EDUC 439/639 Social Networking - Fall 2012

"one of the reasons he chose a wiki format for the site is because it forces students to collaborate, listen, relate, prioritize, and compromise. Rather than the "stream" web we are so used to (with blogs and various social media platforms), the wiki format provides an opportunity for students not just to learn critical digital literacy and research skills, but also how to work together in an online environment."

"The primary purpose of this wiki is to provide a place for students to fact-check, annotate, and provide context to the different news stories that show up in their Twitter and Facebook feeds. It's like a student-driven Snopes, but with a broader focus: we don't aim to just investigate myths, but to provide context and sanity to all the news - from the article about voter fraud to the health piece on a new cancer treatment."

"The prototype Tracker is based on a concise set of questions which have been intensively tested with HE and FE students for readability and ease of response. It builds on resources such as the Jisc/NUS Digital Student Experience benchmarking tool, and the Jisc guide to Enhancing the Digital Student Experience: a strategic approach. The questions cover issues that are important to learners and/or to staff with a focus on the learning experience."

"The Digital Framework is a comprehensive collection of digital capabilities, skills and competencies that NTU has identified as relevant across the institution. The Framework consists of a variety of areas of practice and each area is split into four levels of development. See both the CPLD website and the new NOW NTU Digital Framework learning room for further information about the Framework."

"This Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (Framework) grows out of a belief that information literacy as an educational reform movement will realize its potential only through a richer, more complex set of core ideas. During the fifteen years since the publication of the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,1 academic librarians and their partners in higher education associations have developed learning outcomes, tools, and resources that some institutions have deployed to infuse information literacy concepts and skills into their curricula. However, the rapidly changing higher education environment, along with the dynamic and often uncertain information ecosystem in which all of us work and live, require new attention to be focused on foundational ideas about that ecosystem. Students have a greater role and responsibility in creating new knowledge, in understanding the contours and the changing dynamics of the world of information, and in using information, data, and scholarship ethically. Teaching faculty have a greater responsibility in designing curricula and assignments that foster enhanced engagement with the core ideas about information and scholarship within their disciplines. Librarians have a greater responsibility in identifying core ideas within their own knowledge domain that can extend learning for students, in creating a new cohesive curriculum for information literacy, and in collaborating more extensively with faculty."

"The Teacher Challenge is made up of free professional learning challenges where educators are stepped through weekly tasks that increase their skills while being supported by mentors. The Challenge is open to any educator who wants to increase their skills."

"Provides ideas and resources to inspire the strategic development of digital literacies - those capabilities which support living, learning and working in a digital society"

"In 2014 the UCISA Digital Capabilities Group (then the User Skills Group) launched the inaugural Digital Capabilities survey of the UK higher education sector. The survey focussed on what has been variously referred to as digital capabilities, digital literacies or digital competencies. The need to improve the country's digital capabilities has been highlighted in a House of Lords committee report published in February 2015. Make or break: the UK's digital future notes that the higher education sector "has not responded to the urgent need for reskilling" and calls for institutions to develop courses to give students the skills they need."

"There's already a lot of research into how we form impressions of people based on facial features alone. We see a picture of someone and almost immediately make an assessment of that person. As much as we know we shouldn't, we judge books by their covers."

"Jeannette M. Wing actually phrases it, "computational thinking" in her article on the subject, and writes that "Computational thinking is a fundamental skill for everyone, not just for computer scientists. To reading, writing, and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every child's analytical ability.""

"the reports really show that the shift to a contingent academic work force was motivated by economic (and, I would argue, political) concerns -- disempowering the faculty by making them economically precarious of course reduces their influence and weakens shared governance, giving administrators more power."

"When I think about my own definition of a "meaningful assessment," I think the test must meet certain requirements. The assessment must have value other than "because it's on the test." It must intend to impact the world beyond the student "self," whether it is on the school site, in the outlying community, the state, country, world, etc. Additionally, the assessment should incorporate skills that students need for their future. That is, the test must assess skills other than merely content. It must also test how eloquently the students communicate their content."

"unglue (v. t.) 6. To reward authors and publishers for sharing books with the world."

"The Live Lingua Project is part of our commitment to helping as many people as possible learn a foreign language, even if they can't afford our paid Skype language lessons. Part of the earnings of Live Lingua go to hosting, maintaining and constantly updating this area. This project is the internet's largest collection of free public domain language learning materials. It hosts thousands of free ebooks, audios and videos for over 130 languages from around the world. One of our missions is to make language learning accessible to everybody. Enjoy."

"early MOOCs failed to incorporate active learning approaches or any of the other innovations in teaching and learning common in other online courses. The three principal MOOC providers-Coursera, Udacity, and edX-wandered into a territory they thought was uninhabited. Yet it was a place that was already well occupied by accomplished practitioners who had thought deeply and productively over the last couple of decades about how students learn online. Like poor, baffled Columbus, MOOC makers believed they had "discovered" a new world. It's telling that in their latest offerings, these vendors have introduced a number of active-learning innovations."

"Who knows - maybe one day learning scientists will be as accurate at predicting learning as weathermen are at predicting the weather. While that may sound like a dig against both professions, I actually mean it simply as an acknowledgment of how incredibly complex and dynamic both phenomena are."

"DeVaney compared campus innovation to Japanese pottery. Specifically, he invoked the ancient practice of Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken bowls with brightly-colored laquers, so that the break becomes part of the object's history that is celebrated rather than disguised. "By preserving the damage, by showing that history of an object or an institution, we're able to enlighten those around us," he says. "We're able to illuminate pathways. We're able to help other institutions take advantage of the wisdom that we gained from the journeys that we were on.""

""Learning science" is becoming a buzzword, but it means experimenting with new approaches and learning from what doesn't work as well as what does, writes Michael Feldstein. And everyone who teaches for a living must do it."