Group items tagged

SHort Faculty Focus piece on connecting with your students and learning vs grades on the first day of a course.

"Thanks to Android, Linux is well represented on tablets, but there hasn't been a free software tablet, without any proprietary bits, until now. The Spark, which will be based on MeeGo and use KDE Plasma for its interface, will be the first free software tablet."

First MOOCs now SMOC = synchronous massive open online course

"Taking first steps in the Twitterverse can be a nerve-wrecking experience with new users unsure what thoughts to tweet to the world. Here, Paul André, Michael Bernstein and Kurt Luther attempt to fill the void and give some insights into what makes interesting and valuable microblog content." Actually doesn't give any real insights about 'academic' content - the first comment makes that point well. Perhaps the full paper is better.

The First Year Experience (FYE) wiki developed in Wales with collections of case studies on FYE initiatives.

"All students today are increasingly expected to develop technological fluency, digital citizenship, and other twenty-first century competencies despite wide variability in the quality of learning opportunities schools provide. Social network sites (SNSs) available via the internet may provide promising contexts for learning to supplement school-based experiences. This qualitative study examines how high school students from low-income families in the USA use the SNS, MySpace, for identity formation and informal learning. The analysis revealed that SNSs used outside of school allowed students to formulate and explore various dimensions of their identity and demonstrate twenty-first century skills; however, students did not perceive a connection between their online activities and learning in classrooms. We discuss how learning with such technologies might be incorporated into the students overall learning ecology to reduce educational inequities and how current institutionalized approaches might shift to accommodate such change."

For the first time ever, you can download the first issue of "Hackett and Bankwell," The Linux Comic. In this premier issue, users learn about the history of GNU and Linux, how to install Ubuntu, and how to get started with the graphical user interface (GUI). "Hackett and Bankwell" #1 helps new Linux users establish a solid base of knowledge that will help them tackle more sophisticated tasks and concepts, such as the command line interface.

The first OERu course launches run from Uni Southern Queensland.

The key attributes that a computer grad needs today. "What all of the employers want is the right attitude and aptitude. With these, any gaps in the knowledge and experience of a student fresh from studies can easily be overcome.  Heck, the industry moves so fast that they need to be updating those on the first day."

Study from which the previous article drew some of its data. "The study's objectives are to build a picture of the overall character and quality of the first year experience..."

Video on the history of the internet in NZ including Waikato being first landfall point.

search for early tweets

"This post is to mark post conference publication which provides you with a variety of examples on how Moodle is used throughout Ireland and the UK. The publication contains six articles where the authors of each article volunteered to expand upon their conference presentation and share their experience in detail with you. This publication covers a wide variety of topics from optimising the layout of your Moodle course to analysing the usage of your course through Google Analytics. Hopefully this represents the first of many publications along the same line where Moodle users from the conference produce detailed articles sharing their Moodle experience."

Over 20,000 free science video lectures from first class universities around the globe (English only).

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. 

Antioch University Los Angeles becomes one of the first universities to offer credit for two undergraduate courses from Coursera. 

MOOCs at Edinburgh - the first year report.

Report on GTech offereing a Masters in ComSci for $7000 all by MOOC.

"A report summarising the experience of the University of Edinburgh of  offering our first 6 massive open online courses (MOOCs) in partnership with Coursera"