Group items tagged

"It was great to see New Zealand start-up Swiftpoint honoured at the CES show here in Vegas for the novel design of its pint-sized finger-controlled computer mouse."

Clever analysis of why the iPad works for people.

"This knowledge base features learning theories that address how people learn. A resource useful for scholars of various fields such as educational psychology, instructional design, and human-computer interaction. Below is the index of learning theories, grouped in somewhat arbitrary categories. Note that this website is an iterative project and these entries are a work in progress; please leave comments with suggestions, corrections, and additional references."

"Often, the word competency and skill are used interchangeably. While they are related, they are not the same. A competency is a demonstrated ability to perform a particular job or task. A competency includes skills, but also behaviors and the ability to apply those skills in order to perform a job or task. For example, a teacher may know how to use a computer and productivity software (skill), but may not know how to use those skills to increase collaboration and critical thinking in their students (competency)."

So even the people who hate something (the web? Social media? networking? computers?) are now starting to join FaceBook. We need a timescale on this as well for a start.

"Where governments dream up projects like the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), the resistance seeks to grant kids a "Licence to Tinker" - to demystify the technology by providing tools and ideas that enable them to understand how modern networked devices work."

Nuancing Prensky and introducing the 'digital stranger'. Useful although not sure how much of a cultural and economic argument is being layered on.

Very short survey on cloud computing in HE

"... wearable computers allow people to do things like google information straight into their eyeballs while chatting on the street corner - or project a map overlay on the street in front of them, labeling every store. Or turn the local vacant lot into a wonderland filled with Pokemon characters ready to do battle. This is an augmented reality scenario. Now our technology can actually do this, using smart phones as a crude mobile interface. In these demo videos below, we're getting a first glimpse of what happens when the internet comes out of the box and into the real world"

This paper summarises the results of the Reflective Learning, Future Thinking research seminar jointly held by ALT, SURF and ILTA at Trinity College Dublin. At this seminar 50 leading researchers from three nations came together to share thoughts about the direction of learning technology development. Summary At the heart of all three discussions we still see concerns about status and valorisation of knowledge, disciplines and roles. Repository discussions touch on quality and gate keeping, portfolio discussions touch on the ownership of identity as a learner, while ubiquitous computing and informal learning touches on fundamental questions of access and learner control.

Leafsnap - ID trees by taking a photo of their leaves on your phone.

"Xournal + a cheap tablet computer + a projector = a fairly cost effective interactive white board."

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.

Image of 6 seat group work tables with computer screens

The invulnerable Mac falls prey to a Flash lookalike.

website that links to a lecturer's laptop giving a score for how many students are confused - a 'confusometer'. Students can click the 'understood' button if they understand the followup explanation. Works with iPhone, laptop or tablet browser. 

"During the fall of 1999,  two colleagues and I taught an unusual class, 'The American Experience in Vietnam.'   Neither the subject nor the approach of team-teaching were new; instead what we developed was a pedagogy using a variety of information technologies to organize one class simultaneously across three campuses and disciplines."

"A total of 125 students taking a first year seminar course for pre-health professional majors participated in this study (70 in the experimental group and 55 in the control group). With the experimental group, Twitter was used for various types of academic and co-curricular discussions. Engagement was quantified by using a 19-item scale based on the National Survey of Student Engagement. To assess differences in engagement and grades, we used mixed effects analysis of variance (ANOVA) models, with class sections nested within treatment groups. We also conducted content analyses of samples of Twitter exchanges. The ANOVA results showed that the experimental group had a significantly greater increase in engagement than the control group, as well as higher semester grade point averages. Analyses of Twitter communications showed that students and faculty were both highly engaged in the learning process in ways that transcended traditional classroom activities."

Jim Farmer (on Seb Schmoller's blog) examines the cases of Richard O'Dwyer and Kim Dotcom in relation to actions on the Internet that may be called out by foreign jurisdictions - criticise China on a NZ based website anyone?

Thought you WCELers might be interested in this... Dean ICT Education: Australia vs NZ by Prof John Hosking, Formerly Auckland Uni, now Australia National University Auckland University's Professor John Hosking was a leading figure in New Zealand's Computer Science community. However in 2011 he followed Phar Lap, Russell Crowe and Pavlova across the ditch, in his case taking up the role as Dean of the College of Engineering and CS at the Australian National University in Canberra.