Facebook a valid educational tool, teachers told | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk

Facebook a valid educational tool, teachers told | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk
"Teachers and lecturers are getting the lowdown on how to use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo in an educational way. Most schools and colleges in the UK block access to the websites but they are missing out on their potential for education, a government-funded guide says. The report for Childnet International and funded by Becta, the government body for technology in learning, says while teachers and lecturers may be using social networking services they may not recognise the educational potential for their students. Schools could help students develop "e-portfolios" where learners can record their achievements and collect examples of their work, the guide suggests. Or teachers could use social networking services to set up groups that "semi-formalise" students' online communications and "document discussions and milestones as they go".

The New Atlantis » The Myth of Multitasking

The New Atlantis » The Myth of Multitasking

"In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”

In modern times, hurry, bustle, and agitation have become a regular way of life for many people—so much so that we have embraced a word to describe our efforts to respond to the many pressing demands on our time: multitasking. Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possibe."

Teaching Business at a Liberal Arts College :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

Teaching Business at a Liberal Arts College :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs: "I’ve spent most of my career other than where I should be. I’m a business professor teaching at a liberal arts college. When I walk outside my office door, I’m more likely to bump into a colleague discussing Buddhism or chaos theory than one who’s talking about the latest Academy of Management conference."

Web classes get gas prices' silver lining - The Denver Post

Web classes get gas prices' silver lining - The Denver Post

"When a student enrolling in the online school at Colorado State University asked administrators to waive the registration fee so he could buy a tank of gas, the school's CEO had an idea. The 38-day-old CSU Global Campus online school has 40 enrollees on track to start in the fall. During June, CEO Rich Schweigert waived the $50 registration fee for everyone."The folks enrolling in the online university are trying to better themselves," Schweigert said. "Money is tight, let's make it easier." As the price of gasoline swells by the day, online education appears to be one industry that has grown sweeter for those hoping to get a degree. The wait list at the University of Colorado Denver's online program is up 90 percent from last fall. The number of students enrolled in CSU's distance-learning courses is up by 300 students from last year."

Digital Divide? What Digital Divide? : June 2008 : THE Journal

Digital Divide? What Digital Divide? : June 2008 : THE Journal
"Students in low-income families may have more access to technology than previously thought. What's more, according to preliminary research coming out of the University of Minnesota, these students are using technology consistently to boost their 21st century skills--even if many of them aren't aware that they're of the educational value of their activities online."

Wired Campus: The Battle Between Web 2.0 and the Classroom - Chronicle.com

Wired Campus: The Battle Between Web 2.0 and the Classroom - Chronicle.com: "The collaborative nature of Web 2.0 tools and the structure of higher education seem to be in conflict, says Martin Weller, a professor of educational technology at the Open University, in Britain, in a recent blog post on e-Literate. Weller, who in 1998 launched the Open University’s first major e-learning course, said that although “most students want the structure, the support and the filter that higher education provides,” a project launched by his institution is showing that online learners tend to organize themselves in groups according to their learning interests and help each other in their learning process."

Wired Campus: Who Needs a Professor When There's a Tutor Available? - Chronicle.com

Wired Campus: Who Needs a Professor When There's a Tutor Available? - Chronicle.com

"An unusual new commercial service offers low-cost online courses and connects students to accredited colleges who will accept the courses for credit. The only thing missing: professors. The service, called StraighterLine, is run by SmartThinking, a company that operates an online tutoring service used by about 300 colleges and universities. The online courses offered by StraighterLine are self-guided, and if students run into trouble they can summon a tutor from SmartThiking and talk with them via instant messaging. Students turn in their assignments or papers to tutors for grading as well."

Connecting with the Facebook Generation: Social Media Strategies for Web 2.0 | Academica Group Inc. - Marketing Insight for Higher Education

Connecting with the Facebook Generation: Social Media Strategies for Web 2.0 | Academica Group Inc. - Marketing Insight for Higher Education

"Web 2.0 is already old hat for today’s high school students, who take for granted the streaming video of YouTube, photo-sharing on Flickr, the three-dimensional experience of virtual worlds like Second Life, and “always-on” friendships via Twitter and Facebook. What should guidance and admissions professionals know about social media, and how can they leverage social networks as a potentially powerful channel for communicating with a new generation?

