Group items tagged

"Machine translation is leaps and bounds faster and more effective than my old dictionary method, but it still falls short in accuracy, functionality and delivery. That won't be the case for long. A decade from now, I would predict, everyone reading this article will be able to converse in dozens of foreign languages, eliminating the very concept of a language barrier."

The rationale for seeking open terms of both access and use is as follows. Free access provides the literature to at least five overlapping audiences: researchers who happen upon open-access research articles while browsing the Web rather than a password-protected database; researchers at institutions that cannot afford the subscription prices for the growing literature; researchers in disciplines other than that of a journal's intended audience, who would not otherwise subscribe; patients, their families, students, and other members of the public with an interest in the information but without the means to subscribe; and researchers' computers running text-mining software to analyze the literature. In addition, granting readers full reuse rights unleashes the full range of human creativity for translating, combining, analyzing, adapting, and preserving the scientific record, whereas traditional copyright arrangements in scientific publishing increasingly inhibit scholarly communication.

"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!! :)

Given his calm and reasoned academic demeanor, it is easy to miss just how provocative Erik Brynjolfsson's contention really is. ­Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and coauthor Andrew McAfee have been arguing for the last year and a half that impressive advances in computer technology-from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services-are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous for workers, the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine.

Empire State College submitted a proposal for Open SUNY after Chancellor Nancy Zimpher announced her "strategic plan." Open SUNY includes SUNY Complete, designed help SUNY students who have left the system without finishing their degree to complete their education, and SUNY REAL (Recognition of Experiential and Academic Learning). Empire State College has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation to develop SUNY REAL, which will assess nontraditional learning experiences. In a press release, Zimpher called it "a unique opportunity for military veterans, workers, and others to translate their life experiences into college credit," saying it will decrease time to a degree and save students money.

As more and more mechanisms are built to provide meme-tracking data on social media campaigns, marketers are able to provide more and more dazzling charts and graphs on reach and impact. Social media memes are a high impact, low cost way to show audience engagement. When that engagement is good, it's great. When that engagement is faux-bad (in the case of Hamm's junk), it's also great. While it's not always possible to demonstrate that audience engagement translates into ratings, or sales, or donations, engagement is a good thing in and of itself, right?

"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."

" 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."

"On page 175 of the document, I included a simple diagram titled "The Networked Teacher". It was produced to support my discovery of emerging teacher networks supported by the advancement of social software. Of any idea in the dissertation, this particular theory and diagram may have had the greatest appeal, especially to those who were experiencing this phenomenon. The diagram has been reused, remixed, redistributed and used in hundreds of presentations by educators around the world. Below, I have included the evolution of a simple diagram as evidenced by several linguistic translations and a video inspired by the concept."

Cool example of the power of openness, and how ideas can be remixed for different contexts when the proper copyright licensing is applied from the get-go.

"Problem: You need to provide textbooks for 1500 students in CITY NOT FOUND schools. But because the textbook you currently use costs $80, once you buy a textbook you hold on to it for 7 years before replacing it. This translates into both (1) out-of-date textbooks and (2) textbooks that students are not allowed to actively study with - they can't write, highlight, or take notes in their books because another 6 years worth of students after them have to use the books, too."

With the new funding, he [Andrew Ng, Coursera co-founder] said, the company plans to focus on several key areas, including: New mobile apps (coming in the next few months) Deeper international expansion through translation and distribution partnerships Opening up Coursera to enable third-party apps and integrations (long term, the plan is to open up APIs, but in the short term they'll enable university partners to integrate other apps with Coursera) New features to encourage more collaboration between students When I pointed this out on Twitter, Burck Smith of StraighterLine got it right when he said "Sounds like an LMS".

As you beginning to explore online delivery of your courses, a natural question is how do you translate what you currently are doing as you transition your course online?

"Universities that thrive in this new era will embrace their role as curator and translator. They will integrate best-in-class programs that are responsive to the workforce needs of the time. They will develop digital, clickable credentials that more clearly convey the unique skills and competencies that make up a degree."

"in higher education, we do not have a common language to discuss the value of a college credit. At an event hosted by Jobs for the Future and Higher Education Advocates,called Paving New Pathways: Today's Students, New Credentials, and the Next HEA, I noticed a recurring theme: There is a serious issue with college credit transfer policies across postsecondary education. Courses that count for credit at one institution do not "translate" to another. This issue has real consequences on student success and degree completions."

"If we can crack through political sarcasm, everything else will be easier,"