"To acquire and practice literacy skills today, students and educators in Oklahoma City Public Schools require access to Evernote, Google Docs, Gmail, Edmodo, Posterous, Celebrate Oklahoma Voices, and other educationally appropriate, interactive websites. All these websites are currently (as of February 9, 2012) blocked by OKCPS for student access. OKCPS must stop its "draconian" and unjustified Internet content filtering policies and adopt BALANCED policies. The district must TRUST teachers and empower them to directly bypass the content filter with their login credentials when it is professionally justified for instruction and learning."
"MOOCs are characterized by their openness, enabling anyone across the world with an Internet connection to participate. As a result, most MOOCs have thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of participants. An online course with potentially tens of thousands of students is a very different teaching environment than face-to-face courses or even "traditional" online courses. Teaching strategies practiced in other teaching contexts won't necessarily translate well to this context. Indeed, the sets of choices regarding learning objectives, content presentation, assessment, and instructor-to-student and student-to-student interaction are still being developed in this emergent teaching environment."
"The book draws upon a healthy mix of psychological research isolating specific tactics for induce happiness ("happiness hacks") alongside practical examples of those tactics utilized in both traditional and "serious" game design. The net result? A list of 14 "fixes" that can help readers improve their lives through play."
"The study consists of 1,575 interviews with students, teachers and parents in the U.S., China and Germany regarding their options about the role of technology in education and learning, including practices, preferences and priorities."
"If you have an exercise bike in the back room, you could be the small selection of people that use it everyday to get fit. But then again, you could be one of many more who bought it in the hope of regular practice but were unable to make it part of your routine.
The MOOC or Massive Open Online Course, which has come to prominence this year, often has much the same effect. Students may enrol in the online free courses from prestigious universities in their tens of thousands, but overwhelmingly they bomb out with attrition rates up to 80-90%."
"The same is true in the digital world. Gregory Ulmer, a theorist at the University of Florida coined the term electracy to describe this broader notion of digital literacy. At universities we are all more aware now of the growing significance of digital literacy, as we are seeing a widespread transition from print to digital and an accompanying transformation of teaching and learning practices."
"The large majority of faculty who have taught online courses (79%) say the experience has helped them develop skills and practices that have improved their teaching in the classroom as well as online."
" humans are more important than technology, but inspiring faculty should be our goal. Our organizational cultures need to embrace online learning as unique. We need to be supporting faculty by immersing them in engaging, meaningful online classes as part of their preparation to becoming great online instructors. When our organizational practices convey a hierarchy between face-to-face and online classes, that hierarchy will translate into the attitudes of the instructors who teach those classes."
"Though there are likely many other issues than covered here, a resourceful start is a classification system based on three primary ethical concerns: shifting powers, archiving the future, and building trust. Likewise, it is noted that the focus on microcredentialing should be as a concept rather than as a specific technology, protocol, or practice."
"Producers of web-video instruction need to negotiate old and new rules of video grammar to remain credible (to the traditional video grammar) as they also strive to be cool (in the new media video grammar).
The goal is to avoid violating traditional video grammar while tapping into new video aesthetics to gain ethos with web-savvy audiences (like students).
This tutorial explains the best old and new practices in creating talking heads web video for maximum impact and effectiveness."
A course driven by 20 practical questions about wireless, web, and the Internet, about how products from companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Ericsson, HP, Skype and AT&T work.
"This project addresses the Friday Institute's goals of developing innovative teacher professional development practices and resources and improving 21st century teaching and learning. FIZZ will be an ongoing service offered and managed by the Friday Institute."
"In collaboration with a wide range of educational organizations and educators, the Connected Educators project is increasing the quality, accessibility, and connectedness of existing and emerging online communities of practice."
"Adobe Youth Voices Essentials provides free curricula and tools for educators to inspire young people to create digital media on issues they care about. Based on the best practices of educators from around the world, our curricula promotes youth expression, creativity, and engagement, helping young people build critical 21st century technology and life skills."
"Having started a half dozen MOOC's in the recent months, I have found most of them tend to share a common trait. Many MOOC's currently represent a sort of parody of higher education's worst practices, its most spectacular delusions about itself."
"There's a lot at stake and that means plenty of outlets resort to illicit practices (read: faux users and spambots) to improve their reputation. In a Gartner study, analysts found that by 2014, between 10 and 15 percent of social media reviews will be faked."
"My question is about what tools do you think I should use to connect students with genres or communities of practice based on their personal interests"
Powerful Instructional Tools for Instructors and Students
Delivers an automatic grading solution for math and science courses.
Reinforces student learning through practice and instant feedback.
Offers instructors a wide selection of textbooks and advanced teaching tools.
if curation is done accurately and fairly, it "is of tremendous benefit to the creators of the content, because it brings them many more eyeballs, a lot more traffic, which they can monetize." Now, curation is a common practice among news organizations of all statures.