The real potential of Web 2.0 for PSE recruitment is much more than streaming video, podcasts, student blogs or even online virtual campuses. The power of social media lies in the exponential impact of viral marketing campaigns, peer referrals, and interactive conversations with young people, mediated by their choice of technology. These new, bidirectional channels demand whole new ways of thinking about communications strategy."

Is Scanning Important for Knowledge Workers? | Work Literacy

Is Scanning Important for Knowledge Workers? | Work Literacy
"

June 19th, 2008 - Tony Karrer |

"Scanning tasks are those where you stay up-to-speed on a topic. Likely as you read this post, you are scanning. You are seeing it in an RSS reader or via someone’s link. You didn’t arrive via search looking to find information that answers a specific question. Rather, you are participating in a continuous knowledge work / learning activity.

Common scanning methods are:

• Subscribing to magazines, journals or other publications
• Subscribing to email distribution lists, newsletters, etc.
• Subscribing to blogs
• Subscribing to searches, alerts, or other topic trackers
• Attending conferences or other professional meetings
• Participating in forums / discussion groups
• Conversations with peers can be a form of scanning
• Twitter can be scanning
• Blogging can be used as a part of scanning practices"

JOLT - Learning Management Systems of the Future

JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching: "Abstract
While American institutions of higher education still lead the world in quality of instruction, research and service, certain trends are challenging their future. Immediate attention to resolving these issues is necessary if the American university is going to maintain world leadership in the foreseeable future. The theory of transactional distance is put forward as a roadmap for changing the industrial system of education to a post-industrial one in which each learner receives differential instruction based on his or her prior knowledge of the subject matter, learning preferences and metacognitive states. Management of learning and teaching is described in a dynamic environment in which learners can participate in defining the level of autonomy with which they are comfortable, and instructors can set the required level of structure according to the characteristics of each discipline taught thus providing the appropriate level of transactional distance at each point in time for each individual learner. Ramifications of this environment for the structure of the university are discussed and components of a future educational management system are specified.


Keywords: Learning management, dynamic instructional design, transactional distance, learner autonomy, instructor control, distance education"

JOLT - Wikis as a Tool for Collaborative Course Management

JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching

"There are growing expectations among college students to be able to access and manage their course materials over the World Wide Web. In its early days, faculty would create web pages by hand for posting this information. As Internet technologies and access have matured over the past decade, course and learning management systems such as Blackboard and Web CT have become the norm for distributing such materials. In today’s Web 2.0 world, wikis have emerged as a tool that may complement or replace the use of traditional course management systems as a tool for disseminating course information. Because of a wiki’s collaborative nature, its use also allows students to participate in the process of course management, information sharing, and content creation. Using examples from an information technology classroom, this paper describes several ways to structure and use a wiki as a course management tool, and shares results of a student survey on the effectiveness of such an approach on student learning.

Keywords: Wiki, Course Management, Collaboration, Web 2.0, Content Creation, Student Learning."

University Learning Related Open Course Ware and Open Educational links for Higher Ed.

ZaidLearn: University Learning = OCW + OER = FREE!: "University learning related OpenCourseWare (OCW) and Open Educational Resources (OER) links that are scattered here and there, into one smashing post. In short, this post is about smashing all free University learning related OCW and OER resources and collections discovered into an all-in-one (sounds like shampoo!) quick-to-access/find juicy compilation. Hopefully, it will satisfy my thirst for quick access to free University learning related content."

Socializing Teaching And Learning

Socializing Teaching And Learning
A SlideShare slide show by George Siemens. Presented to: Canadian Network for Innovation in Education, June 18, 2008.

