration."

"We "learn," and after this we "do." We go to school and then we go to work. This approach does not map very well to personal and professional success in America today. Learning and doing have become inseparable in the face of conditions that invite us to discover."

"Hagan writes her own very successful blog, Math = Love, part of the Math Twitter Blogosphere, on which she says she has met wonderful friends - and her boyfriend. She says she never expected her own blog to get almost 3 million page views. It's a combination of project ideas and very cute "Things Teenagers Say." (Sample: "I'll be here all week with the pi jokes. I'm like a baker.") After learning so much from blogs herself, Hagan says, "I felt like I should give something back to the community I'd been stealing ideas from." But for her, it's about more than just exchanging ideas: "It reminds me that I'm not alone.""

"The rise of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag - along with others like #MeToo and #MAGA (Make America Great Again) - has sparked a broader discussion about the effectiveness and viability of using social media for political engagement and social activism. To that end, a new survey by the Center finds that majorities of Americans do believe these sites are very or somewhat important for accomplishing a range of political goals, such as getting politicians to pay attention to issues (69% of Americans feel these platforms are important for this purpose) or creating sustained movements for social change (67%)."

"The kalamazoo promise was simple. Live here, go to school, and your tuition is paid for. But with scale comes complication. The idea of free college is still in its infancy-it took 28 years to get the Morrill Act right, and it's only been 13 since the Kalamazoo Promise. But in the current political climate, the path forward is murky and winding, and that makes it hard for the movement to maintain the momentum it needs. The window of opportunity for nationwide tuition- or debt-free college is still ajar. The next couple of elections could close it completely or throw it wide open.  "

"Student debt in the U.S. has reached record levels, making higher education out of reach for many people. In New York City, a program called ASAP is gaining national attention for helping students earn a college degree and escape the burden of loans they would struggle to repay."

"To better understand how states are using OER to meet curriculum and instructional materials needs, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and New America analyzed thousands of pages of state policies, legislation, and curriculum documents from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Based upon this nationwide scan, we homed in on 14 states undertaking innovative work leveraging OER and conducted in-depth interviews with education leaders from those states. "

"It's as if many Americans are still thinking of higher ed in a mid-20th-century sense, as a public good we support, and haven't quite caught on with the reality of privatization"

Discusses the MOOC at Stanford which we discussed in class, some of its pitfalls.

The issue of wealth inequality across the United States is well known, but this video shows you the extent of that imbalance in dramatic and graphic fashion.