Group items tagged

Diagram from Jane Hart on workplace learning.

Interesting article looking at the ownership of ideas. It made me think of Connectivism - ideas and knowledge exist in the network, not in the individual. If we recognised this would the problem discussed disappear?

"Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught.". From 2008.

Project on Open Content Knowledge Exposition and Teaching

"ITSE is one of many academic organizations that is using the virtual world of Second Life to make it possible for global participants to share their knowledge. This brief tour of ITSE island and a snippet from a recent presentation, gives viewers some idea of how educators might leverage this virtual world for learning."

A group looking to extend education beyond testing and into life skills. "A gulf has opened up between what education systems provide and what children and young people need. Our schools and colleges rightly try to to ensure that young people are literate, numerate and gain academic qualifications. But the emphasis on testing and passing exams often squeezes out other skills that are just as vital in today's world. The leading non-political and non-profit-making organisations that have come together to form Whole Education are determined to change this. They want all young people to receive a well-rounded education that they can relate to. They want all to learn practical skills such as communication and teamwork, to develop qualities such as resilience and empathy and to acquire knowledge that goes beyond literacy and numeracy to an understanding of our culture. A Whole Education will combine practical skills with theory, vocational and academic study for all young people whatever their ability."

"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."

Eric Mazur has swapped the nature of teaching and non-contact time and released it as a software. "The basic idea is that the bulk of information consumption should be done outside the classroom and in-class time should be spent doing guided, measured, optimized peer-to-peer discussion in order to maximize retention of knowledge"

JISC output to support thinking about learners needs, abilities, backgrounds in regard to ICT & digital literacy. "Think about the learners at your institution, or in the context for which you have a digital literacy role/responsibility. What do you know about their current access, skills and strategies for learning in a digital environment? What challenges do you think they face in becoming digitally literate?You can also use these questions with teaching staff to check their knowledge of their own students' ICT use, and to prompt thinking about how they support learners in a digital age."

Kete is open source software that you can use to create online areas for collaboration for your community. Write topics and upload images, audio, video, documents. Discuss them all. Link them together. It's been called a "relational wiki" and " a mashup between content management and knowledge managment". It's a fun way to get things done.

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.

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.

"This paper describes the implementation of a quantitative cost effectiveness analyzer for Web-supported academic instruction that was developed in Tel Aviv University during a long term study. The paper presents the cost effectiveness analysis of Tel Aviv University campus. Cost and benefit of 3,453 courses were analyzed, exemplifying campus-wide analysis. These courses represent large-scale Web-supported academic instruction processes throughout the campus. The findings were described, referring to students, instructors and university from both the economical and educational perspectives. The cost effectiveness values resulting from the calculations were summarized in four "coins" (efficiency coins=$; quality coins; affective coins; and knowledge management coins) for each of the three actors (students, instructors and university). In order to examine the distribution of those values throughout the campus assessment scales were created on the basis of descriptive statistics. The described analyzer can be implemented in other institutions very easily and almost automatically. This enables us to quantify the costs and benefits of Web-supported instruction on both the single-course and the campus-wide levels. "

"The greatest revolution in how humans create and share knowledge, how they read and write, how they communicate and interact in all human history‐‐and there's no space there for the human and social sciences?"--Cathy Davidson, Founder, HASTAC. <--useful for PG FASS?

This week the OCW Consortium is holding its annual meeting, celebrating 10 years of opencourseware. Are universities about credentials or research? Are they a repository of knowledge? It's important, O'Reilly argued, if you want to be innovative "to think about what job you do for your customers (for your students) and not just think about how you do that job today but why you do it."

We are witnessing the emergence of something profound: Humans, historically divided by geography, culture and creed, are beginning to connect and collaborate on a scale never seen before. The driving force behind this creative wave are digital tools and networks that allow new forms of collaboration and knowledge creation.

Stephen Downes with a thoughtful and knowledgeable piece on the current and possible future states of learning in technology rich environments.