EDUC 439/639 Social Networking - Fall 2012

"We're keeping track of major college and university closings, mergers, acquisitions and other consolidation from 2016 to the present."

"The well-being of public college instructors is far more important to national life than anything that happens at Harvard."

"My efforts to introduce zombies into the classroom pulled from all of these techniques - getting students engaged in material in a new way, testing their understanding of theoretical constructs and real-world issues, and contrasting different views of humanity and culture. However, for this undergraduate exercise, I also wanted a few other things for the students - the chance to demonstrate what they had learned throughout the course, show critical thinking skills, and push themselves to think outside the box. Most importantly, I also wanted them to enjoy it."

"This index represents a compilation of activities to help instructors to plan their online and blended courses. A complete description of each activity is given, along with examples when possible."

"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."

Decentralized open source social networking service. In the wake of G+ shutting down, could be an alternative to Silicon Valley behemoths.

"A new online data tool being made public Monday finds a strong correlation between where people are raised and their chances of achieving the American dream."

"You'll hear a reasonable amount of discussion about "new traditional" students today. But the common assumption - in Washington at least - seems to be that they require more vocational education to fill a "skills gap," particularly in STEM or technical fields. Or that they need quicker, cheaper paths to a degree."

"She had, she concluded, 'changed in ways I would never have predicted. I now read on the surface and very quickly; in fact, I read too fast to comprehend deeper levels, which forced me constantly to go back and reread the same sentence over and over with increasing frustration.' She had lost the 'cognitive patience' that once sustained her in reading such books. She blamed the internet.""

Referenced by @tealia "Higher education institutions that want to significantly increase their student success outcomes must design their policies, practices, and organizational culture to promote the engagement and leadership of their faculty and staff. Colleges that invest in designing engagement and empowerment strategies that leverage the talent and dedication of faculty and staff are likely to produce more meaningful and sustainable results."

"In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and, above all, to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world."

"Starting next fall, the University of Pennsylvania will offer what it says is the first online bachelor's degree at an Ivy League college, an illustration of the growing credibility and popularity of online education."

"Conflicts arise, however, because accessibility accommodations can sometimes complicate efforts to quickly disseminate flexible learning options to a broad student population. In some cases, institutions are responding to such conflicts in extreme ways. For example, one institution simply took down large volumes of online content that had been provided in the spirit of UDL but that did not meet accessibility standards; in other instances, colleges and universities that feel overwhelmed by a conflict have done nothing at all to address it."

"Online education has been touted as a way to increase access to education. But it's increasingly unclear if online learning is living up to its promise for students, even as digital learning makes its way into more institutions' offerings. The quality of online courses still varies drastically, and research shows there are major racial disparities in digital-learning outcomes. This has all left us asking: Who does online education really serve?"

"The kalamazoo promise was simple. Live here, go to school, and your tuition is paid for. But with scale comes complication. The idea of free college is still in its infancy-it took 28 years to get the Morrill Act right, and it's only been 13 since the Kalamazoo Promise. But in the current political climate, the path forward is murky and winding, and that makes it hard for the movement to maintain the momentum it needs. The window of opportunity for nationwide tuition- or debt-free college is still ajar. The next couple of elections could close it completely or throw it wide open.  "

"Every dollar a student can save matters. That is why Virginia recently passed legislation (HB 454) to mandate that every public institution of higher education in the state create a framework to adopt and use open educational resources and low-cost resources across the state."

"Automation is a difference in determining whether or not institutions merely dabble with badging vs. truly invest in a sustainable badging program that benefits the students."

"there are now also websites and people on Twitter who say that they can send bots into games, adding sometimes dozens of extra players, thus overloading and crashing games."