Group items tagged

As we increasingly move toward an environment of instant and infinite information, it becomes less important for students to know, memorize, or recall information, and more important for them to be able to find, sort, analyze, share, discuss, critique, and create information. They need to move from being simply knowledgeable to being knowledge-able.

"In the context of a growing emphasis on eLearning, most commonly facilitated by enterprise-scale Learning Management System and a range of institutionally managed and supported communication and collaboration software tools, and in an environment of increasing emphasis on intellectual property rights management and quality assurance, how do universities (and other educational institutions) respond to the use of free, open-access tools in common use by their students? What are the potential educational uses of such tools? What are the current practices of use of these tools within educational institutions? What are the issues, risks and hidden costs? What are the advantages and benefits?"

Enterprise immersive software is a collection of collaboration, communication, and productivity tools unified via a 3D or pseudo-3D visual environment. In this computer-generated environment, one or more people engage in work activities like meetings, conferences, and learning and training. The software provides a shared, interactive, multichannel experience through presence awareness, voice chat, active speaker indication, text chat, and many other features, often including avatars. The Enterprise Immersive Software Decision-Making Guide is a use case-based guide designed to aid business decision makers in the enterprise immersive software selection process. In this report, we present "if/then" scenarios and highlight good-fit vendors for common situations, with a focus on the most prevalent use cases: meetings, conferences, and learning and training. The report offers guidance on how to: 1) ask core business questions to frame the discussion, 2) choose a research-and-demo, do-it-yourself, or combination approach, 3) identify requirements based on your use case, and 4) filter your options based on important limiters.

Awesome little widget that plugs into your browser and grabs creative commons metadata to allow properly formed attributions.

"Our Space is a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments. Through role-playing activities and reflective exercises, students are asked to consider the ethical responsibilities of other people, and whether and how they behave ethically themselves online. These issues are raised in relation to five core themes that are highly relevant online: identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility, and participation. For more information, download the Introduction to Our Space [pdf], FAQ [pdf], and Road Map [pdf]. All curricular units and lessons are free and available for download below. The full casebook [pdf - 133MB] can be downloaded using the link at the bottom of the page." Critiqued by @downes for not addressing the issue properly "This is "a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments." The content divides into five major subject areas: participation, identity, privacy, credibility, and authorship and ownership. I'm not sure these are the top five things I would list when thinking of ethical dimensions of new media environments. While it's useful that there is a section on flamers, lurkers and mentors I think there should be something about hate, racism and bulling. And while a section on credibility is a good idea, it should be based on the principles of reason and inference, not outrageously bad definitions like this: "Networking-the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information." And this: "Collective intelligence-evidence that participants in knowledge communities pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal." Wow, those are just wrong. Maybe I need to review this and criticize it more closely."

Doug Belshaw on Openness in education and its fit with digital literacy. Watch slides at end if not seen before.

"Focusing on these essential elements of digital literacies and the principles we wish to instil in young people is, I believe, a better way to teach IT than a narrow focus on procedural software skills. For more on the essential elements of digital literacies, see this Slideshare presentation..."

The NZ Creative Commons site

"AbstractWe present a case study to evaluate the use of a Wimba Voice Board to support asynchronous audio discussion. We discuss the learning strategy and pedagogic rationale when a Voice Board was implemented within an MA module for language learners, enabling students to create learning objects and facilitating peer-to-peer learning. Previously students studying the module had communicated using text-based synchronous and asynchronous discussion only. A common criticism of text-based media is the lack of non-verbal communication. Audio communication is a richer medium where use of pitch, tone, emphasis and inflection can increase personalisation and prevent misinterpretation."

"The same top nine characteristics are common between online and face-to-face students, with only the order for the two bolded characteristics changing. Responsiveness is more highly valued online, moving five positions."

Interesting - on the dissonance of the CC-BY license.

Excellent story of the journey to openness and the hugely positive difference it made to this leading photographers business and approach to life.

Coursera prevents other entities using courses as part of some other course elsewhere e.g. at UoW.

Google FAQ

I think this is an important stating of the assumptions built into technology and the outcomes resulting from these assumptions and inherent biases. "... we need to understand how the shape of information access controls the intellectual (and, ultimately, financial) opportunities of some college students. If we emphasize the consequences of differential access, we see one facet of the digital divide; if we ask about how these consequences are produced, we are asking about digital redlining. The comfortable elision in "edtech" is dangerous; it needs to be undone by emphasizing the contexts, origins, aims, and ideologies of technologies."

Twanking - retweeting mentions of yourself.