Classroom Technology 'Woefully Inadequate,' Study Finds : June 2008 : THE Journal

Classroom Technology 'Woefully Inadequate,' Study Finds : June 2008 : THE Journal
"Educators are, in large part, bullish on the role technology can play in improving student outcomes. But too large a percentage of them aren't receiving adequate training in the areas that matter most: instructional software, technology integration, learning outcomes management, and designing individual lesson plans. This according to a study released last week by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which also described access to classroom technology as "woefully inadequate" in most schools."

Sociology of Higher Ed: Contributions and Their Contexts (Book Review)

TCRecord: Article
"In 1973, Burton Clark published what must have seemed at the time an audacious essay in which he took stock of the emerging field of the sociology of higher education. Writing in the determinately scientific journal Sociology of Education, itself only a few years removed from its roots in the practitioner-oriented Journal of Educational Sociology, Clark sought a middle ground for the development of a sociology of higher education that avoided a lapse into either atheoretical and overly descriptive “managerial sociology” on the one side, or what he saw as arid and trivial preoccupations with statistical and ethnographic research removed from the world of practitioners on the other. Clark’s prognosis was more hopeful than not that the conceptual richness of Weber and Durkheim could enrich and enliven a sociology of higher education capable of meeting the practical problems of America’s ever-expanding system of higher education."

Staying Smart in Dumbed-Down Times :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

Staying Smart in Dumbed-Down Times :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

By Judith Shapiro

"In 1963, when I was graduating from college, a book was published entitled Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by the noted historian Richard Hofstadter. In exploring anti-intellectualism as a major current of American culture, Hofstadter examined various facets of our nation’s history over time. He described how those living in rural areas grew suspicious of urban life. He analyzed how utilitarianism and practicality, associated with the world of business, were accompanied by a certain contempt for the life of the mind. He devoted special attention to evangelicalism, although we should perhaps more specifically define his target as fundamentalism, a literal-minded approach to the Bible that involved hostility to all forms of knowledge that contradicted scripture or sought to interpret it as a set of historical documents reflecting the context of its production. He noted how all of this combined to make the term “elite” a dirty word."

60,000 top pupils lost to universities | higher news | EducationGuardian.co.uk

60,000 top pupils lost to universities | higher news | EducationGuardian.co.uk
"Some 60,000 of the highest achieving school leavers a year are failing to reach university, according to research.Educational records of every child who started secondary school in 1997 - the year Labour came to power - show there are 60,000 who scored in the top 20% in tests at 11, 14 or 16 but still dropped out of education. The lost pupils are significantly more likely to be from disadvantaged backgrounds.Opposition MPs claimed it showed a "shocking waste of talent" in English state schools. Anna Vignoles, the lead researcher at the Institute of Education, University of London, said: "This research shows clearly that the main reason why poorer students do not go to university to the same extent as their wealthier peers is that they have weaker academic achievement in school."At some point between the age of 11 and 18, 60,000 pupils in every school year who have been in the top 20% of their class are turned off higher education, according to the study by the Institute of Education and the Institute of Fiscal Studies for the educational charity the Sutton Trust. The study suggests that if every single one of them were convinced to go to university annual intake would be boosted by 25%, easily meeting the government's ambition of 50% of 18- to 30-year-olds going to university."

Wired Campus: Educause Survey Shows Students Watch Their Privacy on Facebook - Chronicle.com

Wired Campus: Educause Survey Shows Students Watch Their Privacy on Facebook - Chronicle.com: "Apparently, college students have heard enough horror stories about potential employers scouring Facebook that many are restricting who can see their profiles — so that any snapshots of drunken revelry, or the like, are available only to friends. Preliminary results of an Educause survey of more than 27,000 students nationwide indicates that the vast majority take some steps to reign in access to their profiles on social networks."

Smart Wireless Classroom Audio System Set for August Release : June 2008 : THE Journal

Smart Wireless Classroom Audio System Set for August Release : June 2008 : THE Journal

Elluminate Launches Learning Suite, Planning Software for Online Learning : June 2008 : THE Journal

Elluminate Launches Learning Suite, Planning Software for Online Learning : June 2008 : THE Journal

Finished With Your Exam? Good. Now Share It. :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

Finished With Your Exam? Good. Now Share It. :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs: "Finished With Your Exam? Good. Now Share It. Friday was the last day of classes at the University of California at San Diego, where students faced a weekend of studying before finals began on Monday. If any of them ventured to a nearby La Jolla shopping center, they might have encountered representatives from a new Web site there to make their pitch: Give us a test — any old test — and we’ll give you a $5 Starbucks coffee card."

