Group items tagged

"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."

"While MOOC's have attracted huge attention, and hype, for supporting massive enrollments and for being free its the pedagogical aspects of MOOC's that interest me the most. The challenge is this - How can you effectively teach thousands of students simultaneously? I'm fascinated by the contrast between post-secondary faculty and K-12 teacher contract agreements that limit class size and the current emergent MOOC aim of having as many enrollments as possible. What a dichotomy."

More than simply a management guide, it's a window into a philosophy that thrives on uncertainty, creativity, and trust - a blinding contrast to the hierarchical culture that dominated much of the 20th century workplace. To the extent that innovation and the Internet play a role in the modern workplace, it is a crystal ball into the future of daily life.

"All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don't participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background. In contrast, a tiny minority of users usually accounts for a disproportionately large amount of the content and other system activity. This phenomenon of participation inequality was first studied in depth by Will Hill in the early '90s, when he worked down the hall from me at Bell Communications Research"

We take for granted fundamental knowledge or basic steps that the learner has not mastered. Someone who has recently mastered a skill or a body of knowledge, by contrast, remembers more clearly the challenges he faced, and is less likely to skip or skim over basic steps in the learning process.

The strategy Think-Pair-Share, along with a variety of twists, is a versatile strategy that can be used before, during or after a reading, viewing or listening activity. It incorporates elements of strategies that are known to increase learning (summarizing, comparing/contrasting, restating an idea, collaboration, think time, and using different learning modalities).

Richard Saul Wurman, Radical Media, and Esri bring you the Urban Observatory-a live museum with a data pulse. You'll have access to rich datasets for cities around the world that let you simultaneously view answers to the most important questions impacting today's global cities-and you. Compare and contrast visualized information for a greater understanding of life in the 21st century.

"Some 96 percent of journalism educators believe that a journalism degree is very important or extremely important when it comes to understanding the value of journalism. By contrast, 57 percent of media professionals believe that a journalism degree is key to understanding the value of their field."

"Use of in-class concept questions with clickers can transform an instructor-centered "transmissionist" environment to a more learner-centered constructivist classroom. To compare the effectiveness of three different approaches using clickers, pairs of similar questions were used to monitor student understanding in majors' and nonmajors' genetics courses. After answering the first question individually, students participated in peer discussion only, listened to an instructor explanation only, or engaged in peer discussion followed by instructor explanation, before answering a second question individually. Our results show that the combination of peer discussion followed by instructor explanation improved average student performance substantially when compared with either alone. When gains in learning were analyzed for three ability groups of students (weak, medium, and strong, based on overall clicker performance), all groups benefited most from the combination approach, suggesting that peer discussion and instructor explanation are synergistic in helping students. However, this analysis also revealed that, for the nonmajors, the gains of weak performers using the combination approach were only slightly better than their gains using instructor explanation alone. In contrast, the strong performers in both courses were not helped by the instructor-only approach, emphasizing the importance of peer discussion, even among top-performing students."

"According to data from the Delaware Department of Education, the newly-created ninth grade class at Newark Charter School consists of 15 percent Hispanic and African-American students, with representation of low-income students also at 15 percent. This contrasts starkly with the freshman class at Newark High School which is composed of 64 percent African American and Hispanic students and 70 percent low-income students."

"After leaving their positions at Lingua, the editors started a new open-access journal called Glossa. The new journal charges a $400 APC to authors, and waives that fee for authors who do not have the funds. Lingua's APC, by contrast, is still $1,800, the same as it was before the previous editorial board's departure. "

"Although the movement in course materials in colleges and universities is clearly from print towards digital, the survey data suggest it will be a slow process. Asked when they thought the majority of their course materials would be primarily digital, fully a fourth of the surveyed faculty indicated "never," while another 9 percent said by fall 2022, and 17 percent indicated by fall 2020. In contrast, fully a sixth (16 percent) reported that majority of their current course materials were digital as of fall 2015, and a third (34 percent) anticipated primarily digital course materials by fall 2018. "

"My efforts to introduce zombies into the classroom pulled from all of these techniques - getting students engaged in material in a new way, testing their understanding of theoretical constructs and real-world issues, and contrasting different views of humanity and culture. However, for this undergraduate exercise, I also wanted a few other things for the students - the chance to demonstrate what they had learned throughout the course, show critical thinking skills, and push themselves to think outside the box. Most importantly, I also wanted them to enjoy it."

For week four of the Open University course on Open Education, we were asked to compare MOOC models: either ds106 or the Change MOOC with something from Coursera or Udacity, focusing on "technology, pedagogy, and general approach and philosophy."

"I have long been a fan of Edmodo after it was introduced to me as tool in the Global Read Aloud.  This free social network specifically aimed at students and teachers is a fabulous way to integrate social media into your classroom, as well as setting up ways to collaborate with other classrooms."

So now that I am seeing this, I am torn between which one to try in my classroom. Between Edmodo and Collaborize Classroom, which one would you suggest? Has anyone tried both of these? Looking for suggestions before I finalize with my classroom.

Stacy: This would be a great tool exploration project. Compare and contrast both of them.