Writing Across the Curriculum

a service that "provides a very handy way to keep track of citations to your work."

A study just published in Science magazine sure makes one think twice about how we deliver "content knowledge" the classroom. The method by which a course is taught, it indicates, may be even more important than the instructor's background.

For centuries, researchers have studied the brain to find exactly where mechanisms for producing and interpreting language reside. Theories abound on how humans acquire new languages and how our developing brains learn to process languages. We take a look at the mysteries of language and the brain in the infographic below.

thinking about [learning] in connectivism terms is not about changing what I do or how I teach, but changing what I believe is happening and how it is happening.

An introduction to massive, open, online courses (MOOC) by EDUCAUSE.

high school and college students may be "digital natives" but they're wretched at searching. In a recent experiment at Northwestern, when 102 undergraduates were asked to do some research online, none went to the trouble of checking the author's credentials. In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can't read. Today the question is why can't Johnny search?

Citation style remains the most arbitrary, formulaic, and prescriptive element of academic writing taught in American high schools and colleges. Now a sacred academic shibboleth, citation persists despite the incredibly high cost-benefit ratio of trying to teach students something they (and we should also) recognize as relatively useless to them as developing writers.

Digital higher education - both its software and content - has managed to remain untouched by good design. Design is not even on the agenda. The importance of design to digital education starts with this simple fact: by moving the locus of education from the classroom to the digital environment, we necessarily change the factors that determine the quality of the student's experience. In the digital environment, design plays a far more important role as a determinant of quality than it does in the classroom.

Kelli Marshall's blog is a candid and detailed post on using Twitter as a discussion tool in some of the film courses Marshall has taught. She explains that while some students have resisted using the site, they have generally produced great comments about the course's content and have participated in thoughtful conversations, even beyond the classroom.

You don't have to know much about the psychology of learning to realise that a series of once-only, delivered lectures is pedagogic nonsense. We learn next to nothing from once-only experiences like unrecorded lectures. Indeed, everything we know about learning shows that repeated access to content is necessary for learning.

The question we are faced with, then, is this: how do we prepare our students to write effectively in environments that don't yet exist? While I'm sure there is more to add to this list, I suggest that there are three domains of literacy that, if students become aware of them, will prepare them for new digital writing environments. Namely, students should be aware of the speed of digital communications and the types of interactions that speed encourages, the ways in which digital writing environments preserve and provide access to data, and how writing technologies manage the divide between public and private.

Students don't write mathematics correctly. They throw down a mess of symbols with the answer underlined at the bottom and rely on the examiner's intelligence to get the marks. Teaching them to write in a more orderly and logical way has numerous advantages: it makes marking easier; allows students to demonstrate understanding (or not); forces an improvement in their thinking skills. Expressing their ideas clearly and correctly is a valuable skill for graduates in further study, employment and life in general.

I am getting more an more convinced that in high school it is imperative for teachers who want to 'get into blogging' to understand the under pinning nature of 'writing communities'.

Tips for making the most of the Google+ experience

Currently, we have a mass production model of education. But until we personalize things and require each student to learn. Until we do things in creative ways that make sure kids each learn and have to think and process, we will continue to have the select few do the thinking. It is human nature. Education shouldn't be one size fits all. I don't think that getting outside the standardized work we do in education should be considered jailbreaking. But for now, in most schools it is.

A slideshow about connected knowledge and collective learning.

Connectivism as a pedagogical theory is typically thought of in terms of networks, but the major practical implication of connectivism occurs in the organization of learning eventes and resources. Unlike traditional educatioinal modalities, in which people work collaboratively, in a connectivist model, people work cooperatively.

"The first Networked Learning Conference Hotseat with Peter Goodyear has attracted a lot of interesting discussion. Most of the discussion has centred on what is meant by networked learning and there seem to be as many definitions as there are people in the forum."

"Bring your own device (BYOD) and bring your own technology (BYOT) policies are growing in education and the workplace. Teachers are taking advantage of mobile devices for "m-learning,""

These techniques can provide lots of access points to information.