Group items tagged

"Traditional educators, classrooms, and brick-and-mortar schools are no longer necessary to access information. Instead, things like blogs and wikis, as well as remote collaborations and an emphasis on 'critical thinking' skills are the coins of the realm in this new kingdom. Yet the national dialogue on education reform focuses on using technology to update the traditional education model, failing to reassess the fundamental design on which it is built. In 'Why School?,' educator, author, parent and blogger Will Richardson challenges traditional thinking about education - questioning whether it still holds value in its current form. How can schools adjust to this new age? Or students? Or parents? In this provocative read, Richardson provides an in-depth look at how connected educators are beginning to change their classroom practice. Ultimately, 'Why School?' serves as a starting point for the important conversations around real school reforms that must ensue, offering a bold plan for rethinking how we teach our kids, and the consequences if we don't."

Edited by Terry Anderson and Fathi Elloumi, is concerned with assisting providers of online education with useful tools to carry out the teaching and learning transactions online.

Initial Findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project ~ Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Not a perfect summary, but regardless great online resource! This book should be in your teaching library!

A Checklist for Inclusive Teaching

"Traditional practices (with respect to teaching students but also to raising children and managing employees) often consist of what might be called a "doing to" -- as opposed to a "working with" -- approach, the point being to act on people to achieve a specific goal."

As we continue to discuss important issues such as access, affordability, and personalized learning in higher education, we would be helped by having a richer understanding of the changes that are already occurring. I would like to offer a more descriptive view to capture the growing number of approaches enabled by educational technology. The following is certainly not exhaustive, since the field is rapidly changing. In addition, not all of these models will end up thriving in the long term. My intention is simply to describe some of the primary models and ideally to reduce some of the confusion evident in public discussions.

"Exploring the benefits of Open Educational Resources for media education. Coventry Open Media Classes is a JISC funded project giving open access to educational resources, networks of subject specialists, professional practitioners and learning communities"

"MyOpenMath runs on the free, open source, IMathAS platform, providing free hosted use of this platform in support of free, open textbooks. The intent is to provide classroom use of the platform, without any required cost to students, for schools wanting a managed install of the IMathAS platform, and to provide students self-study opportunities."

This website offers an alternative way to approach and design how people work together. It provides a menu of thirty-three Liberating Structures to replace or complement conventional practices.

We support the creation, sharing, and proliferation of effective, affordable, and quality textbook content. We embrace disruptive technologes, open education resources and new higher education models that bring together for-profit, nonprofit, and government entities.

"a MOOC that will address how artistic practices can engage in questions of reconciliation, most particularly in the Canadian context of residential schools and the associated and ongoing Truth and Reconciliation Commission."

How does copyright regulate the movement of ideas in universities today? How much do we pay for acquiring knowledge, and to whom? What are alternatives to the coursepack, the traditional means of giving students course materials? This series of five comics explore these questions and more.

Mark McGuire, Applied Sciences, U of Otago Blog: http://markmcguire.net Twitter: @mark_mcguire

This post will review existing literature on Open Educational Resources, introducing five critiques: 1.) An under-theorisation of 'openness', in which the concepts of positive and negative liberty will be used to suggest a neglect of coherent theorisation concerning the practice of self-directed learning. 2.) The simultaneous privileging and rejection of institutional authority, where OER literature will be shown to endorse the reputations of established institutions while claiming liberation from them. 3.) The diminishing of the role of pedagogy, in which OER will be aligned with an untheorised learner-centred model of education. 4.) Humanistic assumptions of unproblematic self-direction and autonomy, and 5.) an alignment with the needs of capital, in which a Foucauldian interpretation of subjectivity will offer alternative perspectives on the notions of power and emancipation in OER discourse. It is suggested that these critiques may provide a framework for OER to develop a theoretically rigorous area of scholarship.

This article describes a framework for evolving innovations to ensure effective local adaptation and shows how this framework helped to scale up three promising practices in teacher professional development.

Creating a brand new class or setting out to transform an existing curriculum can be a daunting task for new, as well as experienced, instructors. Although courses may vary in size, subject matter and level, a systematic process will help you plan and structure your course so as to effectively reach desired instructional goals.

Faculty Cyber Connections - Online Module Design Workbook

A refereed e-journal to advance research, theory, and practice in open and distance learning worldwide.

By: Terry Anderson