Learning to create, manage and promote a professional learning network (PLN) will soon become, if it's not already, one of the most necessary and sought after skills for a global citizen, and as such, must become a prominent feature of any school curriculum

More food for thought on discussion and community.

good ideas for good discussion threads

The modern workplace and lifestyle demand that students balance cognitive, personal, and interpersonal abilities, but education policy discussions have not defined those skills well, says a report released last week by scholars from the National Research Council.

"Imagine the moment when these completion exams permit a person to assemble learning from a variety of academic institutions and life experiences to complete a degree. At that moment, the monopoly of institutions over source and cost loosens, and the student gains control of how knowledge is to be gained and at what price. At that moment, the sources of learning are severed from credentialing. At that moment, American higher education is radically changed."

For many years I have considered Wikipedia to be a great sandbox for students to practice information literacy skills. What does it say? How do you know it is accurate? Who is the source? What do they stand to gain? Are there other perspectives? Who are the stakeholders?

Catchy title.

"The LEARNING, DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY Program prepares professionals to design and evaluate educationally informed and empirically grounded learning environments, products, and programs that effectively employ emergent technologies in a variety of settings."

"To a limited extent, research directly influences classroom practce when teachers and researchers collaborate in design experiments, or when interested teachers incorporate ideas from research into their classroom practice. This appears as the only line directly linking research and practice in Figure 11.1. More typically, ideas from research are filtered through the development of education materials; through pre-service and in-service teacher and administrator education programs; through public policies at the national, state, and school district levels; and through the public's beliefs about learning and teaching, often gleaned from the popular media and from their own experiences in school. These are the four arenas that mediate the link between research and practice in Figure 11.1 The public includes teachers, whose beliefs may be influenced by popular presentations of research, and parents, whose beliefs about learning and teaching affect classroom practice as well. Several aspects of Figure 11.1 are worth noting. First, the influence of research on the four mediating arenas-education materials, pre-service and in-service teacher and administrator education programs, public policy, and public opinion and the media-has typically been weak for a variety of reasons. Educators generally do not look to research for guidance. The concern of researchers for the validity and robustness of their work, as well as their focus on underlying constructs that explain learning, often differ from the focus of educators on the applicability of htose constructs in real classroom settings with many students, restricted time, and a variety of demands. Even the language used by researchers is very different from that familiar to teachers. And the full schedules of many teachers leaves them with little time to identify and read relevant research. These factors contribute to the feeling voiced by many teachers that research has largely been irrelevant to their work (Fleming,

"Lee Rainie discusses Pew Internet's most recent findings about Americans use the internet and their mobile devices to learn, share, and create information. He explores how the changed media environment is affecting learners' expectations about the availability of information and the ways in which learning takes place. In this new environment, the traditional boundaries between home and school, teacher and pupil, public and private are breaking down and that is affecting the way learning occurs. Lee also describes how Pew Internet has looked at these subjects and the ways in which schools and families are responding to them."

This is in Beta but it looks like it could be interesting. "PresentationTube provides a video presentation desktop recorder and sharing network to help instructors, students, virtual presenters, and business professionals record, publish and share quality, accessible, and interactive video presentations from the comfort of home or office. PresentationTube integrates a variety of presentation aids and synchronizes presenter's audio and video, PowerPoint slides, whiteboard, drawing board, and Web content. PresentationTube provides a slide scrollable thumbnail allowing the user to move to the respective video content and control both the time and progress of video presentation. A PresentationTube presentation allows interactivity via scrollable thumbnail, discussion board, and self-assessment quiz, allowing participants to be heard and involved. No need for new or third-party software or hardware. It is free, with no ads, no banners, and unlimited bandwidth and storage space. "

a nice tutorial for syncing webpage events with embedded youtube videos.

MIT today announced the launch of an online learning initiative internally called "MITx." MITx will offer a portfolio of MIT courses through an online interactive learning platform that will: organize and present course material to enable students to learn at their own pace feature interactivity, online laboratories and student-to-student communication allow for the individual assessment of any student's work and allow students who demonstrate their mastery of subjects to earn a certificate of completion awarded by MITx operate on an open-source, scalable software infrastructure in order to make it continuously improving and readily available to other educational institutions. MIT will make the MITx open learning software available free of cost, so that others - whether other universities or different educational institutions, such as K-12 school systems - can leverage the same software for their online education offerings, ...MITx online learning tools to be freely available All of the teaching on the platform will be free of charge. Those who have the ability and motivation to demonstrate mastery of content can receive a credential for a modest fee...If credentials are awarded, will they be awarded by MIT? As online learning and assessment evolve and improve, online learners who demonstrate mastery of subjects could earn a certificate of completion, but any such credential would not be issued under the name MIT. Rather, MIT plans to create a not-for-profit body within the Institute that will offer certification for online learners of MIT coursework. That body will carry a distinct name to avoid confusion"

"These are 23 top online degree program indicator rankings that will be published: 1. Online Bachelor's: Student Engagement and Assessment 2. Online Bachelor's: Student Services and Technology 3. Online Bachelor's: Faculty Credentials and Training 4. Online Business: Student Engagement and Accreditation 5. Online Business: Student Services and Technology 6. Online Business: Faculty Credentials and Training 7. Online Business: Admissions Selectivity 8. Online Nursing: Student Engagement and Accreditation 9. Online Nursing: Student Services and Technology 10. Online Nursing: Faculty Credentials and Training 11. Online Nursing: Admissions Selectivity 12. Online Education: Student Engagement and Accreditation 13. Online Education: Student Services and Technology 14. Online Education: Faculty Credentials and Training 15. Online Education: Admissions Selectivity 16. Online Engineering: Student Engagement and Accreditation 17. Online Engineering: Student Services and Technology 18. Online Engineering: Faculty Credentials and Training 19. Online Engineering: Admissions Selectivity 20. Online Computer Information Technology: Student Engagement and Accreditation 21. Online Computer Information Technology: Student Services and Technology 22. Online Computer Information Technology: Faculty Credentials and Training 23. Online Computer Information Technology: Admissions Selectivity"

"Rethinking the Way College Students Learn College students spend a lot of time listening to lectures. But research shows there are better ways to learn. And experts say students need to learn better because the 21st century economy demands more well-educated workers."

"The lecture is one of the oldest forms of education there is. But lecturing has never been an effective teaching technique and now that information is everywhere, some say it's a waste of time. Indeed, physicists have the data to prove it."

"blendmylearning project brought together Envision schools, google, khan academy, and stanford university d.school to chronicle the performance and engagement of low-performing high school algebra students receiving a mix of traditional teacher led instruction and self-guided instruction through the khan academy website."

Though the origin of this post is a blog on computing education, the strategies discussed could be used in any discipline.