Group items tagged

"Optimal learning occurs when students are active participants in their own learning, rather than passive recipients of teacher-delivered content. For this to be effective, students really need to think about their learning. I worked with a group of teachers recently who felt their young students were not capable of writing meaningful reflections for their end of semester reports. That might be true. But only if reflection and meta-cognition are not integral parts of the learning in their classes."

"Our Space is a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments. Through role-playing activities and reflective exercises, students are asked to consider the ethical responsibilities of other people, and whether and how they behave ethically themselves online. These issues are raised in relation to five core themes that are highly relevant online: identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility, and participation. For more information, download the Introduction to Our Space [pdf], FAQ [pdf], and Road Map [pdf]. All curricular units and lessons are free and available for download below. The full casebook [pdf - 133MB] can be downloaded using the link at the bottom of the page." Critiqued by @downes for not addressing the issue properly "This is "a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments." The content divides into five major subject areas: participation, identity, privacy, credibility, and authorship and ownership. I'm not sure these are the top five things I would list when thinking of ethical dimensions of new media environments. While it's useful that there is a section on flamers, lurkers and mentors I think there should be something about hate, racism and bulling. And while a section on credibility is a good idea, it should be based on the principles of reason and inference, not outrageously bad definitions like this: "Networking-the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information." And this: "Collective intelligence-evidence that participants in knowledge communities pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal." Wow, those are just wrong. Maybe I need to review this and criticize it more closely."

A series of tools that can be used to support reflection, with a brief discussion of the process, the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

"...I've been musing on how I integrated social media [twitter, wikis, zotero, google wave & docs] into my classes" via Stephen Downes who noted "you can't just take these new technologies and cram them into an old-word [sic] course"

This study is an exploratory case study aimed at analysing one academic's teaching in terms of conceptions of teaching and its effect on student involvement or engagement. The research has been done by drawing on Gonzalez' dimensions of online teaching and data generated by the LMS and data analytics in general. There is growing interest in the use of academic analytics. However, most of the reported work is being done at the level of institutions/groupings of courses. Improving teaching can only be done through changing the conceptions of teaching/learning held by the academics. Can individual teaching staff, reflecting on their courses, learn anything important from examining their courses through analytics? How can this be done effectively? What do they find? This study uses an academic's approach to teaching + use as an indicator of involvement, therefore, an improvement of teaching.

Interesting reflection on developing a successful iOS game (and a Kiwi to boot!).

Grainne Conole proposes 12 dimesions for better classification of MOOCs. the degree of openness, the scale of participation (massification), the amount of use of multimedia, the amount of communication, the extent to which collaboration is included, the type of learner pathway (from learner centred to teacher-centred and highly structured), the level of quality assurance, the extent to which reflection is encouraged, the level of assessment, how informal or formal it is, autonomy, and diversity. She then evaluates five example MOOCs against these dimensions.

Reflecting on Massive OPEN Online Courses and Massive 'Open' ONLINE Courses.

Sufai John Mac on Moocs and some of the negative comments about them.

After a bad #videoconference @CrossKnowledge's Jason Hathaway reflects that #DigitalLiteracy is more than keystrokes http://t.co/14119lC4u1

Mark Nichols blog of reflection on things elearning, and pedagogy.

Article that discusses the impact of the internet on reading habits the ability to engage in deep reflection

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.

"UnBoxed is a journal of reflections on purpose, practice and policy in education, published twice yearly by the High Tech High Graduate School of Education."

"The Higher Education Academy published the book Transforming Higher Education Through Technology Enhanced Learning in December 2009. Although the book has its genesis in the e-learning Benchmarking & Pathfinder Programme led by the Higher Education Academy from 2005-2008 readers will find that the book contains a thought-provoking edited collection which offers far more than a straightforward account of outcomes of one national programme; you will find that it is both broad in scope and reflective in tone"

"Prestridge identifies three professional learning activities vital for meaningful ICT teacher PD; collegial dialogue;investigation; and reflection. She chooses to investigate the role of collegial dialogue in developing learning communities and enabling pedagogical change. This is intended to inform a model for ICT professional development, using online discussion forums to facilitate discussion."

Terry Anderson reflects on his NZ visit: "New Zealand is doing a great job of supporting the development of high quality teaching and learning in tertiary education."

"We are developing dynamic Web-based maps, which are a fusion of formal curriculum maps, personal learning records, and community-driven maps. Using established technologies and standards the maps provide 'mash-ups' of information from curriculum databases, ePortfolios and other sources. The project aims to enhance understanding and navigation of the curriculum and provide a means for students to actively map, contextualise, reflect on, and evidence their learning. The maps will also support collaboration, including sharing, rating and discussion of learning resources linked to specific topics in the maps."