Group items tagged

After working with a tool for a while, you forget all the familiarity you've built up, all the muscle memory, all the ways that the tool is useful to you. Instead, all you see are the annoyances. But on the other hand, all you see about a new tool are the shiny new features, and you can't see all the hours and days you'll spend learning and adapting, fiddling and breaking the new tool.

"As director of technology for Groton-Dunstable Regional School District in Groton, MA, as well as a teacher of high school courses in digital and information literacy, Andrew Marcinek knows what it takes to effectively implement tech in the classroom. One of Marcinek's recent discoveries is Google Hangouts, a free video chat service that enables one-on-one chats and group chats with up to 10 people at a time. For Marcinek, Hangouts provides a new way to connect students beyond the four walls of the classroom. Where students used to need permission slips and school buses to get that "out of classroom" experience, tools such as Hangouts (which educators can join simply by setting up a Google+ page and signing up for the Hangout feature) allow instructors to do all of the following tasks:"

MOOCs are too new for there to be compelling evidence of their value, cost, and risks. The potential benefits and threats to academic quality, student outcomes, institutional integrity, and administrative processes are not yet known. However, the emerging features of MOOCs that have made them distinctive from the other types of OER are the services integrated with the content. The MOOC platforms for organizing and delivering the multimedia content, integrated with the social media tools for engaging individuals, and the assessment and analytic tools for providing feedback on learning and teaching are critical services that manage the content delivery within a design for learning. These services available through the open enrollment of MOOCs are the additional benefits that have been recognized as valuable by some learners, teachers, and institutions.

Everyone is a futurist. We all think about the future, imagining and evaluating possibilities, making plans, and implementing strategies for realizing our goals. Educators deliberate the future of education, both where it is heading and where we think it should be heading. I will outline here my vision for a preferable future for education, realistically anchored to certain fundamental features of contemporary affairs and human psychology.

"Samsung's new Galaxy S5 arrived with an unexpected and underhyped feature. Like the iPhone 5S, it came with a fingerprint reader, but this reader plugs directly into PayPal, which in turn connects you to dozens of different payment systems. It's a clever trick: instead of a password, all you need is a fingerprint, carrying you through the entire web. If it catches on, soon you won't need a password at all."

Although faculty and students are the primary learning management system users, administrators and IT experts often select the system. This article stresses the importance of involving all stakeholders in the selection process, offers a step-by-step guide to LMS selection, and enables readers to develop a customized list of LMS features that align with their institution's instructional and learning priorities.

"TogetherJS is a free, open source JavaScript library by Mozilla that adds collaboration features and tools to your website. By adding TogetherJS to your site, your users can help each other out on a website in real time!"

"Where's Sakai headed?   Toward interoperability without sacrificing customizations, flexibility, diverse feature set, peer-based innovation and lower costs. Sakai 10 is about to be released. This release celebrates ten years of Sakai providing flexibility, control and cost savings.  Sakai 10 is the first of a series of releases that will respond to the needs of higher ed stakeholders everywhere."

There are 3 categories of audio or video recommendations that I found. Each had slightly different requirements for faculties or staffs: Real time meetings or online courses in real time. Here the recommendations are mainly to contact the Disability Resource Office well ahead of the need to set up a real time captioning service if there is an individual who needs it, or if it will be archived online for more than one term. There is also the important guidance to set it up and test it in the same environment before it will be used. Audio or video materials that faculty or staff produce and upload onto the institutional web (this includes courses). The prevailing wisdom is that if the faculty produce it themselves, they should also take responsibility for captioning; whether they do it themselves or not. Considering how easily this can be done in YouTube with a transcript and the synch captions feature, it is probably not too high a bar for someone who has the sophistication of producing the video in the first place. Of course it requires that a transcript is available or produced. Audio or video materials that faculty or staff find for use (e.g., link or upload materials from other sources). On this point there seem to be differences across institutions around what faculty and staff members should do. The section below details these differences.

"Get the free ebook The Theory and Practice of Online Teaching and Learning: A Guide for Academic Professionals, brought to you by Routledge Education and featuring hand-picked content from some of our leading titles."

"As UT-Austin recently replaced its learning management system, it also needed to replace its plagiarism detection software. Schorn therefore conducted the Turnitin test again this March. Out of a total of 37 sources, the software fully identified 15, partially identified six and missed 16. That test featured some word deletions and sentence reshuffling -- common tricks students use to cover up plagiarism."

"Speaking of companies. Interestingly, language learning companies like Rosetta Stone, Alliance Française and Lingo Live are among the first adopters. So is MOOC behemoth Coursera offering a mix of free and paid tutoring sessions for its Machine Learning course. Notably there is a big group of language tutoring both from companies and private tutors in the Education & Career category, showing that this is still the easiest subject to bring online. Prices range from free over $5 to up to $25 per 30 minute session. Nevertheless other popular subjects like math are also widely offered. As Google Helpouts are built upon Google Hangouts features like screen sharing and document sharing, they also enable tutors to also teach topics that need more interaction or visual support."

"More troubling is the microphone. The TV boasts a "voice recognition" feature that allows viewers to control the screen with voice commands. But the service comes with a rather ominous warning: "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party." Got that? Don't say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV."

"Hootsuite or Buffer? Buffer or Hootsuite? The question floats around social media circles and comes up time and time again. For me, it's like asking a gamer which is better, an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3? Each has its own traits and features, some people will align more with one or the other."

"Introducing TweetDeck Teams, a simple way to share access to your Twitter accounts without sharing passwords. The feature is starting to roll out today on TweetDeck for web, Chrome and Windows."

"If your YouTube channel uses a business or other name, and is connected to a Google+ Page, it may be easier to start your HOA from YouTube Live Events. If your audience is on Google+, it may be better to schedule a Google+ Hangout on Air Event. And there are a few other differences in available features depending on how you set up your HOA."

"Starting today, we're making this feature even more useful by removing the requirement that guests have a Google account in order to join a Hangouts video call. Here's how it works: guests without a Google account who have been provided with the video call link by the organizer will be asked to provide their name and then request to join the call."

"Touchjet WAVE Plus transforms TVs in living rooms, meeting rooms, and classrooms everywhere with more features than any TV set boxes or smart TVs can offer."

"Companies are in constant pursuit of building simple and usable products. More features, new technologies, and advanced capabilities but still in a lightweight and simple to use format. More often than not, making it simple is the hardest thing there can be."

"Ambi is reinventing how learning takes place in higher education by putting students at the center of the experience: a Learner Engagement Platform designed for the student first, creating a more engaged, involved, and immersive learning experience for everyone. Ambi is the product of three years of research and more than eighteen months of development to build a Learner Engagement Platform where learning takes place without limits. The interface is as familiar as the social networks students use on a day-to-day basis, but with a tight integration to the course materials and features from Learning Management Systems like Canvas from Instructure, and Blackboard."