Wired Campus: New Wiki Helps Humanities Researchers Find Online Tools - Chronicle.com

Wired Campus: New Wiki Helps Humanities Researchers Find Online Tools - Chronicle.com

"A new wiki provides a directory of online tools for humanities scholars. The site, which uses software that lets anyone edit or add to the material, covers more than 20 categories, including blogging tools, specialized search engines for scholars, and software programs that can record what is on a user’s screen."

Wired Campus: Encyclopaedia Britannica Goes -- Gasp! -- Wiki - Chronicle.com

Wired Campus: Encyclopaedia Britannica Goes -- Gasp! -- Wiki - Chronicle.com"Long a standard reference source for scholarship, largely because of its tightly controlled editing, the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced this week it was throwing open its elegantly-bound covers to the masses. It will allow the “user community” (in the words of the encyclopedia’s blog) to contribute their own articles, which will be clearly marked and run alongside the edited reference pieces. This seems to be a response to the runaway success of the user-edited online reference tool Wikipedia. (See for yourself. Do a Web search on a topic and note whether Wikipedia or Britannica shows up first.) Scholars have been adamantly opposed to Wikipedia citations in academic papers because the authors and sources are always changing. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder, agrees with this, but in next week’s issue of The Chronicle (click back to our home page on Monday for more) he also points to some changes in the reference tool that may make it more palatable to scholars.

HBR Review Article: Design Thinking

Design Thinking, HBR Review

"Historically, design has been treated as a downstream step in the development process—the point where designers, who have played no earlier role in the substantive work of innovation, come along and put a beautiful wrapper around the idea. To be sure, this approach has stimulated market growth in many areas by making new products and technologies aesthetically attractive and therefore more desirable to consumers or by enhancing brand perception through smart, evocative advertising and communication strategies. During the latter half of the twentieth century design became an increasingly valuable competitive asset in, for example, the consumer electronics, automotive, and consumer packaged goods industries. But in most others it remained a late-stage add-on. Now, however, rather than asking designers to make an already developed idea more attractive to consumers, companies are asking them to create ideas that better meet consumers’ needs and desires. The former role is tactical, and results in limited value creation; the latter is strategic, and leads to dramatic new forms of value."

Innovate: Future Learning Landscapes: Transforming Pedagogy through Social Software

Innovate: Future Learning Landscapes: Transforming Pedagogy through Social Software
"Many higher education institutions are discovering that new models of teaching and learning are required to meet the needs of a generation of learners who seek greater autonomy and connectivity as well as opportunities for socio-experiential learning. In contrast to earlier e-learning approaches that simply replicated traditional models, the Web 2.0 movement with its associated array of social software tools offers opportunities to move away from the last century's highly centralized, industrial model of learning and toward individual learner empowerment through designs that focus on collaborative, networked interaction (Rogers et al. 2007; Sims 2006; Sheely 2006). Such developments are providing the foundations for and shaping the contours of a new learning landscape, which we call Pedagogy 2.0. Pedagogy 2.0 integrates Web 2.0 tools that support knowledge sharing, peer-to-peer networking, and access to a global audience with socioconstructivist learning approaches to facilitate greater learner autonomy, agency, and personalization."

Web 2.0 how-to design style guide

Web 2.0 how-to design style guide: "The list below is a summary of many of the common features of typical 'Web 2.0' sites.

Clearly, a site doesn't need to exhibit all these features to work well, and displaying these features doesn't make a design '2.0' - or good! (The author has) already addressed some of these factors in my introductory Current Style article.

