How one professor uses a MOOC and its resources to flip his own classes.

Key Takeaways Education built around digital portfolios not only ties together various student-generated artifacts into a coherent whole but also creates an environment in which technology use has a clearly identified purpose. Hundreds of services provide free hosting and website creation tools and are ideal platforms for digital portfolios because they can support just about any type of digital content. Turning consumers of knowledge into producers of knowledge transforms learning into an active experience.

Deirdre DeAngelis began a detailed investigation into why, ultimately, New Dorp's students were failing. By 2008, she and her faculty had come to a singular answer: bad writing. Students' inability to translate thoughts into coherent, well-argued sentences, paragraphs, and essays was severely impeding intellectual growth in many subjects. Consistently, one of the largest differences between failing and successful students was that only the latter could express their thoughts on the page.

We always lived in a connected world, except we were not so much aware of it. We were aware of it down the line, that we're not independent from our environment, that we're not independent of the people around us. We are not independent of the many economic and other forces. But for decades we never perceived connectedness as being quantifiable, as being something that we can describe, that we can measure, that we have ways of quantifying the process. That has changed drastically in the last decade, at many, many different levels.

Personal learning networks are a great way for educators to get connected with learning opportunities, access professional development resources, and to build camaraderie with other education professionals. Although PLNs have been around for years, in recent years social media has made it possible for these networks to grow exponentially. Now, it's possible to expand and connect your network around the world anytime, anywhere.

Shimon Schocken and Noam Nisan developed a curriculum for their students to build a computer, piece by piece. When they put the course online -- giving away the tools, simulators, chip specifications and other building blocks -- they were surprised that thousands jumped at the opportunity to learn, working independently as well as organizing their own classes in the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). A call to forget about grades and tap into the self-motivation to learn.

An argument that teachers should develop a PLN.

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. The first report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education.

There's big talk these days about "big data" in education-looking for patterns of behavior as students click through online classrooms and using the insights to improve instruction. One start-up company that manages online discussion forums for thousands of courses recently performed its first major analysis of behavioral trends among students, and found what its leaders say amounts to advice for instructors.

Connected Learning is " when you are pursuing knowledge and expertise around something you care deeply about, and you're supported by friends and institutions who share and recognize this common passion or purpose".

If you are beginning to investigate what a Flipped Classroom is, with the thought of possibly trying some kind of Flip yourself… then this is also the right place. I have researched and tried to find you the very best resources to get educators in all positions thinking about what a Flipped Classroom" really is"? I know that if you take a look at the resources provided you will walk away with a better understanding, and a well thought out implementation.

For Connectivism, the medium is the message - teaching Connectivism any other way than a MOOC is as ridiculous as buying a book about free, open text books from Amazon.Com. I hope that the critics of MOOCs take the time to actually take a course, even as a lurker - they will gain immensely from the experience, and who knows? They might even learn something.

An overview of Connectivism with some fine video explanations from Downes and Siemens.

The nomadic thinker is one who traces the con­tours of the free space of think­ing and whose sub­jectiv­ity is, for neces­sary struc­tural reas­ons, in a state of war-​​like struggle. This struggle is not a purely intel­lec­tual exer­cise where one engages in  cri­tique with noth­ing more at stake than, say, a purely formal vis­ion of the greater good.  Instead, one could say, in a man­ner faintly remin­is­cent of Carl Schmitt, that what is at stake is the nomadic thinker's very life, that is to say, the ethos, integ­rity and cre­ativ­ity of the free space of thinking.

According to Leuf and Cunningham, a wiki is "a free expandable collection of interlinked webpages, a hypertext system for storing and modifyinh information, a data base, where each page is easily edited by any user." A Wiki can be thought of as a combination of a web site and a Word document. At its simplest, it can be read just like any other web site, with no access privileges necessary, but its real power lies in the fact that groups can collaboratively work on the content of the site using nothing but a standard web browser. The Wiki is gaining  traction in education as an ideal tool for collaborative work.

Download hundreds of free audio books, mostly classics, to your MP3 player or computer. Below, you'll find great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

tips on how you can make your posts more Google-y and have more authentic, personal, and intimate conversations.

Every college teacher I know is bemoaning the same kind of thing. Whether it's rude behavior, lack of intellectual rigor, or both, we are all struggling with the same frightening decline in student performance and academic standards at institutions of higher learning. A sense of entitlement now pervades the academy, excellence be damned.

In some ways, the flipped model is an improvement. Research shows that tailored tutoring is more effective than lectures for understanding, mastery, and retention. But the flipped classroom doesn't come close to preparing students for the challenges of today's world and workforce. As progressive educational activist Alfie Kohn notes, great teaching isn't just about content but motivation and empowerment: Real learning gives you the mental habits, practice, and confidence to know that, in a crisis, you can count on yourself to learn something new. That's crucial in a world where, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, adults change careers (not just jobs) four to six times or where, as an Australian study predicts, 65% of today's teens will end up in careers that haven't even been invented yet. We don't need to flip the classroom. We need to make it do cartwheels.

"Sadly, though web searches have become and integral part of the academic research landscape, the art of the Google search is an increasingly lost one. A recent study at Illinois Wesleyan University found that fewer than 25% of students could perform a "reasonably well-executed search.""