Group items tagged

Reform Symposium recordings. Haven't seen any so can't comment on quality. "RSCON3 took place from Friday, July 29 to Sunday, July 31*, 2011 and was our biggest yet global online conference for everyone concerned with education. With 80 presenters and 12 keynote speakers it was an absolutely incredible event! Organised by educators for educators,"

five experts - Times Higher Education online article - views include those of the head of JISC in the Uk

Open University - Centre for research in education and educational technology (CREET)

"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?"

"Concern is growing among so-called distance students, providers of distance education, and Maori. It is that the priorities of the Government's Tertiary Education Strategy do not address the societal need, particularly for women, for accessible second chance education opportunities."

"This user guide is for educational organisations interested in developing open education practices using popular social media. It is based on an analysis of the Otago Polytechnic experience 2006-2009, where a small group of teachers used social media to develop open education practices."

"Being connected changes learning. When those connections are global, the experience of knowledge development is dramatically altered as well. Over the past four years, a growing number of educators have started experimenting with the teaching and learning process in order to answer critical questions: "How does learning change when formal boundaries are reduced? What is the future of learning? What role with educators play in this future? What types of institutions does society need to respond to hyper-growth of knowledge and rapid dissemination of information? How do the roles of learners and educators change when knowledge is ubiquitous? ... (The result is) a MOOC with each week being facilitated by an innovative thinker, researcher, and scholar. Over 30 of them. From 11 different countries."

School of Open will launch its first courses during Open Education week March 11 - 15 2013. Four facilitated courses launched during March 11 week - two may be relevant to NZ (i) Copyright 4 Educators (Aus) and Writing Wikipedia articles: the basics and beyond. 

"A report issued by the United States Government Accountability Office on June 6th confirms a trend of the educational publishing industry: textbook costs to students at higher education institutions are rising 6% per year on average, and have risen 82% over the last decade. The study, ordered by Congress, looks at the efforts of publishers and colleges to increase the availability of textbook price information and "unbundled" buying options as required under provisions in the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA"

"Evidence shows that engaged students perform better academically than disinterested students. Measurement of engagement with education is difficult and imprecise, especially in large student cohorts. Traditional measurements such as summary statistics derived from assessment are crude secondary measures of engagement at best and do not provide much support for educators to work with students and curate engagement during teaching periods. We have used academic-related student contributions to a public social network as a proxy for engagement. Statistical summaries and novel data visualisation tools provide subtle and powerful insights into online student peer networks. Analysis of data collected shows that network visualisation can be an important curation tool for educators interested in cultivating student engagement."

Guest editors Gail Boldt and Bill Ayers have asked 14 leading educators to address the politics of the teacher accountability movement in America. Who benefits and who is hurt? What is gained and what is lost? How can we move forward with a more hopeful and inclusive vision of our educational future? >>> All of the contributors are motivated by an abiding commitment to democratic ideals and respect for the complex work of teachers even as they encourage the reader to take back the conversation about school reform in America.

"It was just 18 months ago that we were living in the "Year of the MOOC." Massive open online courses-MOOC for short-were supposed to revolutionize the way people learned and deliver high-quality education to the masses. But the idea faced a tough 2013. The co-founder of Udacity, an early pioneer in free online education, admitted that his company initially had a "lousy product," while studies showed that hardly any students were actually completing the courses offered by such services at all."

Chalmers, D. and O'Brien, M. Fraser, K. (ed) (2005) Education development units and the enhancement of university teaching. Education development and leadership in higher education: Developing an effective institutional strategy pp. 50-71. Routledge Falmer , Abingdon, UK

"It is at once a statement of principle, a statement of strategy and a statement of commitment. It is meant to spark dialogue, to inspire action and to help the open education movement grow. Open education is a living idea. As the movement grows, this idea will continue to evolve. There will be other visions initiatives and declarations beyond Cape Town. This is exactly the point. The Cape Town signatories have committed to developing further strategies, especially around open technology and teaching practices."

"The new catch phrase in education is "collaborative learning." Yet, despite substantial research suggesting the benefits of adopting collaborative learning, educators and students often abandon collaboration because of the overwhelming resistance to collaboration. Resistance can be overcome by focusing on the oft-ignored rapport-building phase in the implementation of collaborative learning techniques in educational settings. "

"The Higher Education Academy published the book Transforming Higher Education Through Technology Enhanced Learning in December 2009. Although the book has its genesis in the e-learning Benchmarking & Pathfinder Programme led by the Higher Education Academy from 2005-2008 readers will find that the book contains a thought-provoking edited collection which offers far more than a straightforward account of outcomes of one national programme; you will find that it is both broad in scope and reflective in tone"

Upcoming future of education webinars. There are some interesting topics, especially in the Education for a Digital World 2.0 Series.

"Is lecture capture the single worst example of poor educational technology use in higher education?"

Interesting post and some great comments on the role of the Khan Academy in education and whether it pedagogically sound.

"The Connexions Consortium is a group of organizations and individuals, including the world's foremost leaders in education, who work together to advance open source educational technology and open access educational content. Members join the Consortium to work and exchange ideas with other members"