Group items tagged

Thread on Moodle.org describing an initiative to progress staff in their elearning development by benchmarking their Moodle papers.

"This is an initiative from the University of Otago, the University of Auckland, Wellington Institute of Technology, the University of Canterbury, and supported by Telecom NZ.  It is an open access national virtual world grid based on open source software.  It operates on NZ-based servers hosted at Otago, Auckland and Canterbury Universities, and leverages other national investments in IT infrastructure through deployment on the high-speed KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network). The grid has been set up with an academic focus and will be used for research and education, as well as for proof-of-concept application deployments and testing.  The objectives of the NZVWG initative are to: Undertake both experimental and routine use of virtual worlds in teaching and research;Develop engaging, interactive in-world content customised for NZ use; andDevelop new context-specific plugins enabling interaction between the virtual and real (non-virtual) worlds. "

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

"In 2008, HIT Lab NZ released the initial version of BuildAR, which provides the basic functionality required to construct augmented reality scenes. You can load a single 3D model onto each marker, and arrange the models using the graphical editing tools or the simple user interface. This version of BuildAR has continues to be free for non-commercial use. For commercial use, or to take advantage of an updated feature set, check out BuildAR Pro."

"Among the things the two instructors hoped to address with an initial pilot were poor attendance of in-class films and lack of attention to the films among those who did attend."

Web2Rights is a JISC project, funded from 1st November 2007 - 31st March 2009, whose purpose was initially to develop practical, pragmatic and relevant Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and other legal issues toolkits to support the projects funded within the JISC Users and Innovation Programme (U&I) in their engagement with next generation technologies.  The Web2Rights team, comprised of lawyers, consultants, learning technologists and pedagogic experts focussed upon the need to address cultural and practical obstacles in engaging with Web2.0, IPR and other legal issues. Working in close collaboration with JISC Legal and focussing upon the specific issues raised by the U&I community of users, they have created a number of resources to address a variety of legal issues which might arise.

"The aim of the Online Snacks initiative is to provide teachers with the opportunity to develop e-learning skills aligned to their teaching and learning needs. All sessions are FREE and are facilitated by a Digi Advisor" Developed in NZ for teachers.

Comments on Google+ but what's more interesting is the initial 3 questions and the rationale behind them. Qns we should consider when proposing edtech and they also explain some of the #diglit stuff we're talking about.

Education, and in particular higher education, has seen rapid change as learning institutions have had to adapt to the opportunities provided by the Internet to move more of their teaching online1 and to become more flexible in how they operate. It might be tempting to think that such a period of change would lead to a time of consolidation and agreement about approaches and models of operation that suit the 21st century. New technologies continue to appear,2 however, and the changes in attitude indicated by the integration of online activities and social approaches within our lives are accelerating rather than slowing down. How should institutions react to these changes? One part of the answer seems to be to embrace some of the philosophy of the Internet3 and reevaluate how to approach the relationship between those providing education and those seeking to learn. Routes to self-improvement that have no financial links between those providing resources and those using them are becoming more common,4 and the motivation for engaging with formal education as a way to gain recognition of learning is starting to seem less clear.5 What is becoming clear across all business sectors is that maintaining a closed approach leads to missing out on ways to connect with people and locks organizations into less innovative approaches.6 Higher education needs to prepare itself to exist in a more open future, either by accepting that current modes of operation will increasingly provide only one version of education or by embracing openness and the implications for change entailed. In this article we look at what happens when a more open approach to learning is adopted at an institutional level. There has been a gradual increase in universities opening up the content that they provide to their learners. Drawing on the model of open-source software, where explicit permission to freely use and modify code has developed a software industry that rivals commercial approaches, a proposed

"When one uses 'sustainability' in the context of open education, the word usually relates to whether or not an initiative has solid funding or a viable business model..."

Short slide set on badges initiative in UK.

"As part of my open textbook on Teaching in a Digital Age, I am working my way through theories of learning and methods of teaching. I will post shortly my initial draft on theories of learning and their relevance for a digital age. In this post I want to discuss the lecture and its relevance for a digital age. Comments as always are more than welcome."

Open resources / institutions / initiatives in (mainly) Aotearoa

Initiative to allow stacking of badges from multiple providers.

Abstract Managerialism creates burdens for academics with no evidence for its benefit. Business imperatives override educational. There is needless competition between universities. Research imperatives override education. Global inequalities in educational need are ignored, universities have not kept up with the way young people gain information and initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of higher education are 'tinkering' rather than the required total re-thinking of higher education.

"MITx will offer a portfolio of MIT courses for free to a virtual community of learners around the world. It will also enhance the educational experience of its on-campus students, offering them online tools that supplement and enrich their classroom and laboratory experiences. The first MITx course, 6.002x (Circuits and Electronics), will be launched in an experimental prototype form. Watch this space for further upcoming courses, which will become available in Fall 2012."

A project about OERs and the practices of using them. Looking especially at ensuring quality.