1. Simplicity
2. Central layout
3. Fewer columns
4. Separate top section
5. Solid areas of screen real-estate
6. Simple nav
7. Bold logos
8. Bigger text
9. Bold text introductions
10. Strong colours
11. Rich surfaces
12. Gradients"
13. Reflections
14. Cute icons
15. Star flashes"

Preparing for an Influx :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

Preparing for an Influx :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs: "The impediments and setbacks came in ways big and small. Josh Webster had his academic scholarship from the University of California at Los Angeles reduced from $5,000 to $1,000 because the federal government was paying him veterans’ benefits for the time he spent as an Air Force para-rescue jumper. As Derek Blumke sought to gather information about potentially attending the University of Michigan as he departed the Air Force in 2005, officials there transferred his call from office to office six times, he said, before telling him they could not help him because he was not yet a student."

Cyber campuses: Soon, send your avatar to university- ET Cetera-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times

Cyber campuses: Soon, send your avatar to university- ET Cetera-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times: "SAN FRANCISCO: An internet fantasy universe teeming with faux worlds devoted to socializing and video games is expanding to include virtual classrooms and universities. A new trend in online education involves students acting through animated characters called “avatars” mingling in simulated school settings and even rocketing off, via the net, on quests for knowledge. San Jose State University in the heart of Silicon Valley has built a campus at Second Life, the popular virtual world."

Is Retention Improvement Within Colleges’ Reach? :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

Is Retention Improvement Within Colleges’ Reach? :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

Low graduation rates. High transfer rates. Students who never graduate. Gaps — sometimes embarrassingly large — between minority and white students’ retention rates. Are retention problems just too difficult to solve? Actually not, according to speaker after speaker Tuesday at the “National Dialog on Student Retention,” a conference in Atlanta organized by Education Dynamics, which advises colleges on enrollment and retention issues. The theme of speakers was that enough research has been done that colleges know what they need to do to get more students through their degree programs. The problem appears to be in execution, especially on a large scale.

iBreadCrumbs

iBreadCrumbs: "iBreadCrumbs.com is a recording toolbar for your web browser. Similar to what a DVR does for tv, iBreadCrumbs.com records all the web pages you visit while you research. Save, review, and share your research with friends or colleagues.

iBreadCrumbs allows students, researchers, and professors to organize the world's data into narrow research 'breadcrumbs' or click-streams."

10 disruptive technologies for the next five years -

10 disruptive technologies for the next five years -: "Technology analyst Gartner have come up with a list of the 10 technologies it believes are most likely to change the way business is done between 2008 and 2012.
High up the list are web 2.0 phenomena such as social networks and mash-ups – creative mixtures of online content from a variety of public sources – which Gartner predicts will change internal and external business communications."

Second Life goes to school | Australian IT

Second Life goes to school | Australian IT: "AN internet fantasy universe teeming with faux worlds devoted to socialising and video games is expanding to include virtual classrooms and universities.
The new trend in online education involves students acting through animated characters, called avatars, mingling in simulated school settings and even rocketing off, via the internet, on quests for knowledge.

San Jose State University in the heart of Silicon Valley has built a campus at Second Life, the popular virtual world created by Linden Lab in San Francisco."

Video: Social Media in Plain English | Common Craft - Explanations In Plain English

Video: Social Media in Plain English | Common Craft - Explanations In Plain English: "This video focuses on basics of social media: new technology that makes everyone a producer and tools that give everyone a chance to have a say."

Wired Campus: A YouTube Founder's Youniversity - Chronicle.com

Wired Campus: A YouTube Founder's Youniversity - Chronicle.com
"

A YouTube Founder's Youniversity

Jawed Karim, a YouTube co-founder who now helps students start technology companies, has joined forces with two other tech entrepreneurs to start Youniversity Ventures, a venture-capital company that invests in student-run tech start-ups at Stanford University, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota."

De-Departmentalizing the B-School :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs

De-Departmentalizing the B-School :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs: "De-Departmentalizing the B-School

Today, you need to know a little bit of everything, But Villanova University’s undergraduate business school curriculum, starting this fall, is designed on the theory that you don’t need an individual course in everything."