EDUC 439/639 Social Networking - Fall 2012

"While 96% of chief academic officers of colleges and universities believe that their institutions are very or somewhat effective at preparing students for the workforce, only 11% of business leaders strongly agree."

"An exciting path forward in achieving the NGDLE vision is a next generation learning system designed to create great learning experiences that improve learning outcomes. This learning system will understand learning outcomes, learner assessment, the learner record, and how to launch the right learning moments for each student."

"If we want to see our digital learning environments evolve quickly and in a particular direction, we need to understand what evolution means. What are the generational changes that have happened so far, and what were the drivers for those changes?"

"The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers surveyed over 250 American colleges and universities and found that 39 percent of Americans schools witnessed a decline in international applications in the last year."

"An adequate education in web literacy would provide a framework for understanding the internet. It's not just about learning to type or to use a computer or smartphone, nor is it about mastering a programming language like JavaScript. It's about the gulf in between. Web literacy requires understanding the difference between a web browser, a search engine, or an app, and being able to leverage each. It's about knowing how to evaluate online content, and knowing how to differentiate between the credible and the dishonest. It's about the ability to thwart phishing attempts, to craft strong passwords, and to control how personal data is collected and used."

"It's as if many Americans are still thinking of higher ed in a mid-20th-century sense, as a public good we support, and haven't quite caught on with the reality of privatization"

"New World of Work provides free lessons and videos to help instructors and trainers teach 21st Century College/Career Ready Skills"

"OpenSalt is a powerful tool for creating and managing competency frameworks. PCG provides a hosted service for managing and providing CASE API interfaces and support and maitenance for the platfrom. OpenSALT is also an Open Srouce platfrom you can run yourself or contrbute to. You can learn more about open salt "

"With OpenNow, Cengage is sending its clearest signal yet that it is serious about OER. Taking OER materials freely available online from sites such as OpenStax, Cengage has added its own assessments, content and technology to the materials, which will be delivered through an "intuitive, outcomes-based" platform that can be integrated into students' learning management systems. Focusing on general education, OpenNow has launched with courses in psychology, American government and sociology, and more courses in science, economics and the humanities will be available this fall."

"The first part of this opinion piece finished by reporting there are over one hundred different models and frameworks claiming to describe the nature of digital literacies. Given the messy topography of the field this follow up blog post briefly describes some of the higher profile or more widely known frameworks from the United States, United Kingdom and Europe. The discussion identifies an inherent tension between universal and contextual definitions of digital literacies, and finishes with an example of a current Irish initiative. This local example (for me), and the other major models critically reviewed below, illustrate why we need to challenge some of our taken-for-granted assumptions, and metaphorically 'get off the tracks' in order to develop more transformative frameworks for digital literacies."

"A framework for entry-level web literacy & 21st Century skills. Explore the map by selecting what you want to learn more about, to see definitions and activities."

"Even smart people are shockingly bad at analyzing sources online. This might be an actual solution."

"The study looked at performance in an introductory biology course and found that women performed worse on average than did men in tests in the course. But the study also found that the women outperformed men in laboratory work and written assignments, suggesting that the tests may not be capturing the knowledge of women as well as other forms of assessment."

"Not everyone will successfully navigate the shifting jobs market. Those most at risk of technological disruption are men in blue-collar jobs, many of whom reject taking less "masculine" roles in fast-growing areas such as health care. But to keep the numbers of those left behind to a minimum, all adults must have access to flexible, affordable training. The 19th and 20th centuries saw stunning advances in education. That should be the scale of the ambition today."

"The Guide for Inclusive Teaching at Columbia helps instructors answer that question by offering five inclusive teaching principles derived from research and evidence-based practices. In addition, the guide contains practical, accessible, and usable strategies that instructors can use immediately."