Hey all, this could be of interest. A huge bunch of eBooks shared in an MSDN post this week so is legit. A lot of them are product specific rather than technology focused but still a good looking resource

No doubt you guys will have caught this news.... "Google is developing a tool to help teachers manage classroom tasks, a move that should have education app vendors trembling as if they'd been sent to the principal's office. The software, called Classroom , will become part of Apps for Education, Google's cloud email and collaboration suite for schools and universities, Google said Tuesday"

Hey all, not really a Tertiary thing but thought you might be interested... "Rotorua has embarked on a bold plan to equip all of its pupils with personal learning devices - connecting all of them to the internet and creating a New Zealand-first "e-learning community".

Thought you WCELers might be interested in this... Dean ICT Education: Australia vs NZ by Prof John Hosking, Formerly Auckland Uni, now Australia National University Auckland University's Professor John Hosking was a leading figure in New Zealand's Computer Science community. However in 2011 he followed Phar Lap, Russell Crowe and Pavlova across the ditch, in his case taking up the role as Dean of the College of Engineering and CS at the Australian National University in Canberra.

I guess you WCEL folks knew about this? Do eGressive do any LMS related work?... Catalyst IT has taken over fellow open source developer, Christchurch-based Egressive. Egressive will formally become Catalyst's South Island branch from the end of this month (November). The takeover is friendly, says Egressive director Dave Lane.

"NPR reports that Harvard physicist and professor Eric Mazur has largely gotten rid of the lecture in his classes, after finding that in lecture-based classes, students tend to commit to memory formulae and heuristics, but fail to develop deep understanding of concepts. Mazur has tried - and seemingly succeeded - to cultivate deeper learning with a combination of small group peer-instruction and a tight feedback loop based on in-class polling about particular problems."

Hey guys. Happy new year, hope yaz had a nice break. The idea posted in this thread at /. no doubt isnt new to you all, neither the whole learning-styles thing, but the thread itself is actually not a bad read, lots of differing opinions, not all geeks.

"The Mozilla Foundation and Peer-to-Peer University (P2PU), among others, are working to create an alternative - and recognized - form of certification that combines merit-earned badges with an open framework. The Open Badges Project will allow skills and competencies to be tracked, assessed, and showcased."

May not have quite the same clout with the NZQA :) but though you guys might be interested in this...

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."

"Open Cobalt Alpha is the first step in a long term project to make available to all people a free and open source platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing virtual workspaces for research and education. This 3D multimedia wiki technology makes it easy to create deeply collaborative and hyperlinked multi-user virtual workspaces, virtual exhibit spaces, and game-based learning and training environments that run on all major software operating systems. By using a peer-based messaging protocol to reduce reliance on server infrastructures for support of basic in world interactions across many participants, Open Cobalt makes it possible for people hyperlink their virtual worlds via 3D portals to form a large distributed network of interconnected collaboration spaces. It also makes it possible for schools and other organizations to freely set up their own networks of public and private 3D virtual workspaces that feature integrated web browsing, voice chat, text chat, and access to remote desktop applications and services."

Hey guys. Just watched a live session online at Cisco w the developers of this system, still in development, but interesting differentiators vs 2Life, e.g. peer-to-peer, nested worlds, oh and its open-source. Thought yaz might be interested in tracking it.

"You've likely seen the news of the Cisco Cius, our new, mobile collaboration, first-of-its- kind HD video-capable Business Tablet. However, you may have missed the demonstration of Cius yesterday at CiscoLive in Las Vegas. "

Hey you guys. If you can keep the marketing-visor firmly in place, this an ok demo of potential of tablets in education in general. BTW, you'z got an iPad yet? :)

"Writing the future: genres, professions and texts" * moving towards learning outcomes: curriculum design, teaching methodology, materials, feedback & dialogue * evaluating & advancing approaches to teaching writing * the path from teaching or researching to presenting and publishing * the creative writing continuum * the critical analysis/critical thinking continuum"

thought you'z might be interested in this..

"Barnes & Noble continues to makes inroads into the education, um, space. It just announced that it has teamed up with Blackboard, the Web site/software suite that is used in colleges all over the U.S."

Hey guys. Thought I'd share a link with yaz. You probably forgot I was still in the group. ;-)

"Respondus is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to Blackboard, ANGEL, Desire2Learn, eCollege, Moodle, and other eLearning systems. Exams can be created offline using a familiar Windows environment, or moved from one eLearning system to another. Whether you are a veteran of online testing or relatively new to it, Respondus will save you hours on each project. "

Ideas and opportunities for use of AR apps and tools

"Dave Elchoness of GoWeb3D who's one of the early pioneers in the Augmented Reality (AR, but not to be confused with Analyst Relations) industry. In this above video he gives a demonstration of how information (often from the web) can be over layed on top of physical locations"

A post from Tim Hunt about plagiarism in general and OUs policies for coping with it, and looking at the problem that some folks thing a technological solution is all thats required

A post from Tim Hunt about plagiarism in general and OUs policies for coping with it, and looking at the problem that some folks thing a technological solution is all thats required