Group items tagged

"Instructional design is, or should be, nothing less than pedagogy intelligent about the medium within which learning happens. If you teach in an LMS, you are an instructional designer. If you teach in a room, you are an instructional designer. At our institutions, instructional designers or engineers or technologists should be as filled in about pedagogy as teachers are. They should not content themselves to be carriers of content from one format to the next. They should be experts in digital delivery, and consultants to collaborate with."

"Why wipe the slate clean? Why erase such knowledge? Why not use it as a foundation to build upon?"

Via Stephen Downes's recent post; a nice accessible summary discussion for non-techies about how technology is changing teaching. Good teaching resource, I think.

Digital Pedagogy Lab is host of a five-day practical institute that explores the role and application of digital technology in teaching. The institute has three tracks, providing hands-on practice with and discussion of networked learning, digital identity, new media, and critical digital pedagogy.

This Institute is almost full (and a tad pricy) in August in lovely Madison, WI. Interesting stuff.

"active learning feed" "active learning" "higher ed" "pedagogy" "lecture" "instructional strategies"

"If you've heard me speak in the last several months, you've probably heard me rail against "disposable assignments." These are assignments that students complain about doing and faculty complain about grading. They're assignments that add no value to the world - after a student spends three hours creating it, a teacher spends 30 minutes grading it, and then the student throws it away. Not only do these assignments add no value to the world, they actually suck value out of the world. Talk about an incredible waste of time and brain power (an a potentially huge source of cognitive surplus)!"

"The following is a letter to my first- and second-year music theory and aural skills students at The University of Colorado-Boulder. This is my second semester at CU, and the music students and I are still getting to know each other. For some, this will be their first semester with me; others are still getting used to my pedagogical quirks. To help frame the semester, I will have them read and discuss this open letter."

VCU School of Music putting grant funds toward innovative pedagogy.

Added on 11/13 but disappeared. Adding again.

"Research and its potentially competitive nature also pose a challenge, in that it fosters an individualistic and protective attitude during the gestation of ideas. In contrast, for Borges, originality is a vain illusion: being original is simply impossible. Rather, instead of becoming obsessed about developing a unique voice, the writer should pay homage to his precursors, lose himself by imitating the writers he admires, seek and enjoy the connections between seemingly old and new ideas, reveal or interpret their transformation. In short, the writer should first be a passionate, insightful reader. Along the same lines, American composer George Perle, coined the expression "the listening composer," alluding precisely to the mandatory connection between the timeless continuum and the individual creative spirit, each nurturing the other. "

"Praxis Network programs are allied but differently-inflected humanities education initiatives, mainly focused on graduate training, and all engaged in rethinking pedagogy and campus partnerships in relation to the digital. Among other elements, the initiatives emphasize new models of methodological training and collaborative research. Each program exists within a particular ecosystem of disciplinary expectations, institutional needs, available resources, leadership styles, and specific challenges."

Come for the argument, stay for the Monty Python clip...

"Eating your own dogfood is time well spent, a simple way to take your practice one step closer to perfection."