unbc_ctlt

"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."

Inspired by the work and life of Dr. John Slatin, an accessibility movement developed on the University of Texas at Austin campus

web accessibility tool that ensures both static and dynamic content 

Compatibility tables for support of HTML5, CSS3, SVG and more in desktop and mobile browsers.

Why Canada's new copyright bill remains flawed

Podcasts from Anthropology and Canadian Studies classes in downtown Victoria with aim to develop entirely free sets of curricula that are generated by and through community conversation.

Are the current formal programs providing the skills and knowledge needed in the 21st century, and indeed to participate meaningfully in MOOCs and other forms of digital self-learning? And can they learn from MOOCs and how they operate?

Siemens synthesizes some MOOC conversation over the last few weeks and describes the role of MOOCs in education.

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.

Study finds "blended" or "hybrid" learning is at least as effective-possibly more effective-than traditional university courses with three hours weekly of face-time with professors.

Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems.

Allen G. Sens (Ph.D, Queen's) specializes in international relations, with a research and teaching focus on international security. He has a particular interest in armed conflict and conflict management, and maintains research agendas on peace operations, peacebuilding, European security, and Canadian foreign and defence policy. Dr. Sens is currently Chair of the Faculty of Arts Curriculum Committee. He is also currently serving as a Special Advisor to the Provost and Vice President Students. Allen Sens is also co-coordinator of the Terry Project, and is a co-teacher of ASIC 200, an integrated Arts/Science course in global issues. He is a graduate of the UBC Certificate Program in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In 2003, Dr. Sens was a recipient of the UBC Killam Teaching Prize.

Class2Go is Stanford's internal platform for on-line courses. Class2Go is intended to be an open platform for learning and research. Professors will have direct access to the data for their classes to learn how their students learn. We will facilitate experiments. This could be A/B/N testing of how different things affect student learning, or even bespoke code to try out interesting new features.

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.

DERN is a network for, leaders, researchers and educators interested in the use of digital technologies for learning. Users of DERN may have an interest in ICT, media, pedagogy, emerging technologies and related areas and are probably well briefed in the area of elearning research, as well as scholars seeking details about what research has been done, possibly for their own research purposes.

"Interactivity isnot easy--indeed, it shouldn't be easy--but that it is what the university should both practice and teach"

"A few year ago, I was a bit curious about how well learners can evaluate each other. I designed a small experiment to find out. It goes like this: "

Contact North ǀ Contact Nord, Ontario's Distance Education and Training Network, works in partnership with Ontario's 24 public colleges, 20 public universities and over 250 public essential skills and training providers to increase and improve online and distance learning opportunities for Ontarians.

This paper is based on research to identify common factors that contribute to the effective strategic leadership of teaching and learning centers.

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.