Group items tagged

On July 10, 2014, EDUCAUSE joined other leading higher education and library associations (listed below) in proposing a set of network neutrality principles for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to use in developing new regulations to preserve the "open Internet." These groups urged the FCC to adopt these principles in light of a recent court decision vacating two of the key network neutrality rules previously in place, which they believe creates an opportunity for Internet providers to block or degrade (e.g., arbitrarily slow) certain Internet traffic, or prioritize certain services, while relegating the online content and services of colleges, universities, and libraries to the "slow lane." The groups argue that new network neutrality rules based on these principles will ensure that the Internet remains a vital, vibrant platform for teaching, learning, research, and community support and engagement.

"Almost 25 years have passed since Chickering and Gamson offered seven principles for good instructional practices in undergraduate education. While the state of undergraduate education has evolved to some degree over that time, I think the seven principles still have a place in today's collegiate classroom. Originally written to communicate best practices for face-to-face instruction, the principles translate well to the online classroom and can help to provide guidance for those of us designing courses to be taught online."

...Just in time!! :)

"Here are a baker's dozen of the main principles of connected learning. As you will see, they form an "ecosystem," where each component influences and changes the others. These apply in any field (although differently in each field). These principles draw from constructivist, engaged "public educators" (Stuart Hall's term)  going back as far as Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey and including Howard Gardner, Franz Fanon, Jacques Rancière, and digital pedagogy theorists including Yochai Benkler, Howard Rhinegold,  Mizuko Ito, and many others.  "

"Responding to calls for additional resources to support postsecondary instructors, many vendors and organizations now offer online educational development resources. The ultimate goal is to improve instruction and student learning, but to get there, higher education institutions must examine and evaluate these tools, as well as consider the specific needs of diverse campus stakeholders. After research and discussion, the Professional and Organizational Development Network developed eight principles to guide institutions as they explore and select online educational development resources for their campus communities."

"The curb-cut principle is the idea that some accommodations intended for specific audiences provide benefits to others as well. For example, sidewalk curb cuts for wheelchair users are also beneficial for bicycles, shopping carts, and strollers. This same principle applies to digital accommodations. It can be very helpful to identify some accessibility fixes that are likely to have a greater impact than others. For example, captions are essential for students who are deaf or hard of hearing but are also beneficial to second-language learners or anyone in a noisy environment."

"A better approach is positive general principles. Tell students what you want them to do. My favorite model is the four Tribes agreements that are displayed prominently in my class and discussed and practiced every day: Attentive Listening- Pay close attention to what others are saying. Check for understanding Appreciation Only- Treat each other kindly, don't use put-downs. Right to Pass- Choose when and how much you participate. It's acceptable to simply observe. Mutual Respect- Affirm the value and uniqueness of everyone."

I used TRIBES while a principal in Camden, it does change school culure. Thanks for sharing.

"During her search for videos, Chellani discovered that many of them didn't cover foundational concepts. So she started creating her own using the digital content creation software Adobe Captivate. She also started evaluating the concepts she teaches and decided to move away from teaching "to the textbook." Without this built-in time every week, Chellani said she wouldn't be able to work on these projects. Through end-of-year conferences, Sheninger found out that other teaches had students blog in their English classes and create YouTube videos instead of traditional lab reports. "I don't know if that stuff would have happened if this time wasn't made available," Sheninger said."

"Quality in online learning can be defined in many ways: quality of content, quality of design, quality of instructional delivery, and, ultimately, quality of outcomes. On the face of it, the organizing principles of MOOCs are at odds with widely observed best practices in online education, including those advocated by my organization, the Quality Matters Program. "

"Google has funded an associate professor in the Indiana University School of Education to develop a "Big Open Online Course," or BOOC. Daniel Hickey will offer a free course in September focused on educators and titled "Assessment Practices, Principles and Policies" for as many as 500 students, funded by a $50,000 Google grant."

"Wirearchy is an emergent organizing principle that informs the ways that purposeful human activities and the structures in which they are contained is evolving from top-down direction and supervision (hierarchy's command-and-control) to champion-and-channel … championing ideas and innovation, and channeling time, energy, authority and resources to testing those ideas and the possibilities for innovation carried in those ideas."

"As edtech expert, Tony Vincent, would say, "Date the tool, but marry the ability." There will always be multiple edtech tools, programs, and products that provide similar principle functions to support student engagement. However, to achieve engagement that exceeds the element of surprise or novelty, which is often necessary as an instructional "hooking" tool, it is imperative that we place the brunt of our instructional design efforts towards building thinking skills and cognitive growth within students."

"So what makes an online class feel less like it's taught by a bot and more like it's a human-centered experience? The following three principles and related strategies will help faculty keep humans front-and-center of their online courses:"

"In recent posts I've written about how course instructors can support online learners, how to consider the needs of the learner and guide them through phases of dependency to independence. Yet what is the responsibility of the learner? What role does the online student play in his or her learning? And how can this be communicated to him or her? In this post I discuss learning models that assign responsibility to the learner, how these principles can be applied to online learning, and finally describe how instructors and institutions can hand over responsibility to the student."

With the scrambled classroom model, we are challenged to learn new possibilities, but also to design instruction based on principles we have known about for some time. In the scrambled classroom model, the innovation is not so much "online learning," but "human learning" supported by all that the 21st century brings to the table.

The first step to make a collection open is to apply an open license, but that is where the story begins. Openness to collaboration and to novel forms of user engagement are essential if cultural heritage institutions are to realise the full potential of the internet for access, innovation and digital scholarship.

"Katie Salen, executive director of nonprofit design studio Institute of Play, offers a look inside the ground-breaking school in New York City that she co-founded, Quest to Learn. The school uses core principles of game design as a framework to help students become lifelong learners and design thinkers."

"This three-week course provides a foundation for marketers and analysts seeking to understand the core principles of digital analytics and to improve business performance through better digital measurement."

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.

The open learning innovation contest invites innovators whose work embodies the principles of connected learning to submit their stories and experiences for consideration. They might be running online or offline courses, activities, learning programs, study groups, or hybrid classes or out-of-school (extra-institutional) activities having to do with independent learning and volunteer work.

The book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when everyone,and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology. A framework for making decisions about your teaching is provided, while understanding that every subject is different, and every instructor has something unique and special to bring to their teaching.The book enables teachers and instructors to help students develop the knowledge and skills they will need in a digital age: not so much the IT skills, but the thinking and attitudes to learning that will bring them success.