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Educause survey finds rise in use and demand for classroom technology

Students are very comfortable consumers of technology but are not comfortable creating with new technologies. "It's almost as if they know how to read, but can't write."

"Close the gap between the no-frills learning that too often happens in-school and the interactive, hands-on learning that usually takes place out of school. Take advantage of the Internet's ability to help youth develop knowledge, expertise, skills and important new literacies. Use digital technology to combat the increasing reality of the haves and have-nots in education."

"I'm not opposed to disruption; rather, I'm skeptical about the kind of disruption start-ups and tech folks promise: "paradigm-shifting" technology that improves university teaching and learning. The truth is, many of these start-ups clearly have no idea what actually works in higher ed and know little about the direction university teaching and learning have moved in the last 10 years, because they're trying to take us backward, not forward. Start-up and commercial tech are certainly proving disruptive-just in all the wrong ways."

"For some, teaching begins with authority and expertise. For the digital pedagogue, teaching begins with inquiry. And that's why digital pedagogy is so important. It reminds us that the new landscape of learning is mysterious and worth exploring." - an interesting position

"Professors might be surprised by what the data tell them. Eric Mazur, a professor of physics at Harvard, drew murmurs from the crowd-which mostly consisted of Harvard and MIT faculty members-when he showed research indicating that students at a lecture have brain activity roughly equivalent to when they watch television." - this doesn't seem to surprising. There are some other interesting ideas mentioned like "Maybe we could have 100 people register for a seminar," Mr. Rabkin said. The students could work through the first 12 weeks independently and online, "and that teacher can finish the seminar five different times in the course of a 15-week semester, spending the last three weeks with each of those groups of 20."

I agree with this brain activity finding. Students constantly come to me and say "I understand what you are saying in class but when you ask me questions outside of class I do not know what to do." They are not paying attention. Even when I teach to the test, the results from online questions are equivalent (I need to check this formally). This has forced me to rely more on solving open ended problems in groups and getting students to write their own answers. So my principles class is turning into a first year problem solving seminar!

"Rather than think about how "MOOCs" will influence liberal arts education, perhaps it is time to flip the question. What does traditional liberal arts education have to offer "MOOCs"? The answer remains the enduring value of education that produces critical thinkers, life-long learners and economically and politically contributing members of society. But in order to accomplish that feat, liberal arts education may have to take a lesson from MOOCs on how to generate excitement for the deployment of technology in service of inter-institutional and even international classrooms, information competency and problem-solving based courses.""

Given the recent article that Grant shared about the quality of students coming in to college, (and the QL Horizons group), this article reinforces that there are multiple critical thinking "literacies" that are under siege. 

xEducation is a book that George Siemens, Bonnie Stewart, and Dave Cormier have agreed (and been contracted) to write for Johns Hopkins University Press. We expect the book will be published in mid-2013. Our focus is on sidestepping the rather substantial hype around educational reform, particularly from the technological angle, and present a solid discussion of the scope and nature of higher education (HE) change.

An interesting position paper from some of the largest universities in the country on online collaboration, MOOCs and educational technology companies.