Group items tagged

Moodle doesn't encourage good course design. Interesting post by James Clay and it gives me 2 thoughts.  Should we change the way we start people off on Moodle so course design comes first and then some mechanics.  The other thought is could we write a wizard (or some such thing) that leads people through the big picture design of their course and then helps them populate it with appropriate elements?

More on the FOE crash

Thoughtful piece on self assessment by students

Great set of 60 sec videos

(Article not new and thought I had already bookmarked it) Reports on work by OU 'debunking' Prensky native/immigrant thesis. Don't think it does at all and I argued at time that we ad to stop viewing concepts in such dichotomous ways.

a thought-provoking article that puts forward the thesis that MOOCs and Coursera are the wrong direction for higher education - that personalisation and customisation of learning are the direction we should be working to develop.

Thoughtful article by George on the future of education and the role of business, entrepreneurs and innovation.

"Eighth-graders who thought a passage about a pineapple and a hare on New York state tests this week made no sense, take heart: The author thinks it's absurd too."

"The educational thought experiment I wish to undertake concerns curriculum. Not the specific content of curriculum, but the idea of curriculum, what any curriculum is, regardless of subject. Like Copernicus, I propose that for the sake of better results we need to turn conventional wisdom on it is head:  let's see what results if we think of action, not knowledge, as the essence of an education; let's see what results from thinking of future ability, not knowledge of the past, as the core; let's see what follows, therefore, from thinking of content knowledge as neither the aim of curriculum nor the key building blocks of it but as the offshoot of learning to do things now and for the future."

Why Blackboard purchase  of Moodlerooms and Netspot is about data access

Link to Danah Boyd video from Webstock on the attention economy and how social media can perpetuate the fear of missing something.

The University of San Francisco has revealed the results of a six month 2010 iPad study involving 40 faculty members that looked at how teachers could use the device as a tool in the classroom. The result: while many teachers found the device useful, all thought there was room for improvement.

Some thoughts on how Coursera might make money - and some insights into how they currently organise e.g. more than $1m per staff member in venture capital available.

"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.

A map of competencies and skills that a group of Mozilla stakeholders (including Doug Belshaw) thought was important for getting better at reading, writing and participating on the web. Organised under three headings: exploring, building, connecting

thoughtful article on the idea that path dependance has led to an academic publishing system that works but is sub-optimal in the new technology environment.

Very well thought out exposition on how the 'openness' concept has been confused and damaged by the MOOC phenomena. Preview of a chapter to be published in Bonk's book MOOC and Open Education around the world.

"Blogging. For many, the term evokes thoughts of cringe-worthy diary-esque posts by angry teenagers, or bland breakfast tweets by bored acquaintances. But in many fields, including the sciences, law and librarianship, blogging has become vital to the advancement of scholarship."

This article is worth reading. An interesting thought piece (two actually) on the move away from the open web to closed systems running across the internet that control the devices we use, the delivery mechanisms and the content we consume (read Apple).