Group items tagged

Interesting. Dragon in a browser! Needs some work on recognition although I'm trying in  a noisy environment.  

"This visualization attempts to organize a series of emerging technologies that are likely to influence education in the upcoming decades. Despite its inherently speculative nature, the driving trends behind the technologies can already be observed, meaning it's a matter of time before these scenarios start panning out in learning environments around the world."

The sky hasn't fallen in because Australia moved to an uncapped environment but there are questions about graduating standards.

"Key Takeaways Education built around digital portfolios not only ties together various student-generated artifacts into a coherent whole but also creates an environment in which technology use has a clearly identified purpose. Hundreds of services provide free hosting and website creation tools and are ideal platforms for digital portfolios because they can support just about any type of digital content. Turning consumers of knowledge into producers of knowledge transforms learning into an active experience."

thoughtful article on the idea that path dependance has led to an academic publishing system that works but is sub-optimal in the new technology environment.

Google releases codeless development environment for Android apps. Anyone can easily (so it claims!) develop apps for android phones.

Article on student use of a VLE /  LMS using data from 2 years of surveys.

"Sophie: redefines the notion of a book to include rich media, reader feedback & conversation within a networked environment." Something for the test server?

Looks like a useful set of papers on learning and teaching online - design, tutoring, mobile, communities, assessment, social, etc

Nine evidence-based elearning guides:Tutoring on-line; Web-based course design; Learner acceptance of on-line learning and e-learning; Learning objects and repositories; Learning using mobile and hand-held devices; On-line communities; Technology-supported assessment; Learning environments; Using social software in learning.

"In a traditional teaching laboratory environment, students typically arrive at the laboratory to do an experiment without a clear idea of the practical techniques they will be using, the skills they will need, or the chemistry behind the practical."

Teaching vs research and the possible effects of an uncapped environment with funding following the student.

"Open Cobalt Alpha is the first step in a long term project to make available to all people a free and open source platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing virtual workspaces for research and education. This 3D multimedia wiki technology makes it easy to create deeply collaborative and hyperlinked multi-user virtual workspaces, virtual exhibit spaces, and game-based learning and training environments that run on all major software operating systems. By using a peer-based messaging protocol to reduce reliance on server infrastructures for support of basic in world interactions across many participants, Open Cobalt makes it possible for people hyperlink their virtual worlds via 3D portals to form a large distributed network of interconnected collaboration spaces. It also makes it possible for schools and other organizations to freely set up their own networks of public and private 3D virtual workspaces that feature integrated web browsing, voice chat, text chat, and access to remote desktop applications and services."

Hey guys. Just watched a live session online at Cisco w the developers of this system, still in development, but interesting differentiators vs 2Life, e.g. peer-to-peer, nested worlds, oh and its open-source. Thought yaz might be interested in tracking it.

Description: It took tens of thousands of years for writing to emerge after speech, thousands more before the printing press was invented, and a few hundred more for the telegraph to arrive. Today, new ways of relating are constantly created and a new communication medium emerges every time someone creates a web application-a Flickr here, a Twitter there. How can we use new media to foster the kinds of communication and community we desire in education? This presentation will discuss both successful and unsuccessful attempts to integrate emerging technologies into the classroom to create a rich virtual learning environment.

* investigated how commencing first year students and their teachers use traditional and emerging technology-based tools in their everyday lives and to support student learning * drawn on the expertise of teachers and the results of this investigation to develop and implement pedagogically sound, technology-based tools to enhance student learning in local learning environments

"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?"

In this article I want to reflect on the rhetoric of 'Web 2.0' and its potential versus actual impact. I want to suggest that we need to do more than look at how social networking technologies are being used generally as an indicator of their potential impact on education, arguing instead that we need to rethink what are the fundamental characteristics of learning and then see how social networking can be harnessed to maximise these characteristics to best effect. I will further argue that the current complexity of the digital environment requires us to develop 'schema' or approaches to thinking about how we can best harness the benefits these new technologies confer.

Comparison between elgg, google, and other free tools to build social environments.

John St. Clair's blog at Uni Mary Washington. Lots of good stuff and it also demos how UMW are using Wordpress as a learning environment for more than just blog posts.

Over time the learner has been the explorer of knowledge, its accumulator and skilled 'access-or'. In the 21st century challenges and demands are expanding and changing again. Our new society's environment is one of rapid communication, action and change, of intricate social activity and a huge potential for new knowledge. What are the models of the learner for this brave new world? How can higher education create these models and support the learners who aspire to them? This paper postulates four models of the learner of the future: * the collaborator: for whom networks of knowledge, skills and ideas are the source of learning * the free agent: utilising flexible, continuous, open-ended and life-long styles and systems of learning to the full * the wise analyser: able to gather, scrutinise and use evidence of effective activity and apply conclusions to new problems * the creative synthesiser: able to connect across themes and disciplines, cross-fertilise ideas, integrate disparate concepts and create new vision and practice. The paper describes an example of these kinds of learning and considers what they might imply for the development of learning in higher education in the coming century