Group items tagged

"One of these dead ideas is that grading motivates learning. Pike contends that grading motivates getting grades."

"Social media and online games have the potential to convey 21st century skills that aren't necessarily part of school curricula - things like time management, leadership, teamwork and creative problem solving that will prepare teens for success in college and beyond. Making the transition between a highly structured environment in high school to a self-driven, unstructured environment in college can prove a huge challenge for many kids. Educators spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix this problem. The solution doesn't lie solely with games, but a lot of the psychology that motivates teens to play games holds potential. We need to figure out how to tap in."

"If you want to find out why people might become engaged in OER and Open educational practices (OEP) then you might like to look at the Motivations section. If you are interested in looking at the range of models and approaches adopted for OER Release then the Models page may be useful for you. If you want to know about the impact of the HEFCE funding then we have an Impact section. We have drawn together some critical factors to support OEP for those that want some tips on how to go about this themselves. We have a section that highlights tensions and challenges around OEP and the OER journeys section provides an interesting look at the wider context and how the HEFCE-funded initiatives fit into that. We also offer recommendations. If you contributed to our surveys, polls and interviews then we have a series of supplementary appendices and you can look at out methodology and evidence pages - all available from the main report page http://bit.ly/HEFCEoerReview. We have also produced a summary briefing paper."

"Howard Rheingold offers a glimpse of the future of high-end online learning in which motivated self-learners collaborate via a variety of social media to create, deliver, and learn an agreed curriculum: a mutant variety of pedagogy that more closely resembles a peer-agogy."

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.

"The concept behind My Resource Cloud is that each educator tailors interactive content to suit the needs of their own learners.   My Resource Cloud consists of a number of resource sections: My Language Cloud, My Math(s) Cloud, My Science Cloud and My ICT Cloud. My Resource Cloud allows users to integrate web, printed, mobile and social media based technologies to help motivate learners."

"But the answer isn't yes or no - the answer depends on the student's learning style, gender and motivation."

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

Paper on understanding student emotional responses to online learning

Very short report on the change of the role of unis in providing content based courses. Thin, but notes OU has 360,000 iTunesU downloads per week and that the VC of the OU says that the value of an institution would not be its course content but how it motivated and supported students.

via Downes: Brian Lamb's presentation is smooth, polished and informed. Culture, he says, is something that historically we have participated in by creating and not merely consuming. And we are returning to those days, where we can create content for ourselves that we used to pay for and merely consume. Indeed, for any content company, placing a barrier - such as price - between the content and readers is a fatal mistake. Culture is something that is ours - it's not simply the creation of the best, it's an act that is a part of being there (like the million people who have photographed Barack Obama). And when each person records his or her own presence, we can create something larger than life, something real. Knowing that you are making a significant contribution to public discourse is motivation to create and contribute. There's this and a lot more in this presentation.

Serious games / gamification. This is an interesting model built around personal health. The 'See how it works' link gives a handy diagram to visualise the structure in applying game theory.